birthday weekend

for my birthday dinner i wanted to try shakahari in carlton. it's odd we'd never gone there before last weekend because its a very vegan friendly vegetarian restaurant and only a couple kms from home (and one of the oldest veggie restaurants in melbourne). soooooo goood! we shared the avocado rolls for our entree (appetizer to north americans). i got the marcopolo gift for my main and zac had a vegan lasagna made with quinoa. the meals were the perfect size and i still had a bit of room for dessert but we decided to go for a walk down lygon street to one of the gelato places and get vegan sorbet.

my actual birthday was on sunday and we had a wedding to go to. it was the brother of the groom of the wedding we went to in february. the ceremony was at the same greek orthodox church the groom's brother's wedding was at:

the reception was at quat quatta. they did an amazing job of our vegan meals. i was a little worried about our meals because this was the first wedding i've been vegan at. in the past, my vegetarian meals have been good and filling mostly because of the amount of cheese. zac's vegan meals have always been good but very small because the chefs don't seem to take into account that when you put a few veggies on a plate (with no grain or protein) it's not going to be a filling meal like the meat mains are. we were stuffed by the end of this meal. we had 2 rolls with some veggies at the start of the meal from a share platter on the table. then we had avocado salads (with about 1/2 an avocado for each of us). the main was a stack of grilled veggies that were done really nicely. our dessert was a bowl of berries (i LOVE berries and was excited to find out that was our dessert over the usual fruit salad that zac has always had at weddings). the parents of the groom:his mom is soooo sweet. i've only met her a few times in the past but she greeted me at the church with "happy birthday, shawna!" i was pretty amazed she remembered considering her son's wedding was about to start. at the reception she came up to me a couple times and wished me a happy birthday and at the end of the nite she told me she had planned on getting me a little mini birthday cake but remembered i was vegan and didn't know where to buy a little vegan birthday cake. i was sooooo full when we left there's no way i could have eaten any birthday cake.