Weekend Trip to LA and My First Bar Mitzvah

I feel so terrible for neglecting this blog over the past couple weeks, but it’s been impossible to post since Alex and I have been off on an epic Shanghaied adventure on the other side of the world! We’ve been having an amazing time and I have a lot to talk about regarding all of the tasty vegan food we’ve had here when I get back. But for now, I wanted to post about our trip to LA that happened right before we left the country. I had written this the day before we left, but just realized that I had forgotten to post it. Ugh!! So here it goes…

This past weekend we took a little road trip to SoCal to attend a Bar Mitzvah. This also happens to have been my first Bar Mitzvah ceremony so I was curious to see what it all entailed.

We started the drive Thursday after work, stayed the night in San Luis Obispo, and then continued on Friday morning to meet our friends, Luis and Anna, for lunch in Irvine.

Alex met Luis years ago at the Game Developers Conference where they discovered that they had not just video games in common, but also veganism, anarchism, punk rock, and comics. At the time, Luis was living in Boston, but soon after got a great gig working at Blizzard on World of Warcraft in Irvine and has been living there ever since, which has been super convenient for weekend visits with him and his family 🙂

Anna and Luis have two girls, Lydia, who was at school and Lucia, the adorableness you see pictured here. We ate at Veggie Grill, which is an awesome vegan fast food restaurant chain in SoCal. Boo on me for not taking any photos of our delicious food, but at least I didn’t forget to take some of our friends.

After lunch we drove to LA, checked into a hotel, and headed to Ruth and Aaron’s house for a shabbat dinner in celebration of their son Isaac’s upcoming Bar Mitzvah. It also happened to be Isaac’s grandfather’s 80th birthday so there was much toasting to his major life milestone as well.

A shaker was passed around the room giving everyone an opportunity to say something about the birthday boy.

And then there was much singing, which was very lovely considering the room was full of talented voices, such as the lady below who happens to be the adult singing voice for Nala in the Lion King.

The next morning we got ready and headed to the Bar Mitzvah that began at 10am. As I mentioned before, this was my first Mitzvah (Bar or Bat) and I’m pretty sure everyone who participated set a really high bar for any future Bar Mitzvah’s I attend. Isaac gave a very thoughtful, funny, and wise-beyond-a-13-year-old speech which made sense when it was time for his parents to speak because they both gave very beautiful, eloquent, and humorous speeches about her outstanding son. Aaron is a comedic writer and his words provide the world with many weekly laughs on the television show, The Office, so I suppose I should have expected he’d provided us all with some good laughs.

After the ceremony Ruth and Aaron hosted a reception with lots of great vegetarian food since Isaac himself has been vegetarian of his own volition since the age of six. See what I’m talking about? This kid is wise!

They had a klezmer band play through the entire lunch, which was so much fun and impossible not to dance to.

The last dance of the afternoon was saved for Aaron and his daughter, Sylvie.

After saying our goodbye’s we drove to the Century City mall in Westwood as I needed to stop by an Aveda store to stock up while my birthday discount was still active. I had to photograph the parking garage as I’d never seen this before and perhaps it only needs to exist in the land of cars that is LA. The screen told you how many open spaces were available in each direction and above each parking spot was a light indicating whether it was taken or available so that you could quickly glance down the entire lane and know whether it was worth your time to drive down it or not. In theory this is a great idea, however, I didn’t find a single stall marked green where it was actually free—a few bum sensors or a broken system? I didn’t spend enough time investigating to figure it out.

Then it was on to visit my eccentric aunt Edith who lives near the UCLA campus in Westwood. Every time we’ve gone to visit her “for dinner” she stashes $50 in our pockets, send us off to eat dinner without her, and then meets back up after we’ve eaten. So Alex and I enjoyed a delicious meal together sans Edith at Native Foods.

I had the Moroccan Bowl and added some red beans on top. It was made with quinoa instead of the usual couscous, sauteed veggies, slivered almonds, currants, and a very flavorful sauce topped with tofu skewers. Soooo good!

Alex had the Oklahoma Burger which had sliced “chicken”, tempeh bacon and cheese topped with deep fried pickles and sweet potato fries on the side. This was also phenomenal!

I wish I had taken more pictures of the inside because the restaurant had such a nice feel to it. The hanging lights give you somewhat of an idea as the overall modern, yet rustic decor.

After satiating ourselves we met back up with Edith and took a walk around Westwood. I wanted to mark the occasion with some photos and at first she resisted taking any because she’s a “71-year-old hag” (her words, not mine) and was wearing an unflattering sweatshirt (again, her words, not mine.)

Eventually she warmed up to the idea and even gave us a wide open smile.

Despite being such a short trip, it was action-packed and heaps of fun!