The girls were with Aunt Ellen today and my mom happened to have the day off from work. We decided to take the opportunity to have a little mother-daughter day together. We headed out to eat at a small, local restaurant called Aladdins Natural Eatery in downtown Rochester. Their menu touts fine, fresh ingredients to make delicious, healthy meals. Well what do you know, I’m all a-tout that myself.

We decided to split the babaganoush for an appetizer.

I’ve made babaganoush but was never quite sure it turned out like it was supposed to either time. It was like a mystery waiting to find out what this was actually supposed to taste like.

This was great! I think I put too much tahini in mine – it was nice and subtle here. I was very ready for lunch by the time we sat down and between the two of us we easily made this disappear.

We sat on the upper level and enjoyed watching city life go by while we chatted and noshed.

For our lunch, mom ordered the Melazangna.

She shared a (very generous!) bite with me, it tasted just as good as it looks!

I choose the Spanakopita. This is one of my favorites and I also like to try and order things in restaurants that I wouldn’t normally make for myself at home.

After our fabulous meal and conversation, we were off to catch Julie and Julia!

I don’t get to the movies often these days, so if there’s any movie I’m going to see this summer it’s got to be the one about a food blogger!

It was a really cute movie, Meryl Streep was so convincing as Julia Child! I of course had to come home and find Julie’s blog. If you’ve seen the movie, have you found her blog yet?

Plenty full from lunch we didn’t need anything to eat in the movie theater. I snacked on this guy that my mom brought me to try when I got home.

She said it tasted like peanut brittle but with sesame seeds – and that’s exactly what it was like! It was interesting and I liked it.

Home just in time to head out again for the next thing on the schedule – a family picnic at Zak’s mom’s house to visit with some family who were visiting from out of town.

From the looks of what’s on my camera, I was too busy carrying around a shy Maxine to take pictures of anything but food.

Dinner was a bun-less veggie burger (with Nances mustard!) and pasta salad and tomato, cucumber, basil salad.

I had my eye on other carbs and was willing to spare a roll for my veggie burger.

Maxine ate a few bites of her child sized portion of cake and then eyed my piece and said “how about we switch?”

It’s a good thing you’re cute, kid.

She didn’t mess around here. She spun my slice right around and dug straight into the frosting and chocolate shavings on the back of the cake.

Way to keep it real. Why even mess around with that cake part, it’s all about the frosting!

I passed on any wine tonight and stuck with water because I’ve got a long run planned for the morning. Got the carbo loading all taken care of though, lots of chocolate goodness to fuel my run in the AM. That’s how ya do it.

If cake is your thing, what’s your favorite part? The cake? Or the frosting?? I’m definitely a frosting girl myself.