In the week leading up to Christmas, we took a shopping trip to the Raisin Rack, a natural foods market located in Westerville, Ohio, to pick up some Japanese purple potatoes. We had learned that Okinawa residents have one of the highest life expectancies and purple potatoes are a staple of their diet. Pear juice was another item we came across that we decided to purchase. It happened to be the last bottle on the shelf. We found the staff at Raisin Rack to be most helpful and pleasant and of course, we were excited that they had plenty of purple potatoes in stock. Garlic parmesan roasted purple potatoes and purple potato fries were the scrumptious recipes we chose to work in our purple potato meal preparations.

After our satisfactory shopping experience at Raisin Rack, we headed over to Molly Woo’s Asian Bistro, a Pan-Asian restaurant, located at Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio. As we were visiting during the Holiday Season, the Christmas décor on one side of the entrance doors and the Hanukkah décor on the other side of the entrance doors were an appropriate and visually friendly welcome. As we walked to our table, the paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling illuminated the restaurant and created a warm and artistic atmosphere; we found Molly Woo’s Asian Bistro to be a traditional and contemporary restaurant environment. Spring Rolls house-made with shredded Chinese vegetables and sweet chili dipping sauce were a delicious appetizer to our dining experience. Our main meal consisted of Lo Mein egg noodles tossed with snow peas, mushrooms, bean sprouts, baby corn, onions, carrots, and chicken; we added water chestnuts to our entrée, which was a tasty choice and the meal was quite filling.

Molly Woo’s Asian Bistro and Raisin Rack enabled us to enjoy an extremely charming winter evening in Central Ohio.