After working practically non-stop for months on my upcoming cookbooks, I finally got away to DC last weekend for a little relaxation. The weather was perfect — sunny and warm with a slight breeze. Much better than summer’s oppressive heat and humidity that will settle in soon enough.

Living in a rural area with limited (make that closer to zero) dining-out options, I end up cooking at home all the time. Not a bad thing, of course, but I do enjoy the occasional break from routine. That’s why anytime we go into the city, one of the highlights is going out to eat. This trip we had some terrific veggie sushi and some great Thai food.

The best meal of the weekend, however, was one we enjoyed on the drive home at a little Vietnamese restaurant in Centreville, Virginia. It’s a cute place and the food was great. Best of all, they have an entire vegetarian menu page and are sensitive to using vegan ingredients — I was assured that they use an all-vegetable broth in their vegetarian pho and that they use no egg or dairy in their vegetarian menu items.

The most difficult part for us was restraining ourselves from ordering everything on the menu. As you can see in the photo, we came pretty close to doing just that. We shared an order of super-yummy spring rolls (which we inhaled before remembering to snap the photo!), a wonderful bowl of pho that contained thin slices of seitan, an addictive banh mi sandwich on fresh crisp French bread, and their “special rice dish” that included a slice of delicious shredded tofu loaf served with broken steamed rice. Everything was super-fresh and reasonably priced.

After our fabulous Vietnamese meal, we stopped at Trader Joe’s, which is just down the road from the restaurant, and loaded our car with all the ingredients that I can’t find in my local supermarket. Now that I’m back home and my kitchen is well stocked, it’s back to home cooking. But I’ll save that for another post.