From Raw Food to Loving Hut in One Day

Saturday was a fun-filled, food-focused day.

It started out with a raw foods class in Lakeland, organized by a group called the Polk Veg Connection. Jackie and Gideon Graff were the teachers of the class. They talked a lot about raw food diet basics, then demoed Brazil nut milk, raw apple pie, and then raw ice cream (made from the aforementioned Brazil nut milk).

The apple pie was amazing! Very simple to make (all you need is a food processor) using simple ingredients. The texture was the best part. Half of the apples are processed until it resembles applesauce, then the remaining apples are just pulsed into chunks, and this texture combination was lovely for mouthfeel and for presentation.

I wasn't sure about the ice cream at first, but it grew on me. I think I would have liked it better if it had more flavor (more vanilla, maybe?).

From there, we skeedaddled back up to Tampa for our friend, Dean's going away dinner held at Loving Hut. Loving Hut had a buffet all day, and the buffet offerings are always hit-or-miss, but that night, they had two totally awesome dishes with no strange mock meats, and I loved them!

This tofu is the BEST tofu I've had since I moved to Florida.

And the all-veggies stir-fry was delicious. I love bok choy!

Amber brought some totally rockin' homemade cupcakes - peanut butter with chocolate frosting and chocolate-chip pumpkin with cream cheese frosting - but I didn't get any pics of them. They do make an appearance in this shot of the guest of honor.

I had an educational day and a rowdy, laughter-filled night with my beautiful veggie pals. I met some cool new people, too.

And to Dean: It was nice knowin' ya. Your activism will be missed in Tampa, but Seattle is lucky to have you. Expect to see me crashing on your floor space in the as-near-as-possible future.

I Like Lakeland: Part Two

My nerdy interest in health food stores brought me to Anthony's Health Hut, the other health food store in Lakeland. This is not my kind of health food store: too many supplements, not enough food. They have a teeny, tiny cafe that makes a couple of soups, a couple of sandwiches, and a couple of smoothies and juices. I will say that their smoothie prices are reasonable; much cheaper than your average Smoothie King or Tropical Smoothie Cafe. Still, unless you're looking for every vitamin on the market, skip Anthony's. (I didn't have my camera with me for this visit, but there wasn't much to photograph, anyway.)

I stopped at another roadside produce stand on this camera-less visit and loaded up on cheap veggies and blueberries for the week. They offered hot boiled peanuts, but they were out of a Crock Pot! Authenticity Fail!

With my camera back in hand, I visited Hollis Garden, a small colorful botanic garden on the lake that is popular for weddings and photo shoots. There were many photographers roaming the gardens while I was there.





Oh, hey! They're vegan-friendly!


Strolling along the lake

Found this bad-ass family park


I'm also interested in libraries (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!), so I headed back over to the Lake Morton (Swan Lake) area to check out the Lakeland Public Library, where I was incredibly impressed and pleased to find three shelves of veg*n cookbooks in the cooking section! Go Lakeland!

The library is currently undergoing renovations inside, but it's still a nice set-up with a sitting area by giant windows that overlook Lake Morton. How could anyone read with a perfect view of swans, geese, ducks, and other seabirds romping around right in front of them?!


Time for another piece of fun Lakeland trivia! Does this look familiar to any of you? (Especially Johnny Depp fans.)


There's plenty to like in Lakeland, Florida, and I really enjoyed exploring the city over the weekend. Because there's only so much eating one can do in a short visit, I plan on returning and scouring the area for hidden vegan treasures. Until then, I hope you enjoyed learning about The City of Swans.

I Like Lakeland: Part One

Until this past weekend, all I had really experienced of Lakeland, Florida, was their Moe's. This past weekend, with help from a lovely friend/tour guide, I gave Lakeland a proper gander, and I liked what I saw.

My tour of Lakeland kicked off with a trip to BD's Mongolian Grill. Now, long time readers will know that one of my favorite restaurants in Kansas City is Genghis Khan, so my expectations for a Mongolian grill place are mighty high. And I'm going to be honest, BD's doesn't even stack up to Genghis Khan, BUT - since I'm many, many miles away from my beloved Genghis Khan - BD's is a decent substitute. I appreciate that they advertise their veg-friendliness (this was especially comforting after a disgusting experience at a different Mongolian grill place in South Dakota).


My friend and I also got there at 3 in the afternoon, so there was no line, so the grill was all ours, no need for partitions. (Mwa ha ha ha!)


A's plate

Mine


BD's has a variety of spices and sauces to add to your plate (pre-grilling) and a nice selection of veggies, as well as the oh-so-necessary tofu. They also offer brown rice, and any restaurant that offers brown rice gets a gold star for that. A and I did the one bowl deal, but if you decided to go for multiple bowls (at a higher price), soup and salad is included (but I'm not sure if any of the soup offerings are vegan).

From BD's, we went to one of Lakeland's many lakes, and clearly the best one, Lake Morton. Lake Morton is officially one of my favorite places in the world, and you'll see why in the following pictures.










Birds everywhere!



Lakeland is called The City of Swans for a reason! You can read about how the swans came to Lakeland HERE. (You never know -- this may be a trivia question some day.)

From Swan Lake (tee hee!), A and I moseyed on over to Chamberlin's Natural Foods, because I have a nerdy interest in all health food stores.

Chamberlin's is small, but carries some of the essentials, as well as a nice selection of chocolates. A and I picked up some goodies, and you can look forward to a review of those products soon.

Our headliner for the evening was downtown Lakeland's First Friday art crawl. There were tons of people filling the streets. We surveyed a little art, strolled past some antique cars, glimpsed a fire juggler, and then headed down to another lake for the hot air balloon launch, which ended up being canceled due to the wind. We were sucked into an antique shop for a little while, then popped into Mitchell's Coffee Shop and discovered there was an improv comedy show about to start. Hey, why not? We stuck around and watched the Improv Addicts get silly.



All in all, a good full afternoon and evening in Lakeland! More Lakeland coverage coming soon.

Peanut Gallery

Last weekend was a whirlwind of activity and fun times. As you already know, it concluded with a speaking event with Dr. Neal Barnard, but other good times and good eats were had before Dr. Vegan Eye Candy.

On Friday, I hung out in Lakeland with a friend. She's not veg*n, and since neither of us were familiar with the area, we decided Moe's would be a good option for the both of us. Bring on the tofu rice bowl!

In my opinion, the tomatillo salsas are the best.


I love that two of my three Moe's visits have included some kind of entertaining shenanigan-watching. The first time, it was some youngsters line-dancing outside of the restaurant. This time, it was a college kid creating balloon animals. There happened to be a table of several children next to us, so we had a great view of watching this guy create motorcycles, just about every Disney princess, a flower, and Mario. My friend had to get a Mario of her own.

I gladly paraded him about town with us for the remainder of the evening.

Saturday afternoon I met with a new friend for lunch, with the plan to meet at a Roebeks in Brandon. (I can't help but think of Sears whenever I hear or read that name. I imagined eating a salad perched atop of a riding lawn mower.) Anyway, turns out this particular location is closed. The sign is on the building, but the space is for lease. Minor detail! So we moved on to nearby Ploy Thai.

Ploy Thai is a tiny, but nicely decorated restaurant within a strip mall. (I love extravagantly decorated Thai restaurants, with Bahn Thai in Leavenworth, Kansas, still my favorite thus far.) Ploy Thai had a specifically vegetarian section in their menu with several items, but I'm a sucker for a good Panang curry, so I figured I'd order that off the "Curries" section. At the top of it, it offers tofu with it, so I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to get it veganized, right? Well, when a fancy-dressed lady came to our table, I inquired about getting the Panang curry made vegan, "with no fish sauce." She said most of the sauces, including the Panang, come "pre-made," with fish sauce. She named off the few sauces that are made fresh and CAN be made without fish sauce, so I flipped back to the "Vegetarian" section and chose something off of there, when she told me that that sauce was also pre-made, WITH fish sauce, even though it's on the "Vegetarian" section. Whew! So I went with the tofu and veggies in a chili sauce.

The sauce ended up being sweeter than I would have liked (I don't like sweet entrées), but the tofu was really good. This dish could have used more veggies, specifically broccoli. The "veggies" mostly consisted of cabbage. Meh. At least my rice was heart-shaped (funsies!).


My friend ordered the veggies with peanut sauce, which looked delicious (and fish-free!).


All of that fish business made ordering a little more difficult and disappointing, but luckily we were able to navigate around that fishy obstacle. And while the food wasn't terrible, I can't help but think that there are better Thai restaurants in the area.

Since I've been spending some time out in the country lately, I pass a lot of produce stands on the side of the highway, all of them heavily advertising strawberries (I'm in strawberry country!). I was more interested in other fruits and veggies, but couldn't find anything beyond strawberries and citrus at the first two stands I stopped at along highway 60. The third stop was the winner. Not only did she have zucchini, yellow squash, citrus, strawberries, cucumbers, peppers, collards, and potatoes, but she had freshly boiled peanuts. I have spotted this southern delicacy advertised several times, but never tried them out until this past weekend. After one sample, I was hooked.


The woman working the stand told me that the peanuts are boiled in salted water for 6 hours.

Holy cow, where do I even begin on how awesome these peanuts are?! They were scooped straight out of the cauldron, warm and fragrant, and poured into a bag.

The shells are soft and moist, obviously, and quite easy to tear open, revealing the warm, salty, oh-so-creamy peanuts within. Seriously, I simply had no idea a peanut could be THIS creamy without being "peanut butter."


Despite the sloppiness involved in eating these heavenly nuts, I felt like a true Southern Belle all the while.