teabowl

All over Toronto, “Urban Fresh” Sobeys have sprung up in the last two years. For those not from Toronto, Sobeys is a large Canadian grocery store chain. The “Urban Fresh” stores are unholy, small ’boutique’ grocery stores aimed squarely at cooking-challenged young urbanites. They present themselves as filled with ‘healthy’ fast food options (there’s lots of prepared food, expensive luxury brands, frequently to the exclusion of regular budget brands, an olive bar, a whole display case of individual cake slices, etc.) but ultimately, they’re the worst of the industrial food compex: limited, expensive, unhealthy and wasteful. Sobeys “Urban Fresh” is where self-respecting, right-thinking people who care about their bodies and our world shouldn’t buy groceries. It’s the sort of place you should only go to when you’re in a pickle.

Almost Perfect is the anti-Sobeys. Located near Sheppard and Keele, it offers brand name food at dramatically reduced prices. The food got there because of damaged packaging, manufacturer closeouts, overstocks or changes of packaging. Almost Perfect is clean, reasonably well presented and looks like a grocery store. Most brands are recognizable, and in 95% of cases, it’s clear why the food is there: cans are dented, outer cardboard packages may be slightly torn (but the inside vacuum packages are perfectly intact), outer wrappers may be missing. Some items are past their manufacturer’s expiry date but have been frozen before that date was reached; the store has a helpful sign that assists with decoding the various “sell by” and “use by” dates on packages, and what they mean here.

It’s the sort of place that does well on the fringes of suburbia, and there’s only one in Toronto proper; the others are in Ajax, Oshawa, Whitby or Peterborough. The typical clientele, I imagine, consists of young penny-pinching families, those living just above the poverty line, and older, retired folks who are on a fixed income, and whose dollars go much further at Almost Perfect.

Unfortunately, Almost Perfect is also the sort of place that hip ecologically conscious urbanites wouldn’t be seen dead in. You don’t see any Zip Cars in the parking lot on Saturday mornings. No urban warriors cycle here to fill their baskets with fabulously cheap foods.

If saying no to industrially produced imported food is one side of the personal activism coin, surely Almost Perfect is the other side. In the same way that we think Second Harvest is a great idea (collecting unused food from fast food outlets and delivering it to social service programs), we should also rally around Almost Perfect. Not primarily because of the savings (though these can be considerable in these recessionary times; we bought about $80-$100 worth of various soy meats, sweet potato chips, loose leaf tea and other veggie-friendly stuff for around $30), but because things shouldn’t be thrown away when they’re slightly damaged or don’t look perfect. And as anyone who’s ever opened a can or frozen package well after its expiry date and found the food inside perfectly fresh can attest, those dates mean very little when things are stored properly.

Buying frozen food at Almost Perfect should be cool in the same way as buying a “pre-loved” pair of recycled jeans at Value Village, or getting a weekly organic produce box directly from a local farm. These may be small things in the greater scheme, but the greater scheme will benefit tremendously from them, as will your savings account.

I can trace my recent improvements on the vegetarian cooking front to one insight in particular (thanks to the stir fry section in Heidi Swanson’s book, credited/linked below): that almost every stove-top vegetarian dish is vastly enhanced with vegetable stock cubes.

Stock cubes are magical, easy-to-apply, highly compressed morsels of savoury goodness. They can add flavour and balance to almost any vegetable stir fry, sauce/gravy or pasta dish. They can elevate what would otherwise just be a side dish of bland-ish veggies to a surprising little main event.

My cooking now routinely includes quickly preparing a coffee mug full of dense vegetable stock. I let one or two cubes dissolve while I prep the vegetables, and it’s ready to go when I need it to keep things moist, after the initial sautéing/browning. If I want to add some extra flavour (say, for a little Indian spice or Chinese sweetness), the hot broth is a perfect delivery vehicle for curry powder, vegetarian oyster sauce, black bean sauce, and the like. Just dissolve the other spices or sauces in it before applying.

In practical terms, here are a few ideas where stock cubes can make or break a dish:

• Green asparagus, in season right now (or maybe just out of season…), quickly sautéd with some onion, then cooked in veggie stock for 5-8 minutes at medium heat until soft-ish.
• The same thing, only with green beans (they require slightly less time – 3-5 minutes – and should still be slightly crunchy when served).
• Any vegetable stir fry, flash fried, then cooked in half a cup of vegetable stock with a table spoon of Indonesian yellow curry powder over brown rice.
• Vegetable fried rice cooked in a cup of vegetable broth in which some black bean sauce has been dissolved.
• The delicious veggie bake previously described (which, incidentally, also benefits tremendously from asparagus tips).

In the higher heat stir fries, the vegetable stock will reduce while cooking, become slightly thick and form a kind of sauce. You can certainly add salt, pepper and other spices or herbs, but be cautious with the salt because stock cubes can be quite salty. When in doubt, skip the additional salt. Another word of caution is for fried rice dishes – adding too much stock too late in the process results in a soggy mess that might taste delicous but whose appearance and mouth feel are more like a strange risotto.

Heidi Swanson’s book unfortunately seems to be more or less out of print, but it’s a fabulous work – sort of a ’structuralist’ approach to preparing vegetarian dishes. In it, instead of presenting recipes in the traditional way, she finds structural similarities between similar dishes, establishes the ‘archetype’ and helps you understand the concept behind what you’re making rather than letting you puzzle out the mysteries of each preparation style yourself. It’s a very empowering read for those of us who gain confidence from intellectually understanding something, and worth any amount of money you can find it for.

Cook 1.0

Heidi Swanson. Stewart, Tabori and Chang 2004, Hardcover, 192 pages, $59.90

When you don’t feel like assembling a whole lasagna, or change your mind at the last minute – this is a very tasty and healthy vegetarian pasta bake. For us, it feels a bit ‘festive’ each time we make it; as if we’re treating ourselves.

1.5 bags brown rice pasta (spirals or penne; Tinkyada is a good brand)
1 small onion, cubed
2 red peppers, chopped
3 stalks celery, sliced into small pieces
1 zuchini, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bunch spinach, washed and chopped into 1″ pieces
2+ cups vegetarian stock
Oregano, salt, pepper to taste
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2 cups of grated aged white cheddar
Quarter cup of grated parmesan

Pour olive oil into a large lidded frying pan, add all the vegetables (excepting spinach), and sauté until they begin to soften. Add the stock, oregano and salt and pepper to taste. Cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, on medium heat, about 10 minutes. Add spinach to wilt, stirring occasionally. Recover, and cook another 2-5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Prepare the rice pasta as per the manufacturer’s description. (It makes sense to try one occasionally while it’s cooking – rice pasta should be ‘al dente’ and not too soft, and it turns too soft very quickly). When it’s cooked, drain and rinse well using hot tap water. Once the excess water has dripped off, add the pasta to the vegetables, and fold together so that the veggies are evenly distributed and the pasta is fully coated by the sauce. The key to this recipe is that the veggies aren’t dry; they need quite a lot of sauce. So if you’re thinking your veggie mix is too wet – it’s actually just right.

Rub or spray a very light coat of olive oil onto the inner surface of a large lasagna baking pan. Pour pasta & veggie mixture into it. Distribute cheddar evenly on top and then sprinkle with parmesan. Add salt and pepper if desired.

Briefly bake at 350°F (5 minutes at the most) until the cheese starts to melt. Then, briefly broil it (2-3 minutes) on high to brown the cheese slightly. Remove from oven and let cool down slightly before serving. Serves 4 very hungry people or 6 if you’re also serving a salad and dessert.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

Alan Witschonke (Illustrator). Wiley 2007, Hardcover, 1008 pages, $19.83

Super Natural Cooking

Heidi Swanson. Celestial Arts 2007, Paperback, 224 pages, $11.61

Heidi Swanson’s blog – 101 Cookbooks – is a daily must-read for the beautiful recipes and pictures.

Eating healthily and losing or maintaining one’s weight are hard things to do in a busy life. We’re surrounded by fast food options everywhere: the din of junk food has become deafening, especially now that so much of it claims to be healthy (for example, Subway claims to be healthier than McDonald’s, which is objectively true but still doesn’t ever make Subway a good option for someone who wants to eat actual food).

I struggle most with breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is characterized by little time and my ‘morning fog’ which I try to lift with two mugs of steaming hot coffee every day. The idea of actively making food in the morning, involving the application of heat to foodstuffs, often seems overwhelming. So I typically end up having instant oatmeal and a slice of toast with nut butter, or oatmeal and a sliced apple (the organic Ambrosias are particularly delicious right now).

Lunch, though, is the real struggle. I work in a part of town where healthy, vegetarian-friendly options are hard to come by. Here are my options:

• All day breakfast places serving omelettes
• A so-so Indian place that has some vegetarian options
• A sushi place that serves only limited vegetarian options and has only white rice
• A “by the slice” pizza place whose pizzas are delicious (but there’s no way I should have pizza at lunch, or – probably – ever)
• A middle eastern place that serves very good falafel sandwiches or plates
• Various Subways, McDonald’s, Swiss Chalets, Harvey’s etc.
• A neighbourhood alternative eatery that’s a little scary and whose food is very greasy
• Various low-end Korean, Thai and Chinese restaurants that typically make everything with fish sauce and chicken stock (and who, when asked to use something else, produce really bland food).

The better places in the area are essentially cheap sit-down restaurants, and visiting them requires a little time and forethought, something I can’t always muster during a busy consulting day. As for the rest – if I try hard, I can pick out the ones where I can ‘make do.’ But I think lunch needs to stop being about making do.

So that’s my dilemma. If I want to eat well, I have to start packing a lunch every day, something I’ve never done in my life. I also need to find ways to snack healthily during the day when I get hungry because my new diet will have fewer calories than I ate before, so snacking will become a necessity (and the snack cupboard at work, kindly provided by my employer for free, is unfortunately a little house of horrors consisting of trans fats, high fructose corn syrup and all those other lovely things industrial food production bestows upon us).

Here’s what I’ll do:

Snacks

Healthy snacks can include:

• Roasted almonds (I buy them raw at Costco and roast them myself in the oven)
• Dry-roasted cashews
• Trail mix
• Finncrisp or Ikea-style dry Swedish crisp bread broken into pieces
• Apples or other fruit
• Fruit leather

Lunch

I think the point about lunch is that it has to be easy to pack in the morning, easy to carry around, easy to re-heat or eat cold, and healthy. While I love reading Vegan Lunch Box, I find the suggestions/recipes often a titch fussy and can’t really imagine doing the same amount of daily prep.

Mark Bittman, whose Food Matters I’m currently reading, suggests that the success of his suggested eating plan hinges on being prepared to ‘do the work.’ I think that eating vegetarian, and eating well as a vegetarian, requires a ton of prep work. You need to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, chop and store them, and remember to take them with you. Bittman suggests that this is “easier than you think, as long as you’re equipped with the right containers.”

Personally, I bring lunch to work about half the time, and it’s usually a soup (or something soup-link if not an actual “soup”), one that contains vegetables or legumes and grains, so it’s pretty substantial. They’re based on the same quickly prepared foods you would eat if you were home.

So, my lunch ideas include:

• Pre-prepping vegetables like celery, carrots and bell peppers (everyone tells you to do this and store them in the fridge in Tupperware containers filled with water)
• Making a couple of rice pilaf dishes every week in my rice cooker (see my recipe) and taking portions to work with me each day
• Bringing apples to work and complementing lunch with ’something sweet’
• Preparing a quick earth bowl in the morning and taking it with me (see my recipe)
• Veggie soup based on Bob’s Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix, which is delicious
• Amy’s makes very good vegetarian burritos… but that veers off into the prepared foods again, so I’ll try to minimize that.

That’s it so far. The objective is to take the daily frustration out of lunch and to find ways of having good, healthy, simple food by doing the absolute minimum of weekly prep work. Let me know if you have any other ideas.

If you’re like me and are always looking for low-fuss lunch food that can be pre-cooked and stored in the fridge for a few days, this is a nice recipe. I use a rice cooker for it. You can definitely make this in a regular stovetop pot, but the steps are slightly different (sweat the onions first, then add the grains and stock).

3 measures short grain brown rice
1 measure black beluga lentils
2 measures vegetarian stock
4 measures water
1 yellow cooking onion
2 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste
1 small can of corn niblets

Get your rice cooker ready. Chop the onion into small-ish pieces. Add olive oil to bottom of rice cooker and add the onion. Add rice and lentis, stock, water and salt. Stir a few times. Start the rice cooker.

After 50 minutes (of whenever your rice cooker thinks it’s done), open the lid, stir the pilaf and add the corn (drain liquid from the can first!).

That’s it. Ridiculously easy! It makes a large amount, and it keeps well for about a week in the fridge. You can warm it up or eat it cold.

Red kale is an interesting discovery. Not something I see very often in any of the grocery stores I frequent, even the organic ones. Our desire to include more greens in our meals often results in very ‘earthy’ tasting food – green kale, for example, is very sturdy and can be a little tough, even if steamed for 20 minutes. Red kale, on the other hand, is soft and sweetly fragrant. As greens go, it’s as innocent as spinach (and tastes slightly better).

Last night, I made a colourful vegan pasta dish that’s a variation on a stir fry principle and uses red kale, zucchini, red pepper, black olives and onion. Here’s the recipe. As always, my recipes aren’t super precise, so you should trust your instincts and approach it with caution the first time!

Medium red onion
Half a bunch of red kale (4-5 large leaves)
Half a red pepper
Medium zucchini
One stalk celery
One cup sliced, pitted black lives
8-10 basil leaves
One cup vegetarian stock (from cube)
Olive oil
Four vegetarian sausages (Italian flavour)
Salt to taste
One pack of brown rice fusilli (or other substantial shaped rice pasta)

Chop onion into thin half rings. Cut out centre stems from red kale and wash it well by soaking it briefly in a bowl of water. Cut red kale into small chunks (quarter inch by one inch pieces, more or less). Cut red pepper and zucchini into small cubes. Cut celery stalk into thin slices. Chop basil leaves into small pieces. Prepare vegetarian stock in a cup of hot water.

Cut vegetarian sausages into half inch slices and fry them, on both sides, in a small frying pan with some olive oil until quite crisp and a little dry. Set aside.

In a larger frying pan or wok, heat up olive oil at high heat, and add onion, red pepper, zucchini and celery. Fry until the onion is soft (glassy) and add half the stock and a little salt. Cover, and let simmer for 5-10 minutes (depends on how soft you like your veggies). Add red kale, olives and basil as well as the second half cup of stock, re-cover and cook for another 5 minutes to soften the kale. Remove from heat and stir in the sausages.

Serve over al dente rice pasta (cook according to instructions on package). Add grated cheese (parmesan or aged cheddar) to serve if desired. Serves 2-3 hungry people, 3-4 if you have a starter and dessert. Add a clove or two of garlic during the original frying stage for even more flavour.

The Beet Organic Café & Market is housed in an old TD Bank building, its entrance behind a still-functional Green Machine ABM terminal. I’m not sure if this is an amazing coincidence or a subtle, “only in the Junction” political statement: on Queen West, the big brands are taking over the mom & pop restaurants and stores. In Toronto’s “up and coming” West End, it’s apparently the other way around.

The Beet is not vegetarian, but very vegetarian and vegan friendly. All of its food is organic and healthily prepared. The fact that it’s co-owned by a certified nutritionist and a homeopathic doctor is evident in everything we tried: the food is tasty, healthy and solid. Unlike the light-and-fluffy salads that pass for vegetarian fare elsewhere, things here are weighty and feel like they’re providing actual nutrition.

It’s all very earnest, but excellent and deserving of a vegan’s/vegetarian’s/locavore’s/eco-aware person’s patronage. The “market” is a thoughtful selection of healthy products, from organic toothpaste to healthy granola bars to tea (the selection could be a little better here, I think…) and coffee. The soundtrack was tasty and chilled roots reggae today, perhaps indicating the preferences of the fabulously friendly blonde dreadlocked server.

We ordered the soup of the day (cream of parsnip with apple), the frittata of the day (kale, broccoli, Emmenthal), a tofu and avocado wrap and a freshly juiced juice. Everything was delicious, the soup a particular standout for me. The sandwich/frittata plates are served with a substantial helping of well-dressed salad (a rare feat, finding a well-dressed salad in any restaurant) and solid multigrain bread with sundried tomato spread.

I ordered jasmine green tea which came in a Bodum coffee plunger – a good idea in principle, but the plunger was a little loose, so I had a few moments of, “Oh boy, I hope it holds up!” :) I did get a free top-up of hot water though (without asking!), which was great.

The bathroom is fabulous (I imagine it used to be the bank manager’s office – worth checking out for its sheer size alone, but also very clean and new, and furnished with non-scented hand soap, which is a rarity again).

Overall, highly recommended. You can tell that intelligent human beings are involved in planning and running this restaurant daily. It felt like a bit of an oasis, and I think I’ll return many times. And I sincerely hope it does well. Toronto needs more restaurants like this.

Closed Mondays, Open Tuesday through Sunday. Hours and location on the website.

Earth Bowl is the yummiest, healthiest, most counter-intuitive meal imaginable. Originally published by Caroline Dupont in Enlightened Eating (an excellent, continually surprising source of vegetarian, vegan and raw food recipes and inspiration), Earth Bowl combines apples, celery and nuts into a healthy meal or snack. It could be breakfast because it has apples and nuts. It could be dinner because it has celery. It takes less than 5 minutes to make.

Earth Bowl

1 apple, diced (green or red, but should be crunchy and not mealy)
2 stalks celery, diced
half a cup of pecans, loosely crushed
quarter cup of pumpkin seeds (or maybe slightly less)
half a cup of sugared, pitted dates, chopped into small pieces
juice of one orange

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Stir. Eat. Serves one person as a meal, two as a side salad. I have no idea what you’d serve it with, though. But it’s really good.

Crocs are strangely compelling. I’ll make a confession up front: I’ve just bought my first pair after resisting them for the last few years. Like this blog, I thought they were ugly and cheap looking. Shoes made of injection-moulded rubbery plastic seemed like another indicator of the impending apocalypse. It did seem that shoes like these should never grace the feet of anyone over the age of five.

But Crocs have had a strange victory march, certainly through North American society. And this has been despite a variety of alarmist high-exposure news reports about them. For example, Maclean’s (Canada’s very own, low-rent version of Time magazine) ran an exposé about how Crocs in healthcare (where they are very popular) are endangering both patients and staff. Says Maclean’s:

An increasing number of hospitals and health centres are moving toward banning Crocs and Crocs knock-offs from their facilities for fear the shoes have endangered both patients and staff. The main offenders appear to be the popular Beach and Cayman models, which have holes on top, side vents and a back strap rather than a closed heel. They allegedly have been responsible for infection control hazards because bodily fluids such as blood have spilled into the holes. Staff have reportedly twisted ankles because of the open back. And staff reaction times are said to be compromised because it’s suspected that clogs are more difficult to run in than traditional hospital footwear.

And you do see them everywhere in hospitals. I’ve been spending a bit of time lately at Toronto’s Sick Kids children’s hospital, and I would say – estimating anecdotally and visually – that 50-70% of all staff seem to have them on their feet. They come in all sorts of colours, to match various flavours of scrubs, and you can sort of understand how walking around on something soft, wide and washable would make sense in a hospital. As for running or infections… well, sure. You might have to slip them off if they call a code and run on your socks, and you may have to throw them into the washing machine once in a while.

Horror stories from outside of healthcare abound, too. For example, CityNews reports about a four-year-old Toronto boy who almost lost a toe in an escalator:

Duncan was at Sherway Gardens with his family, coming up an escalator when suddenly one of his Crocs got stuck between the moving stairs and the stationary wall. His mother quickly figured out what was happening, but not before his shoes were forever ruined. “I dropped my shopping bag and ripped his foot out,” recalls Duncan’s mother, Karen Goodfellow.

And the Japanese have actually issued a government warning to let people know that Crocs can get kids’ feet stuck in escalators.

All of this sounds a bit like sour grapes, doesn’t it? Like alarm bells rung by those that are aesthetically offended.

I’ll admit that they’re perhaps not the most pleasing shoes to the eye. And – being German – I’m partial to Birkenstocks, the original manufactured clog (we’ll leave out Dutch wood-sole clogs for the purpose of expedience here). Birkenstocks are shaped ergonomically (and have been, for a hundred years), look good and can be worn as sandals in the summer and slippers in the winter. But: I’ve discovered that they can become smelly and stained pretty fast because of all their natural materials (leather, cork, etc.). And, while Birkenstock offers the ability to replace the footbed, this is a costly process which – in my experience – doesn’t work very well.

So the idea of wearing an anatomically shaped, anti-bacterial, disposable, $35 clog is sort of appealing. Plus Crocs are completely vegetarian/vegan-friendly. And now you can even buy a recycled, post-consumer version (but those only come in a putrid grey that’s truly, deeply ugly).

I’ll see how I actually do this summer… I may flounder and go back to my Birkenstocks when I’m finally confronted with my size M12/13 pair of brown Caymans on my feet, paired with shorts and no socks. That’s why I have the big mirror in my hallway. Just so that I can be mortified at myself before I leave the house.