Clif Bar - Coconut Chocolate Chip = OH MY!

I promise my posts are not sponsored by Clif Bar. I just wanted to share my own opinions and experiences with food/products. This bar is so yummy and Vegan! Only .99 at Walmart, or a case of them was almost $11 at Whole Foods Market.

Delicious Food Cooked at HOME

I am a very lucky lady, I come home every night to a cooked meal by my husband and everything is fresh, homemade, and Vegan. He is a big meat eater but makes the best meals I have ever had, better than eating out by a long run. I actually sit here and day dream about his food.

When we were in Cleveland this past weekend, he found the pasta maker that he has been wanting to get. He was SO excited to make homemade pasta for the first time, and I think I was more excited to try it! I hung out behind him watching and waiting and saying how hungry I was :) The great thing about it, it's only made of water and flour! It's cool to see a small ball of dough turn into a long sheet, then into the spaghetti noodles. This was like angel hair, he said the net time he will make it a little thicker. It was delicious, and he also made homemade spaghetti sauce with zucchini in it, YUM!

homemade pasta, homemade sauce, garlic toast (Italian bread with Earth Balance Vegan butter & garlic powder)

2 cups of this flour & 3/4 cup water

Yesterday I told Tom we needed to make sure we used our leftovers and produce before it went bad, so when I got home he had prepared these for me. They are stuffed tomatoes (left over white rice with lime & cilantro, zucchini, onion, pepper, salt and garlic) he left me a text to put them in the oven for 400 for 25 minutes and broil for 5 minutes. They came out perfect, I ended up eating 6 of them and he had 2.

Clif Bar Carrot Cake = SO GOOD!

This bar is SO YUMMY and I just saw on their website that all of their bars are Vegan! My husband and I just bought a case of the White Chocolate Macadamia and their newest bar Coconut Chocolate Chip. I love that these are made with Organic ingredients, filled with vitamins and protein. This bar is 240 calories, 4.5 g of fat, 5 g of fiber. I have loved Clif bars for years and rely on them a lot when I am needing an energy boost or a healthy snack that fills me up.

Trader Joes & The Melt Bar and Grilled-Cleveland, Ohio

My husband and I decided to have a date day and head over to Cleveland to try the Melt Bar & Grilled for the first time. A friend of mine had just gone and told me they had Vegan Cheese. I have never tried Vegan cheese before so I was excited! There are 3 locations in Cleveland, we went to the one on Cedar Road in Cleveland Heights. It opened at 11 and I was expecting to be a long wait from what I have heard, but we got seated right away. Our waiter Patrick was great and the food came out quickly.

My sandwich was the Spinach Pie with Vegan Mozzarella -wilted garlic spinach, roasted red peppers, grilled onions. It was VERY Good, the flavor was great, there is a lot of spinach so the bottom of the bread started to get soggy. That was the first time that I tried Vegan cheese and at first I couldn't tell at all then it left an after taste that I didn't like. The texture is more rubbery than regular cheese. I don't think I will have vegan cheese again, but overall the sandwich was very good!

My husband ordered the Hot Italian - grilled salami, honey ham, pepperoni, sun-dried tomato pesto, roasted garlic, provolone. Both sandwiches came with fresh cut fries and coleslaw.

The atmosphere is fun, the place is decorated with all kinds of decor (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Kiss, misc). There is a bar side and the restaurant side. We really enjoyed it.

We also spent the day shopping at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel and Sur La Table. I posted a few pictures below from Trader Joes, their prices are better than Whole Foods and I love their selections. I saw Maple Sugar and got excited, I can't wait to try it! We had a great day together :)

Spinach Pie

Hot Italian

Gatsby's Diner - Sacramento, CA

Another stop last year while we were in Sacramento, Ca was Gatsby's Diner. We saw this on Diner's, Drive In's and Dives show. One of the reasons we went were for the beet sliders, but we both ended up getting something else and were too full to try to share a plate of them, they don't offer them individually.

Italian Eggplant (vegetarian)

Eggplant, herbs and veggies ground into a patty, then seared and served with lettuce, thinly sliced red onions, tomato and olive tapenade on a toasted rosemary bun.

Bacon Mushroom Swiss

8 oz. burger patty topped with swiss cheese and crispy bacon, with mushrooms, mayo, and caramelized onion, served on a toasted bun.

 

 

Elvis Milkshake -Chocolate, Banana, & Peanut butter - their milkshakes are so good, old fashion style

The Banana Hut Hawaiian BBQ- Eureka, Ca

One of our favorite places we found to eat at on our road trip out west last year was The Banana Hut Hawaiian BBQ Restaurant in Eureka, CA. Tom and I both had never had any Hawaiian Cuisine so we were excited. My sons however are pretty picky, so they said they rather get something else afterwards.

At time time, I wasn't eating Vegan completely, I have been a very strict vegetarian for many years but on and off with eating Vegan, so some of my past desserts/meals are vegetarian but had some dairy products in them.

The restaurant was decorated in a Hawaiian theme. Their food was so fresh and so delicious. My husband loved it and wanted to put Hawaii on our places to go in the next year or so right after eating there.

Vegetable Stir Fry- Stir fried zucchini, carrots, red bell pepper and
onions stir fried with a teriyaki sauce, white rice, and green salad.

Tom's Kalua Pig -slow roasted
smoked pork, served on a bed of shredded cabbage, white rice, green salad.

Macadamia pie -flown in from Hawaii

Coconut pudding

Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

I had plans to go to my mom's tonight so I thought it would be nice to bake a Vegan dessert to take with me. Earlier today I had printed this recipe from the blog Eat Pure. I had all the ingredients I needed to make them. I am so glad I did. Everyone enjoyed them and they came out so perfect. They are so moist and full of flavor, and they are VEGAN :)

ingredients

dry ingredients for muffins

wet added to dry

crumble for top

crumble still not mixed fully

ready to go in the oven

starting to rise

perfect!

so moist!

**** Update on muffins, after 1 day these muffins taste even better than the 1st! I just ate 3 in a row :)

Voodoo Doughnut -Portland, Oregon

Last year on our road trip out west, one of our stops was Portland, Oregon. One early afternoon we were walking the city and I saw someone pass me with a cool pink box and wondered what was in that box and I asked Tom if he saw it and he said that he recognized it and it was the Voodoo Doughnut place we saw on the Food Network, so I immediately looked it up and we were within 5 minutes of it.

The line was out the door and down the side of the building, but it moved fast. We ordered our donuts and sat out on the picnic tables outside.

My doughnut was a Vegan version of the Old Dirty Bastard- Raised yeast doughnut with chocolate frosting, Oreo’s and peanut butter, Gage ordered the regular version, Graham ordered Glazed, and Tom ordered a Portland Cream. All of us were very happy with our yummy doughnuts. They do have a fun/ naughty names for their doughnuts, but I did not even realize what their slogan on their box meant until I posted a picture of it on Facebook and someone pointed it out how funny it was and then I read it again and thought about it, then it hit me what it meant. It must be the blonde hair :)


You can check their website out right here VOODOO DOUGHNUT