I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day yesterday. Even though any day of the week can be a time to show love and to shower each other with gifts, Valentine’s seems a perfect day to be out in the streets with the rest of the world, right? Well, at least we do not live in a BIG city because it was not too bad of a day.
After having the baby in November, having some alone time has been difficult. Going on dates is practically absent seeing as we do not have family in town. We have had church family volunteer as well as friends at the college. We decided we would take up one of our friend’s offer to come and babysit Julianne.
Did I feel weird? Not as hard as it was last month but the fact that she decided to start crying like never before made me wonder if she KNEW we were going out to dinner. Luckily, our dinner reservations were for an hour and a half later after our friend came by so we stayed behind to calm Julianne and to see what was going on. We were nervous we would have to stay home because it was VERY peculiar that our daughter started crying like she did. Eventually, she calmed down and we were able to head out to dinner. Whew! I was mentally prepared if we had had to stay, either way, we urged our friend to call us if she started up again, which she never did.
We headed out to one of my favorite local joints in Lansing. Ryan had never been to Soup Spoon Cafe before so AFTER I convinced him that the restaurant did not only serve soup, he told me it was a fine choice for him.
I do not know if you remember, but I wrote an article of the vegan and vegetarian options that this place has several months back that appeared in the Lansing State Journal. Check out the article HERE. I also wrote a little blip about them in BlogHer pin-pointing them as a healthy restaurant. They sell a lot of local foods and since moving to Michigan, I love supporting local businesses. You can scroll all the way down the article to read my description of Soup Spoon Cafe.
I was really excited about going in the evening because I had never had dinner at this cafe. From what I had heard, the owner wanted to create a more sophisticated ambiance for folks during dinner which meant a great selection wines, cocktails, and beers. They sell all local beer so I was very excited to try one.
This was probably the most delicious dark beer I have had. It was creamy, smooth and so delicious after having one piece of chocolate. Either way, even though I was ordering pasta, I decided to go with beer and not wine. Hey, what can I say, I am a true Michigander. 🙂
Ryan and I had eaten pretty light and healthy all day so that we could keep our calories for the evening without really OVERDOING it. That was the key. We ordered the Naan Pizza of the day which consisted of naan as the crust and pesto as the sauce with grilled chicken, pine nuts, parmesan, and fresh tomatoes. It was a delicious appetizer!
Even though the owner remembered I had done a piece of vegan and vegetarian options, he did tell me that although none of the dinner dishes were vegetarian or vegan that they could be prepared especially for me. Well, I decided to try something off the menu since I have been eating meat.
I ordered the Chicken Marsala, which had tons of mushrooms and chicken. It was very fresh and once I mixed the whole dish together, I could taste the creamy garlic sauce. YUM!
