Lunch at Spiral Diner

We spent last week in Oklahoma visiting Tony's family.  We had a great time. I love me some Oklahoma! I lived there for ten years, and I can honestly say that the best people in the world are from Oklahoma. I even married one of them!

As a bonus, on our drive up there, we stopped in Fort Worth to eat lunch at Spiral Diner.

Jackson and Olivia are all about dipping their food, so we decided to order a couple of appetizers for them to share. The Chip & Dip Party included salsa, guacamole, and cashew-based queso.

We also ordered them some hummus. It was a huge bowl of hummus! Even for a family of hummus fiends, we had to have most of it boxed up to take with us.

Olivia loves her chips and dips!

Jackson saw a picture of an ice cream cone on the menu, and started asking for ice cream. We were on vacation, so why not have ice cream at lunch?  He loved his strawberry "I-Scream," as they call it.

I had the Veggie Wrap, chock full of greens, carrot, cucumber, peas, olives and raisins, dressed with some amazing ranch dressing. I was happy to be able to get a big serving of veggies while on the road. The wrap came with a side of pesto pasta salad, which was delicious. I love pesto.

Tony had the Sketti & Meatballs. It looked so good, covered in marinara sauce, pesto, and pine nuts. But, he complained that the spaghetti was overcooked. Mushy pasta is never a good thing. He did like the soy meatballs a lot.

I want to say thank you to the bloggers who have presented me with a Liebster award. Liebster is apparently the German word for "dearest" or "beloved." So, Christine at Christine's Chatter, Bethany at Bananas for Smoothies, and Cheryl at A Midlife Vegan+ -- thank you so much, ladies, I am honored!

So Delicious Review

Recently...OK, not so recently...back in July (sorry!)...So Delicious was awesome enough to send me some coupons to try out a variety of their dairy-free products.

The coconut milk creamer is rich and non-curdling in tea or coffee. It can also be used in cooking -- for example, to make a pasta sauce a little more decadent and creamy.

 

If you didn't know (I didn't), So Delicious coconut milk is nothing like the cans of thick coconut milk that you would use to make a curry. It's thin like a dairy or soymilk. It comes in original, unsweetened, and vanilla flavors. And it doesn't really taste like coconut at all, if you're worried about that.  I enjoyed it on my chia oats.

 

 

The only thing that stops me from buying it regularly is that one serving contains 25% of your daily saturated fat. So if you're using it on your morning cereal, and then you have some in your coffee, and then you have milk and cookies later, or whatever, you might be ingesting more saturated fat than you planned to. But I do buy it on occasion, just to switch things up from our usual soymilk.

We tried three different types of ice cream sandwich "Minis" -- vanilla (made with coconut milk), lowfat vanilla (made with soymilk), and lowfat neapolitan (made with soymilk).  They were all fabulous. A perfect little treat on a hot day -- which we had far too many of, back when we were sampling these products.

Next we tried the coconut milk yogurt.

We loved the chocolate flavor. It could be eaten as a dessert. I've bought it several times since I originally tried it.  I also sampled the mango flavor, but it had a tartness I didn't care for.

Next up, cultured coconut milk. I guess it's similar to a kefir drink. The live cultures are supposed to be beneficial.  We had the strawberry flavor -- there's also chocolate and vanilla.  It has a thick, smoothie-like texture that Jackson and Olivia love. I have bought this from time to time and it never lasts long, because they want to drink it all up.

Finally, coconut milk ice cream.  I love mint chocolate chip. I'm not sure why I bought the sugar-free variety, but there you go. 

Now this product, I would say, should be eaten as a very rare treat, as one serving contains 45% of your daily saturated fat. It's super rich, and pretty yummy.

I'm so very grateful to So Delicious for their generosity.  Do you like their products? Have you tried their holiday beverages yet? The nog has been calling to me, and then today at Natural Grocers I noticed there is also a mint chocolate drink. Yum!

Molly Monkey's Visit

This week, Jackson brought his friend Molly Monkey home to stay with us. Molly has been making the rounds among Jackson's classmates, and now it's our turn to play host to her. As with any houseguest, the first thing we did was make sure we had her favorite foods on hand.

 

We planned some outings to entertain our guest. A trip to the park...

Weeee! Be brave, Molly.

Jackson has never shown interest in a stuffed animal before in his life, but I can tell Molly is different.  He hasn't put her down.

In addition to bananas, one evening I made a risotto with roasted broccoli and brussels sprouts.  I was inspired by Carla who posted this delicious dinner back during Vegan MoFo.  You can roast the veggies in the same time it makes to cook the risotto and have dinner on the table in 30 minutes.

Another night, I made tofu bacon, recipe courtesy of the Vegan Cookbook Aficionado.  I skipped the freezing and thawing of the tofu. Instead I pressed it in my Tofu XPress and used a serrated knife to cut thin slices.  It turned out great! Crispy, salty and smoky.  (It's also quite greasy when you take it out of the pan, but you can transfer it directly onto some paper towels and that will soak up a lot of the oil.)  It was fabulous on a rye bread BLT.

One evening when it was just me and the kiddos, I had a craving for stuffed mushrooms. These are Melissa's Stuffed Mushrooms from La Dolce Vegan.  Garlicky and amazing!

And here's my attempt to replicate Sabra's Supremely Spicy hummus at home. That stuff is like crack for me.  In a small bowl, I combined minced roasted red pepper, chili pepper flakes, and some olive oil. I let it sit for awhile to combine the flavors, then spooned it over some basic hummus. It wasn't quite as spicy as I wanted, so I sprinkled more chili pepper flakes on top after I took this picture. Not quite as good as Sabra's, but it'll definitely do in a pinch.  Yum!

Thanks for visiting, Molly!

And thank you for visiting me here. Have a great weekend!

Happy Halloween!

My brave firefighter and loyal firehouse dalmation had a blast last night, traipsing up and down our street (all two blocks of it) and filling their pumpkins with candy.

Hope your Halloween was spooky and amazing!

Dia de los Muertos

On Saturday, we spent the day downtown at the Dia de Los Muertos (Mexican Day of the Dead) festival. Tony and I used to go before we had kids, and we were excited to take Jackson and Olivia this year.

Lentil tacos with guacamole gave us some fuel for the celebration.

The very cool Mexic-Arte Museum puts on this festival each year. I love the murals on the side of the museum.

The ofrendas were so gorgeous, covered with paper marigolds and offerings for the departed.

Jackson liked the skeleton musicians.

Sugar skull lollipops were a big hit with the kids. Jackson made a big, sticky mess with his. For the rest of the day, his hair smelled like burnt sugar (which was kind of nice.)

On the music stage, bands played all day long. There were also vendors selling Dia de los Muertos art and Mexican food.

Finally it was time for the parade. We headed over to 6th Street to get a good viewing spot. A big cheer went up when the parade came into view.

I loved all the dancers in their amazing costumes and skeleton make-up.

There were also dancers with giant papier-mache skull heads, who stopped and did a little dance in front of us.

How was your weekend?

Pumpkin Patch

Over the weekend, we took the kids to a local pumpkin patch. We took a hayride, checked out some animals, and enjoyed the perfect fall weather. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

When we got home, I made a quick pot of soup for dinner. I chose the Winter Greens Soup from the appropriately named Fields of Greens cookbook, which I checked out from the library. It's the cookbook of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco.  I ate lunch there once, many years ago.

All the dust and hay at the pumpkin patch caused Tony's allergies to flare up, so he requested greens to help his immune system out. This soup is chock full of greens -- a full head each of kale, chard, and spinach. Look at that vivid green color! The soup had a great flavor, and homemade garlic croutons were a perfect addition.  I'll have to copy down some other recipes from the cookbook before I return it to the library.