Follow Your Heart Market & Cafe

You guessed it; I ate lunch at Follow Your Heart again! A little disclaimer about their online menu: They have recently overhauled their site and, in re-entering the menu, have omitted many important facts about each dish. Just so you know, almost every item on the menu is vegan optional with the exception, I believe, of the spanakopita and the lasagna. I might be missing another dish or two, but those are what specifically come to mind. I almost went for one of the brunch specials this time around, but instead opted for my favorite vegan reuben. It totally hit the spot!

Since I was dining with my dad, who is amazingly supportive of my veganism and happily eats at Follow Your Heart with me when he is in town, I also got to go grocery shopping in the little Follow Your Heart market. Believe me, they pack a lot of goodness into this market! I know many of you are fond of posting photos of your famers' market bounties, so here is a photo of my Follow Your Heart bounty:



Clockwise from back left: Purely Decadent Mint Chocolate Chip, Follow Your Heart spicy barbecue sauce, Spectrum organic toasted sesame oil, chocolate Silk, Living Harvest chocolate hemp milk, Muir Glen diced roasted tomatoes, 4 Larabar flavors (Jocolat chocolate coffee, chocolate coconut, cashew cookie, cherry pie), coconut Sweet and Sara marshmallows, Sunspire vegan carob chips (not pictured, Purely Decadent Peanut Butter Zig Zag).

I'll try to remember to write a separate post reviewing the Purely Decadent flavors I bought on this trip, along with three others I've tried in the recent past. Follow Your Heart's spicy barbecue sauce is incredibly delicious; I keep trying to make up reasons to eat it! I believe I've talked about the Sweet and Sara marshmallows. I really like the coconut covered ones. The vanilla ones are a little dull for my taste. I love Sunspire carob chips so much that I often just eat them plain as dessert. That was the quick run-down of what is pictured. In case you were wondering why I didn't buy any plain faux milk, the answer is that I favor Vitasoy fat-free plain soy milk that I buy at Trader Joe's. :)

Up until now, I've resisted trying Larabars. Their fat content is FAR higher than my comfort zone for such a tiny bar. However, my dad was generous enough to treat me to this little shopping trip and I decided to buckle down and see for myself why many of you rave about these. So far, I've tried the two chocolate ones and the cashew cookie and I wasn't impressed with any of them. The chocolate coffee was fairly bitter (and, if I'm going to eat chocolate, the darker the better, so that wasn't the issue). The chocolate coconut was a little better, but mostly because I liked that it had coconut and a bit more of a chewy texture. The cashew cookie occasionally tasted like cashew butter, which I love, but not consistently, and the texture was crumbly. I have yet to try the cherry pie and my mom just gave me a key lime and a lemon, so I'll try those, too. I'm curious about several of their other flavors, but I think three misses is a pretty good indication that Larabar and I have no future together, so I won't waste my money or my fat grams on them after I finish the three I have. That means more for you!