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.

bread + lettuce+ hummus

As much as I love eating out, after awhile I start to feel a little guilty about spending all of that money & I usually always eat healthier when I cook for myself. So this time instead of buying lunch at the UNSW cafeteria like I have been doing lately, I decided to pack a lunch to bring to the library.

Mixed nuts & dried fruit, a banana, & an english muffin sandwich w/ mixed lettuce, avocado, tomato & hummus.

Before leaving the house though I had a big bowl of Special K Vanilla Almond cereal w/ soy milk.

Then before getting down to studying I of course needed some caffeine so I went to the coffee stand on campus & grabbed a soy latte w/ hazelnut syrup.

The coffee warmed me up a bit & gave me the kick I needed to hit the books.

I think James needed to coffee more than I did though!

That night once I got home I made myself a salad w/ mixed lettuce, steamed broccoli & corn, & hummus w/ a piece of Lebanese bread.

After a long day of studying we needed to blow off some steam so first James & I went to the Paddington Inn across the street from us & then we took the bus down to Bondi where we had some drinks w/ a bunch of James' guy friends at the Beach Road Hotel. Afterwards we ended up at the White Revolver to celebrate our friend's birthday. We danced a bunch & there was an open tab so....

I had some champagne ; )

Once I got home I had the late night munchies so I made a little snack wrap w/ lettuce & hummus in rotti bread. I just realized that all of my eats for the day were a variation of the same thing- bread + lettuce + hummus. Go figure.

Honaaay

This morning I grabbed my usual coffee from Starbucks (venti iced coffee w/ sugar free hazlenut) along with...

a cranberry almond Kind Bar. I usually just get these bars out of convenience because they have them at Starbucks when you check out. Even though they are good they don't compare to Luna Bars which will always be my #1 choice.

My original plan was to spend all day packing and getting ready for my trip tomorrow since I will be gone for the next month. My friend Jared texted me though and told me that I had to come up to his friend's Memorial Day party in West Hollywood. I wasn't that hard to convince, and drove up to Marina Del Rey asap to go pick up Cami. How could I resist a day full of sunshine, great music, and tons of gorgeous gay boys in a beautiful house overlooking all of LA?

I packed a lunch for the drive up-

Sandwich w/ avocado, heaps of arugula, tofurky, & hummus on whole wheat bread, and some bagged veggie straws.

Cami & Me

Bryan & Me

Memorial Day Party

After Party

My friend Britton brought me my second coffee of the day to keep me going, somewhere in there I also munched some cheeseless pizza.

For dinner Cami and I decided to stop by Real Food Daily in West Hollywood. This is the first time that I had gone to this location, normally I go to the one in Santa Monica, but when Cami & I saw it on our drive to the party we knew that we would have to stop by on our way home. This location is just as nice, maybe even better because It is not as split up as the one in Santa Monica which has an upstairs and downstairs.

Cami ordered her usual (above), the grilled veggie wrap with squash, onions, sun-dried tomato pesto, lettuce, tomato, avocado, spinach tortilla w/ portabella mushroom and cashew cheese and a side Caesar salad.

I had one of their weekly specials, Buddha's Belly. Udon noodles, sweet rice croquettes, orange glazed tofu, Thai peanut sauce, napa cabbage, carrots, golden miso dressing. This tasted like a much healthier and more satisfying version of regular Thai food, plus the croquettes were seasoned heavily w/ curry which is one of my favorite spices.

Today was a great way to finish off Memorial Day Weekend, and to celebrate my last day in the States before I take off tomorrow. I even got home in time to watch Nurse Jackie & United States of Tara. Now all I have to do tomorrow is pack, pack, and pack!

Memorial Day Weekend

Coffee!!!

Breakfast- Smoothie w/ strawberries, 1/2 banana, almond milk, ice

Memorial Day Weekend = lots of beach time. I'll be black by Tuesday.

Kettle cooked potato chips, the nutritional info on these was pretty good surprisingly.

Rather than eating a 'real' lunch I just decided to keep on snacking once I got home. I had some garden veggies straw from Costco w/...

some red pepper hummus & humguac from TJ's. Humguac is equal parts guacamole and chickpeas w/ seasoning, I know it's brilliant idea. All I need now is BBQ hummus and i'll be set for life.

My mom had some friends over & had the below amazing spread, so once again I snacked for dinner. Mostly hummus & stacy's pita chips, dates, and lime & chili cashews.

Afterwards I headed out for a night on the town in Laguna, we went to the Royale Hawaiian where there was an 80's cover band playing and then down to the Marine Room.

Ari, Raveena, and Me

Showing my affection for Rav.

Today I skipped breakfast and just went straight to lunch. I had a tofurky & arugula sandwich w/ hummus, avocado, and soy cheese on a 100 calorie whole wheat roll.

Open Wide!

This did not fill me up so I had some soy nuggets w/ ketchup too.

I shopped all day & got clothes for my upcoming trip, and picked up a GRE study guide from Barnes and Noble.... time to crack down and study soon : ( I was also able to visit my grandma who is finally out of the hospital yey!

We brought home this enormous edible arrangement for Issy because she took a pretty bad fall earlier in the day and bumped her noggin on the pavement. She had to go to the hospital and get a CAT scan. She's okay though, just a minor concussion.

Milk chocolate dipped strawberries & pineapple, white chocolate & milk chocolate dipped banana and marshmallows. Craziness- I nippled on some strawberries & grapes, I'm not a fan of chocolate plus it has dairy in it.

Issy loved the chocolate though!

For dinner I dipped slices of tempeh first in TJ's Island soyaki and then dredged them in flour and baked them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Then I added the tempeh to a big bowl of arugula w/ 1/2 avocado & raw broccoli.

This was the first time that I had marinated the tempeh in soyaki and it ended up being delicious.

Black Eyed Peas & Potluck Parties

Waking up late sometimes means that I end up combining breakfast & lunch, creating not your typical brunch, but instead coffee and a sandwich.

Open wide! Tofurky, arugula, vegenaise, mustard, 1/4 avocado, and soy cheese in between two pieces of ezekiel bread.

After eating breakfast/lunch I picked my sisters and their friends up from school because it was one of their girlfriends birthday and they wanted me to drive them to the b-day party. Just picture me driving my mom's white Range Rover with about ten little girls hanging out of the sunroof, Black Eyed Peas blaring, and all of the windows decorated in pink painted w/ "happy birthday Sarah" hearts and piece signs. It was a sight to see. I brought them to the party at the Marriott pool and got to sunbathe while watching the kiddies- not to shabby at all. When I was done there I drove over to Raveena's house to lounge on her couch all day and watch Cami and Dru film videos of their feet dressed in comforter slippers dancing to Salt & Pepa (if this scenario doesn't make any sense I don't blame you I didn't really understand it either). Rav provided me w/ the necessary snackage.

Hummus & Crackers

Rav is Indian and I have heard that her mom makes amazing Indian food, but in the past 8 years that I have known her I have yet to try her Indian cuisine. This is crazy especially since Indian food is my all time favorite, and almost all Indian food is vegan. Finally on Friday I got to try it!

Black eyed peas w/ whole wheat rotti.

This was soooo good, I had to come back for seconds. She even rolled out the dough for the rotti and made them right there in front of me. You can bet that I will be visiting Raveena's house more often from now on.

Saturday morning I went and took my sisters to breakfast at Cafe Vienna.

I had a couple pieces of whole wheat toast with my all time favorite raspberry jam...

and a bottomless cup of coffee w/ soy milk.

A couple of hours later I was visited my gma in the hospital and I munched on an Odwalla super protein bar. This really was not my favorite, pretty bland actually.

After leaving the hospital I went and ran errands to get ready for my little potluck that night. We frequented both Walmart and Costco ( I tried lots of taste testers), and stopped by Pick up Sticks where my mom and split the buddha's feast w/ brown rice. I'm not really a fan of semi fast food Chinese restaurants, I don't like Chinese food really nor fast food, but this was surprisingly tasty.

When I got home I rushed to get the outside patio ready before everyone came over.

I provided the beverages- an assortment of Mexican beers from Costco & lemon drops.

Easy Lemon drop recipe-

mix 1 part Absolute Citron Vodka with 2 parts lemonade (I use Simply Lemonade) , and garnish w/ lemon slices.

I love these glasses (above) and matching pitchers (below) that I bought from Walmart, they were super cheap too.

Considering that I had to explain to one of my girlfriends what a potluck is, I was impressed by what everyone ending up bringing. There ended up being tons of great food. The aforementioned girlfriend brought Stacy's Pita Chips and 2 types of hummus which is always a winner in my book. I supplied lots of non-vegan food including turkey wraps, margherita pizza, dark chocolate covered acai berries, bbq popchips, and spicy artichoke dip.

My friends all kept my dietary needs in mind and everyone brought vegan food; too sweet of them. Dru made a white bean salad which was delicious, but I sadly forgot to get a pic- sorry Dru! Thank the lord Raveena treated me to more Indian food and brought Samosas filled w/ curried potatoes & 2 types of dipping sauces- a sweet one and a spicy cilantro,

Looks like I wasn't the only one w/ pizza in mind- Tara brought a margherita pizza too, but hers was a vegan one from Z pizza. Sooo yummy I have not had pizza in ages. The soy cheese may have looked a little funny but it tasted like regular mozarella. I dipped mine in the spicy cilantro sauce that Rav brought.

I bought some funny $5 nerd glasses from Walmart that day and decided to sport them. Dru likewise donned the clear pair since she was my date for the night. I'm not going to lie I wore them all today too and have been embracing my inner nerd.

We all got to meet Tara's new BF too who is a great guy, and received all of our approval : )

Rav's beau was there too and they adopted Issy as their child for the night. She was being a bit rambunctious & attempted successfully in decorating him in My Little Pony stickers.

It was a great potluck, and we all stayed up until the wee hours drinking lemon drops & chatting. Good food & friends, what more could one wish for?