Day 249: We find a cake vendor and reject a caterer

Remember back in this post when I laid out the status of my wedding planning...and lamented?

Yesterday, the S.O., my mom and step-dad and I took a drive over the hill into Santa Cruz to do a cake tasting and to give caterer #2 the benefit of the doubt and visit their cafe to get a sense of their culinary "style."

One home-run and one strike-out.

Home-run: Now, I hadn't really looked into any other bakery than Black China Bakery in Santa Cruz. They're the ones who make the vegan cakes I buy from Whole Foods, and I knew I wanted them to get the business. The trick was in figuring out if we could go all-vegan as I hoped. we tried three different cake varieties, 2 all-vegan and 1 non-vegan. As luck would have it, everyone like the vegan cakes better! So now we just have to decide how we're serving the cake...cake per table? Cascading set of differently-sized cakes? (We like the idea of multiple cakes and multiple flavors.) The price seems reasonable, particularly if we go with their standard rosette decorations and then use flowers to embellish the presentation.

Strike-out: I was already annoyed with caterer #2. While they were the best philosophical fit, being focused on organic, local, season foods and green business practices, they were also the ones who weren't exactly going out of their way to get our business. After throwing out an option to cook us a specific meal for $30/person, they kindof took it back when I bit on the idea and stuck with their first two suggestions: "Just stop by our cafe to get a sense of our style" or "let me make you up a plate the next time we cater a vegetarian event."

So, given we were already in Santa Cruz we decided to stop by their cafe on our way out of town. The cafe was really a glorified sandwich shop, albeit with fancier ingredients, but there was no place for four people to sit indoors (and it was still foggy and chilly.) But beyond all that, my exact concern  was borne out, as they had only ONE vegan item on their entire (limited) menu, and that was hummus.

What a frikkin' waste of time. We headed back to Los Gatos and had some lunch here. After all the sugar shock of a cake tasting it was good to eat some "real" food :)

Breakfast:
Puffins Cereal
Rice Milk
Organic Banana

Snack:
Wedding cake tasting at Black China Bakery

Lunch (Los Gatos Brewing Company):
Diet Coke
Sourdough Bread
Vegetable Pizza (no cheese)
Jasmine Rice and Tamarind Sweet Potatoes and Fennel
French Fries