The Healthy Everythingtarian

If you follow me on Twitter, you’re well aware of the fact my camera broke.

Insert sad face emoticon here.

I don’t know if you know, but a blogger without her camera is like a baseball player without a glove…

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…or a red carpet event without Joan Rivers + her latest plastic surgery procedure…

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…or, since this IS a food blog, a cold pint of beer without cheese curds.

It just ain’t right.

At approximately 1:52pm on Friday, mere minutes before a very exciting foodie engagement, my SD memory card decided to bust and bring the rest of my camera to photography heaven along with it. No scream of anger or evocative dance of rage could express my utter frustration in this moment outside of the Quaker Steak + Lube.

But I channeled my inner yogi, took a deep breath and held it together.

Why, you ask?

Because I had a very exciting lunch date with two fantastic people: Cole and Carmen. Cole is the business mastermind behind Sunshine Burgers and Carmen is his lovely significant other.

We met at the Quaker Steak + Lube, where excitingly, Sunshine Burgers on are the menu!

For the record, Nacho Mama’s Veggie Salad doesn’t mess around…

I honestly loved it. In fact, crumbling Sunshine Burgers atop a ginormous junk salad may be my favorite way to eat this pure and simple veggie burger.

In case you aren’t familiar with these boigers (ahem, burgers), Sunshine Burgers are organic, all-natural veggie patties made from sunflower seeds, grains, legumes and sea salt. They’re vegan, soy-free AND gluten-free and come in six flavors (in order from my favorite to least favorite): Falafel, Breakfast, Garden Herb, Barbecue, Original and Southwest.

Most importantly, they are delicious. I’ve been happily eating them for more than a year now.

Anyways, we had a great lunch, and it was so much fun to talk to like-minded people who appreciate the art of healthy, nutritious and delicious food.

After lunch, more work and a PiperLime online shopping spree (can you call online shopping but not buying anything a spree?), I headed home, packed up my stuff and slurped down this smoothie…

1 cup vanilla kefir
1/4 cup skim milk + 1/4 cup water
1/2 cup cherries
1 sliced frozen banana
1 T vanilla cranberry peanut butter
2 cups spinach

Then, I hit the road and arrived at la casa de Mama y Papa Everythingtarian last night.

I slept 10 hours, awoke to a fresh Starbucks coffee brought to me by Daddy E and went on a 5-mile walk with Mama E. Currently, I am procrastinating doing work and researching cameras.

Since when are you actually supposed to do labor on Labor Day Weekend anyways?

Before I skedaddle, I need your help!

What kind of camera do you have? Do you like it? If you have an SLR (for example, a Canon Rebel), would you recommend it? I am debating between getting a point and shoot or a SLR camera – a point and shoot because it’s easy to carry around and a SLR because the pictures are amazing. Thoughts?

…if I am actually as much of a crazy-scheduled busy body as I think I am or if I am just being a 25-year-old baby who can’t handle the demands of real, adult life.

…if I am just a person who perspires profusely at 6am or if yoga indeed brings out the sweat in me.

…why people like Cheryl from America’s Nutrition are so nice as to send me this FABULOUS PurAthletics yoga towel to help with said bodily function issue. The best part? It’s a full-length towel, which means extra surface area to sop up all that hard-earned perspiration.

…why Cheryl from America’s Nutrition is EXTRA nice as to also send me this salad shaker chiller to review for the blog as well. Trust me, I am nowhere near as cool as I should be to receive such kindness.

…why didn’t anybody think of this sooner? It’s got a special compartment for your dressing (that’s turnable and releases the dressing into the shaker), spacious room to accommodate a ginormous junk salad, a freezer ring to keep everything cool and it clickety-clacks all together!

…why I can’t go a single meal without spilling on myself. Twenty-five years and still going strong…

…how such good-for-you ingredients can taste so dang good for you. Then I realize in the beginning of mankind, before the invention of KFC Double Down Sandwiches, Candwiches and one Fast Food Nation suped up on processed faux-food, real food was good because it was well…real.

1 cup mixed greens
1/4 cup diced heirloom tomato
1/2 cucumber, sliced
1 grated carrot
sprinkle of nutritional yeast
crumbled Garden Herb Sunshine Burger
drizzle of Lemon Basil Pesto Vinaigrette

…how I can come back to Earth in my second life as a Russian ballerina.

…if I tried really, really hard, could I be a vegan again? With recipes like Vegan Yum Yum’s Rainbow Rice and vegan-friendly friends like Kristie, I am sure I could do much better than my two-month stint several years ago when I lived in the middle of Nowheresville, WI with access to zippo vegan eats.

…why beer can’t be a food group.

…when some crazy intelligent college nerd is going to invent me a machine that single-handedly does my dishes for me. Oh wait! That’s called a dishwasher, and I’m too poor to own one.

…if there is anything better in life than devouring warm chocolate chip cookies + coconut milk vanilla bean ice cream after dinner while rehashing college drinking stories and hanging out with good people.

…if spilling on yourself at lunch really happened if you can’t see the stain on your white blouse in a point n’ shoot camera shot from 10 feet away (ya know…like if a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it, does it really make a sound?). Ponder that.

…why there can’t just be more hours in the day. I mean, is it too much to ask if the Earth’s axis, laws of outer space and time can all shift just for me? I think not. Then I could lurk all the links in cyberspace I want with those extra precious couple of hours…

• 2 People, 2 Dogs, 1 Apartment
• Healthy Living Blogs
• Madison Beer Blog (written by my friend + coworker Cecely!)
• Nature Made’s Cholest-Off Challenge
• Say Yes! Change Things
• Whale Tongue (written by my BFF’s fiancee, the aspiring filmmaker Maxx!)

Finish this sentence, “Sometimes I wonder…”

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,

“Love of beauty is Taste. The creation of beauty is Art.”

Thinking about it, I am pretty sure Mr. Emerson was an insightful philosopher who was way ahead of his time and could see into the 21st century. I mean, how could he not be talking about us modern day foodies who blog about food and read food blogs?

Let’s be real, we are the world’s best tasters as well as some of the best artists – constantly appreciating and creating beautiful, nourishing and delicious works of food.

And coffee. Always coffee.

I like to think art, beauty and creativity are the ABCs of my life.

Whether in writing, photography, paintings, food, clothes, nature, design, ideas, architecture or just about any thing else I can think of, I get a huge sense of satisfaction from exercising my creative muscles.

More so, I love noticing the little things.

While this PB+J was delicious, it was the blueberries that stole the breakfast show for me.

If you take a minute to look deeper at this dish of antioxidants, you see each blueberry is unique in its own right – with a slightly different shape, color pattern and taste than the next…

And for some unknown reason, that makes me happy.

Because there is nothing wrong in wanting to be things to be aesthetically pleasing, even if you have to Photoshop them to make that happen…

Farmer’s markets, for one, are obviously a great example of showcasing the beauty of food as well as the beauty of people and their Midwestern fashion sense.

“There is no beauty as true as old man Hawaiian shirts, ankle socks with sandals, mullets, mom jean shorts and too skimpy college girl clothing.”

You can quote this Everythingtarian on that.

Plus, when you can get 5 multi-colored peppers, 4 banana peppers, 3 cucumbers, 3 zucchini and 1 bundle of kohlrabi all for just $9, beauty is merely an added bonus.

So what makes this Tortilla Espanola (Spanish Omelet) even more beautiful?

Not peeling the red potatoes.

I find the sliver of brightly colored skin adds a burst of much-needed color.

A work of art AND a delicious lunch?

Double bonus.

Food doesn’t necessarily have to look beautiful.

Sometimes it just IS beautiful…all 17 grams of vegan protein of it.

That’s not to say “ugly” meals don’t happen. I mean, as great as the ingredients and stats are on this Simply Bar, I will be honest in saying I did not enjoy the Cinnamon flavor that much.

C’est la vie.

Life goes on.

To a gorgeous, all-organic farmer’s market salad of spinach, cucumber, white pepper, banana pepper + ranch and a BBQ tempeh sandwich…

And when you can combine your love of art, beauty and creativity with a fellow food-loving friend?

The beauty is doubled…if not tripled.

What if the food at hand is going to be Chocolate Beer Waffles?

I’d say that quadruples the beauty.

But wait…those waffles are VEGAN?

Beauty officially quintupled.

Vegan Cashew Cream + Chocolate Sauce?

How do you say six-tupled?

Excuse me why I do a quick Google search.

Sextupled.

Definitely, sextupled.

I forgot my coffee with coconut milk creamer…that septuples the beauty.

That’s seven, right?

But I haven’t even gotten to the waffles yet!

Take this all-vegan feast of Chocolate Beer Waffles, Chocolate Sauce + Cashew Cream…

…multiply it by 2 1/4…

…and you get true beauty octupled.

But please don’t call me Octomom or even Octoeverythingtarian.

Holly works just fine.

Natural beauty is best, no?