Raw Adventure 2.3: A RAWsome breakfast!

Last May, back in our cooked vegan days, one of the loveliest trips we got to take was to the White Pig, a vegan B&B in Virginia. For the first time in months (if not a few years), while traveling, we were able to eat whatever was put in front of us without having to worry whether it was vegan or not, and even whether it was organic or not. Going raw, we kind of assumed those days were over and that unless we specifically went to a raw food restaurant, we thought we'd be sitting in our hotel/b&b rooms eating fruit and dehydrated snacks we would have brought a long. Dawn, the owner of Speedwell Forge, certainly proved us wrong.

When I made our reservation there about a month ago, I knew that Dawn was already very accustomed to making breakfast for people with all sorts of dietary particularities: macrobiotic, vegan, gluten intolerant, you name it! So I thought I'd give it a shot... I shyly mentioned in my reservation that we were both raw, but that we were totally okay with just eating fruit for breakfast if she had any on hand. To my happy surprise, she immediately wrote back to me saying that she loved a challenge and that she would be more than happy to make this as special an experience for us as any. After asking me to recommended a couple good raw food websites to her, she said she's come up with something great. And she did just that!

First, she served us a wonderful fruit salad, with soaked (she was even sweet enough to do that!) nuts and seeds. She also served us a mango-banana smoothie/pudding which though she thought had not thickened enough, was so good I had to ask for another glass. It was like raw mango lassi heaven (I'll definitely be making that at home).

She then served us zucchini pasta over bell peppers and avocado with a wonderful mango sauce:

It was so sweet of her to make such an effort to not only feed us, but actually look into our diet, and present it so beautifully for us! She said she had to make our stay special, dietary choices included! I can't be grateful enough!

As it was our last day on the road, our final day was dedicated to finding an authentic Pennsylvanian market. We stopped at the Green Dragon Market in Ephrata who boasts: "if you can't buy it at the Green Dragon, it chust ain't fer sale!" And man, were they right! We found everything and anything (most of it definitely not part of our diet), like an entire stand dedicated to baking sprinkles:

Piles o' meat:

Buttery Sugary Amish goodness (including whoopie pies and shoofly pies of course!):

And of course, the revolving hot dog machine of DOOM (the lady running that stand thought I was a total weirdo for taking a picture of it... hey when you're a healthy raw vegan, these things are just not part of your world!):

There was also lots of other fun stuff from furniture, hardware, chocolates, preserves, to pickles, but that would just take pages and pages to write about. And though I like to dwell on the positive, gotta say, I think we were the only healthy looking people in that entire market!

After that we visited the first Ten Thousand Villages store (it was HUGE), where I picked up some recycled glasses for my parfaits, and stopped by the Tessems' house in Hanover to pick up some of their lovely stoneware to complete the beautiful kitchen set we started through them. All in all, it was an awesome relaxing stress-reducing trip, with all good things included, raw food, wolves, and hot dog machines, oh my!