Sunday, June 13, 2010

Emad's

This morning I laid in bed & finished watching Julie & Julia, which completely inspired me w/ my purpose in writing this blog & made me want to start cooking more (no beef bourguignon for me though!). A lot of the main character, Julie's, doubts when she first started writing her blog were feelings I could commiserate with. Like, what is the point of sending messages out into the abyss to randomly be read by people I have never even met, and does anyone even read what I am writing? Also, the entire point of blogging is quite narcissistic, who am I to think that strangers would be interested in my life & what I eat on a daily basis? Like I said this movie inspired me, so rather than these questions making me want to give up blogging they made me reevaluate & remember my original purpose in writing this blog.I know I haven't written an 'about me' section yet so I have not explained my main purpose for having this blog. My main goal is to share how I fit eating vegan and healthy (most of the time) into my busy schedule of being a student, traveling, & enjoying life w/ my family and friends. I have always been passionate about food, and about 14 months ago I made the transition into becoming vegan for both moral and health reasons. I would have never been able to make this lifestyle change without first becoming involved in reading vegan blogs (namely hungryhungyhippie) which showed me that eliminating animal products from your diet & eating healthy is really not that difficult. This was a relief for me considering that I have never eaten 'red' meat, and always have had a hard time on those rare occasion when I did eat chicken not imagining the life of the bird that I was eating.While I am not trying to pressure everyone into becoming vegan (I am far from the perfect vegan myself), I do want to help people understand that they can become less reliant on animal products and still enjoy food. Worse case scenario even if no one follows my blog it can serve an entirely selfish purpose and give me an excuse to dine out more frequently & try new recipes. Another benefit is that I have always loved journaling and by capturing images of the food I consume it helps me keep a record of my life since food is inextricably linked w/ everything I do.

Enough ranting, back to the food!
Breakfast as usual (special K vanilla almond cereal w/ soymilk & 1/2 banana). I also had a coffee at the Paddington Grind but wasn't able to take a pic since I got caught upin a conversation w/ a woman I met there.

At UNSW I regretfully had to buy lunch from this women who drives me nuts because nothing else was open except for the Indian vendor where I had already eaten the day before. She literally yells at people & makes racist remarks all the time. My toasted sandwich was decent though, and filled w/ avocado & grilled zucchini, eggplant, and pumpkin.

For dinner James & I were both craving some hummus so we ventured into Surry Hills' Little Lebanon & picked the restaurant that looked the least sketchy & had the best decor which is how we ended up at Emad's. I was immediately impressed by the hot pink walls, silk pillows decorating the benches, and bright jewel toned gauze draping the ceiling. By the time that I walked through the kitchen to get to the bathroom and saw that the kitchen was staffed by only one little old Lebanese women, drinking wine & wrapping dolmas, I had fallen in love w/ the place.


We started out w/ some hummus & flat bread of course. This hummus was insane; super rich and creamy & topped with lots of olive oil. There is nothing better than homemade, traditional hummus.

I had the tabouleh salad &...

rice wrapped in vines leaves.

Emad's is BYO so we went to the bottle-o across the street & grabbed a bottle of Promise Land Chardonnay. While this is James' moms new favorite (she always used to drink Yellow Tail like me), it is a bit too sweet for my liking.

After both of our meals we weren't entirely satisfied so we ordered some more flat bread & hummus. If anyone loves hummus more than me it's James, he can eat tubs and tubs of it on his own. Emad's was great, but I would recommend going with more than two people so that you can try lots of different dishes since the menu is all meze w/ no real main courses.

1 comment:

  1. My favorite of your blogging so far! You have to take me to Emad's! Looks like our kinda place. Love you and miss you Honey. Can't wait for you to come home so we can do some home cooking/entertaining! Not the same without your touch!

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