Saladelia Cafe

* feel free to stop reading this post right now

Since I've been staying with Richard and Caroline I've been eating out a lot, eating a little bit of food, mind you, large meals and I still are not appetizing in the least (and I've lost a belt size, in fact I've been told the 'divorce diet' is an effective one). That aside the lobby of my building has a small version of Saladelia Cafe and I have to say, I'm glad it's there.

The food is quite tasty, made from fresh ingredients, quite a few grown locally. In addition to many salads, sandwiches and other offerings covering the vegetarian, vegan and meat crowds, they also have small sides. Earlier in the week they sold a fantastic small-dose spicy bowtie pasta. Wow, that was good stuff. Really excellent. Assuming they sensed my growing addiction they pulled that from sale. Why? Beats me. Maybe it's a Monday and Tuesday thing only. Today I tried something new - tabbouleh.

I've seen tabbouleh for sale before, Neomande comes to mind in fact, but I've never tried it (though I think that has more to do with the fact that Neomande's hummus is so freaking good I can't bring myself to try another side item).

Anyway, Saladelia's version of tabbouleh turns out to be vegan made from fresh tomato, cucumber, red onions, parsley, bulgar (?), olive oil and lemon juice. I added a dash of salt and pepper before tasting because, well, I was kind of afraid of it.

WRONG! THIS STUFF IS FREAKING AWESOME!

Had I known vegetarian and vegan stuff actually tasted good I might have explored my options a bit more. Will I now? You bet. Don't get me wrong, while I lived in Korea my meat-to-vegetable ratio was reversed from what it is here in the states (Korean food is very good, by the way).

Anyway, I'm rambling on at this point.

This weekend is going to be odd. Normally on Friday I'm either getting white line fever to hit the highway with the wife and dogs in a mad dash to the NC coast where we'd have a happy weekend in our cozy condo. Well the condo and the dogs are all Kelly's now as is the car we drove there. So.. that's out. Yardwork? I no longer have a yard. Tonight the void will be filled by Richard and Caroline both getting new iPhones. I'll give them a full home training session. That will be cool. Saturday we have a massive data center power-down for electrical maintenance. That will keep me busy for sure. Sunday I have to go to Kelly's house to identify what out of the garage we will sell and further identify who gets what.

* I'll keep you all posted if only for the fact that writing about this helps keep me sane.