Back home!

This morning I had drip coffee, you know what that means....

I'm back in America!! I already Americanized my nails

Much to my surprise, last minute I made the stand by flight & I got to spend a good 13 hours in the very back of a plane in between 2 men. FYI sitting between 2 men on a flight is the worse because they always take over BOTH of the armrests. The feminist in me fought for my armrest long & hard the whole flight. Besides the bad seat, since I was standby I couldn't order a special vegan meal, & not expecting to get on the flight, the only thing I had eaten was a bowl of warm muesli that morning.

The flight was a vegans worse nightmare: creamy fettucini, a roast beef roll for a snack, & eggs w/ grey sausage. Ick! I had to go non vegan a bit & had a small croissant, green salad, pretzels, chardonnay, & coffee. I was starving when I got off the flight! Thankfully as soon as my mom picked me up from LAX she brought me to a vegan restaurant that I have been meaning to try- Veggie Grill. This place was reminiscent of Native Foods (my all time favorite). I had the Santa Fe Crispy Chickin' w/ crispy chillin' chickin', lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado, & southwestern spiced vegan mayo on a bed of kale w/ a side of chili.

My mom had the VG- Cheeseburger done El Dorado style w/ jalapenos, caramelized onions, & ketchup w/ a side salad w/ miso dressing. I thought it tasted yummy, but my mom still thinks Native Foods is way better.

Later I drove back to the airport & picked James up from his flight & we came home to a nice homemade meal. Knowing the both of us too well my mom made James a big pasta w/ chicken while I had brown rice topped w/ broccoli cooked in garlic & truffle oil. Truffle oil is sooo good!

This morning I had copious amounts of the coffee shown in the first pic & made breakfast for the family. Cooking for everyone else made me not so hungry, so I waited until the fam (along w/ James & Dru) & I went to go see Eclipse to have my first feed. My friend Dru, the person who originally got me into veganism, has recently converted back to her vegan ways so I brought us some healthy snacks to the movies. Chili & lime cashews, dried apricots, & pepitas.

For lunch I made myself a simple wrap w/ a whole wheat tortilla filled w/ shredded soy cheese, guacamole, tomatoes, & arugula. Doused in tapatio.

Tonight both sets of my grandparents came over for dinner & we drank peach sangria...

& I enjoyed an arugula salad w/, sugar plum tomatoes, & garlic croutons....

hummus, grapes,pita chips and a cold pasta salad....

Yum! It's nice to be home & w/ the family. Hoping for nice weather tomorrow so I can enjoy the beach. Cheers for now.

Venice Beach

I had to wake up super early this AM and drive to the Chatsworth courthouse to take care of a speeding ticket that I missed my previous court date for. So frustrating. It was my first ticket ever & I didn't realize that they don't send you any information in the mail about your court date. Luckily I was able to get traffic school & 45 hours of community service rather than having to pay the exorbitant fee.

I decided to have a hot coffee instead of iced to last me on the drive up.

Venti coffee w/ sf hazelnut & a splash of soy.

Afterwards after spending far too much time waiting in lines at the courthouse my mom and I were ready to get the heck out of there. I dragged my mom to check out my new favorite restaurant Mercedes Grille in Marina del Rey and Cami joined us too.

We ordered mimosas w/ our meal.

Sometimes I am really a creature of habit, and even though I ordered this salad the other day I had to have it again.It is insanely delicious!

Grilled Vegetable Tostada Salad w/ marinated tofu and no cheese.

When we were finished with lunch and said farewell to mi madre, Cami and I decided to work off our lunch by renting beach cruisers and taking a bike ride from Marina del Rey, to Venice, and then Santa Monica.

When we got to the Santa Monica Pier we stopped off at the Coffee Bean and I ordered a large ice coffee w/ soy milk. I love the Coffee Bean, it's a bummer though that all of the powders they use in their drinks are dairy based, otherwise I would frequent here more often.

At the pier we enjoyed the people watching and scenery.

We acted like little kids in the arcade after I kicked Cami's butt at air hockey (one of my favorite games).

Eventually we made it back to Laguna despite the Memorial Day traffic, and I arrived home just in time for dinner. The family was BBQing for my little sister Summer and her girlfriends (think lots of screaming little girls & blaring Keisha i.e madness), so I had to fend for dinner on my own.

I tried a new hummus from Costco; organic basil & sundried tomatoes- this tub is enormous!

I paired the hummus w/ a mixed green salad w/ shredded carrots & raw corn, some cous cous

from Costco too, and a hundred calorie whole wheat roll (w/ some BBQ sauce on the side).

This hummus was pretty good, the calories compared to other hummus was not too shabby either. The couscous was definitely the best part of the meal though. I loved how there were big pieces of couscous (compared to little ones), olives, and bell peppers. Yum!

Later Raveena came over and we enjoyed some Chardonnay & strawberries for dessert as we watched the crazies on the Real Housewives of NY and chatted it up.

Days like today make me realize just how lucky I am to live and go to school in the LA area (I know Malibu is on the outskirts but it still counts). There is nothing more fun than exploring your own neighborhood, and no matter how many times you have seen it before you will always notice some new quirk that you had overlooked. The bright graffiti, crazy characters, and chaos of Venice Beach as well as the charm of the Santa Monica Pier will never get old.

Warehouse Parties & Mimosas w/ Moo

Yesterday started out pretty normal with a big cup of coffee & an unpictured apple cranberry fiber mini-muffin. I ate it up before I could even think to grab my camera.

Spur of the moment I decided to drive up to Marina Del Ray and spend the day w/ Cami at her family's apartment. I mean who could resist this view?

We laid out and got our tan on. Cami's french bulldog Moo wanted to bronze w/ us too.

My lunch was not of the healthiest variety, but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyways. Wheat thins & mimosas.

I let Moo snack on some wheat thins, we had to keep her away from the champagne though she can never seem to hold her alcohol!

After tanning all day Cam & I got ready and headed over to our friend Jared's house in Hollywood. We were both starved (wheat thins are not the most filling lunch), so we headed to the nearest restaurant- Sushi Kingz. Jared forewarned us that the sushi was sketchy; I believe he described the restaurant as looking like Christian Audiger's baby. This was a very apt description- the walls were adorned w/ Ed Hardyesque dragons, clubbing music was blaring, and we sat in enormous, gaudy gold chairs w/ velvet upholstery.

The meal started out w/ edamame.

I had the vegetable roll which was just average.

Afterwards we drove into downtown LA for a birthday party in this enormous warehouse that some of Jared's friends live in. Cami and I were unaware that the theme was 'tribal'- oops.

At first Cami and I were the only ones dancing, but by the end of the night everyone was on the dance floor.

Such a fun night. My camera ended up dying so I wasn't able to snap a picture of the veggie sandwich on flatbread that I ate at 3:30AM. We were so happy when we found a 24 hr Subway on the drive home.

By the time Cami & I were up and ready this morning it was lunchtime so Cam took me to this restaurant in Marina del Rey that she has been raving about- Mercede's Grill. We sat outside in the sunshine & downed ice coffees w/ soy milk. Both of us ordered the grilled vegetable tostada- I had mine w/ out cheese & w/ tofu.

This salad was INSANE, one of my all time favorite salads which says a lot considering that I eat salads all of the time. The tofu was really flavorful; it was marinated in this spicy/sweet cuban style sauce. There were a ton of grilled veggies including asparagus, corn, zucchini, along with 1/2 avocado on top of chopped romaine lettuce. Underneath there was a crispy flour tostada w/ black beans, pico de gallo, and white rice. The salad doesn't even need dressing, but the dressing was amazing it was served w/ the house vinaigrette & pesto jalapeno sauce. YUM.

Lunch was a bit pricey ($50 for both of us), but the waitress let us know that salads are 1/2 off if you come between 1-2 Mon-Fri.

Before driving home I stopped by Starbucks and grabbed a soy strawberry & creme frappuccino.

I'm a total sucker for Starbucks' advertising campaign right now, I never order frappuccinos but the ads lately have just stuck in my mind. I tried to order the vanilla bean one w/ soy, but the lady making it let me know that it's not actually dairy free because the powder they use has dairy in it. The strawberries and creme one though has a sugar base and is vegan. It was pretty delicious- tasted like a strawberry milk shake.

Dinner was nice and simple- steamed baby carrots, cauliflower, broccoli w/ hummus, BBQ, and mango chutney. On the side I had 100 calorie wheat roll thingy.

Crash

On Sunday night I went to go use my macbook, only to find a big question mark staring back at me in the screen and my computer unable to start up. Yesterday I brought it into Mac and they told me that my hard drive had crashed, and of course NO I do not have an external hard drive that I had backed up my files on. This has been one of those things that I have been putting off and putting off. They replaced my hard drive for free because my macbook is still under warranty, but all of my computer settings, photos, songs, papers, etc... are gone : ( I'm not going to dwell on it, but it is a bummer.

I do have my pics from Sunday afternoon though because I hadn't uploaded them on my computer yet.

While packing my sister's lunches for the next day I snacked on some peanut butter filled pretzels.

No preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors- I'm sold, and I'm sure it has nothing to do w/ the fact that they are filled w/ creamy peanut butter and have a crunchy pretzel shell. Addiction.

For dinner I had a monster raw salad.

Mixed greens w/ raw corn, sugar plum tomatoes, & shredded carrots. Topped w/ hummus.

Post mixage- I added some BBQ in there. Hummus just calls for BBQ.

My sister snapped a pic of my drinking a glass of chardonnay while working on the computer. Busted.

Post dinner I nibbled on some KooLoos while watching Date Night w/ my sisters.

I had never tried these before and decided to pick them up from Costco. They are little soy nuts topped in a crunchy flax seed coating w/ a honey BBQ seasoning. They would be good to satisfy a BBQ chip craving as they taste like healthy junkfood. I love oxymorons and this one couldn't be more fitting.

On monday morning I woke up and had a big cup of coffee w/ vanilla, soy milk creamer while I read Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead. My friend Dru has been bugging me to read this forever, and now I understand why. It is soo good I havenot been able to put it down.

With my coffee and book I had a TJ's apple, cranberry, fiber mini-muffins heated up & topped w/ a pat of light Smart Balance. These muffins are delicious, plus they have simple ingredients and are vegan and low-cal.

As I read and ate breakfast I enjoyed the view from my balcony...

and played w/ my puppy Bondi.

Later I went to the mall to get my macbook fixed, and do a quick shop. My mom and I ate at the food court, and stopped by this delicious little place that I cannot remember the name for the life of me.

First you pick out your fresh veggies and a sauce and they add noodles....

and then they cook it in front of you on a a big Mongolian grill.

I added more sriracha & sesame seeds. So yummy & filling. Unlike a lot of other Asian restaurants where the sauce is often really heavy and greasy, this one is quite light.

Later on as I packed my sister's lunches I snacked on some of TJ's Honey, Pass the Snack Mix.

Sometimes I love little kid food.

For dinner I decided to keep on snacking starting w/ a piece of baguette bread w/ hummus, roasted eggplant, and spicy mango chutney.

I had some self restraint and put down the carbage, and ate some more chutney and hummus paired w/ carrots and celery.