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Thursday, February 16, 2012

The Present Moment Cafe

Chris and I have just gotten back from the most absolutely amazing romantic wonderful trip to Jacksonville. We bought a "Living Social Escape" a while ago for a two night trip to the Riverdale Inn. Sneak Peak of our beautiful bed and breakfast:

Traveling can be a very big challenge when you're on a limited diet, and I suppose a plant based diet is considered a limited diet. I used the websites Happy Cow and Urban Spoon to navigate my way around town. The bed and breakfast and the staff there were very friendly and flexible about my breakfast.

I cannot wait to tell you about all the amazing places we went to eat! We don't normally get to eat out at restaurants and I was more than reasonably excited. Since I'm clearly obsessed with food I'm going to space out my craziness over a few posts :)

We stopped for lunch at an organic cafe near downtown St. Augustine where we stopped on our way from Orlando to Jacksonville. They serve mostly raw or living foods as they're sometimes called. Chris, my beloved omnivore husband agreed to a living foods lunch if he could choose our dinner restaurant.

Look how pretty it was inside!


Chris was excited to find a soda that I wasn't appalled to watch him drink.


We ordered the Chef's Choice lunch although based on the check they gave us at the end, they gave us the Chef's Choice dinner even though the menu said dinner wasn't served until 5pm. I was frustrated about the price difference more on principle, the amount wasn't significant.


Moving on... The first thing that came out was our Kale Avocado Salad. It was delicious. They used cinnamon I think on the nuts, maybe in the dehydrator. They reminded me of those sweet almonds you get at a fair. Chris and I debated about the ingredients and we couldn't settle on what was in there! It was so good though!!

Our chef's choice was actually our choice, we chose 3 menu items as a sampler platter.


Choice One: The Special of the Day, a shepherds pie with portobello mushrooms and vegetables marinated in a tamari mixture with a dehydrated mashed potato on top. I'm not sure what the "gravy" is on the top. It was so umami and satisfying. The dehydrated potatoes were more like a cracker but I didn't mind at all.


Choice Two: Tacos of Life, a scoop of pine nut-chili and walnut puree, fresh salsa, and guacamole in a romaine shell topped with sour cream and jalapeno vinaigrette. These were fresh and delicious. There was too much cilantro in the guacamole for Chris but I love cilantro and Chris hates it.


Choice Three: Maki Sushi Roll, seasoned parsnip "rice", avocado, and vegetables rolled in a nori sheet served with wasabi and tamari sauce. This was a secret mission to try someone else's sushi since we love the sushi we make at home. We both loved it and were very satisfied with it. I had to give Chris the last maki roll for half a taco of life that he didn't like.

So you may not be able to go to this restaurant but use their dishes for inspiration and make them at your own house!
Stay tuned for the rest of our eating out excitement.
Happy Eating!

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