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!

Lagunatic

I've been slacking on blogging this week so this is going to be a long post, but a good one w/ lots of yummy food!

Wednesday:

The usual breakfast- coffee & a Lemmon Zest Luna Bar

I had to drive up to LA to go to a doctors appointment, and afterwards I met up w/ Cami to go apartment hunting in Santa Monica. While there seem to be hundreds of apartments available almost all of them were 1 bedrooms : ( The search continues.... We stopped by my favorite vegan restaurant in Santa Monica for lunch, Real Food Daily. RFD is similar to Native Foods, but the food seems to be a bit healthier. I hadn't been in a couple of months, and I was happy to slurp down my favorite acai tea.

The waitress told us about a new appetizer that has yet to be put on the menu. I think it was called a sea patty, because it is supposed to be like a crab cake but made w/ arame and done in a pesto sauce. Cami and I both agreed that it was absolutely delicious. I loved the plating too.

For my main I stuck with my old favorite the club sandwich.

This sandwich is to die for. It was enormous and came with a caesar salad on the side w/ my favorite croutons. It has thick breaded seitan that is crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, crispy salty tempeh bacon, soft chewy bread, loads of creamy vegeneise, lettuce, tomato, and avocado. I'm salivating as I write this.

I was totally stuffed after lunch- when I came home I unwound w/ a glass of chardonnay. I think my kitty apple wanted some too.

My mom made a very delicious white bean, broccolini rigatoni dish, which reminded me of minnestroni soup. I rarely eat pasta because I usually pig out too when I have it, what can I say I'm a carbaholic.

I added meatless meatballs to mine and my mom made a separate batch w/ sausage for the rest of the family.

Here is the recipe- Sauté 1 chopped white onion and 3 cloves garlic in olive oil in a large skillet. Add heads of 2 bunches of broccoli rabbe, and sauté until mostly cooked. Then add 8 cups of vegetable broth and 2 ounces of tomato paste and cook on medium heat until mixture begins to boil. Add ½ box of enriched whole-wheat rigatoni and 1 can of white beans. Cook until al dente.

Thursday:

Looking back on my Thursday eats there seem to be a whole lot of brown drinks, first beginning w/ a cup of joe.

Then I made a smoothie w/ one of Trader Joes's new products, Almond Butter w/ Roasted Flax Seeds. I love flax seeds but I don't eat them enough. I think that this product will replace my normal almond butter from now on.

Smoothie w/ above almond butter, plus ice, half a banana, left over coffee, and half a cup of vanilla almond milk

Brown drink number 2

For lunch I was at the hospital again visiting by grandma, so I had the only thing that looked edible in the cafeteria- a big ole' salad. Mixed lettuce, garbanzo beans, peas, carrots, baby tomatoes, all dipped in a rasberry vinaigrette.

Of course I needed some carbs on the side.I had a whole wheat dinner roll.

As I was waiting to pick up the girls from the bus stop I went and grabbed my third brown drink of the day- blended vanilla ice coffee from Cafe Vienna. Icy deliciousness.

For dinner I hapazardly put something together and had even more peas & corn. I really don't know what I would do without frozen food. Everything from this meal down to the brown rice from Costco was frozen.

Brown rice w/ corn, peas, and meatless meatballs (I added mango chutney & BBQ sauce).

After quickly scarfing down this meal I headed out for a night on the town in Laguna w/ my chicas Dru & Raveena. I think we went to almost every bar in Laguna- first Gina's Pizza for pitchers of Stella (more brown drinks)...

then to Big Fish for mojitos...

then to the Saloon for this crazy yummy pineapple drink where I bumped into one too many people from high school...

then we walked to Blue Laguna, then Hush, and ended up at the Sand Piper where we danced the night away. Here is Dru getting her funk on

and me and her canoodling/dancing? Don't mind my insane roots, i've been refusing to cut/color my hair for the past few months.

It was a really great night, lots of fun- Dru & I did some serious snacking when we got home late night, but luckily I didn't take any photos so there is no evidence except for me feeling bloated this morning. This post is already long enough, so I will share my eats from today w/ you tomorrow.

Monkeying Around

My late nap yesterday totally threw me off, so at 1 am I was wide awake and decided to put some browning bananas I had to use and made banana bread. Sounds sensible right? Not really the banana bread did not finish until 2:30 a.m. I found this recipe on postpunkkitchen. I altered it a bit mostly because I didn't want to go to the store and get more ingredients and because I wanted it to have less calories and be a bit healthier. Here are my ingredients:

1 cup Splenda brown sugar

1/2 cup Earth Balance, at room temp
4 very ripe bananas, mashed well
2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

I followed the same directions as they recommended to in the recipe and baked it for about 1 hr and 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I held off until I woke up this morning to try some. This is how it looked in the end-

This morning for breakfast I had some heated up with Smart Balance on top along with some coffee. It was really delicious, very moist and not too sweet.

I wasn't too hungry at lunch time and decided to have 1/2 of a sandwich consisting of a piece of toasted ezekiel bread, lots of sprouts, hummus, and Tofurky.

Almost every time my mom comes to visit me up at school we eat lunch in Santa Monica at Real Food Daily which has amazing vegan food. My mom was nice enough to buy me Real Food Daily cookbook which tells you how to cook every item on the menu. It includes appetizers, sauces, entrees, deserts- basically every yummy vegan meal you can think of.

I decided to make the caesar salad with blackened tempeh which I have had many times at the restaurant. I am actually not a fan of non vegan caesar salad, but this vegan recipe was delicious. I won't include the recipe because I think it would be better if you bought the book.

These are the pieces of blackened tempeh that were coated in spices, olive oil and whole wheat flour. They had quite a kick to them & were packed with flavor.

Below are the croutons which were super crunchy and very rosemaryish (not a word real word I know, but the best one I could think of).

Here is the finished product. The best part was the dressing which was simple to make and very salty and creamy.

Close up.

There was enough to feed all three of my roommates, who even though they are not vegan said that my version was better than regular caesar salad! I felt quite accomplished : )

I had sorority stuff to do tonight but grabbed a soy chai tea misto w/ 2 splendas before hand to keep me awake through Chapter.

All this talk of food has made me hungry! May have to go grab a slice of banana bread....