Live Your Life Be Free!

Had an excellent lunch with my friend today at Live Organic Food Bar. The food was incredible – it was hard to believe that there was none of the "good stuff" (meaning cheese and meat) was in it. For example, there was a cannelloni dish made with nuts that tasted creamy (?!) and Thai spring rolls that were full of unusual raw ingredients that were absolutely amazing! My friend had the vegetable juice called "liquid plumber" (I don’t want to know…) and I had a berry smoothie. Everything we ate was delicious with no bad aftertaste literally… or the figurative bad aftertaste of diet-straying guilt.

I really enjoy these healthy places and I love the trend of regular eateries getting healthier. It has changed the whole ritual of eating out:

• Traditional Restaurant: I eat larger portions than usual; I eat more courses than usual; great looking, thin waiters and waitresses who probably don’t eat a lot of the food at their own restaurant serve me; I go out feeling puffy, guilty, wishing to look more like the slim waitress… but knowing that it wasn’t a good start, eating all of those large portions and courses.
• Health Restaurant: I eat healthier than usual; I eat more courses, but it doesn’t matter because each course has more nutrients and not a lot of calories; great looking wait staff serve me who eat everything on the menu; I go out feeling great and nourished with no guilt.

The raw food diet is one of the most difficult to manage (other than Michal Rae’s diet of course), since imagine, not only are you forgoing meat and dairy, but you can’t even cook! My friend and I spoke to the owner, who is pregnant, on the way out. She explained that to her raw foods is more of a cuisine than a full-time lifestyle. This makes a lot of sense to me. Of course I still like the traditional restaurants since hey – the bad guilt aftertaste has its own property of deliciousness (like the cheesecake I indulged in last night foe example). But… I definitely want to go to more restaurants like Live… hopefully more will spring up.