My Birthday :) February 20th

It's that time of year again... my birthday! I decided to have my birthday dinner at Blossom, and I invited fellow bloggers Melissa and Shannon. Peanut was a little upset he wasn't included! lol

Earlier today I went to the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle (where they filmed one of my favorite more recent movies, Enchanted!). I did some shopping at the gigantic Whole Foods there first and got a "peach perfection" smoothie at Jamba Juice.

Then I headed over to Blossom. It never ceases to amaze me how good their food is. If I only knew their secret, I'd be the happiest vegan on the planet! :)

Melissa and I shared our appetizers because we both wanted to try more than one!

I started off by getting their porcini flutes.

And Melissa got their ravioli with cashew cream.

I really liked both, and they tasted very similar (both were mushroom filled). Don't let the green (pesto) sauce on mine scare you, it is SO good! And normally I wouldn't touch something that looked so, uh... odd!

I also got a side of their mashed potatoes, which truly was their all-star dish. I have NEVER eaten better mashed potatoes than this! It was worth the extra $6!!!

For my main course I got their lasagna. It never ceases to amaze me how good this is. You really don't miss regular cheese at all!

(Melissa took the photos of the food because her camera's flash was working better than mine. So thanks Melissa!)

And here we are at dinner!

(Our nice waiter took the photo)

Afterwards we ran into Cocoa V (Blossom's vegan dessert place across the street). I further bankrupted myself by getting a cupcake (hey, it's my birthday, and what's another $3 after what we had already spent?!).

This was really good and it was a closer vegan dessert place than Babycakes. The cupcake is chocolate and the frosting is vanilla (and my favorite color too!).

Overall, I'm okay being another year older. I'm not that old anyway. And I feel like I keep learning and growing. I'm in a better place in my life, healthier, and you know what? It shows! :)

I'm going to be doing a post on product reviews and recipes next, so more soon!

Christmas re-cap & more! December 26th

I was up at my grandparent's house for Christmas eve & Christmas day. We were going to leave this morning, but ended up leaving late last night instead because of the blizzard heading for NY! We may get up to 2 feet of snow here. I'm praying it won't be that bad, but it's going to be a rough next couple of days, that's for sure! Anyways, my Christmas re-cap has no food in it, but instead, cute animals! :) Here are some pics I took from my grandparent's house, starting with me and the tree:

Now, on to the puppies! :)

My grandparent's dog, Mae, who you can see more of here. (She's my favorite dog in the universe! :)

And my aunt's dog, Chiclet, who visited us on Christmas Eve. (What's really cute is that Mae and Chiclet are friends and Mae actually greets Chiclet at the door when she comes over! lol)

Now I know what you're thinking, what about Peanut?!?!

Don't worry, he got his Christmas presents before we left!

One of his gifts was a mint scented toy that you can see him with here:

And I also got Peanut his very own mini box of Q-tips! lol I decorated it for him too!

(Also, please note that Peanut is MONITORED when I give him a Q-tip to play with! NEVER let a cat play with a Q-tip or any other small object unsupervised because they could choke!!)

When I got home today, despite the blizzard, I went out to the Chelsea Whole Foods to pick up a few things. First I stopped for brunch at Blossom.

(The view outside Blossom's window earlier today... they were decorated nicely for the holidays.)

I got my usual, their tofu scramble. I swear, after eating pretty much nothing but junk food the past two days, it felt SO good to eat something healthy (and delicious!). Which brings me to my next announcement...

I'm really going to be making an effort to eat vegan as much as possible for the new year! I've been a vegetarian for years anyway, so it's not that big of a jump. I'm not going to become obsessive with it (and I'm still going to eat the NYC pizza that I love!), but I do want to clean up my diet some, and the less animal products I eat, the better!

I'll probably be updating one last time before 2011, and posting more food then! But first, how was everyone's holidays so far?

Cold Days & Tofu Brunches (November 8th)

It feels like we've bypassed fall and we're already into winter! Wtf happened?! :( In any case, I've been trying to eat well to ward off any colds, etc. But I am a HUGE vitamin fan, so that helps. (For reference I love the brand Rainbow Light and take quite a few of their supplements.)

The last two brunches I had out were at two of my favorite vegan restaurants, and BOY do they both know how to make a tofu scramble!

The first was at Blossom a few weeks ago...

And the second was at Sacred Chow just this past weekend... and it was so crowded I actually had to wait for a table! This place has really caught on... the "secret" is out and people are flocking to it now! Back when I started going in 2007, I was the only person in the place!

Sacred Chow's wasn't quite as good because they put too much pepper on the home fries. However, that's just nit-picking! lol

My mom and I had a nice dinner Friday night at the Olive Garden. We hadn't been in a long time and I got to try some new stuff on their menu...

Starting with the old favorites... breadsticks & salad (I always munch on the breadsticks, mom on the salad).

I got a venetian sunset drink (mom got a strawberry martini which was literally the size of a swimming pool-- in fact, you can see it in the background!).

One of my favorites, minestrone soup (which they claim-- and I hope-- is vegetarian!).

Their new lasagna rollata al forno (which was tasty, although I think I still prefer the ziti al forno).

And I was FAR too stuffed for dessert, but I got one of their new mini "dolcini" desserts to go. You can choose 3 for a set price, or pay for them individually. I just got one, the strawberry & white chocolate cream cake. I PRAY they make a large size of this. It was amazing!

And lastly, colder weather means cuddling. And Peanut takes full advantage of the situation whenever there is something warm to lay on!

Splaying out on the sheets...

And nestling in warm laundry. :)

And on a side note, I met this nice family at Sacred Chow who was asking me about vegetarian restaurants. They told me how they found out about that restaurant through Happy Cow (which is a great resource for vegetarians btw!). It's funny that they picked me to talk to, as I pretty much am the authority on vegetarian restaurants in this city! lol Of course I told them about Wild Ginger too... I swear, Wild Ginger should pay me a salary!

Ok, that's all for now!

Nice Lunch, Bad Brunch! May 17th

I don't know if I'm just going through an unlucky streak with restaurants or not, but I have quite a doozy for you all (read below!). But first, I met up with my friend Missy for lunch today at our usual spot, Sea Thai Bistro in the Meatpacking District.

I had the usual... spring rolls & broad rice noodles with tofu. We had a good time like always!

I got some cute shots of Peanut yesterday too...

Now you all know that I LOVE Blossom and have raved about this place many times (in fact Gabriela and I just had an incredible dinner there a few weeks ago!). But an unfortunate incident with an INCREDIBLY rude hostess at Sunday's brunch has left me with a "sour taste" in my mouth, to say the least! On to the story...

I hadn't made a reservation since it was just myself. The hostess walked up to me and asked me if I had a reservation, and I said, "No, because I didn't think I needed one for just myself," or something to that effect. Then she said, "Well I don't know if I have room for you," and proceeded to look at her seating chart. She then was then saying all this confusing crap about which tables she had available and when, and said something about 2 o'clock… and then I finally said to her, "Look, do you want me to leave or not?" Then she had the nerve to say to me, "Wow, you're really aggressive!" I said, "I'm not being aggressive, but I just don't understand if you want me to leave or not." So finally I got it out of her that yes, there was a table available, and that I'd have to leave by 2. Which gave me plenty of time. She then reluctantly seated me! I absolutely could not BELIEVE her nerve. How dare she say I was being "aggressive" when I was speaking in a completely normal tone?! If anything she was acting like she wanted me to leave!!! YET, there were plenty of tables open! And guess what, the WHOLE time I was there (all 20 minutes at most?), there were several open tables. So you know what Blossom? F*** You!

The problem with Blossom is that they really do fit the stereotype of a vegan restaurant. They have a snooty and "holier than thou" attitude that really bothers me, despite how much I like their food! I really don't know if I even want to go back there again after this incident, because just the fact that they could speak to me that way after I've been such a good customer is unbelievable. They may be cruelty free to animals (which I applaud, of course), but what about their customers?!

I wrote a very good e-mail to them today, explaining the situation, so I'd better hear some sort of apology from the manager... I'll let you all know if I do!

Oh yeah, and I got the french toast! lol And funny... it wasn't as good as I had remembered it to be! Maybe I had just lost my appetite by then, who knows...

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go indulge myself with the cheesecake Mom made this weekend! :)

So how about you guys... any rude restaurant stories to share? Have any of you actually had someone pick a fight with you because you didn't make a reservation (for one person!)? Am I over-reacting or do they owe me an apology?

Pizzas, Fro Yo, & a Lovely Blogger Dinner! May 3rd

I have some new (and a few old) eats to share, including a wonderful blogger dinner to rave about! So lets get to it!

Friday Mom and I did our weekly (or bi-weekly?) cleaning and ordered some pizza for dinner. We decided to order it from Rivoli's in the West Village. Ironically we had forgotten all about this place somehow, and we used to go to it all the time back when I came into the city for modeling jobs (before we even lived here!). I highly recommend them and their delivery is excellent!

Since it's been so miserably hot and humid here these past few days, I thought it would be a great time to try Red Mango's new fruit parfait! So yesterday I went to the Red Mango near me and got one.

Here's what it's supposed to look like:

Here's what it actually looked like (forgive the poor picture!):

I got mine without bananas (because I hate them, lol) and it was pretty good. HOWEVER, you really get very little yogurt in this... it was mainly just strawberries & blueberries! So as you can imagine, I was hungry shortly after I ate it. NOT a good value for the money. But a clever idea none the less!

I also tried one of Kashi's new pizzas for dinner one night this weekend...

I thought their margherita pizza was excellent! Even better than the mushroom one that I've tried before. I couldn't finish the whole pizza, but I ate a good portion. The crust is VERY thin, so it's not that filling.

Despite the hot weather, Peanut still wanted to cuddle in the laundry this weekend! lol

Cleaning himself...

For lunch today I went to the Spice in Union Square because I was craving my usual...

Spring rolls & broad rice noodles in soy sauce with tofu.

And for dinner tonight I had the pleasure of meeting up with Gabriela (from the Une Vie Saine blog). She is going home this week and won't be back until she returns to school here in the fall (or hopefully visits this summer?), so we decided to have dinner at Blossom before she left. While I've had many delicious brunches here, this was my first time trying their dinner menu and because I've heard such great things, I was excited! Luckily everything exceeded our expectations! :)

We decided to split an appetizer (being that they are SO pricy!). We got the porcini flutes, which were basically stuffed mushrooms in pastry. We both thought they were delicious! If only they had given us more though!!!

For my entree I got their lasagna. And as an Italian (or, half-Italian :), I've got to say I was SHOCKED how good this was. It truly fell under the "I can't believe it's vegan!" category. It was excellent!

For dessert I got their cheesecake, which was very good (although I still prefer the real thing more!).

Overall I was VERY impressed. I can totally see why Blossom is consistently rated the "best vegetarian restaurant" in the city! They definitely live up to their hype and Gabriela and I were astonished at how they managed to make the food taste NON vegan. :)

I also want to take a moment to say that I LOVE the feeling after I eat a vegan restaurant. Similar to my experiences at Wild Ginger, after my meal at Blossom I felt pleasantly full, but not stuffed, and I felt that everything we ate was top-of-the-line quality. If only I wish rich and could eat that way every night! Or perhaps I just need to marry a veggie chef?! lol

Tell me, what do you like about vegan or vegetarian restaurants/food?