A Touch of Paris….

Happy weekend everyone! Is anyone doing anything special or are you all winding down for the holidays?  Speaking of holidays, it is 95% certain I get to go home to Australia for New Year!! Woo hoo. I am excited, but I don’t think I will believe it til my butt is on that Etihad flight to Brisbane.

When I was in Bahrain the other day, I headed to one of my other favourite places to have lunch. Lilou. It is a delicious french cafe decadently decorated Parisienne style (kinda like my living room at home – well sort of…I love the French/Paris look).

I usually have to amend my orders in any restaurant a la Meg Ryan style in When Harry Met Sally so I just ordered their La Gaite Parisienne salad and omitted the chicken and asked the chef for avocado (he always complies). Check out my ‘Dining Out’ link above for more info on veg or veg friendly dining. Obviously I will expand this with more travels (and please don’t forget to send me any of YOUR suggestions around the world!)

Crunchy roquette salad tossed with grilled vegetables, rissini pasta and drizzled with balsamic lemon-romesco dressing (I didn’t eat the bread and the pasta was minimal)

They also have a wonderful range of juices (for Bahrain standards anyway but they are yet to put a green juice or smoothie on the menu)

I forgot what was in this but I think it was a mixed berry. The juices are always delicious but I always forget how filling they are!

Er I look half asleep here….

Dinner that night was a wrapless version of this.

For some reason the tahini sauce curdled with the lemon juice rather than thickening it up, think I might have added too much lemon juice. Still tasted darn good.

And a side of oven baked sweet potato with Earth Balance and pan fried onions and mushies.

Thursday night I was asked to dog sit for my friend Sarah and look after her pound puppy Monty. He is adorable. Sometimes Lucy loves him, sometimes she doesn’t give him the time of day, but needless to say, Thursday night was a bundle of laughs for me, watching both Monty and Lucy play and wear each other out. That is until Sam the cat came in for some attention.

He decided to take up residence in Monty’s makeshift bed.

And there was a Mexican standoff for it!

It was a pretty funny night.

Remember the triathlon I was going to do on Friday? Well that never happened as my team fell apart and there was no way I was going to make the swim, ride and run even if it was a sprint distance (also not having the correct bike would have been a lot of fun too). So I just had a lazy day in and caught up on housework. And had a bit of a treat for late lunch and carb loaded instead.

Some pasta hearts I bought on my trip to Italy in August

Topped with some tinned herbed tomatoes, yellow capsicum, mushies, garlic and zuchinni. Garnished with pine nuts

Remember how I told you last month that my mum was going to learn surfing after indoor rockclimbing and watersports? Well here she is on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with some ladies from her boot camp group at the gym! Isn’t this unreal? She is totally putting me to shame. I am really going to have to UP my game.

On that note I’m outta here to go and make some more dehydrator goodies, and I’ll be back later today with a post on ALL the fantabulous goodies I managed to score in Bahrain. I have totally found more superfoods and raw foods that I really thought I would have to live without in this part of the world. And I also may have news on where to get a Vitamix blender in Saudi Arabia . Stay tuned for that one everyone