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.