Vegan MoFo Day 19: birthday noms.

There is one good thing about having a birthday- my loved ones want to take me out for food! I love you, food. And you too, loved ones.

Last Saturday I turned 36 (bleh), and my sweet Ken took me out for dinner at Cafe Sunflower. Sunflower is our usual go-to for special occasions, mostly because the food doesn't come in a paper wrapper, and there's vegan cake. We started off the night with an appetizer of walnut pesto pizza with capers, caramelized onions and artichoke hearts. I could have eaten a pile of this, it was so good. Very oily and briny, which to me is never a bad thing.



For my entree, I chose the ravioli. Each ravioli pillow was stuffed with either butternut squash or tofu ricotta, and everything was topped with a pile of spinach, green beans, mushrooms and tomatoes. I liked this dish very much! (crappy camera phone picture, sorry)



Of course we finished everything off with a piece of vegan chocolate raspberry mousse cake. I had to take a bite before I even took the picture. Can't help myself.



My birthday eve was a grand ol' gut-buster, but it didn't stop there. On Sunday, my best buddy Christy took me out for lunch and cake at World Peace Cafe. I liked my grilled veggie sammich a lot, once I finally received it. Long story, but the service was amazingly bad that day. Christy wrote an honest review of the experience on Yelp, if you care to read more. I didn't take any food photos because we were so weirded out by having to wait almost an hour for a sandwich, but in the end I did like my food a lot, especially the piece of triple layer chocolate almond cake!

On Wednesday, another good friend of mine, Malia, took me out for a belated birthday feast at Queen of Sheba. I love Ethiopian food, though I admit I need to branch out and try different Ethiopian restaurants as Queen of Sheba is the only one I've ever been to. I'm not always sure what I'm eating exactly, only that it's vegan and delish. Here's my pile of yellow lentil stuff, red lentil stuff, lettuce stuff, cabbage and carrot stuff and collard green stuff.



All of the staff there is so incredibly friendly. The waitress overheard us mention that we sat at the same table for my birthday last year, so she was kind enough to bring out a complimentary piece of beautiful (and decidedly not vegan) cake with a lit candle. I thanked her, blew out my candle, and made sure Malia knew she had to eat the cake to make it look like I did. Ha. It was very kind of them to offer the cake, despite the fact that I'm vegan and the cake was not. Malia liked it, so that's good.

Thank you to Ken and all my sweet friends for making sure I stay fat and happy for another year!