Sunday, October 16, 2011

In Which I Visit India Sweets and Spices, and a Classic Giveaway: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar!


Yesterday I ventured to the scary suburbs of Portland, OR, to visit a shop that Nummers told me about a couple of years ago. This is a component of strip mall hell, but inside is another matter. We are going inside India Sweets and Spices. That spot of yellow is a kid's t-shirt. He was bouncing a football against the wall outside the shop. He won't be the only kid hanging about!

You come in through that door at the end and you immediately hit the wall of spices and spice mixture packets. It was hard to take photos because there were five or six littles running around the shop playing tag. Chaos, but it was really fun.



Here you see Amchur, which I picked up thanks to Amey's post at Vegan Eats & Treats, and black salt for scramble!





All of the Marmite is sold upside down.



Hindu figures for worship. I think they are Lakshmi and Ganesh, mostly?



Aisle of Indian snack foods! Both sides! This seems to be the Indian version of what I would expect to see in a potato chip/tortilla chip aisle here.



Close-up of a few of the snacks/snack mixes, and puffy mini-puri.



On the left, dried mango balls coated in kala namak (black salt) and seed mixes for after meals. On the right, aseptic boxed juices: basil, triphala (this seems to be an Ayurvedic mixture), karela (bitter melon?), gooseberry, and lauki (bottle gourd).



Mango stack!



On the left, I'm looking at the leaves in the middle. These may be lime leaves, but they are much larger than the kaffir lime leaves I found at Uwajimaya last week. On the right, I think we have methi (fenugreek) greens and kavathi, which is an indian tuber. Amey? Anyone else?



This basket, which looks like it is full of maggots, is actually full of fresh turmeric!




Choose your preferred pappadum for frying! Right in the middle above the yellow disks, there are two little packages of items for frying. You know they are for frying because their name is the Fry Me. You can get them in kapu kathi shape or pillow shape.



All of the flours! Rice, wheat, bean, all different kinds and grinds for making all different dishes. Remember that there are kidlets running around the store this whole time, yelling and dodging each other and sweeping around the adults. The adorable little girl on the left intentionally inched her way into the photo while I was trying to back up further to get the whole rack. Then she smiled at me and picked up a bag of chick pea flour and started gnawing on it.



Hing. Keep a respectful distance from this . . . pungent spice. I can't read anything on those labels, but I know hing. You may also know it as asafoetida.



Just in back of the flours, there is another big rack. It has all different kinds of pulses on the left, and on the right, two-pound jars of powdered spices over the housewares. The back wall and to the right of the photograph is all pickles and chutneys.



There was also a lot of unloading happening in the back, plus this great big sign that says India Sweets and Spices. On the left, you can maybe see this silver house, which could be a shrine. You can also see how high the ceiling is! This concludes the visit to India Sweets and Spices. They also have food made to order and a sweets case, but they didn't understand vegan so I didn't photograph the sweets or buy any hot food to take home. That is too bad, but having access to this shop is pretty luxurious so I won't complain!

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Today's giveaway is for the vegan classic cookbook Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar! This lovely book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero is the second in the dessert trio, which I hope you know also includes Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and the just-released Vegan Pie in the Sky. It includes the recipe for the infamous peanut butter chocolate pillows and 74 more recipes. If you don't have it, you need it. If you have it, you need it to gift! The giveaway is brought to you by the lovely people over at Da Capo Lifelong, who have furnished a number of titles for giveaways on this blog. Please consider having a look at their website, and/or following them on Twitter and Facebook, because they are seriously generous. They also publish beautiful and useful vegan books, like Isa and Terry's dessert trio, and many more.

To enter this giveaway, leave a comment below. Tell me about your favorite cookie, or someone who invaded your life, or anything at all. This giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada, but others this month will be open to everybody everywhere. The winner will be chosen by random number generator and posted tomorrow below tomorrow's giveaway. If you win a giveaway on this blog at some point this month, please be kind and don't enter further giveaways--I'd love as many people to win something as possible!

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The winner of The Conscious Cook is xvavaveganx! Congratulations! Please send your name and address to me at miso...@yahoo.com. (<---make sure to click on the . . . link for the rest of the email address. This is a spam avoidance thing.)


31 comments:

  1. Hi celyn,

    I've selected this blog for the Liebster Blog Award. I'm really enjoying your MoFo posts. <3
    Here's the link: http://phoenixdreaming.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/liebster-blog-award/

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  2. That store is fantastic! So much bigger than ours. But I'm happy to have a place to buy black salt and some of those chips are really yum!

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  3. OK, first of all YAY!!!! I'm so excited about the cookbook thanks you SOOOOO much! And secondly, that store looks amazing! What a huge variety of items! ANd I'm jealous about the black salt, I've been looking for it and haven't found it yet. There are a lot of Indian markets here so that is my next stop :) I'm sending an e-mail now! Thanks again!

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  4. not an entry for the book, but i just wanted to say how crazyjealous i am of your trip to that store! so many things in one place that i can't find in my town!

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  5. PS. my comment was not an entry, can't be greedy :) Just a thank you!

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  6. I love India Sweets and Spices! I didn't realize that they have locations outside of California. my favorite cookies are classic chocolate chip.

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  7. i've already got the cookie book, so I don't need to enter the contest. What an excellent store! Next time I come to portland, I am going to beg you to spend a whole afternoon taking me shopping. :) Those little greens are definitely methi/fenugreek and they are great! I'm not sure about the bigger leaves, I agree they look like lime leaves, but don't those kaffir lime leaves usually come in twos? so many wonderful foods to explore in this world!

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  8. My mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever! I'm still trying to veganize them! I would love a copy of this book for some pointers!
    Thanks!

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  9. My favorite cookie is just classic oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Thanks for the wonderful giveaway!

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  10. What a cool store! Great rundown of all the things available there. :-)

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  11. Cool! I'd love to win. my fav cookie? The classic choc chip!

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  12. whoa...i want that cookbook. the peanut butter chocolate pillows have been a huge hit anywhere i take them!

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  13. Hey I really enjoyed this post of yours. Brings back memories of visiting the Indian stores at Queens. What fun it used to be to visit these places when we lived in the US. Used to make us think of home (messy, noisy, not so great part of home but nonetheless home). Now that we're back here in India, we take all our spices and snacks and other such goodies for granted once again. Just a ten minute walk to the neighborhood grocery store and I can get my hands on whatever I want for my daily cooking.

    Those large leaves that you've pictured wit the limes and tomatoes are Beetle/Pan Leaves. They are used during traditional/religious occasions and also eaten at the end of a meal with a bunch of things wrapped inside them. They are spicy and are a developped taste. :)

    They have medicinal properties and when shred and boiled in water, they make for a fantastic and highly effective herbal tea for coughs and colds.

    Oh and hing is my favorite spice! LOL

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  14. Good I make chocolate chip cookies the most, which is why I haven't gotten it yet. But as soon as it stoped being 9000 degrees I wanted to make them all!

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  15. What a cool store! :)

    I can't decide on a favorite cookie, but I just made an awesome batch of chocolate chip cookies!

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  16. My favorite cookies will always be Nana's fig-filled cuccidati, a simple filled and glazed Italian cookie with rainbow sprinkles.

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  17. My cat invaded my life! And I love cookies. And I am coming shopping with you and Amey in Portland! <3

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  18. I found your blog through Cadry's blog, saying you are also a former Iowan! Very exciting.
    I love veganizing peanut butter cookies and snickerdoodles (even adding flax!).
    I will be back to check your blog, love it!

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  19. What a great store. I love venturing into ethnic food stores and looking at the different vegan products they have, and trying odd snacks... like those mango balls in black salt? And thank you for reminding me turmeric is a root like ginger.

    My favorite cookies probably are chocolate chip cookies.

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  20. My favorite cookie is a snickerdoodle. I like the name and I love the cinnamon & sugar topping.

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  21. I'm impressed by all of the ethnic markets near you! Jealous, really. :P

    I'm a classic chocolate chip kind of gal!

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  22. That looks just like the Indian grocery store I visit, I love their huge range of spices and flours, I never walk out without buying at least a dozen things!

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  23. This may sound lame, but I never even thought about fresh turmeric as a concept - I've never seen a recipe that called for it, so it's always just been a ground spice in my mind. I *love* turmeric, though, so might have to look into its fresh uses. :)

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  24. Ha! I totally thought the turmeric was maggots.
    My favorite cookie is chocolate chocolate chip. Weird to talk about cookies after just talking about maggots.

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  25. Pappadum! <3 And I recognized the asafoetida right away! I bought the same kind from a store here after looking for it for the last 3 years. Now my kitchen has that smell every time I spin my spice rack :)

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  26. Chocolate chip cookies forever!!

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  27. I love peanut butter oatmeal chocolate no bake cookies. Super easy and always delicious.

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  28. Awesome.. i love indian stores.. of course coz i am indian.. i need all those godies very frequenntly.. love the fresh turmeric, mine doesnt have that!

    my current fave cookie is candied beet multigrain thins, which is my own creation!

    Richa @Hobby And More Food Blog

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  29. my favourite cookie has gotta be a classic chocolate chip one..crispy on the outside and nice and soft inside! delish! peanut butter ones may be a close second though..

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  30. First of all, I love your blog post. Thank you for the share, though I think I only ever want to see tumeric in a shaker bottle from now on :)
    As for my favorite cookie, it has to be just out of the oven chocolate chip, with a few less chips than most people like, because I LOVE that dough. Mouth watering right now for some.

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  31. Oh man I would be in heaven if I ever visited that store. The snack aisle in particular has me salivating at the thought.
    Fantastic post!

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