A couple Saturday’s ago my wife and I were planning to make a trip down to IKEA in Conshohoken to get some new office furniture for my home office remodel. I happened to stumble across a Vegetarian Nutrition seminar being held in downtown Philly that day through the NoMeatAthlete Facebook page. So we decided to add that to our list of places to stop. As the week progressed we also decided to checkout Blackbird Pizzeria, a vegan pizzeria, before and Essene Market & Café after the seminar. The day was shaping up to be quite busy.
The seminar started at 12PM and we missed pre-registering due to some issue with the registration page, which closed on the Monday before. I had connected with @TexasVeggieRD who said she could get us in anyway. We wanted to get to Blackbird Pizzeria by 11AM so we would have adequate time to get to the seminar, which was over at Friends Center over on Cherry Street about 20 minutes away. We didn’t get to the pizza shop until 20 after 11, so it was a bit of a rush. There was no one in the shop except for the 2 people working there and it looked like they were just starting to get some food ready. I ordered 2 slices of “pepperoni” pizza, which had round slices of Seitan and melted Daiya cheese on top. My wife ordered the Grilled Veggie Wrap, which took a bit of time to make since it appeared that they hadn’t cut any vegetables yet that morning. As we waited, the thick-bearded chef made several trips back and forth to the pizza area from the kitchen in the rear with tubs of cut veggies. While we waited, a middle-aged fellow in a long-tailed tuxedo came in and ordered a slice of pizza. We had passed a wedding getting started at the church down the street and he appeared to have hurried down for a little snack. He didn’t appear to be the vegan-pizza eating type and the place really gives no indication that it is a vegan pizza shop, so we were a bit entertained watching him stuff down his slice of pizza. He gave no indication of being surprised or that the pizza didn’t taste quite right, so either he knew or it was really that good that it fooled him. Eventually our food came and the slices were so 
big that they each came on their own plate. My wifes’ wrap was as thick as a soda can and packed with veggies. I hadn’t eaten any pizza in around 5 months, so I was really looking forward to scarfing down some pie.
It surely looked like pizza, so far so good. The first bite definitely had a nice thin crust bite and an string of cheese slinking back to my mouth. The Daiya “cheese” looked pretty much cheese, although the taste was a little different consistency. It didn’t have that gummy-ness of mozzerella and the taste was little pseudo-cheesy. The Seitan “pepperoni” was great and had a nice spice to it. The crust though was one of the best thin pizza crusts I have ever had. This really made up for for the fakeness of the cheese. I scarfed down both slices with ease and even sampled some of my wife’s wrap too. The Veggie Wrap was really tasty and my wife claimed was well worth the wait. I don’t think you would normally wait that long there, it was just we caught them at a bad time. Will definitely hit that place again when down the city.
We navigated our way over to the seminar on Cherry Street, which was just behind City Hall, and parked the car in a parking garage. We got to the lecture which had already started and the girl let us in no problem. The first two lectures were on vegan athletes presented by Enette Larson-Meyer, PhD, RD and Matt Ruscigno, MPH, RD. Enette is the author of the book Vegetarian Sports Nutrition which I have purchased but not read yet. Since we came in late, it took me a while to catch up to what the context of the talk was. She had provided some numbers of recommended nutrient intake with particular regard to the International Olympic Committee figures. It seemed that most of the audience there were dieticians and not really athletes. There also seemed to be some doubt among that community as to whether a vegetarian or vegan diet was sufficient to fuel an athlete based on her talk.
Matt Ruscigno spoke next about a “Day in the Life of Vegan Athletes”, to which he provided a video about a friend of his, Donovan Jenkins, that recently completed a 100-mile Ultra-running event. Matt is himself a endurance athlete and vegan and also was the pacer for his friend for the last 26 miles of the event. The video was pretty cool and had a pretty cool story to go along with it. It is worth checking out.
The last two speakers were Jack Norris, RD and Virginia(Ginny) Messina, MPH, RD, authors of the book Vegan for Life. They went over some of the key nutrients we need how to get them from a plant-based diet. One of the key takeaways I got from this was that a well-diversified plant-based diet will supply you with the proper nutrients you need. They recommended supplementing with Vitamin B12 since the only way we can get it these days is from animals digestive tracts. We actually produce it ourselves, but it is too late in the digestive system(
) for us to absorb it. B12 is actually a bacteria that comes from the ground and since we don’t interact with the soil anymore we cannot absorb except through meat. But before any meat-heads get on their soapboxes, it was found that most meat eaters don’t get enough of this vitamin either and the dieticians recommend that anyone over 50 should supplement it as well. Meat or no-meat. We were fortunate to get a copy of their book after the seminar, which was made possible by the fine folks over at Tofurky. LOL! I don’t eat or subscribe to this stuff. Even though it is “vegan” meat, it is still processed which defeats the whole purpose of a whole foods, plant-based diet. So the scientific community is still buying into the whole processed foods crap, but I guess they need funding from somewhere.This demonstrates one of the key differences between vegan and whole foods, plant-based. You can be vegan and still eat like crap.
We took a walk around the block after the seminars just to kill some time. There was an Occupy Rally going on in Love Park which we listened to for a bit. They started chanting something over and over again and then the girl on bullhorn started dropping F-bombs. We started heading back to the parking garage and then made our way back to South Street area to check the Essene Market & Café for dinner. The market was tiny but very well laid out. They carried all kinds of healthy stuff and a vegan buffett which we enjoyed for dinner. The plates were weighed by the pound so I had to be careful sampling all the different dishes. It wasn’t like the Honey Underground that’s for sure.
It was getting fairly late by the time we got to IKEA. I had the sales guy lay me out a plan for the office and he provided me with a list of all the parts I needed. We then navigated the IKEA maze down to the warehouse and started picking out the pieces we needed. The first piece was a 63”x47” corner tabletop. Looking at this we soon realized this may not fit in the CRV. I ran out and measured the back of the car and sure enough it would not fit. Ugghhh! This was the main reason we were going down here and now we could not get the furniture. It was a good thing we hit all those other places or that would have been a total waste of a trip down to Conshohoken. Guess that gives us another excuse to come down again for dinner!
