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...

HIppie shit, apparently

I am most definitely not a vegan but I am pretty vegetarian inclined these days. I saw this and I loved the other one so here it is. The bold are the ones I've tried, the rest are my comments. You try too! (I liked the omnivore better)

The HHL Vegan Hundred:

1. Molasses
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits
7. Arepa
8. Vegan Cole Slaw
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream (not store bought)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California Mango (in season Sept-Oct only)
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet (habanero) pepper (just a bite!...hot!
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice...with Extra Ginger
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula
57. Vidalia Onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics - got it for my mom when she was doing checmo and it SUCKED!!!!
59. Honeycrisp Apple
60. Poi
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores
62. Grape seed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna (raw optional)
77. Kombucha - YUUUUUUCK!
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers - seriously? this is starting to get gay. no it started awhile ago
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi
92. White Flesh Grapefruit
93. harissa
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina
98. Seedless 'Pixie' Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas