Hello, Readers! Are there any of you out there that still read this blog for fashion? Again, I’m so sorry this has become so foodie-focused of late. Like I mentioned before, the stresses of moving overseas etc. make me much less interested in trends and shopping, and much more interested in eating lovely delicious foods. I’d much rather wait in line for the best burger or burrito in town than anxiously scan the internets for sightings of Alexa Chung’s latest Madewell line.

That said . . . on to more food! Fruit juice to be exact. I went to Soul Vegetarian in my hood (the West End), Scoutmob in hand, with some of my favorite peoples last week.

Oh look! Some fashion-y bits did make it in! This is what I wore to eat (note loose-fitting dress for maximum eating comfort).

I even made an effort to wear my favorite (and least comfortable) shoes. I’ve only worn them once before: my wedding day.

On Lar/moi: Sunnies from Target • Dress (or quite possibly a shirt) from Squash Blossom Boutique in Decatur • DVF shoes • J.Crew Outlet necklace (if you squint, you can see that it’s made of a series of breast-shaped marble beads – quite heavy – my husband thinks it looks like a fertility necklace. I hope to gawd it is not).

Above is my plate of soul food done vegan (didn’t think that was possible, did you?). I’m 100% not a vegan, but for being without some key ingredients that I usually love, this was a delicious plate of soul goodness. I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed it (see my so-cute-it-should-be-criminal nephew below):

But even if you aren’t a cute toddler or a vegan, you need to go to Soul Veg for their juice bar! I’ve never tasted a fresher more real fruit juice than this. They don’t add anything but a little bit of coconut milk and/or agave. Divine! Plus, they aren’t as crazy expensive as a smoothie you can buy with a bunch of not-so-healthy fillers (Smoothie King, I’m looking at you. Looking at you and frowning).

So, in conclusion, yummy food and drink and cute kids. Great fashion blogging done right, huh?

Cath and I have blogged about Sweet Auburn Curb Market before (just last week and last year) because it’s THAT good. And I feel like it’s one of Atlanta’s best kept secrets. It’s not nearly as shiny and big as Seattle’s Pike Place Market, nor is it nearly as touristy. And I don’t get why not! It’s walking/MARTA distance to touristy stuff in the heart of downtown Atlanta and chock-a-block full of history: you can walk to Dr. Martin Lurther King, Jr,’s old office and home from here.

And let’s talk about the food! You can buy a month’s worth of collards here (I’m gonna miss those bitter greens when I get to Scotland- mmm!) and your whole pigs (see photo above/ poor piggies, why must you taste so yummy). You can also find some of the tastiest food stands/restaurants right in the market: Bell Street Burritos, Cafe Campesino Coffee Bar, tons of soul food, Sweet Auburn Bakery (more on that in the next post), and Grindhouse Killer Burgers.

A peanut butter and chocolate milkshake from Grindhouse (OMG, heavennn!!!):

Grindhouse burger (these are my absolute favorite burgers in Atlanta. Sorry Farm Burger and Yeah! Burger, ya’ll are good, but Grindhouse makes me think “vegetarian” is a dirty word):

They also have turkey burgers (delicious) and veggie burgers (surprisingly haven’t tried those yet – sorry, cows and gobbles!):

One of many vegetable stalls hiding behind some mysterious mosquito netting:

And that’s the weird thing about this place. Even with so much delicious food and fun things to do (like carrying around armloads of collards and trying to decide if turkey necks look edible), Sweet Auburn Curb Market has got a lot of empty space. See unemployed dishwasher below:

An empty Ciao Boca (why? you look so delicious):

Here are some more empty corners, soon to be filled to the brim with eager Atlantans and Tourists after reading this postie, right? Fingers/toes crossed!

I’m sorry to inundate you guys with so many foodie posts, but apart from hanging out with Kitcath and friends and family, I just want to eat my way through Atlanta in the next month. They’ll have to roll me off the plane once we get to Scotland – thank goodness I’ll have to walk everywhere.

Next post? Sweet Potato Cheesecake. It’s as good as it sounds and probably something you can’t find outside of the ATL. Come on down, ya’ll!

Happy Friday, lovelies! Thank you for the wonderful comments from the last post. Cath and I don’t really like to think about the moving-away-from-each-other part of this exciting Scotland move, and all of your words are so encouraging! Once I move to Scotland we do plan to change AsianCajuns a bit. The blog will be more like letters to each other about our experiences across the pond. We’ll still have fashion and food galore, but just shaken up in a slightly different format. Whatcha think?

In the meantime. food! Apart from spending gobs of time with our peeps, Matt and I are trying to eat our way through Atlanta and Decatur. This is not the most cost-conscious thing to do, but we are using the excuse that our kitchen is all torn up and unusable, so we might as well try all those delicious food places we have yet to lick our chops at. It’s a bit like playing tourist in your own backyard (cameras strapped-around-necks included).

We managed two yesterday. Delicious!

First up, Bell Street Burritos inside of the Sweet Auburn Curb Market (how is this place not more of a tourist/local destination?! It is ah-mazing!). To be truthful, Matt and I found the burritos a little on the bland side, so make sure when you go to bring a bottle of your favorite condiment: mine is Hot Squeeze. Burrito, meet Hot Squeeze. Hot Squeeze, meet Burrito. Match made in heaven, that.

Next up: Cakes and Ale’s Bakery in Decatur!

On Lar: thrifted Brooks Brothers shirt • Zara shorts • Deux Lux purse • Mango booties • Target sunnies

We’ve been so impatient for their grand opening that we decided to pop in yesterday during their soft launch. Come next week they’ll have pastries and sandwiches galore. We whetted our appetites with a peach tart, rosemary monkey bread (oh-so-gawdly-good) and some coffee.

Matt and I also plan to hit a few other places that need to be drooled over before we leave town: Holeman and Finch, Cakes and Ale (the restaurant), Sugar-Coated Radical, more Miso Izakaya of course, and a number of places off Buford Highway and in Duluth. Locals, any recommendations to add? We’d love to hear them!

What do you guys have on tap for the weekend? If you’re free and fancy a hop over to the West End (of Atlanta), I have a few handy paintbrushes that would love to be put to work in my kitchen! I kid! (I think). Here’s my plan: paint one more layer on cabinets, reward with Grindhouse burger, paint kitchen walls, reward with dim sum. Good plan, right?

It might seem like really bad timing on my part: 1) make plans to move abroad, 2) redo kitchen a month before leaving. Recipe for disaster – oh and I hate disastrous recipes. But we aren’t as crazy as we sound (or so I like to think). My hubs and I received a generous monetary gift from my in-laws for our wedding. Said in-laws have oh-so-wonderfully agreed to stay in our house (in our hood) while we are away. So we thought, why not make the kitchen more usable?! By usable we mean: installing a dishwasher and ripping out old uneven countertops and generally making the space less of a dark cave.

So we went marble shopping yesterday!

Look how excited I am by the marble slabs (above) and how steadfast and assured Matt is by this swirly granite (below):

Sadly, we learned that just days before our arrival to the Slab Farm (that’s what Atlanta Kitchen and Baths calls it), a worker had been moving all the lovely marble in our price range and broke it! Luckily said marble mover was not hurt (phew!), but we had to leave empty handed (sigh).

We needed some sort of consolation prize, and luckily the Slab Farm is just steps from one of my favorite bakeries in the whole wide world: Southern Sweets.

Wow! is right, piggy chef. Consolation prize: rustic cherry pie – ooooo I’d loose my marbles any day to  eat this! Slice of heaven, this is!

Can’t resist, must show you another shot:

It’s a lovely space. I believe one of the bakers is an artist, there’s an artist studio tucked off to the left of the shop, and wonderfully colorful paintings covering the walls. And you can eat your slice of pie on a soft buttery leather sofa. Delightful!

Oh, right, ahem, back to the kitchen. Please do not judge this photo below. This is the state of our kitchen at the moment: cabinet doors off, souls bared. Eesh! Can you tell even the camera could barely stand to look – just a quick blurry glimpse.

The plans are to prime/paint/demolish and then have the countertops and backsplash installed so it looks a little something like this:

(This is just one of many inspiration photos I’ve gathered, and I’m sorry I don’t know where it’s from. If it’s yours, please let me know and I’ll drop a link in straight away).

So that’s my weekend(s) job! What you lovelies up to?

You hear Cath and I wax poetic about Decatur all the time (it’s been our “home” town for the past 10 years): one of those small towns that happens to be six miles from the heart of a big city (Hotlanta!), a festival every month of the year, great boutiques, great food, great people, etc. Well, since I got married back in March, I actually haven’t been a true Decaturite. Now I’m a West Ender.

As a West Ender that means I’m a true Atlantan, just south of downtown. It’s not a neighborhood that a lot of Atlantans know much about, or if they do I usually get that “I hope you carry a gun on you” nose wrinkle when I tell people I live there. It’s true that the West End has seen wealthier days, but that doesn’t mean that as you roll through town you should lock your car doors twice and not make eye contact. West Enders are even friendlier than Decaturites (when Cath and I first moved to Decatur from DC it freaked us out when people whom we didn’t know would wave and smile – you just don’t do that in DC).

The West End is also awesomely historic. Most of the homes are brick bungalows built in the 1920s or gorgeous Victorians and Queen Anne homes built during the turn of the century. It’s home to my favorite house museum in the world The Wren’s Nest (you know how much we love that place – our latest adventure there was my Out of Africa inspired wedding photo shoot). The West End is Atlanta’s oldest suburb (originally a white affluent ‘burb) and is now home to a number of African American cultural centers like Hammonds House and The Shrine of the Black Madonna.

The West End is not the neighborhood to go to if you want Starbucks and high-end shopping malls. It’s the opposite of big box stores, neatly manicured strip malls, and homogeneity. Instead it offers plenty of mom and pop shops, soul food restaurants, and a Krispy Kreme.

Before I leave for Scotland, I’ll try to give you a few more peeks of The West End. These photos were taken on a little side road dividing The West End of Oakland City, in front of a mural of Brer Rabbit and (a menacing/trickstery-looking) Brer Fox hopping along to The Wren’s Nest.

On Lar/moi: tank top from Khol’s • French Connection for Sears skirt • Target belt • Ashley Watson purse • Ring from Heliotrope • Turquoise necklace from June Shin • Orange beaded necklace from a clothing swap