Meat-free, dairy free, gluten free pescatarian. What's up, SEAN!!

This past Sunday at around 10am I decided to try not eating any meat, wheat or dairy. Not for any reason than to just see if I could and what it would be like. I have to say, not eating cheese and bread definitely makes me feel less fat. I love both of those things more than most other foods with the exception of all of the japanese foods. So I have been eating a lot of vegetables and brown rice and fruit and veggie booty. Oh veggie booty, I love you a lot. I like doing it a lot more than I thought I would but I do miss eating a sandwich. A friend recently reminded me of Liz Lemon's theory that the common denominator of all humans is that all we really want is to eat a sandwich in peace. It's not a bad theory. Who doesn't like doing that? The japanese, that's who.

Hello (hello hello)?

Is anybody reading this? Or should I give up?

New place omg shut up!

We just tried a new place and I loved it!! Basic Bites on Beverly Dr in Beverly Hills. I had a Charming Chinese salad. Not really sure what's up with the kicky names, but the place has the same taste in vegetables that I do and doesn't use the stupid ones like red onions and bell peppers. This salad had lettuce with "Chinese vegetables" which to my delight turned out to be snow peas, green beans, cucumbers and water chestnuts, avocado, tomato, sesame seeds, peanuts and "Chinese dressing." Somehow saying Chinese feels a little bit like saying Oriental to me. It seems a little red-necky and wrong, but I guess that one's still PC for now. Can't we just call it all Asian to be safe? I don't feel like this dressing was so distinctly Chinese as to exclude the rest of Asia, but I suppose they have the right to decide that more than I do. It's their recipe. It was, nonetheless, very very delicious and I will most definitely be frequenting this place again. I liked it so much that I dipped all the bread scraps (and one quiche scrap) I could find into the leftover dressing, thus saving myself no calories whatsoever by not using all the dressing. I'm competing for biggest eater and I'm pretty sure I might win. Who's with me?

www.basicbites.com

Not Chirashi

Today was Mishima. Yummy casual Japanese lunch place. They have a thing on the menu called "side of Chirashi" and it costs $3.50 and it has a little picture showing a mini little sashimi bowl. Every time I order it, I get something different, but never a mini little sashimi bowl. This time they made it a smaller version of the main thing I ordered which was "Healthy Soba Salad." Cold soba with seaweed, egg, cucumber, shitakes, tomatoes and sesame dressing. For my side of Chirashi, they sent seaweed, egg, cucumber and shitakes over rice. Not a bad thing to receive but definitely not Chirashi. I deconstructed my salad (took the tomatoes off) heated it all up in the microwave and doused it in ponzu and wasabi and Onigoroshi. I should tell all the restaurants my tricks, their food could be so much better. Most of tricks involve spicy and / or pickled things, so what I really should do is open a spicy pickled restaurant. But I won't. Too lazy.

www.mishima.com

Boring salad

Greenleaf. It's a salad place where you can build your own. I've never been to the place, only gotten it to go, and really, how hard is it to make a salad, but there's always just something off. There's not an awesome dressing despite the fact they have like 15. They don't have hearts of palm or something else I like in salads but I can't remember right now. It's just a weird menu, but we get it a lot. It's healthy. I had a salad of spinach, avocado, jicama, mint and basil with a "mom's asian mustard" dressing. Until I just wrote that I thought I had ordered the sesame vinaigrette because I think that's what I actually got. Didn't notice til now. It was a little oily but I drowned it in the juice of a giant lemon and salt and pepper which helped and it was actually pretty good. Maybe the best boring salad I've had from there. Alicia likes boring places so I sometimes let her have what she wants.
Hot tamales for dessert.

www.greenleafchopshop.com

New idea, did I have this idea already? Sounds familiar...

Maybe it's time to get back to this. As most of you know, lunch is a huge deal when working in the office. Deciding what to get starts around 5 minutes to 11 (out loud, way earlier in private). So maybe now you get to see what I eat for lunch every day. Or at least hear about it depending how embarrassing taking a picture seems. Maybe you don't care what I eat for lunch, but I am always dying to know what YOU ate for lunch, so please indulge me if you feel like it. Check back later. When lunch arrives, I should be done around 4 minutes later...