Amarand Journal

Sean gets creative with leftovers--and totally steals the lemon out of my water without warning. Good thing I love him...

I had a play to review tonight for Theatre Vault, and it was over an hour away from home.  Even though I have some portabella mushrooms in the fridge that really need to be cooked, I just couldn’t be bothered.  I wanted to make tonight a special “night out” for my sweetie and me before the kidlets descend tomorrow.  So I offered to treat Sean to dinner at a vegan/vegetarian friendly restaurant of his choice before we set off for beautiful downtown Newark, Ohio.  After a bit of debate, we chose Whole World Natural Bakery and Restaurant.

So garlicy that I'm pretty sure I'm still not kissable several hours later. Totally worth it, though!

I checked out their daily specials, and when we got there I knew exactly what I wanted:  Black Bean Hummus on Pita Bread.  It had some nice crisp veggies, lots of garlic, and I stole a few of Sean’s black corn chips for a side dish.  Yum!

I promise--it tastes even better than it looks!

Sean’s choice was the Bombay Burger—a chickpea-based veggie burger with Indian spices, lettuce, tomato, onion, soy cheese, Vegenaise, and mustard (in a star shape—I love that!!) on a whole wheat bun.  He was kind enough to let me sample it, and it took everything in my power not to steal it from him.  I really was pretty happy with my Black Bean Hummus, though.  I think I’m going to try to make my own version of it at some point in the near future…

We grabbed some yummy vegan desserts there, too.  No pictures of those—sorry!  There was a raspberry bar that was pretty good (although I like the idea of raspberries, I still hate the stupid seeds that get stuck in my teeth) and a roasted almond bar that was orgasmic.  Really.  It’s not an exaggeration.  Ah-mazing.  I would have eaten the entire thing myself if it hadn’t been for the fact that I knew Sean would pout if I did.

While we were getting totally turned around on High Street, we stumbled across vegan Nirvana in the Columbus metro area:  Pattycake Vegan Bakery.  This is the place to go when you’re vegan in Central Ohio, or so I’ve been told.  Yes, we had a whole bag full of vegan desserts already.  But Pattycake was right there, in front of us! How could we let those poor defenseless baked goods go another moment without a loving home?  We totally caved.  I limited myself to three selections: peanut butter chocolate chip cookie heaven (because I wanted something similar from Whole World, but their version wasn’t vegan), a slice of raspberry lemon chiffon cake (for Sean—what’s up with the raspberry trend today?), and—on the advice of one of the girls behind the counter—the pumpkin spice Whoopie Pie.  We ate the cookie after the play, and we discussed the various high and low points of the production as we munched.  The slice of cake is half-devoured, waiting for whoever is least comatose from sugar overload to finish it, and I have a feeling the Whoopie Pie is going to be my breakfast tomorrow morning with a cup of coffee and a marathon review-writing session.

Tomorrow night, we’re taking the kids down to Groveport to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and there will be a vegan picnic involved.  I need to figure out what I want to do for that.  Luckily, I have all day tomorrow to cook and shop for what I need, but I still need to figure out what I feel like making.  I might do something with eggplant—I currently have 4 sitting in my produce drawer as we speak—and the kids didn’t seem to hate it too much when I made it before.  Maybe a different recipe with less oil is in order this time…  Oh!  I could make an eggplant lasagna…thing…and just serve it cold!  Hmm…  This may take some thinking and planning…  Horray ideas out of the blue!  (Of course, you realize that since it’s almost 2:00 a.m. now, I’m probably going to sleep late, completely forget about this wonderful idea, and make PB&J for the kids instead, right?  Right…  It sure sounds good now, though.  *grin*)