PENNY'S PASTRIES

Yet another great day in Vegas.  Sometimes I think Vegas would be a great place to live...and then i remember my addiction to gambling :)


This morning was a very relaxed one.  We didn't leave til almost 11 and then my aunt and eddie decided to take me to the raw restaurant again (go raw cafe).  Today I had the veggie wrap!  Good choice!  And that picture is a half size portion!  I also had a smoothie with banana, tahini, cacao, dates and spirulina- YUM!

What a treat to be in Vegas with my aunt!!!!  The night i arrived we watched Glee together because she hadn't watched and we both caught up :)  However i crashed pretty early and actually slept in!  Ok...7:40 was sleeping in for me.  I didn't realize how much I would miss bob, but I felt kinda lonely.  So know you are missed bobert :)

It was a great day though.  I was going to lay out, but the winds here are really heavy so it made it pretty chilly in Vegas.  I spent the morning relaxing and reading.  Then at 11:30 I went to meet Sara and Dex for a raw vegan lunch at Go Raw Cafe.  By suggestion of my raw friend Lenette at home, Sara had the burger and I had the mexican pizza.  I thought they were both delicious.  Sara...well...her statement was  "i didn't hate it....that's the best I can say".  So thank you sara and dex for humbling me and eating raw!  Come to chicago and i'll have you experience my raw food :)

What a great day...yet sad that Bob is leaving!  The reason for the title is because those were two things that kept happening to us...our gps would NOT stay in the cradle and kept falling and turning on the windshield washers and we also kept seeing people's buttcracks-ew!!!  


The day started by going to Fox Studios where my friend Tom Parker greeted us and gave us an amazing tour!  Not only did he give us a free tour, but he gave BOTH of us a bag of free movies (like 7 of them!) and we got to buy t-shirts in the fox studio gift store and they ONLY sell those shirts there and have been there for only a week!  so basically, bob and I are cool now with our t-shirts!  THANK YOU TOM!






What was your favorite restaurant?
Hmmm, I liked 2 actually. 118 in Costa Mesa and Cafe Gratitude in San Fran.



















What was your favorite dish/new food?
KELP NOODLES! Yummy in my Tummy. Also, the diversity of Sunflower....sprouts and seeds!

























What was your favorite dessert?
Grrr...we had so many. Strawberry Short Cake from Cafe Gratitude or Triple Chocolate Cake from RAWvolution in Santa Monica.




















What is one thing you love about raw food?
Again, 2 things that I love about RAW food is how full you feel when done, but not the "Food Coma" feeling. And also the colors...so bright!


Do you think you'll continue to eat raw?
I will take away certain things with this. Fruit smoothies, kelp noodles, etc. I will always eat whatever Penny makes me!





What is the one thing you missed eating while being raw?
CHEESE!

How many days did you go without eating dairy and how do you feel?  (proves anyone CAN do it!!!!)
10! Holy S**t. I feel good. My cough is gone. I think it may be from the sun, but Penny swears its from not eating dairy.


How many salads did you actually eat- since that's the number one misconception of being a raw foodist?
One and I ordered it because I wanted one.



What was your favorite part about being with me (Penny)?
There was no fav...we had a blast and it felt just like hanging with her in good old Chi. Time did fly by though.


I am SOOOO grateful to have bob in my life and that he came on this amazing journey with me!  I'm gonna miss him...but I'm sure everytime i hear Jason Mraz "i'm yours', i'll wake up! :)  (that was our morning alarm)  


So...after I dropped bob off, I drove to Las Vegas to surprise my aunt!  SURPRISE!!! she loved it.  We ate some dinner and now i'm going to read, relax, write, and enjoy my vacation!  love you bob and KEEP READING- more raw restaurants to come!!!!

We slept in a Days Inn last night which was horrible!  But we slept really well on a good bed compared to Aunt Geisela's- no offense to her!  We took off early this morning so we could catch up on blogging which we did!  And then we went to the San Diego Zoo!!!  The title of our blog is because we kept hearing "I'm a be" on the radio and I stated that the more I heard it, the more I was thinking "I am a bee" and replaced the words "i'm a be, i'm a be, i'm a, i'm a, i'm a, i'm a bee" with "i'm a bee, i'm a bee, i'm a bumble bumble bee".  Well...we thought it was humorous.  So back to the zoo.  We loved it.  We took a Skyfari Arial Tram which was basically like a ski lift.  We loved it so much, we took it twice.  We left the zoo rather early because we were both hungry.  However we decided to drive to Coronado Island to see what was there.  It was beautiful, but not a place where we wanted to settle!  


We drove to Encinitas, with a bit of a detour because I for some reason plugged in a random address in the Garmin, which took us way out of the way.  So The Greenery was a VERY tiny place and was basically a grab and go place.  Not one of our favorites, food lacking salt and flavor, but it was very good pizza and looked like it too!  (we had not-stir fry veggies, a cream cheese sandwich on sweet potato bread and pizza)



We made a pitstop at a grocery store and got some smoothies and a piece of blueberry cheesecake. Bob said mine was better :)  I kinda agree. This one had WAY too many nuts on it!


After lunch we drove around trying to figure out something to do but we decided to just drive back to Santa Monica and walk around a bit.  Before we knew it, it was dinner time!  We ate at Rawvolution!  We both were craving salad things and chocolate.  So Bob had a large salad and I ate kale salad, not-stir fry salad and tuna with onion bread!  OMG- hands down best raw vegan tuna ever!  And the triple chocolate cake was to die for!  And bob and I aren't even chocolate lovers!  The girl that helped us also gave us a piece of chocolate covered durian for free.  It was chewy and a great balance of flavors!

Earliest morning wake up call yet as Penny's excitement for Disneyland built with anticipation through the foggy foggy foggy LA highways.  :)  We don't have much to say because Disney is Disney so what else could we say!  It's much smaller than Disney World but still entertaining.  Some rides we both never been on were Alice in Wonderland, Nemo's submarine ride, and some bobsled ride which was super cool.  I freaked out at Pirates of the Caribbean and Mr. Toads Wild Ride and Penny....well...Penny's favorite ride we never went on...It's a Small World.  And no, that's not a joke.  As far as the raw food goes, we found a great place for raw salads which were not typical Disney food so for that we were grateful.  The reason we called our blog fast passes is because we had to wait an extra long time at nemo's ride so they gave us a fast pass for another ride.  We attempted to use it at Space Mountain, but as we were about to board, a blind man fell and his hat fell into the tracks which caused the ride to shut down.  So they gave us another fast pass to use.  However, we never got to use it because they never re opened the ride.  Therein lies the story of the fast pass.  But I did find a super cool shirt...tada!  And so did Penny.  Enjoy the slideshow and we'll see you tomorrow in San Diego.

This morning was a fun one in which we had to leave Annie's quietly and through the side gate which was a small narrow path covered with trees and vines.  The kicker was that Bob was carrying all of the luggage while I was trying to watch our path and hold open the tiny gates.  At the same time, the owner of the place , who we never met, was in the kitchen looking out the window at us and just waving hi.  Fun times.


So, title of our blog was because we went to this AMAZING farmers market in Hollywood because a girl we met in chicago who was from cali told us we had to try Harry's Berries.  These were definitely the best berries either of us have tried.  They had to varieties and they both tasted so different.  It was a treat.  Some things that intrigued us were organic coffee, flavored raw honeys, and flavored nuts.  As we were leaving we ran into Jake Gyllenhaal, thus the title of our blog today.  Yes everyone he cut his hair, and it was ironic because bob's been making fun of his new movie this whole trip.  And no, we didn't take pictures...too quick!

After the market we quickly drove to Venice Beach.  We didn't have much time, so we walked a bit down to the pier, took some pictures, walked the street and saw crazy people, and then got back in our car.  We drove again to Erewhon to grab some smoothies before our one and only guided tour of this trip.


Our guided tour through the company Dearly Departed Tours was a 3 hr van tour of all of hollywood/la/beverly hills.  The focus was on people who had departed us and some gruesome stories of homicide, suicides, and overdoses.  Some of the highlights were Jim Belushi, River Phoenix and Janis Joplin's place of death, Michael Jackson's last home and the house that the Osbourne's were living in while filming their tv show.


At that point we were starving so we drove to Santa Monica, our destination for the evening, and went to a restaurant that Karyn had suggested called Planet Raw.  This was my favorite place so far!  We started with a Mocha Mylk Shake that can not be described in words.  I will be getting another one!  As an appetizer we had raw vegan (no meat) sushi.  This too was delish. (that one's for you Marci)  Then we decided to experiment and bob had his new favorite kelp pasta in the pad thai and i had an ariel wrap with nori, collard greens, avocado, nut pate, veggies, coconut jerky, and fakin bakin both of those dishes being specials!!!  We were so stuffed but the special dessert was raw vegan cinnamon rolls which we couldn't pass up and thank g-d we didn't.  Wow.  

Our internet has been far and few between so stay tuned for our adventures!  We will be posting as soon as we can!!!

-Penny and Bob

I can make your bedrock."  This was the song of the day that we kept hearing over and over again on the radio.  We thought it was funny!  Once again...sorry for the blog delay, but our internet hasn't been too great!


So i'll start with the blogging and bob will probably help out a bit!  So I am going to try and make a huge photo album to share all of the pictures when i'm done!  I know people want to see more of my "regular" california pics who aren't on facebook!


To start today we woke up early in LA and decided to do the touristy stuff early so we could avoid the tourists..oh wait...we are tourists :)  The first thing we did was of course take pictures of the Hollywood sign.  Bob's camera took way better pictures but i did the best i could.  It was cool to finally see it in person and not in the movies!  Then we went to walk hollywood blvd and take the typical star pictures on the floor and of the different theatres.  We drove around and randomly found Sunset Blvd and took some other pictures but we headed for our first raw stop which was Erewhon...BEST grocery store ever.  I'd move to cali JUST for this store!  I would have taken more pictures but we had to get on with our stops!  We bought some "vegetable tempura" which was a great snack!  I loved the flavor and so did bob!

We took a mini detour to visit Bob's friend Anna at The Beverly Hills Hotel where she is the manager of The Green Teaist.  Here's Bob.


The Green Teaist is originally located in Lake Forest, IL and this is their newest location!  They are an importer of the finest Japanese green teas...very pricey.  Anna was kind enough to give us some tea to go. Penny had the genmaicha (green tea blended with popped brown rice) and I had the hojicha (stems of the tea roasted).  Most fascinating was they came in to go cups in which EVER starbucks should use, no offense to the green teaist, but they had retractable lids meaning they could open and close manually! And we got to see two of Anna's children who I haven't seen in a long time.  I knew all about the tea from it being close to home, but it was nice to have Penny experience it with me!







Then we drove to Silverlake to eat lunch at Cru.  Lunch was absolutely delicious.  We ate spring rolls, bruschetta, and some spicy kelp noodle dish.  Bob's new favorite food is kelp!  You should all try it.  After lunch we tried a new product we had gotten at the grocery store which was sadly melted...but it was a carrot cake.  However, some may say, not as good as mine! heehee.  

We went back to Annie's, (THANK YOU) to get dressed because we went to Costa Mesa that night for again another great dinner at 118 Degrees.


This food was outstanding and Bob was a huge fan.  First off, we had a great waiter- Tino!  Shout out to him!  We liked him tons!  Then for dinner we shared the fried avocado, who knew and stuffed mushrooms and I had the lasagna and bob had the ravioli and then for dessert the apple cobbler.  I loved the food so much that i bought the "uncook" book.  We were stuffed but well worth it!  Thanks Tino :)

Then we went to see Bob's friend Liz in a staged reading at a play festival at the South Coast Repetory Theatre and the play was called Between Us Chickens.  Here is bob again!


Well, because Penny and I normally have date night, granted they are usually musicals, I dragged her off to Costa Mesa to see my old HS buddy Lizzy Vital!  This was my first time seeing LA theatre and even better seeing Liz in a theatre in LA!  Oddly enough we also ran into Nick Mills in the same production and the three of us used to perform together in Chicago.  Penny and I thoroughly enjoyed this experience.  We also have noticed the over abundance of theatre spaces on our tour and are amazed.  "Where can we go where there is no theatre, no musical theatre, no dinner theatre of any kind?  LOS ANGELES"  can you guess the quote?  Connie and Carla the movie!  Obviously theatre is alive and thriving!  See my review on this production and others mainly in the chicago land area HERE.  (had to plug myself. heehee)  Then we went back to Annie's and CRASHED hardcore!  We forgot to mention this previously, but on our first arrival at Annie's there was about a 6 inch lizard inside of Annie's Bungalow and we spend quite a while trying to lure him outside!  Rather amusing, but not on a night we were dead tired like last nite!