If you’ve been reading here for a while, you will know that I have a soul sister and her name is Kristen.

Kristen Suzanne to be precise.

She runs a very popular and one of the first raw food blogs over here and has quite a few ebooks and books that you might like to check out, as well as an awesome published book called Raw Awakening which if you pre order now, you will also get a FREE copy of her ebook Raw Transitions – perfect for the raw food beginner or trying to introduce more raw food to your family.

So Kristen and I developed an online friendship when I first delved into raw food when I was still a flight attendant out of London.

I bought her ebooks online and we got to know each other through our emails, which developed into a mentoring relationship then friendship, with Kristen being the first person I spoke to when considering going to Raw Culinary school.

Pat affectionately called us soul sisters, as we got to know each other, that we had plenty in common too.

So of course I was elated when Kristen told me she would come to visit us in Long Beach (she lives in Arizona) on our trip to LA. It would be the second time I got to see her in person (the first was here) but the first time I was able to meet her precious daughter Kamea and this time Pat was also able to meet their family.

We lunched at Long Beach’s only known vegetarian cafe, Zephyr’s – Kristen had dined there the night before so we decided to head back there the following morning!

We all ordered the popular MK works burger (black bean patty) and it was quite nice – in between trying to keep Manus entertained, you know a mother of an active child rarely enjoyed a sit down meal in a restaurant. Even this pic was snapped mid way between shoving some in my mouth and trying to pacify Manus.

The food was ok, but the service – 45 mins to get our food when we were the only ones in the cafe. Weird.

It was so lovely to chat (between looking after the kiddos) with my friend whom I wish we lived so much closer to! The food alone we could share would be incredible – she an incredible raw food chef.

After saying our sad goodbyes and sending Kristen and her family off on the last part of their road trip, we headed off on a mini road trip of our own.

The weather was overcast but we were still yet to see the local beach.

Here’s one of the local beaches at Long Beach – you can see the Queen Mary and the port in the background.

Being a Sunday, there were plenty of families playing on the beach (and in the water, which we were advised to stay out of due to the oil refineries spilling oil and possible sewerage – ew!) and also I wish I had of taken a photo of the family that were grilling on a BBQ in the back of their truck. It was pretty cool.

Then we drove further south to Huntington Beach.

After a beach side drive we ended up at, you guessed it, Whole Foods.

Check out this awesome juice bar. They even had a beer and pizza bar in this one too. NICE!

We got our token green juices and watched Manus create a lot of noise.

Before calling it quits and picking up some stuff for dinner.

I picked up the avocado and mango brown rice sushi – GREAT flavour combination!

And a seaweed salad.

Who would you really love to meet?