Easter and Recent Restaurant Meals

Hey all. Thank you for your well wishes last week. Stomach bugs suck. I hate puking. I didn't even puke when I was pregnant. I hope I don't get sick like that again for a long, long time. I am feeling much better now. Thanks again.

If you celebrate Easter, I hope you had an enjoyable one. This year my parents sent some Easter baskets for the kids to tear into when they woke up. These were the parent-pleasing kind of Easter baskets -- full of clothes and toys, no candy. I'm sure next year Jackson will be old enough to know that there ought to be some candy in that basket, and we will have a hyper little monkey on our hands.

We also colored a few eggs. Jackson was super serious about the whole process. It was a big deal. I was smiling at his looks of intense concentration.

He was quite proud of the finished product.

Olivia didn't know what to do with a bunch of eggs. I'm with you, lady.

Since we are not a fully vegan home, the eggs didn't go to waste. Tony made them into egg salad to eat for his lunches.

Since recovering, I've been back in the kitchen a little bit. But today, I thought I would post some pics of restaurant meals that we ate while we were living in the hotel and getting moved into our new house. We ate out a lot. Typically we try to only eat out once a week. But I don't feel bad about it at all. There are so many great Austin restaurants that I missed.

This was my first meal in Austin. Yes, it has cheese on it. In my excitement, I forgot that the veggie enchiladas from Chuy's arrive covered in cheese. So I forgot to tell the waiter "no cheese." No worries; it was easily scraped to the side. Olivia ate the beans and rice.

Watermelon mojito on the side. Oh yes.

While Chuy's is Tony's favorite Mexican restaurant in Austin, mine is Polvo's. They are awesome. They have like 16 different types of enchilada sauces. Not all vegan, but still. There's also a self-serve salsa bar with black salsa. The charred skins of roasted tomatoes is what makes it black. I've tried to duplicate it at home but I think there is some kind of unicorn magic involved. I can't stop eating it. Jackson knows what I'm talking about. He needed his own bowl.

I am not normally a person who goes to a restaurant and orders a salad, but I have dreams about the Michoacan avocado salad. Can you ever have too much avocado? I think not.

Another day, we were driving around looking at houses and I stopped to get smoothies for me and Jackson at Daily Juice, my favorite juice bar. I used to go to the one on Barton Springs that is just a juice bar, but there's another one further north that is an actual sit-down cafe and serves raw food. I've not eaten there but I need to try their food sometime. I've never been to any kind of raw cafe. Have you? How was it?

I had the El Paraiso, with mango, pineapple and other good stuff. It was turned green from spirulina. Like sucking down a cup of sunshine. Green sunshine.

Jackson made short work of his strawberry-banana smoothie. In New York we rarely made smoothies, but I know we will be drinking more of them now that we are back in a hot climate.

Finally on my most-missed list, there is Magnolia. We used to live across the street from this 24-hour diner. After several days on the road, eating little besides Larabars and fast food was getting old. At least Subway and Burger King serve veggie patties, but I don't know if they are vegan, and I definitely ate too many French fries to count. I was craving vegetables like never before. Magnolia was there to help.

That is one of their dinner specials. It's tofu, spinach, summer squash, mushrooms, peppers, and spinach, cooked in a coconut curry sauce. Next to that lovely mess of veggies is half an acorn squash, with some kind of pecan topping baked onto it (in the picture it sorta looks like a portabello mushroom, but that's actually the blackened pecan crust you're seeing.) It is a huge plate of food and I was more than happy to take home the leftovers and finish them for lunch the next day. Tastes so good.

Well, I am off to check on the tempeh I am BBQing for dinner tonight, and try to clean the bathrooms before Olivia wakes up. I feel busier than ever these days so I may not be blogging as regularly, but longer posts like this one when I do blog. We shall see. Hope you all have a great evening.