This Sandwich is a life raft

I never thought I would be so excited about a sandwich. It’s been a really tough year, for a lot of reasons, and I know that many of you are unemployed, and struggling, and feeling the pinch of the economy. We’ve been struggling, like everyone else, and there have been some scary and stressful  months around here. It’s pretty difficult to ask for help when there are so many other causes that are so worthy, and we ask you to donate to them pretty often, and don’t want you to stop doing that. So we’ve done our best to stay ahead of the curve and try to figure out what it is that you’d like to buy with your precious “eating out” money that you keep stashed in a mason jar in your closet. And that’s why I’m excited about a sandwich.

Our lovely new sandwich menu, designed as usual by The Guy Upstairs (also known as Jared Souney). Portland is awash with vegan baked goods lately, and not as crowded with vegan sandwiches, so we’re taking a step in that direction. All of our bread will be house made, as well as our seitan, our jam, and lots of other stuff! I sincerely hope that after 5 years of serving baked goods to this community, we will be able to stick it out through this economic storm, and still be here for another 5, or 10, or 15 years. I’ve named the sandwiches after those near and dear to me here at the vegan mini-mall, all of whom have given me lots of friendship and support and advice, and their hard work, over the years. Come out on Tuesday (2/9) and help us celebrate our 5 year anniversary (which was in January, I know, I know) and try out a sandwich!  We also have a limited run of t-shirts for sale, printed by my friends at Ink Brigade, and the money from the sale of the shirts helps us pay off the equipment we had to buy for sandwich making. They’re $20 and they come with a coupon for a free sandwich. If it makes you more willing to buy a shirt, we’ll also let you come into the kitchen and try to lift our new panini press, which is small, but weighs 50 lbs!

A quick word to our gluten free friends, who really wanted GF options for sandwiches… we really considered this, and I even baked some pretty great GF bread, but we are having issues with customers complaining of cross-contamination with wheat. Serving GF sandwiches and avoiding cross-contamination was going to be really expensive (separate panini grill, separate knives, scoops and containers of sauces and spreads, separate cutting surfaces, etc.) so we decided that it isn’t something that we can do right now. We added a version of our Unsalads that are served on a bed of greens instead of bread (The Ruby Bird’s Nest), and most of our soups will remain gluten free.

what 14 lbs of margarine looks like

Not to eclipse the fun of valentine’s day, but seriously, is this gross or totally delicious? This is a regular sight here in the bakery, so sometimes I forget how weird it actually is. Once someone paid Jesse $5 to eat an entire stick of Earth Balance. I don’t think I’d do it for less than $20.

art is all around us

Easter Goodies

I’ll admit, as if you don’t already know, that we aren’t overly religious folks here at Sweetpea. But it is hard to resist an opportunity to make cookies in the shapes of baby chickens, rabbits, and spring flowers – so we will have an array of easter and spring items through the weekend.  Did you say easter basket? Maybe, just maybe.

sleepy chicks

When I was a kid my mom would set up elaboate easter egg hunts for us. Some of the plastic eggs had candy, and some had notes like “Give mom one hug” or ” wash the dishes tonight” (which also contained one piece of candy – to lessen the pain of dishwashing I suppose). As we got older mom didn’t want to let go of the tradition, so she started filling the eggs with money.  It is sad that my parents didn’t own a video camera,  because a video of three groggy teenagers (this was at 7am!) scrambling behind couches and house plants for eggs filled with money would surely be hilarious. Some of the eggs still had candy and notes in them – “give mom 3 kisses” – she was getting more desparate as we got older and college was looming – but most had pocket change. I am a self admitted SORE LOSER and always ended up with the eggs full of pennies and the “empty the bathroom garbages” note, which meant I was in a bad mood all day.  Somehow my younger sister seemed to get all of the eggs with the big bills, and would walk away with $25 and some change. She probably deserved it after the time we filled her eggs with baby grasshoppers when she was 4.

-lisa

We’re an internet bakery now.

This is long overdue! Lots of great new things on the website, to keep you up to date. We will be blogging about what is new and happening here in the bakery, tweeting about useless information, and letting you know what our soups and brunch are, IN ADVANCE!

Thanks for coming in and keeping us busy!
xo