Monday, May 9, 2011

Raw Foods Restaurant & Blogger Meetup

  Hope everyone had a great weekend and Mother's Day! I had a fantastic weekend! Some highlights included sleeping, exercising, being out in the sun with a friend, meeting up with another blogger in Charlotte, and trying a raw foods restaurant.

 Andrea is a fellow food and fitness blogger who lives in Charlotte with me and this was our second time hanging out. The first time was at an exercise class, so obviously we didn't get to talk as much as I normally do. I have been wanting to try out a raw food restaurant called Luna's Living Kitchen for awhile now. Everything on their menu is raw. That means not cooked. It's healthy, vegan, raw foods.
 I got the quinoa burger and greens salad

 and Andrea got the lettuce wraps. 

Everything on the menu sounded good, so it was hard to choose, but I was not dissapointed with the quinoa burger! It was better than I could have ever dreamed up a quinoa burger to taste like! Andrea said her wraps were just as good. 

 After we ate, we walked around the indoor farmer's market which was right next door. 


This farmer's market was different from the produce one I usually go to. This one had tables set up with different vendors selling anything from breads to soaps and herbs and salsas.   Here's me sampling some pickles and salsas (excuse the messy hair, I had the top down on my convertible and it got a little wind blown :) 

We did a lot of sampling (yum!) and I ended up buying some steel cut oats and two different dips. Sure, I could make homemade salsa and black bean dip at home, but this peach salsa and black bean dip were soo good, and sometimes it's nice to not cook everything myself.


 I don't particularly love peaches, but The Boyfriend is absolutely crazy about them, so I bought the peach salsa for him. He is counting down the days until we go peach picking here in the South! 

 Have you ever tried a raw foods restaurant?  This is the first raw foods restaurant I have ever heard of, and I loved it! I am pleased to know that Charlotte is going this direction with healthy foods, because most things in the South are deep-fried, rolled in butter, and dipped in meat. (That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is an abundance of grease, fat, and lots and lots of meat.)

 Does your city have a lot of health food stores/restaurants? 
 I thought that Charlotte would have more vegetarian/vegan and health-friendly stores and restaurants, but I was surprised to find out that even Dayton, Ohio (what I considered to be the armpit of Ohio) has more health food stores than Charlotte, which is considered an up-and-coming and very modern city.

9 comments:

Chucky said...

Hehe. We Southerners do like our fried fatty carnivorous foods. I became a vegetarian seven months ago and am lucky enough to call Orlando home. We're not inundated with healthy choices but have a few of them. Not too many serving raw foods though.

Have you ever checked out http://www.happycow.net? Awesome site if you are visiting an unknown city for locating these gems.

Thanks for sharing your blog.

Nicole @ Fresh & Fit said...

Those lettuce wraps look amazing! I have never been to a raw food restaurant, but would love to go to one. I just have to find one in my area first!

Just Us said...

I've never been to a raw food restaurant, but so want too!

You nailed the way southern food is cooked! I live in Jackson, TN and there is nothing healthy about it. :o) We eat a lot of Mexican out because that's about the only place that I can have a good selection of food to choose from. If we go any where else, it's always a salad for me. :o)

The peach salsa sounds great. I saw a recipe to make that somewhere, and my husband thought it sounded great. I need to find that recipe and make it now.

Oh...how fun to meet up with a fellow blogger!

Alessandra said...

Ciao Michelle, How are you?

I just wanted to tell you that I (finally) started to compile a vegan blogs' list on the Vegan Blog, and I included your blog, hope you don't mind.

It is here http://alessandra-veganblog.blogspot.com/

ciao

Alessandra

Foodafok said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Foodafok said...

Dear Michele
Very nice blog and very good food.
Have a nice Day

The Preppy Vegan said...

I have a Groupon to Luna's and have been DYING to go! Maybe we can have a little meetup there as well :)

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