Squishy Tulips: Our vacation to biscuit land

It was Robert's turn to pick a vacation spot, and he picked...Nashville! While planning our trip, I discovered Nashville had multiple vegan restaurants, which has not been too common in our travels. The only place I can think of that rivals Nashville with number of vegan places is Phoenix, AZ, and I haven't really spent too much time there. Sorry, Phoenix!

Though Robert initially chose Nashville for food, (Not for any kind of music-related things; that would be preposterous), it was later discovered that his food places were actually in Memphis. However, we both quickly realized that Nashville has incredible food, and Robert had nothing to worry about.

Robert has his own Nashville food stories to tell, but this isn't his blog, so we're going to talk about mine. After visiting Nashville, I can tell you with certainty that what began as a trip to eat good food, do some hiking, and have some time to relax quickly turned into a mission for one thing, and one thing only.

Biscuits.

Maybe you already know that Nashville has the best (and perhaps the most) biscuits in the United States, but Robert and I didn't know that. Because of my dairy intolerance and inability to make biscuits (unless you have a soft spot for gravelly drop biscuits), biscuits are not even in my reality. At our first breakfast place I thought it would be nice to have a biscuit and move on to the next vegan restaurant.

Turns out darn near every vegan restaurant in Nashville offers biscuits. I ate so many biscuits, I thought I was set for a few years. But the last vegan biscuit place, which turned out to be the best, sold frozen biscuits. So guess whose freezer is full of biscuits?

If you are in Nashville and only have enough time to eat three biscuits, no need to stress. Here are my top three vegan biscuit places:

Sunflower Bakehouse has not only a biscuit sandwich, but also the elusive vegan biscuits and gravy (I still make the best gravy, but theirs is great too). They also have about 20 different baked goods.

I added egg, which I'm pretty sure was Just Egg. Delicious!

Graze has the second best biscuit, and the waitress there convinced me to try the fried chicken sandwich with pickles and hank sauce. I wasn't sure about these things touching my biscuit and thought I'd be taking the sandwich apart, but I was wrong. I've never been so happy to be wrong in my life! Graze also has an excellent brussels sprouts dish too!

My favorite biscuit place ended up being so special Robert and I went three times. Dear Guerilla Bizkits, we love you. One of the owners was there every time we stopped in, and he was super passionate about good food and shared other Nashville vegan places to try. He is also an artist and such a joy to talk to. When I asked him what biscuit I should have as the vehicle for my egg, cheese, and sausage sandwich, he suggested the blackout biscuit, which has dried cherries and jalapeños. Soooo good! Before we left, we dropped in for several packs of frozen biscuits to take home.

Look at his artwork!!

I never knew how much I loved biscuits until we took this trip to Nashville. Thankfully Robert and I had so much fun we will likely go back someday.

The first day we were in Nashville we did a library and book tour that Robert conjured up after talking to a librarian at the first branch we stopped at. We went to four libraries and three bookstores. We stopped at the downtown library first and were completely blown away by how much thought went into everything. I also observed a baby storytime that may potentially change my life. Seriously! I can't wait to email the ladies I met that day and ask for all their songs and activities. I spent a long time talking to the director of youth services, and even though she was super busy, she took her time telling me about their programs and library.

After storytime, I spent some time exploring the stacks and opening almost every poetry book. It wasn't the best poetry collection I've seen in a library, but I still enjoyed it immensely. I kept finding all kinds of things in the pages too. Look how perfectly cut this magazine picture is!

My favorite library on the library tour was the Green Hills branch. It was a lot like my branch and felt immediately like home. It was humming with life, older patrons were tucked away here and there reading, students were studying, all the study rooms were full, and the youth section was inviting and a little chaotic. They even had a yarn tree! I think my branch needs one too!

Thanks to needing some much-needed downtime and being in the middle of a couple excellent books, we flopped a little more on this trip than we usually do. Josie and Margo were thrilled every time we went to sleep early, stayed in bed late, or came back to the hotel for naps. They didn't try any biscuits, but I think they had a great vacation too.

Turns out Nashville also has a craft thrift store too. So much fun!

We spent one day hiking out to Machine Falls, which is outside Tullahoma, TN. It was so beautiful. Flowers and trees just waking up. Josie and Margo were racing everywhere. And the sun was out!

We stopped at the Coffee County Lannom Library, which had its own story walk and lots of unconventional and thoughtful things available for checkout (tent pavilion, party supples, extension cords anyone?). We also visited a bookstore, Book Shelf, that had an incredible mural and two gregarious book ladies.

I came home with SO MANY books.

We spent a day hiking Long Hunter State Park, which was peaceful and beautiful.

After hiking we popped into Sunflower Cafe, which I believe is Sunflower Bakehouse's sister restaurant. It was a little bit cafeteria style where you pick out a few things (or in my case, everything). The food was delicious, but it didn't have biscuits, so it didn't make the list of best restaurants.

I had some kind of chicken taco (no idea what the chicken was made out of), and it was so delicious I nearly lost my mind. Thankfully Robert captured a picture that illustrates my feelings about not just the exquisite taco, but all the food I ate in Nashville. I'm pretty sure I looked like this every time I ate, because it's exactly how I felt.

On one of our visits to the Bizkits man, we did a little shopping in the Fatherland District, which had super cute shops. They had an olive oil/vinegar shop where I spent too much money and another foodie shop that had some of my favorite things including tinned fish and cashew cheese queso. I love you, vegan food, but I will never be able to go 100% vegan because I love fish (and burgers shh) too much.