Meatless Monday: Fast Food

So, as I may have mentioned, I'm in the process of moving. The prospect of doing such a thing always sounds so easy, but of course it's not. The movers come tomorrow, so I've been frantically trying to get every little trapping of my material life stuffed into boxes over the past couple of days.

Last night, I packed up the last of the kitchen items. As you might imagine, it's a little difficult to cook without pots, pans, spices, utensils, and whatnot. Couple that with the dilemma of not having very much time to eat and an inevitable evil looms in the near future . . . FAST FOOD! How's a girl to eat healthy and, today, meatless with the kind of options available at your average fast food restaurant, where sometimes the "healthy" items rack up just as much fat and and as many calories as a burger-and-fries combo meal?!

I'm not going to eat at your average fast food restaurant, that's how! In California, I've got some great options . . .

California Crisp
This small chain only has 7 locations, but they're worth seeking out. A lot of items on their menu come with chicken, but you can always ask them to hold it. Try their BBQ Chicken Wrap sans chicken. The sauce is yummy and the jicama adds a great juicy crunch. LOVE jicama.

Natural Cafe
This restaurant only has 10 locations, but, as with California Crisp, they're worth seeking out. Their menu offers a HUGE list of vegetarian options. I'm a big fan of the "Mr. Natural" - fresh, seasonal vegetables steamed and served over short-grain brown rice. I get it with sauteed tofu. I don't know what they cook the tofu in, but it is DELICIOUS!

Orean's Health Express, Inc.
Where I'm moving is relatively close to Pasadena, which means I'll finally get a chance to check out Orean's, which touts itself as "the first vegetarian fast-food take-out." Their menu is definitely more fast-food-y than the first two places I've mentioned here, offering items like burgers, dogs, burritos, and fries. Their website says they're open from 9:30a - 9:00p, but I remember trying to go at least twice when I lived in Pasadena and it being closed. If memory serves, I think both times might have been a Sunday, so maybe they're closed on Sundays. I drove by a couple of Saturdays ago when we were still house hunting, though, and saw that they were open. So, fair warning, African Burrito - You Will Be Mine!

Hopefully someday on-the-go vegetarian places will be as ubiquitous as McDonald's. Until then, . . .

If you know any good fast-food vegetarian places (or fast-food places with good veggie options), please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts

Poetry: Resilience

Here is poem #19 for the poetry pledge drive, which was inspired by a few things - watching my husband work in the garden today, hearing about evictions in the news, having just said goodbye to someone who is moving tomorrow, and thinking about moving myself.

I'm trying hard not to look back at what I've posted so far, not to judge and compare each piece, but I can't seem to help it. The danger of doing it is that it can be tantamount to writing an engraved invitation to writer's block, but it can also open your eyes to bad writing habits you need to break, weaknesses you need to overcome, etc.

So far, two things of which I've become acutely aware are that my imagery could stand to be more subtle yet stronger and that the meter and cadence of my lines truly suck. To remedy the former, I know I need to use less obvious and more vivid and evocative language. Fixing the latter is going to prove to be a challenge though. I look forward to analyzing that problem a little more closely when I evaluate all 30 of these poems at the end of the month. Lord knows what else I'll discover in the process . . . .

Resilience

As the season changes -
A tap on the shoulder - you turn
Over the soil, and the earth starts

To crawl. Evicted but not put out,
The pill bugs get straight to work navigating
The new terrain. Things that could have been

Much worse are fine. In the fetal position,
They still find good shelter. When we move,
I hope to remember this.

To read other poems or poetry-related posts on this blog, click here.