Well, needles to say I have been super busy! We've had a lot of guests staying over this month including my amazing boyfriend who I hadn't seen in months! On top of all our wonderful visitors, Mom and I decided on a whim to hop over the pond to Ireland and Paris for a little over a week next month! I have been over the moon planning it. (Imagine tears and an incredibly rapid heartbeat for three weeks straight, and I still have three weeks to go!) So I havn't been very adventurous in the kitchen the last few weeks besides some amazing vegan french toast that I will share with you in a few days!
I have found that with some tools and the right foods, cooking a veggie filled whole foods diet can be very easy and fun! But, being busy, I have been to some resteraunts in the last few weeks. I was kind of nervous. What was avalaible? Was there dairy products hidden in there? They probably think am a high maintenance jerk, right? The first restaurant I went to was a Mexican restaurant, Don Ramone's. I spent a while combing over the menu. Let me tell you, I was missing cheese right then. But I found a tostada with vegetarian cooked beans, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. I ordered it without cheese and used the tomato salsa on the table to add a little flavor. They were happy to ablige with my request for no cheese and I was really relieved. A few days later, I found myself at Rubies Diner on the Pier in Huntington Beach. I was really in the mood for A veggie burger and I knew that as a vegetarian, I had eaten them there before. I was bummed to find out that they were cooked with cheese. Nope. So I searched the menu for something I could eat. Luckily I was there with my mom and boyfriend who are incredibly supportive! I finally found a veggie taco with beans. Unfortunately the sauce was sour cream based. So I had to make a special order with no sauce and extra beans. They were also awesome and perfectly accommodating. The last restaurant where I had a problem was Claim Jumper. They don't have a menu with allergen free options. So I ordered a mashed sweet potato meal that originally had chicken but without the chicken. It was supposedly just veggies and a mashed sweet potato. It looked delicious!! Unfortunately though, the sauce the veggies were cooked in or the way they were cooked, they had an odd pickly taste and it started to make me feel sick. I let the guy know and he brought me a plain mashed sweet potato. It was amazing and just what I needed. And since I'm only eating a veggie diet for health reasons, I added a little honey. The server was really sweet and made sure that I didn't feel rude after sending a meal back. The manager even came to my table to ask if everything was alright and made me feel like it was "about me". I learned that as a paying customer, if you ask nicely and treat the staff as the awesome people they are, they will happily help you. Your body is your body! No one can tell you what you can and can't eat! People are a lot more understanding then I thought and restaurants want you to feel like a valued customer so you will come back! Don't be afraid to ask for changes in the menu, no matter what menu change you need, whether vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, etc.! It's not that hard and they're usually happy to help!
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