Please Forgive Me!!

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. I've been a HORRIBLE blogger recently, considering I've not written anything new in over 2 weeks!! For that, I am deeply sorry, and hope you'll find it in your hearts to forgive me...or if not, that you'll keep reading anyway :)

My face when I realized how long it'd been since I'd blogged

I've been incredibly busy over the past couple of weeks with work, my two shows both being in rehearsals, Mother's Day, and also my birthday last week (I officially entered my upper-middle-twenties at the ripe old age of 27!). For my birthday dinner, my family and I went to EarthFare in Johnson City. They'd never been there, so I was happy to introduce them to its glory! But, even as crazy as it's been, that's no reason for me to fall off the face of the Earth. There's no way I could possibly fill you in on everything without writing the next great American novel, so I'll just share with you a couple of missteps I've had.

• Missteps-
• We took my mother to Longhorn Steakhouse in Johnson City for Mother's Day lunch. Don't worry, the vegan aspect of the experiment remained intact, even at a steakhouse. I ordered the grilled vegetable salad, which was described on the menu as "hand-cut crisp romaine & balsamic vinaigrette, topped with fresh fire-grilled vegetables, roma tomatoes and feta cheese", and asked them to leave off the feta. When the salad came, however, one of the grilled vegetables happened to be corn (far too much to try and pick off). Now, with as many friends as I have in the restaurant industry, and having worked in food service before myself, I know that Mother's Day is one of, if not THE, busiest day of the year for restaurant workers, so I wasn't about to send a salad back because it had corn on it. I ate the corn. The salad was delicious. Life goes on.

• Last Thursday, a friend and I ate lunch at K.P. Duty, a restaurant here in downtown Bristol that I'd not been to in quite some time. The menu overall was not very paleo-vegan friendly, so I had to take up a bit of strategy. I found an item, a shrimp and avocado sandwich. I saw on the menu where any of their sandwiches could also be made as a salad, so I had them leave off the shrimp and make it a salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I assumed that this would be the only dressing I would have, however the avocado itself seemed to be dressed in the mayonnaise that I thought would not have been included in the absence of the shrimp. It didn't taste bad at all, but since it was mayo, I can only assume that it contained eggs. Once again, I was in a bit of a rush, and I also didn't want to send something back that wasn't the kitchen or server's fault.

Those are the only errors that I can think of that occurred. At least neither one of them were intentional.

As for the rest of what's happened since we last visited, I'll just show you a few pictures of what I've been up to, then I PROMISE I'll pick back up with my regular posts!!

I found a new vitamin! One A Day Energy, with NO GELATIN! (some corn starch, but gotta take what I can get)

The new YMCA facility opened, and I'm in LOVE with the new spin studio/bikes!

Muffin tin breakfast I made mom as an early Mother's Day surprise. Sadly, I couldn't eat any of it :'(

Mother's Day afternoon wine tasting at Davis Valley Winery

This is what my summer is going to consist of, and I'm perfectly fine with that

Front row at The Avett Brothers concert in Knoxville the night before my birthday!!

Simple spinach salad topped with some awesomely fresh avocados I got from EarthFare

Some roasted red, gold, and purple potatoes, and a quick stir fry using a new ingredient I'll be sharing soon!

Thank you all so much for all of the support you've shown for my experiment and this blog up to this point. I'll be back in touch soon! And don't forget to follow @ThePaleoVeg on Twitter for updates from me, as well as retweets of things that I find of interest from around the paleo, vegan, and vegetarian communities!

Much love to you all,

Jon