69 Food Freak Friday: Greek Position

Hello… ha...ha..hel...(multiple mic taps)…hello.. is this thing on? (Another tap tap, for good measure)

Food Fight Friday is in the house and so is Puravidaville!! Hey guys!!! It’s been so long since I’ve dropped a piece of sweet gluten free, vegan deliciousness on ya, I wasn’t sure I knew how to turn this thing on anymore.

My beautiful husband and sous chef, @dandays, requested (clears throat), demanded, that I rock out with you this weekend because the food fight crew is making some major moves. Apparently, all of y’all have been completely shutting this ish down and eager eyes have been watching. I just want to say “great freaking job all of you food freak animals. You are all a class act and I can’t wait to share this weeks contender with you Exec Chefs”.

Sooooo, it’s been quite a few months since I’ve hung out and although, @dandays has most certainly been keeping you up to date, tonight I’m going give you a dietary restricted Greek treat from a day in the life of yours truly 🥶, (don’t let that description fool you).

Yesterday, I decided we’d go out to eat today and had the perfect restaurant in mind, curtesy of TripAdvisor (I’m in no way getting paid for this promotion 😉). This eliminated the need for me to hit the veggie stand by our house, which I do on a daily bases. Instead, once Dandays got back from the gym and I finished my run (that one’s for you, @plantstoplanks or should I say shoes to jogs) we decided to blow this popsicle stand and go “see what we see”, one of Dandays favorite lines.

We headed out to the promenade with our newly downloaded electric scooter app, ready to kick some butt or eat some food. Same thing, right 🤷🏼‍♀️? After diddling with these scooters a minute we hit the peddle to the metal and ended up in city center. It’s literally a 20 minute walk from our place but who wants to walk like a peasant when you can glide like a G ?!

After failing our first few attempts at acquiring a CBD vape pen we decided we would be better suited to fend off anymore disappointment on a full stomach. Cue drum roll for the star of the evening…

Thessaloniki’s very own all vegan and gluten free hole in the wall restaurant, rOOTS, (that’s the business’s font not my own creative choice). Would you get a look at that Buddha bowl. It had me Buddha full after I was done with it. Yummy crispy carmelized onions, red cabbage (although, I think it’s purple myself), shaved carrots, wild quinoa because the tamed one sucks, avocado so Dandays can’t have any, and edamame tossed in a ginger sesame seed dressing 😋. It was delish.

The mains were prefaced by a semi edible falafel appetizer that looked much better than it tasted in my opinion. According to the hubby it was perfectly adequate.

His truffle and wild mushroom risotto was the ticket though. I didn’t catch a bite of this one for it was devoured in seconds. No sweat, the only mushrooms I ever liked were not the casual eating kind, they were the hold your nose, chase it with orange juice, chew chew chew as fast as you can and swallow faster kind 🤦🏼‍♀️.

Dinner was pretty filling but it’s a @foodfightfriday so we were on the prowl for dessert. Usually, Greece is sprinkled with decadent little bakeries on every corner selling the freshest and bestest (I know grammar nazi) glutenized goodies anyone could dream of, but tonight we are on a “No Gluten” mission so off we went, to see the wizard.

Greece is full of cobblestone alleys packed with small cafes that serve tea and cakes. I was hoping to run into one of those when I saw it… …it wasn’t a cafe and it wasn’t in an alley, in fact it was only a few steps from the restaurant we just ate at but it was glorious.

It was the entrance to an outdoor, semi permanent market. There it was, a mobile table stacked with these gorgeous looking cakes. They looked so shiny, almost sparkly, and swirled with what could only be chocolate or chocolate like swirls. Of course I stopped and asked if they were gluten free and vegan. The lady, I can’t remember her name, said they were not only gluten free and vegan but that they are made from tahini and sesame seeds and are actually not cakes at all. They are called “halva” and they taste like the middle of a butterfinger minus all of that cancer producing frankenfood added.

I’ll take two pieces then, thank you very much!

She quickly wrapped them up in cheese paper and sent us on our way. We took a corner and bammm, right into this little distraction. …

… fruits and veggies…

…nuts, flours, and herbs galore.

I was hastily ushered out of there for only Dandays knows the damage Pura can do at an outdoor food market. I will buy every damn thing and will take no names either. It might be an undiagnosed condition, we haven’t decided yet.

We are currently looking for a quaint cafe to sit outside and enjoy some hot tea with our recently copped gluten free dessert.

Should we go left?

Nah, let’s go right. It looks romantic this way 🥰.

We ended up at the corner of a Greek sounding street and a Greeker sounding street where we decided to go down the street with the Greek name.

Well all be darn (I’ve never used that adage in my life) look what we ran into…

… this will do. I ordered both our teas and we sat outside to wait and people watch.

Not much to see tonight but still charming enough. I pulled out my shisha pen and began to set up our small dessert station. Don’t mind the plastic spoons and cheese paper plate, we were improvising in a place where everyone speaks Greek. The only words I know are “hello”, “please”, “thank you”, “asshole”, “I love you”, and the names of some very specific Greek cookies. Now you try and ask for gluten free with that vast vocabulary 🤷🏼‍♀️

Finally, our liquid nectar has arrived and the sweet pic for the evening can be completed. Check it out…

What? I didn’t tell you about the Greek bakery I popped into while Dandays was off busy on another photo shoot, and asked if they had anything gluten free in my best Greek? Probably because it was more like engleek (kind of like Spanglish but with more Greek and less Spanish) and it was a surprise to Dandays too. However, the biscuits didn’t quite go with our hibiscus tea but of course I ate them anyway. You can’t get an avocado booty by only eating avocados ladies 😉.

From this point we are losing sunlight and I want to get back so I can write my contender post. My sexiest husband (no really, I have a few but he’s definitely the sexiest) takes my finger because why hold a hand when you can hold a finger, and leads me back through the city center, on towards the promenade where we can be line it home.

And that jam packed bus, ladies and gentlemen, is why we take the electric scooters. I swear if you could see how packed those things are here, every American with the average personal space requirement of most Americans, would agree there’s no way you are taking that bus. It’s crazy how many people they can fit on there. People seriously hang their babies from the ceiling to use up any and all available space. It’s nuts.

On that note, I’ll leave you with tonight’s theme song…

Because who doesn’t want to swing from a chandelier 🤷🏼‍♀️

Happy Food Fight Friends. I missed you guys and can’t wait to say hi and check out what you’ve got cookin. @birdsinparadise, I’m coming over to see what gangster creation you’ve been up to because a gangster doesn’t know how NOT to be a gangster 🥶.

Thank you @jlsplatts, @dandays, and all of the regular contestants for keeping this thing going. It’s nice to have a community to come back to after a short hiatus from steemit. You folks all rock!!

Pura Vida ✌️