Trip to Ithaca

We have mentioned in one or two posts before that we make trips over to Ithaca, NY from out hometown of Corning. Ithaca offers a lot of vegan grocery options that we don't have available locally. Yesterday we made one of these trips that we'd like to share with you.

Thai food is Josiah's favorite ethnic cuisine variety, but Thai is something that Corning has a woeful lack of. Corning doesn't have any Thai restaurant and even the Wegmans grocery store in Corning fails to stock a lot of the Thai pantry items that we would like. Just a few days ago we had our hearts set on making a Thai green curry at home, only to find that green curry paste didn't have a home on our local Wegmans' shelves. We settled with making a red curry, but red curry tends to be a little too hot for my tastes. To make up for this, we stopped at Tast of Thai Express as soon as we got into Ithaca to enjoy a lunch. Josiah got the green curry tofu while I opted for the yellow curry tofu. Reis, much to his disappointment, wasn't allowed to have any of the pretty Thai food. He had to stick to his formula.

So many options!

You can see the resentment in Reis's eyes

Greenstar is a small Ithacan co-op grocery. It stocks all sorts of local, organics products such as produce, tofu, and tempeh. Greenstar is a must-stop for us if for no other reason than the 2 pounds bricks of tempeh that they sell. We also regularly buy from the greater variety of Larabars, Daiya products, soy yogurts, and bulk foods (both dry and wet). Their prepared foods are also spectacular. Pick up some Macro Mama peanut noodles or a vegetarian "tuna" sub and I doubt you'll be dissappointed. Wegmans has gradually begun offering some of these products that we could formerly only find at Greenstar, like agave nectar, increasingly more Daiya varieties, and better brands of soy yogurts, but it is unlikely that we'll ever stop visiting Greenstar. Sometimes, though, we do get a little fed up with the crowds. It's a popular place (especially on a Saturday afternoon) and the building is no warehouse.

This trip we didn't make it to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. We left Corning later in the day and our time in Ithaca was more limited than usual. Also, the produce available is much more exciting in the heart of the Summer rather than this long after the harvest is over and the weather's gone cold. But, just for craps and chuckles, here's a picture of Reis and myself at the Ithaca Farmer's Market from earlier in the year.