The weekender

That’s the name of the meal I ordered at brunch on Saturday.  Kyle’s parents took us to Real Food Daily, my favorite breakfast spot in Santa Monica.  I love this place so much I’ve stopped linking to it on my restaurants tab because I’ve been at least a dozen times.

   

My plate’s the one on the upper left.

It has two (gluten free) pancakes, scrambled tofu (with onions, tomatoes, & cashew cheese), tempeh bacon, and hash browns.  Holy breakfast right?

You can choose between fruit or hash browns (can’t say no to fried taters!) and pancakes and French toast (pancakes are the GF option).

The pancakes are made with almond meal, but you’d never know it.  They were crazy soft and fluffy and thanks to the heaps of vegan butter I smeared all over the place, they completely melted in my mouth.

I wish the scramble had fewer onions, but otherwise it was awesome.  RFD has fantastic cashew cheese.

The potatoes are good with the ketchup, but kinda a snooze plain.

I want to know how they get their tempeh so crispy.

The rest of the fare, clockwise, sausage scramble, breakfast burrito, ava b ‘n cheez scramble.

I took a significant portion of mine home (so much food!) and had some more a little later, after Kyle’s parents headed home.  Later I went on a walk while Kyle cuddled up on the couch.  He’s fighting off a cold, so I made sure he had lunch prepared and fluids near by.  My walk was so-so.  I’m sore from an overly intense yoga session I had on Friday.  Overachiever.

Once I showered I ate half a sweet potato with almond butter (no pic).  The second half was reserved for dinner, which I did happen to photograph.

Brown rice, sweet potato, and baked tofu.  With tamari and nooch.

I had frozen peas afterwards because I needed some veg and (shocker of all shockers) we were OUT of CARROTS!!  I have no clue how this happened, but it was a serious problem all weekend.  I close out almost every single meal with a few handfuls of carrots.  It’s a way to crunch and let my stomach realize it’s full.  So when I said frozen peas, I actually meant they were not thawed, but still frozen.  I kinda liked it.  Not as much as carrots, but it worked well enough.

I made Kyle a rice dish with green chickpeas, white beans, and Sabra’s seasonal rosemary hummus as a sauce.  After dinner we watched a really random film on butter carving.  Despite the decent cast (it had Ty Burrell, Jennifer Garner, & Hugh Jackman in it), the movie was totally weird.  Not bad, just weird.

For dessert I had a spoonful or Reginald’s cashew butter and a small bowl of ShaSha raw granola.  I can’t remember where I found their Buckwheat Cocoa & Vanilla Snacks, but it’s pretty good.  The buckwheat wasn’t overly hard or crunchy, so I liked the texture, but the flavor was a little deceiving.  For a product with cocoa and vanilla in the name, I was expecting both of those flavors.  Instead, it was more tart and sweet from the dried fruit.  It was good, but just not what I expected.

For Sunday’s breakfast, I had my last pancake from RFD with a fried egg.

Then it was off to stock the pantry/kitchen…Costco & Whole Foods.  Boom boom.

Since we were already at WF we got something for lunch and dinner.  For all my budgeting and home cooking I deserve a dang treat pre-made meal.  Let’s call it a weekend splurge.

We got lots of veggie sushi and pad thai to share for both meals [along with brown rice and veggies we already had at home].

Our Sunday night agenda looks like Grammy’s and dessert.  I’ll probably fall asleep an hour into the Grammy’s, but I’ve already seen all the red carpet stuff online so I’m not too concerned.  I definitely wont’ fall asleep before dessert.  That’s a promise.