30 Something Birthday by: HER- Food Fight Friday

Happy triple F you food freak lovers! It’s so nice to be back in attack on this lovely Friday. Who else missed all of the fish slappin, @jlsplatts -in, debauchary of #foodfightfriday? 🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏾‍♂️🙋🏾‍♂️🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏿‍♀️… that’s a lot of hands.

Well then without further adieu, let’s get this road on the show (I mean show on the road). @dandays and I spent our week off celebrating. We celebrated our little butts off. No not by drinking booze and hiring hookers, we are much too refined for that nonsense, but by (did I just say butt-bye?) taking a tour of our nearby cities.

What’s this have to do with food? Well, I’m known to get a tad bit hangry when I’m hungry so @dandays never has us drift too far away from a restaurant. What? You thought vegans (plant-based eaters) don’t eat out? Psssst!

I’m reminded of a joke:

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

Phshhhhh… huh? Huh? … get it… say it out loud, it’s funnier that way.

First stop on our city celebrating tour is American Junkie. Our nearby junk food restaurant bar on the pier of Redondo Beach. One thing a vegan can always order is French fries with chips and salsa 😋.

Don’t mind the guacamole, that’s off limits for him. The poor guy has had an allergy to it since he can remember. Shhhooottt … “your life crazy”! Only because we are in the midst of celebrating will I be scarfing this green goddess dip down without betraying my ever so loving husband. It’s cool, he indulged on his sodium benzoate drink of death while I rubbed avocado all over my face.

I know what you’re thinking… what a cute couple… haha… well thank you for the thought.

Excuse me? Do I have anything on my face?
Nooo… I didn’t kill that ramekin of dip all to myself, nope.…not me.

To avoid the finger pointing and laughing of the other patrons, we quickly paid our tab and jumped back on our harley’s (schwinns) and peddled on out of there.

“This way Batman, we are losing them”.…
Now that we are all nice and fueled up let’s check out what we see…

Let’s take the secret path… the route of the ancients. Cruising between houses and the sand, you can hear the water crash with each wave. Actually, it was quite an invigorating ride. People walking, running, dogs sniffing, volley ball players yelling, the sun is shining and the wind blowing all so we can have the perfect celebration.

Okay, maybe the volley ball players were taking a break, but you get what I’m cooking. Would any of you believe this was on a Friday? Mid-day? Like 2:00 pm Friday? I’m often impressed with the amount of people out and about during a weekday on the beaches. Apparently, LA is full of independently wealthy humans 🤷🏼‍♀️

Just check out this persons succulent wall…

That is strategically placed on the front of their house, which sits on the edge of the boardwalk, that runs along the coast line… living the life.

And I think this person wins the best water feature award…

Can you tell the water surrounds their patio? Is it a fancy bird bath? Is it a foot tub? Baby pool? Nahhh, it’s to block out those noisy ocean waves… stupid ocean!

C’mon, let’s go check out some more stuff…

This is the pier heading back up into Manhattan Beach. We cruised the boardwalk the entire way… water on one side, fancy homes on the other, then came the battle of the hills…

Needless to say I was walking my bike up that little iron man course. Would you look at the gorgeous flower I captured along the way…

Don’t worry, I only fell once and it wasn’t that bad…

Hey, @sivehead, can you stitch these babies back up for me? I can still get a few good wears from them.…

Dandays and I attached our bikes back up the car and finished day one of celebrating with some nice tunes. But first this little gem:

I look over and see this spiffy Porsche with a license plate that reads “Brrroke”… immediately the music is turned down and dandays is alerted to the breaking news.

Maybe not a big deal to some, but I’m already a firm believer that Porsche drivers tend to be douches’ (douches’ said in an accent is less offensive) not to be confused with the douchery of a corvette driver but a douche all the same.

Manhattan Beach happens to border Compton and the glaring realty of gentrified and wealthy Manhattan Beach to the back drop of poor and impoverished Compton, by comparison, is undeniable. To sit in traffic next to “brrroke” was to sit in traffic and talk **it!

Dandays and I quickly noticed the surf board rack that lacked a surf board and made quips about “how cool” this guy must think he is.

Then an elbow pops out of the window and @dandays, without hesitation, says “who does this guy think he is… Travis Barker or something?”

All the while I’ve now snapped two photos and spent at least 3-4 minutes sizing this dude up to another narcissistic, Los Angeles sleeping at the wheel, ultimate douche bag and then the light turned green.

As the Porsche driver turned right, we went straight and with one more look saw that he wasn’t a he at all… it was a girl driving that Porsche, with a surf rack on top, tattoos covering her elbows and a license plate that read “brrroke”.

I think we just came in close contact with the coolest girl in the world, not to be confused with the ‘most interesting guy in the world’.

Seriously though, we felt like ants and were semi tempted to follow her to another stop and tell her just how cool we thought she was. Haha… as if our opinion matters 🤦🏼‍♀️

Anyway, more about food…

I woke up on day two of celebrating and found a crazy creature in my kitchen. My husband was frying up some potatoes and peppers for breakfast. This was my “happy, happy, birthday” breakfast and he got it just right. How can anyone go wrong with po-tates in the morning 🤷🏼‍♀️

Similar to the day before, we threw our bikes on a rack and headed to Newport Beach. I have never spent much time there so the idea of exploring this unchartered city via bicycle was right up my alley.

Upon stepping out of the car and watching Dandays struggle to get the bikes down, I realize I’m hungry. Yes, hungry again… it’s a full time job feeding me, I swear. He knows the drill so we head out in search of a vegan friendly, gluten free, sandwich joint… sounds easy enough right?!??

We found our spot… “Sessions”! It might not sound like much of a sandwich place now but you just wait until our food comes. Nom, nom, nom, nom 😋.

With my husband locking up our bikes, I’m guided into the restaurant with this little invitation. I love a good quote on the wall (or in this case, ceiling).

As soon as it’s our turn to order our food through the cashier we realize he’s hella ripped. Not lightly toked on a Friday night ripped but Cheech and Chong take over LA ripped. Haha… these situations are always my husbands favorites 🤦🏼‍♀️

Getting through level one, I skip off to find a good seat to devour our goods.

This looks nice! Everything looks so eco friendly and welcoming. So far so good :)

I’m glad we got there when we did because the place started filling up and without any more seats it was evident we had picked the right place.

This sandwich was stuffed with so much yumminess I’m afraid I’m about to forget something, but here goes nothing: a brussel sprout, pickled onion, shaved carrots and cilantro sandwich stuffed in gluten free bread and drizzled with a sweet teriyaki maple glaze that brought the whole thing home, accompanied by homemade rosemary seasoned potato chips.

I didn’t pay much attention to what @dandays got because I was dripping maple glaze all over my face. Apparently I have a hard time getting things in my mouth and they end up on my face 🤷🏼‍♀️ Can’t take me anywhere.

Yes, I’m aware there is a mixed green salad there but who cares when you have homemade potato chips, I mean c’mon.

Like the nice people we are we finished our, not messy at all, sandwiches and passed our table to the next unsuspecting victim of the saucy sandwiches. With a full belly, I’m rip roaring ret (ready) to go.

Check it out, another fancy shmancy boardwalk with mansions on one side and water on the other. Oddly enough we didn’t see a whole lot of people enjoying their very nice and expensive beach patios. Maybe they were all at work 🤷🏼‍♀️

The houses stopped for a moment and an elementary school appeared right on the sand. It was made up of classrooms, basketball courts, recess areas and an outdoor grassy area build right on the sand. Definitely not what my elementary school looked liked. So cool!

We peddled across the basketball courts to get a better look at the view.

Can you tell that’s a pirate ship or does it just look like a run of the mill sailboat? Well it’s a pirate ship alright.

Look… we found our chill spot.

The paddles are for us to get our smash ball on. Have you ever played smash ball? It’s so much fun. Dandays likes to run me all over like I’m Serena Williams or something.… such a turd !

Shortly after we settled in, a group of whales frolicked the wave line for our viewing pleasure. I’m blind as a bat so for them to come up close enough for the birthday girl means they were pretty close. They hung around for a minute or two and then disappeared into the vastness of the ocean. A very cool birthday sighting indeed.

All I brought on this chill moment was an apple from my local farmers market. After sharing it with @dandays I was left only half hungry. This means we had about 30-40 minutes before The Hulk strikes again. We took to higher ground :)

A quick detour through the marina and a thank you to Mr. Look Out…

… and we arrived at Manoaw, Thai food for anyone.

A very modern and Jetson-y ambiance. With two menu’s, one for vegans, we ordered an appetizer and two meals.

The spring rolls were some of the longest I’ve ever seen. We only sword fought with them briefly before inhaling the plate.

My Pad Thai, without egg and fish sauce, made for a good celebratory dinner. I think @dandays got the Artichoke Green Curry but didn’t get a picture of that. Hopefully you’ll accept this slightly different angle of Pad Thai instead 😉

After all of this food, sun, and more food, I was pooped. We headed home where my Mr. perfect went out and fetched us some local dairy free hazelnut chocolate chip ice cream.

It took all of 2 minutes to fall asleep that night, but after (did I just say butt-after?) a good rest we woke up deciding to hang kind of locally for Sunday’s celebration.

I also woke up hungry (surprise, surprise) so we headed to our favorite falafel shack.

One basket of falafel balls and French fries later (yep, I said falafel balls) and we were ready to rock and roll again.

See the people in the background of this picture? They were chatting it up with the guy right next to us and passing a weed pen back and forth while comparing their best vegan dining experiences. To avoid joining the smoke sesh we left them to it and headed, guess where, to the beach :)

But first, yoga in the park. You can’t tell from this photo but the ocean is to your right so really it’s yoga on the beach.

Heading down the railway we peddle on the boardwalk to find a good place to play dominoes.

Pit stop on the pier and it doesn’t look like there is a spot here…

… c’mon, let’s peddle further this way…

Uh oh… I have a good feeling about this one…

… a little further…

… taaadaaa…

We made it. Now it’s time to kick butt and take names :)

Thank you all for joining today’s food fight tour celebrating my birthday. I know it was ramble heavy and calorie light but that’s why I made the chips and salsa picture the cover shot… so it would fit perfectly with my #foodfightfriday peeps… I mean, it’s about food a little bit 🤷🏼‍♀️

Pirate Vida ✌️

(I mean, Pura Vida).