vegangirl.com

Asian Slaw and Potato Salad

A new vegetarian restaurant opened up today in downtown Asheville. Green Light Cafe, on Lexington near College (across from Tops Shoes) offers a new healthy option for dining out.

Everything on the menu is vegan or can be made vegan, with the exception of one of the dips. There are also several gluten-free options, although they do not have gluten-free bread for the sandwiches and wraps at this point. For the raw fooders, there are several salads and at least one raw dip.

The first thing they brought us was chlorophyll water, which they serve free of charge. It didn’t have a strong flavor but I did feel as though I was getting my meal off to an extra healthy start.

We then ordered the savory pocket appetizer which had a flakey spelt flour and coconut butter crust. It was magical. I will no doubt go back there many more times just to order that.

For entrees, we had sweet potato patties over rice with peanut sauce which was amazing, although a little more like breakfast than I’d expected. More sweet than savory. We also ordered the Jamaican Rice Mixup which was also a little sweeter than expected, but still a very filling, healthy, and tasty meal. The food was so filling actually, that we took half of it home with us.

But that didn’t stop me from ordering the Chunky Monkey cookie (I was won over by my server’s enthusiasm for it). It wasn’t the greatest cookie in the universe, but I did enjoy the blend of chocolate, banana, and walnut. They weren’t stingy with the good stuff.

High quality and generous portions and the whole thing cost us only $25 (before tip, after taxes).

More so than other restaurants, the staff seems so genuinely happy to serve their customers. It made me that much more happy about giving them my business. It’s a little unfortunate that their name is so similar to another healthy restaurant that is just a block away, The Green Sage, but on the other hand, Green Light Cafe has actually been around since 1998 as a catering and “mobile cafe” based out of Black Mountain. It is only their downtown Asheville location that is new.

So overall, I am genuinely excited about this new addition to Asheville. If you’re not a vegetarian or if you’re not into health food, you might be inclined to think “what do we need another healthy veg restaurant for?” But if you are into vegetarian health food, you’re probably just as tired as I am of eating the same things all the time. Green Light Cafe brings a whole new set of options to town. Check them out and give them your support!

[P.S. – like an idiot, I left my camera at home so I didn’t get any pictures. I’ll take some the next time I’m there. The picture currently on this post is from their website and is not what we ordered.]

Smashed up windows at the Grove Arcade

I remember being angry at how messed up the world is. I even remember thinking people who engaged in “civil disobedience” that involved stealing from and destroying property of big corporations were heroic.

Even at my angriest, I never would have even considered wrecking the storefronts of small, family-owned businesses in a little mountain city like Asheville. The only chain store in the effected area, which is a Subway restaurant, escaped unscathed.

From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

About 10:45 p.m. Saturday, a group of between 20-30 people wearing dark clothing, some wearing masks and carrying backpacks, threw items, including newspaper boxes, through windows of several businesses along O’Henry Avenue. A front window of the Asheville Citizen-Times was shattered, as were multiple storefronts at the Grove Arcade. An ATM was smashed at the RBC on O’Henry.

Multiple cars parked on Battery Park had their windows smashed.

The violence is likely linked to the observance of May Day, a day for marking worker solidarity that has been seized upon for anti-capitalism displays of violence, especially by self-proclaimed anarchist groups in Europe.

Several in the group yelled unintelligably as they vandalized. The group walked south on O’Henry Avenue and turned left on Battery Park Avenue. Some walked through the alley beside the Citizen-Times, where several employees of the paper had rushed to ensure the safety of their cars.

Talk about your random acts of senseless bullshit. For goodness sake, one of the vandalized shops, the Grove Arcade Copy Shop, has a big photo of the sweet-looking couple that owns the place right inside one of the smashed windows.

A comment on the article sums it up perfectly:

…this bunch of momma’s girls and boys who decided to get all radical in the most soft, liberal sympathizing, white-bred town they could find. LOL! Way to really show “the man” and take “the struggle” to the epicenter.

The Grove Arcade, where all this took place, is full of nothing but small locally-owned businesses, most of which take pride in supporting local artisans, farmers, and other local businesses. They are already struggling to survive in a down economy.

Since many of these “kids” were in their early- and mid-twenties, I am sure they came up with some amazing justifications for why they ran through downtown Asheville smashing stuff up. Wish I could hear what it was. I hope they all feel really stupid about this some day soon. Preferably from the inside of a jail cell.

The businesses that were vandalized include the Asheville Citizen-Times, RBC Bank, Grove Arcade, Grove Arcade Copy Shop, and The Eye Center.