Birch Bay part 1 ~ Vancouver and dinner at a Chinese Buddhist vegan restaurant

I mentioned in my last post we went north to the tiny town of Birch Bay for five days, where we were given the use of a condo across the street from the water. The condo was quite large and, unlike the house we live in in Seattle, WARM. In fact, even though the thermostat was set to 60˚, the temperature in the condo was so warm that several times we opened the terrace door to cool it down. Understand, I'm not complaining — it was kind of wonderful to be warm, even if it was only for five days.

Although the condo was cozy-warm, the weather outside can only be described as bleak — near-constant rain and dark skies, but hey, we didn't let that stop us. No, we're used to bleak. We arrived Wednesday night, stopping first at a vegan-friendly Vietnamese restaurant in Bellingham, for dinner. The food was presented beautifully and was very good, but I didn't take any photos; I'm sorry to say I was blogged out, and just couldn't manage it. The photos you see below are all from Vancouver.


Soup with dumplings ~ Bodhi Buddhist vegan restaurant

On Thursday, we headed to Vancouver. Because it was so close to Christmas, crossing the border took a long time, and the 40-mile trip took us about two hours. It was pouring in Vancouver, of course, but my husband wanted to go to Stanley Park. Doesn't everyone want to enjoy nature in the pouring rain? We both had hooded raincoats but had somehow forgotten the umbrellas, so we ended up buying one in the gift shop — which now that I think of it, seems like a rather appropriate souvenir — and set off to walk on the seawall. Pouring rain certainly does cut down on the crowds, and we were practically alone as we "enjoyed" our walk. After that, we were pretty wet, and decided that it just wasn't going to work to walk through the forest — or anywhere else. We had planned on having an early dinner anyway, so we did a car tour, then headed to a Buddhist Chinese restaurant called Bodhi.


Daikon cakes ~ Bodhi Buddhist vegan restaurant

Our dinner was so good — I even got to have daikon cakes (sometimes called radish cakes or turnip cakes) which I love. We decided to get an extra dish and some soup to take back for the next night, Christmas Eve, when we doubted we'd find anything open. It's true we had a kitchen, but didn't really want to cook except for daily breakfasts, and dinner on Christmas.


Bean curd skin rolls in sesame chili sauce ~ Bodhi Buddhist vegan restaurant


Stir-fried Chinese broccoli~ Bodhi Buddhist vegan restaurant



After dinner we packed up our leftovers and extra dish, and headed back to our nice warm condo in the relentless rain and gloom.

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So glad I signed on to test recipes for Urban Vegan!!!


Spiced lentils


Mini injera


Ethiopian collards


Dinner!