Raw... 2 days out of the 30 day challenge.

Ok, well the first two days of the thirty day challenge have been a piece of cake because all of the food was made for me by Alissa Cohen and her fabulous assistants! The past two and half days I've been at the raw food (or, rather, living food) boot camp.

I'm going to follow up with a much more detailed post when I am done with this session (one more day to go). Until then, here's a quick summary of my past few days.

Friday: Who knew walnuts and a red pepper would make the most unbelievable combination? Alissa's "Mock Salmon" was hands down one of my favorites of the weekend. Some other incredibly easy dishes she showed us: Collard Rolls (I have a new found love for Nama Shoyu), zucchini pasta with marinara sauce, portabello mushroom caps with a yummy avacado filling. All of these dishes took max 5 minutes to put together. Pretty cool.

Saturday: More food! Chili using sprouted barley, a KICK ASS onion dip, pizza!, an enchilada!
And, the MOST amazing thing---a date, filled with coconut, and dipped in a combination of agave syrup, pure cacao powder, and coconut oil. Unbelievable.

Sunday: We learned a lot about what it means to "go raw", the health benefits. Throught the past few days I've also learned a lot of detailed information about what raw means, what it involves. I'll save that for my next post.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Grezzo for a whirlwind 12 hour food fest, tour of the restaurant, and a total information dump from the head chef there. Can't wait!!

Raw...

Yes, raw, as in Raw Vegan. I'm embarking on an experiment. I'm committing to going raw for the next 30 days to see what it's all about. To kick start the effort, I'm doing a raw food boot camp of sorts. I'm attending the accelerated raw food teachers certification that Alissa Cohen of Grezzo is holding this weekend. I'll be posting at the end of each class telling you what I've learned.

Toronto, Transformers, and Tasty Treats

Two weekends ago, I went to TFcon Canada. I agreed to go with my boyfriend cause I thought um, maybe a transformers festival of sorts will be fun (?), and, well, it's Toronto, a known vegan hot spot.

Needless to say, the Transformers aspect of the trip was interesting, in full geek glory. I learned a lot more about Transformers than I ever thought I would care to know.

Lucky for me though, there are indeed tons of vegan places in Toronto, and we began our exploration the first night we got there. We drove from Boston, and got in late in the day, and by the evening we were tired, and just wanted food. We were not looking for any ambiance, so we ended up at Sadie's Diner on E. Adelaide St. Simple, simple, simple. No frills. The food was ok, but the notable thing about Sadie's was the Pez collection.

The next day we explored Toronto and for lunch we ended up at Fresh, on Bloor St. There I treated myself to a brilliant Liver Cleanse juice. Um, yeah, I know, Liver Cleanse sounds AWFUL, but it was a beautifully colored juice concoction with beets, and ginger, and some other stuff, and pink peppercorns! They also had this miso dip for french fries that was to die for.

The next day, for lunch, I just had to try this restaurant called the Urban Herbivore, on Oxford St. The plan was to drive into the city from the hotel where TFcon was happening, get sandwiches from the very funky vegan sandwich place, and drive back in an hour. Check on the first half of the plan: we managed to leave TFcon, get to the restaurant, get our sandwiches (a lovely selection of sandwiches, cookies, super relaxed environment, and obviously a popular spot), and get gas for the car. What we hadn't counted on was the jumper who was threatening to jump off an overpass of the Gardiner Expressway, closing off the highway in about 10 miles in either direction, and a major accident on another one of the major highways, and major work being done on another one of the major highways, all funneled traffic onto a few roads. Thus, our entire quick lunch trip took us about two and half hours. The cookie was fabulous, and the sandwhiches weren't bad, *almost* worth the hassle.

Our final veg destination was Fressen, on Queen St. W. I had heard so much about Fressen in the Toronto press; I had big expectations. Overall, it was...a little bit better than ok. They operate on a tapas style model, so we ordered 4 dishes: Mushroom raviolis, some sort of gourmet pizza, a mushroom and vegetable filled purse made from filo dough, and some asparagus. All were very beautifully plated, very delicately flavored, but we should have ordered 5 dishes. Then the kitchen staff apparently didn't realize the order for our dessert had been handed in, and we ended waiting almost an hour for it to come out. They were very gracious about the incident, and didn't charge us for it, and take off the cost of one of the dishes we got.




Back to the Transformers: I discovered during a viewing of an episode of Transformers Animated that Prowl, when turned into a human due to the machinations of SoundWave, he preferred to be a vegetarian, because, "don't you know? Vegetable fuel burns cleaner than animal fuel". Well said Prowl! He's my favorite Transformer these days.

Warm things.

The time has come again to figure out what to wear to keep warm during the cold, windy New England winter. As many vegans will attest, it such a pain to find a nice winter coat that does not have the following:

• Feathers
• Wool
• Weird colors
• that just off the ski slope look when you are, in fact, not even thinking about skiing

After a few too many days this season walking to work in bone-chilling wind, I got a coat from the North Face. It has no feathers, it is not wool, and generally is appropriate for what I need it most for, walking to and from work and other non-sporty occasions.

Muffins!

Tonight I made muffins! I couldn't find my copy of Veganomicon, so I found a basic recipe on the box of Ener-G Egg Replacer. Here it is:

1-2/3 C. all purpouse wheat flour
2-1/2 tsp baking powder
2 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp Ener-G egg replacer beaten in 2 T water
1-1/4 cups milk
4 T oil

Preheat oven to 400 F. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl. Combine wet ingredients in another bowl. But the wet stuff into the dry stuff, mix until combined, and put into a muffin tin lined with those cupcake papers.

Ok, now here's what I did to make these my own, and vegan:

1. I DOUBLED the recipe to get muffin tops!
2. I used white flour because that's all I had on hand.
3. I used Silk Creamer because I ran out of regular soy milk.
4. I added a touch of vanilla.
5. Here's the fun part: semi-sweet baking chocolate, about half a baking size bar, chopped into small pieces; handful of walnuts, chopped; handful of frozen strawberries, chopped! Add these ingredients last, to the blended dry/wet mixture. And, fill the little muffin cups to the very very top! My batch made 13 muffins, if you don't snack on the batter. :)

Yet another reason to not eat cow.

This article appeared on CNN today. 143 million pounds of beef (but, let's call it what it really is, cow) was recalled today. The reason cited was because:

"cattle that had lost the ability to walk since passing pre-processing inspections were slaughtered without an inspector having examined them for chronic illness -- a practice...[that] violated federal regulations and had been going on for at least two years."

The article goes on to say that around 37 million pounds of the cow meat went to school lunch programs.

Yet another gentle reminder to those of you that still eat cow--STOP! Not only are you contributing to the general miserable life and death of these beautiful creatures, but you'll be saving yourself the worry of catching some weird brain disease and you'll have yourself a healthier heart (less cholesterol to clog up your arteries).

Note: picture by foxypar4

From our friends at Vegan Soapbox

Read this post about pigs.

Ode to Broccoli

I love broccoli. It is by far my favorite vegetable. It's beautiful and incredibly good for us. It's also one of the simplest meals I know how to make.

Here are some stats about this wonderful superveggie, courtesy of WHFoods.org :




Just take a look at the nutrient per calorie punch broccoli gives us!

Here's my favorite way of eating broccoli (braised):

• few garlic cloves, sliced or minced
• OO
• Broccoli (a usual bunch you would find in the store would be fine), chopped into whatever size you like--be sure to use the crowns, not the stems. The smaller you chop, the quicker they cook.
• sautee or fry pan with top
• salt
• 2 slices of whole wheat toast, with soy-based butter like Eden Soy Whipped

Put about 1 T of OO in the pan over medium heat, add the garlic. Wait until the OO sparkles a bit, and the garlic begins to look a tad translucent. Add the broccoli. Stir the garlic and broccoli a bit so no sticking to the pan occurs--let the broccoli sautee in the pan for about 2-3 minutes. Now here's the part--add about 1/8th-1/4 C. of water to the sautee pan, and put the cover on. Let the water steam the broccoli for about 3-4 minutes--really depends on how big or small your broccoli pieces are. When done, you shouldn't have that much water left.

TIP: Keep in mind that your broccoli will keep cooking a few minutes after you remove it from the stove, and in the bowl, so a tiny bit of crunch is ok when you do your last taste test. Pile as much broccoli as you want into your favorite bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and enjoy with your soy buttered toast!!! Scrumptious!

Note: Broccoli photo courtesy of kmilyun.