The Cutest. City. Ever

My tenure in Victoria started this week. The vegan food forays are successful so far; my only fault is excitement. I have to keep reminding myself that I am here for two months. Accordingly, I do not have to try everything on the very first day.

So far, I have:
--settled into my apartment in the James Bay neighbourhood, including figuring out a Murphy bed,
--gone for a run and gotten rather lost,
--bought groceries at Thrifty's, the big grocery store down the street from me,
--acquired a loaner bike from a co-worker who happens to live a few blocks from me,
--bought (vegan) cupcakes at Pink Sugar (Sin-a-mint and Toasted Coconut; I have only tried the former and it was yummy, will report on the latter...later)
--discovered my local Lush store, mere minutes from my office
--tried a spin class at the Y (which was less than successful, though I attempt again Saturday morning)
--bought some locally-roasted coffee for my morning caffeine buzz, which I will try tomorrow morning and report back.

My initial observation is mostly that Victoria is really, really cute. Maybe it's just the neighbourhood I've been in so far, but the city seems mostly comprised of cute little bungalows with cute little gardens and cute little friendly cats. Really forking cute. And cute parks. And cute crosswalks at intersections, instead of stoplights. Even the city on a map--it looks like it's big and spread out, but really, it's small. Small and CUTE.

Should I find any non-cuteness--waitstaff who swear like truckers? a traffic jam of more than 3 vehicles? pets that aren't sweet-faced and fuzzy? Or, god forbid, a little old lady who makes cookies from a mix--I will advise you immediately.

Ah, Paris! Veganized chèvre chaud

Paris is in fact everything they say it is. The city is just as beautiful as they say, the Eiffel Tower is just as impressive, the bike culture is just as awesome, the food is just as good, the waiters are just as surly. It's fantastic. Paris was my first vacation outside of North America, and I would go back again in a second. It's true: seeing places around the world changes your perspective on home, in ways both fantastic and slightly bubble-bursting. (Yes, bubble-bursting: see the afore-mentioned comment on bike culture. And then ponder North American bike culture.)

The highlight of many vacations is the food. And for Paris this is especially true. Yes, you pay through the nose for everything (unless you learn to shoot espresso while standing up) but everything is fantastic. I went to Paris with my mother, and also with a friend who met up with friends of hers who were in Paris at the same time. She came back from their lunch reporting her friends had said they hadn't had any good food since being in Paris. The three of us shook our heads in disbelief: we hadn't had one BAD meal since coming to Paris. Crepes, salads, gorgeous crusty baguette everywhere—these were food memories that would stay with us long after flying back home.

But after becoming vegan, I started to think all those memories of good food would remain memories, since the French load every single meal up with cheese and ham (and sometimes chopped egg for good measure). I was especially sad about losing one of my favourite meal, chèvre chaud. Literally “hot goat's cheese”, chèvre chaud is a simple salad, with some kind of dressing and the simple-yet-delicious toasted bread and goat cheese on top. It's one of those meals that prove the old axiom: a fantastic dish is often made up of simple ingredients, and becomes more than the sum of its parts.

I wasn't even thinking about veganizing this dish, since vegan cheeses are rarely fantastic, and as a vegan, cheese dishes are something I have learned to modify but never replicate. So when I was at work on Friday, thinking about what I could eat as my pre-gym snack, the thought of my cashew “goat cheese” on toast did occur to me as an option. But only when I started craving the greens I had in the fridge did I realize that greens + cashew goat cheese on toast = vegan chèvre chaud.

And yes, it was delicious. It was almost like being back in Paris, except there were no surly waiters in sight!

Recipes for vegan cashew cheese abound: I'm sure google can help you there. I recommend crusty bread or chewy whole-grain bread, with a simple dressing. And please use green greens (not white, limp lettuce), for maximal texture as well as nutrition—baby arugula or spinach would be a wise choice. Slice off a bit off cashew cheese, put on top of toast, and put under the broiler until warmed. At this point, the last step is to dream of Paris.

Burst o' sunshine

January sucks. I know it's not January anymore, but I spent all of January missing the sun, sleeping in and being rather unproductive, so I'm still bitter.

February is a little better, because now when I leave work at a reasonable hour, it's not yet pitch black outside. There's also Family Day, for some provinces at least (including mine), and as much as Family Day sounds like a holiday to celebrate right-wing propaganda, it is actually nice to have a long weekend to look forward to in the dead of winter. And for some reason, Groundhog Day, which is really the silliest day of the year--based on folklore that is actually contrary to logic, yet we all play along--at least gets me thinking about the end of winter, even though it's six weeks away.

Even with the increased daylight recently, I've been craving a little sunshine. So when I remembered I had a mango--purchased last week and at that point over-ripe--sitting in my kitchen, waiting to be eaten, I got a little excited. "A-ha! I can make mango popsicles." I had some soy-yogurt in the fridge that would blend nicely with over-ripe mango, and make a delicious frozen pop.

So I did. It is ridiculously easy.
1. Clean fruit.
2. Put fruit and and soygurt in a bowl.
3. Blend with hand blender.
4. Pour into popsicle molds.
5. Freeze.

Popsicle molds cost a couple bucks. They're well worth it, especially in the summer (especially in humid, sticky Toronto) when all you want is some way to get come cool back to your body. Even in the middle of summer, mango popsicles are a yummy burst of sunshine.

The stuff of life

Mmmm, bread. The smell of baking bread is unparalleled. But I would venture to say that most people don't know how good baking bread smells. Or how a shmear of margarine melts into a slice cut off a still-warm loaf. Because no one bakes bread anymore.

When I take bread to book club or to work, it goes over well. Most people freak right out. "You actually made bread!?" It lessens the wonder somewhat when I say it's easy. But not much, because people don't actually believe me.

I think I had somewhat of an odd childhood--my parents actually cooked. From scratch most of the time. I know--and since you're a loyal, dedicated follower of my blog, you know too--my mom didn't really cook, but she did bake. We had fresh home-made muffins almost every week. And she made noodles from too, like my dad. And Dad always cooked from scratch. (Except for canned mushrooms. *shudder*) So it's not that weird to me that I make cupcakes and pasta and soup and pizza and bread all from scratch. But apparently it's weird to others.

So I say, "No really, it's easy. It takes a little time, but it's not hard." And no one believes me. So I expound, "The hardest part is having 3 or 4 uninterrupted hours to start the bread, let it rise a couple times, and bake it. But the process it self is easy." I think people may believe me a little at this point, but I doubt many of them are yet making bread from scratch.

But I want you to make bread from scratch. DO IT. It's delicious and very satisfying, and will impress the hell out of everyone, including your significant other, your boss, your boss's boss, and your mother-in-law. To facilitate this, I have summed it up into several E-Z steps, with helpful hints where necessary.

Step 1: combine ingredients.
This is pretty self-explanatory. The most important factor is remembering to stock enough flour and active yeast. It's a little messy: you will end up with dough on your hands.
Step 2: knead.
This one should be self-explanatory. If not: kneading allows the yeast to start working and allow the gluten to develop. It gives the bread its texture. Don't neglect the kneading.
Step 3: rise.
This one is easy. Once you've kneaded the bread, you have to leave it in a warm place to let it rise. I accomplish this by turning the oven on just enough to get a little warm (around 200 degrees), opening the oven door and placing the dough in its bowl on top of the stove.
Step 4: knead again.
Should be self-explanatory by now.
Step 5: rise again.
This time, when you're done kneading, the dough goes into a pan to rise.
Step 6: bake.
Make sure you pre-heat your oven and that you leave enough room above the pan so that when the bread rises it doesn't hit the element. Trust me: stupider things have been done.
Step 7: cool.
This is important: turn out the bread from the pan. Otherwise, as it cools moisture will be trapped between the pan and the bread, and the bread will get get moist on the outside. In case this comes as a surprise, I'll warn you: moist bread is bad.

Start with bread recipe from a cookbook or a website you trust, using ingredients you are familiar with. In only a few short hours you will have the smell of delicious warm bread wafting through your kitchen.

Dad's noodle soup, updated

When I was growing up, things in my family were a little different. My dad stayed at home and took care of us when we were young; between that and his wee perfectionism, he did all the cooking too. Let me be clear: my home was no fish-out-of-water slapstick sitcom, because my dad is a good cook. While he does tend towards WASPy meat-and-two-veg cooking, most things he makes are delicious, and there are a few things he makes that are out of this world. Soup is one of those things. Through example, Dad taught my brother and I that soup doesn't come condensed, from a can; it's a serious business. And really serious soup takes two days to make.

Dad makes stock the first day, simmering onion and carrot and celery--plus whatever bones he has saved and frozen in the past little while--and cooks them on the stove, all day, until the house fills with the pungent, rich scent of home cooking. He takes the pot of stock and cools it in the garage overnight, cold enough so that the fat hardens on the top of the stock so he can ladle it off the next morning. Then the next day if we're really lucky, he makes noodles, rolling out thick noodles and cutting them into fat strips by hand. It is slurping noodle soup, with broth splashing everywhere as noodles fall off the spoon.

When I became vegan I realized that some of my old familiar foods would change. While the things I learned from watching Dad cook have stuck with me, I know I will never again have his chicken noodle soup. Luckily, my palate had expanded, so I can now look beyond the handful of basic soup recipes I learned from my dad to curb my comfort-food cravings. So this week, with winter's chill deep in my bones, I wanted soup. I flipped through my recipe books and was rescued by Asian-inspired Sesame Shiitake Noodle Soup in Laura Matthias' ExtraVeganZa. Whe I don't have time to make pasta by hand, the thick udon noodles satisfy my comfort-food cravings and the hearty, filling vegetables nourish me. The only thing better than eating noodle soup? Eating noodle soup with chopsticks.

Conscious cooking

As a reward for making it through the holiday season, I bought myself The Conscious Cook, by Tal Ronnen. Since I lasted six months of being vegan without buying even a single cookbook (gasp!), I have, of late, been buying myself almost every vegan cookbook I even remotely coveted. But The Conscious Cook is different-- in a very intimidating way. It bills itself as French-style vegan cooking, and it really is. A lot of the dishes involve multiple steps, with several prep-heavy items being combined on one plate. It's really complicated. You know, sauteed something on a bed of something beside something else, on top of pureed-something sauce, sprinkled with diced something. The kind of thing I would never make for myself.

So I put off buying the book. When I did buy it, I thought of it as food porn, something I could look at, and drool over, but not partake in myself. (Remember, this is food porn I'm taking about here. Get your mind out of the gutter, and stop picturing me covered in pureed something.)

But I was wrong. I have made several of the dishes. While some of them didn't turn out quite right, and some of the fake-meat ones were not as divinely-inspired as the book claims, the one I made tonight is already a staple. It has become, in my iteration, spinach pesto; and tonight I'm planning it for a weekday lunch, with kamut rotini and a bowl of butternut squash and shiitake soup. I'm sure it will be delicious, despite not being on a bed of something and sprinkled with something, diced and sauteed.

Comfort me with chocolate (for I am sick of love)

I don't know exactly why the quote is "comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." Anyone who has ever been dumped, or perhaps had their heart a wee bit bruised, knows that chocolate is best for comforting where love is concerned. Apples are delicious, but not exactly on my top-5 list of comforting foods. (Apparently, the precise wording depends on the translation. It could also be "Refresh/fill/stay me with quinces/citrus/melons." But I digress.)

A boy is making me sad today. I can't say it's necessarily his fault, for I have not only seen He's Just Not That Into You (three times), I have also read the book (for book club, even). And yes, his signals were mixed, at best. We met through work--his, not mine--so it's possible he is interested in me, yet bound by a company rule about dating customers. A ridiculous policy, clearly--especially when this particular boy has beautiful happy-sad puppy-dog eyes that are prone to making me melt. ...Melt like, perhaps, chocolate.

However, given ample time to either express his disinterest or find a way around this hypothetical anti-fraternizing rule, I can draw only one conclusion. I am sad to think that this particular boy, in whom I had invested actual emotions, is actually Not Into Me. Accordingly, I came home today and not only was happy that I had the ingredients for a yummy, chocolate dessert, I was also--dare I say--taking comfort in it.

But I digress.

So I made chocolate-almond-cherry bark. And chocolate-sea salt bark. Because sometimes just one chocolate won't do. Luckily, President's Choice makes accidentally-vegan chocolate chips, with which one can make delicious barks of all flavours, that can be found in Loblaws and The Real Canadian Superstore.

The basic recipe came from Eating Well magazine--a subscription I almost cancelled, due to its ginormous quantity of meat recipes, but didn't because of the abnormally high proportion of yummy tofu recipes. And I'm glad I didn't. (Partly because a boy with beautiful happy-sad puppy-dog eyes helped me find the sea salt for the chocolate bark. But I digress.) ...Once you get hold of vegan chocolate chips, the recipe is a cinch. Start to finish, it was about 15 minutes, mostly due to the time it takes to melt the chips in the microwave. And it is very comforting.