Brings Back the Good Old Days…

Hi all! I hope your day is going well.  Mine has been great!

Ryan and I headed over to Barnes and Noble to do a little work because the internet at my parents’ house has been kind of spotty.  After two hours of grading (guhhhh), I was ready for a break– just in time for my 11:00 mani/pedi with my sister!

I know it seems like I’ve been pampered a lot in the past few days, but trust me, this is not a regular thing!  This was actually the first pedicure I’ve gotten since our wedding reception back at the very beginning of June!  And trust me, with all the running I’ve been doing, my feet really needed it.  I felt kind of bad for the guy, actually.  He asked me if I was a soccer player!  No, I said, it’s from running.  He said, Ohhhh…I can tell!

It was great having some sister time.  As I said in an earlier post, my sister and her husband recently moved home to Shreveport, so this is actually the first “vacation” trip home we’ve taken where we aren’t ALL staying in my parents’ house together.  I know that they’re just five minutes away, but still– it’s weird not having them around!  We decided that she might just have to move back in for a few weeks when we come back for Christmas!

After our mani/pedis, we headed over to my favorite Shreveport lunch spot: Earthereal!  Earthereal is a vegetarian restaurant/bakery that’s owned by Katie and John Koellen… they’ve been in business for over 25 years.  They serve a variety of sandwiches, salads, and smoothies, as well as a daily vegetarian special. 

Katie worked in a plant nursery for years, so she’s got quite the green thumb.  The entrance to the restaurant is surrounded by potted plants, herbs, and even a little garden pond:

I might be a teeeeensy bit biased about Earthereal, because I worked there for 4 summers as a teenager

But really…their food is just the best. 

For lunch today, I ordered my favorite: tacos!

Their combination tacos are filled with: soy crumbles, cheese, carrots, avocado, and lettuce, and then topped off with their homemade vinagrette dressing:

Ryan got the Christopher sandwich, which consists of avocado, swiss cheese, pickles, soy crumbles, mushrooms, olives, and sprouts, all served on whole wheat bread:

It’s not a sandwich for weaklings…Ryan finished the whole thing, too!

And of course, no trip to Earthereal is complete without a trip to the bakery counter.  In addition to all their lunch food, they also sell breads, cookies, and muffins:

We picked up a bag of cowboy cookies, as well as some oatmeal raisins.  Totally necessary.

Here are Katie and John:

They’re so cute!  They were the best bosses I’ve ever had

John is almost 80, and he still gets up at 4:00 every morning to do the baking…and then he works in the restaurant until 3…what a rock star!  He was also a BIG runner for many, many years, so he was excited to hear about my half-marathon.  Earthereal provides post-race food to a lot of the road races in Shreveport, and they’ll be at the 5k Turkey Trot that we’re planning on running on Thursday.

It’s beautiful outside, so I think we’re planning on grilling again tonight.  I found a recipe from vegetariantimes.com  for black bean/walnut burgers that I’m going to try my hand at.  Hope it goes well…I’ve never made my own veggie burgers!

Have a great rest of the day!