Sun!!!

LG and I took a short trip to the big city, enjoying the first real Spring sun we've seen this year.. We spent the day in Seattle - including a trip to Whole Foods on 15th Avenue. We never seem to get out of Whole Foods without dropping somewhere near a c-note...this time was no exception. Now, in the future we know we'll pack a massive container of our home-cooked leftovers - preferably last night's lasagna. Since we're still new to this whole watch-what-you eat thing, we just went to a Thai restaurant for lunch. The pic is a shot of my tofu with mushrooms, garlic and bell peppers (maybe you already saw it on Facebook.) It was ridiculously delicious. LG decided to try the pad Thai. Hers was good, but we could taste a level of sweetness that seemed "not right" for our diet. Well...sure we ate it...we just suffered through a [very] few moments of remorse. I must confess that my dish contained a small amount of chili oil, but was otherwise Engine 2 Diet pure. It's sure a lot easier to be pure with this diet when staying at home and [having LG] doing our own cooking. Thanks, babe.

With the afternoon waning, we headed south to our favorite Seattle suburban sleeping place - the Cedarbrook Lodge in Seatac. Their restaurant, The Copperleaf, is a multi-award winning eatery with a vegetarian and vegan sensitivity. Of course, upon check-in we were advised that the restaurant was booked solid for the entire evening. Seems the Norwescon convention was in town and had pretty much booked every room and restaurant in the Seatac. We did a little research when we got to our room (booked a while back, fortunately) and were confounded - ever been confounded? - to find that the thousands of interesting-looking, mostly-young people swarming the region were attending the "The Pacific Northwest's Premier Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention." No...I'm serious! Who knew?! Suffice it to say, we got in the car and found another Asian - Vietnamese this time - restaurant in downtown Seatac with a vacant table. Both of our meals were pretty good, though mildly contaminated with oils. We are getting SO persnickety...I mean, "selective." LG told me "persnickety" is an old fart's word. I shot right back, "No it ain't, dag nabbit!"

We had a fine complimentary oatmeal, fruit and nuts breakfast at the hotel and departed for home, where a couple of our kids were visiting and relaxing from their hectic Seattle schedules. One thing parents love is to have their children visit. One thing parents hate is to infect their children with their parental weirdness. Sadly, we arrived to find that daughter and son-in-law had been eating vegan lately and we fear it was our influence that caused them to fall into the trap. Well, the good part of this story is that they had prepared a big pot of vegan chili and our lunch was ready when we got home. Thanks a heap, H & B!

The "cheese atop this bowl of chili is leftover topping from our very successful lasagna venture the other night (cashews, nutritional yeast, etc.) It will definitely become an omnipresent element of our condiment selection. Wow...if I keep using sentences like that, I might get an invitation to next year's Norwescon! Anyway, it's a wonderful chilli that one would never guess is vegan - tempeh for - "meat texture", beans and nicely balanced heat and chili spices.

Once again as I approach the Sunday morning weigh-in time, I'm concerned that I've been overeating. I know yesterday's restaurant ventures were minor violations of our diet so...we'll see.

It's still sunny so I'm going out to join the rest of the clan on the deck. Bon apetit...nod to the great lady of American-French cookery! (she'd have a grain-fed, steroid fatted cow if she knew I'd associated her with this vegan blog.)