Currently viewing the tag: "the examined life"
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn’s renowned Alma Restaurant earned a recommendation in the prestigious Michelin Guide in 2009. Why a tire company sets the standard for exceptional dining has always perplexed me but why Alma received a coveted mention does not. The view, service and cocktails would stun any hungry patron, yes. But it was the Veggie Tacos al Pastor and only the Veggie Tacos al Pastor that prompted our visit. This celebrated vegan-option of marinated skewers of seitan, pineapple, peppers, and onions grilled and served with a fresh piles of chopped cilantro and red cabbage and fresh corn tortillas was not always on the menu, reports CandyPenny, who has lived blocks from Alma for many years. The dish was brought to my attention a few months back by the Electrician who had just learned vegan vocab staple “seitan” and it’s sat on my radar since.
With Brooklyn’s colorful shipping yards in the foreground and Manhattan’s east side the background, Alma’s rooftop lives up to the hype. Being famished, we ate several baskets of complimentary chips and salsa while sipping our adult beverages. At this altitude the pineapple-vanilla cocktail and apricot margarita calm our sun-drenched heads to the sway of the hazy heat of the city. Add the esoteric and tangential chat of a party whose years of friendship have reached the feisty teenage years, and you got a wonderful afternoon, all conditions defining why I love Brooklyn and why I love New York City. 
Onward to the food! Alma’s modern twist on Mexican presented a delicious dish of grilled tender seitan, chunks of juicy pineapple and flavorful onion and red pepper with several fresh corn tortillas to make a few sublime tacos. The feast had the F-word all over it: FRESH. (This is likely the most common craving I have… fresh food, though foodie companion CandyPenny and I can stretch this conversation out through loops and circles, descriptives in a dedicated journey to pinpointing and articulating the nuanced and fickle whim of our frequent food cravings.) The dish was just what I needed and enough to have me shut up about being hungry for at least a good hour. 
Alma is high-end dining so the Veggie Tacos al Pastor had a hearty price tage of $17. I mention this because to many a dish’s value, or lack thereof, has direct consequence on the dining experience. I, on the other hand, splurge not on designer jeans or regular beauty treatments but treat myself often to flavorful, nutrient-dense and texturally satisfying food. I don’t eat cheap because eating is one of the most important decisions of one’s life, though many do not treat it this way. How others disrespect this intimate action and ingest without with care and selection baffles me. [Awkward pause.] Was it me that posted something about Nathan’s onion rings the other day? No, no. That was someone else.
I often sing the praises of fruits and vegetables. It isn’t because I’m a vegan… I’d be a vegan no matter what it tasted like really. Separately and as passionately, I love food. I’d love a roasted onion over a new pair of shoes, prefer a perfectly ripened tomato over a twinkling ruby. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration but you get my point. Patchouli, Birkenstocks and essential oils aside, I want to take a bite out of the Earth; I need to take it all in. My senses, especially taste, are my best friends. And I make these romantic rationalizations constantly to justify my irrational whims of fancy and unyielding appetite, yes, but this is in direct relation to my very reasonable and responsible existence. So an onion, to me, is more than an onion. It’s a part of how I experience the world. I think too much and eat too much.
I cut some thick slices of yellow onion today. I was inspired by the fresh sliced tomato and onion appetizer I had last weekend (which was inspired by Peter Luger’s Steakhouse). Raw onion is a bit intense however. I roasted it with some olive oil and numerous grinding twists of sea salt and peppercorn. Heavenly onion. Speaking of, did you know that the Ancient Egyptians worshipped the onion, believing its shape and rings meant eternal life? I’d join that movement.
Tomatoes are my favorite, uh, fruit for roasting. I haven’t bought a tomato that didn’t wind up roasted ever I think. Make sense of that double-negative! It’s a no-fail. Cut the tomato and put in the oven. I want to tell you something spectacular about the tomato… the scientific name for tomato translates to “wolf peach”. It totally is a wolf peach! I can just see wolf fangs piercing that taunt red skin.
I made that bread a few days back, the spiced potato and onion bread. It is very unfortunate but I am a terrible slicer of bread. My diagonal attempts look more like door stops than slices of bread. But! I’ve found that these clumsy slices are perfect for hearty open-face sandwich pizza-type snacks. Like below, quite possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in my apartment in months: a toasted wedge of my spiced potato and onion bread smeared with my fresh-made basil sunflower seed pesto and topped with those roasted tomatoes and onion. I can’t wait till I am hungry again so I can eat another.
Deep Thoughts: While I was driving south down the I-35 today, in the “road zone”, I began to think about… [wait for it]…human beings.
I began to think about how it was that a lower order of primates evolved to eventually have me sitting snug in a moving machine, barreling down a leg of this man-made intricate interstate system with a device playing digital musical files, reading and interpreting a multitude of semiotic systems, using tools–technology–to gratify all my whims as they arise: hotel reservations in Oklahoma City, checking in with my boyfriend in New York, conditioning the air around me, locomoting from state to state, city to city, mile to mile. I began to think of how amazed I am about… [wait for it]…life. That I am here and I am free and that I have the capacity to embrace being here and being free. No, it wasn’t the countless pro-life billboards (We are in the Bible Belt.), it wasn’t the delirium of thousands of miles under my own belt, it wasn’t too much coffee or that K2 “incense” I have been reading about in the news. It was a thought born of having thought everything else far more frivolous the past 12 days I have been on the road.
Breakfast: Cafe Seed, an all-vegan cafe in Kansas City that served me a perfect breakfast this morning. I hold that meal partly responsible for my elated state. My breakfast, the bacon-scramble tofu biscuit with potatoes and fruit, as well as the rest of the cafe’s weekend brunch menu, was straight-forward, unadorned, fundamental deliciousness… downright paradisiacal. Fueled by the cafe’s distinct energy of rebellion and activism (complemented by the Afrocentric art and photography about its walls), I was reminded that my veganism is a deliberate act, a conscious decision based on justice, fairness and principle. Eating at a place that makes this connection feels good. …Aaannnd they also had the best coffee I’ve had in all of my trip so far.
Cafe Seed’s biscuit, a real biscuit… not a roll or a dense cake… but that distinguished biscuit texture, was filled with a fabulous tofu scramble. This is the kind of scramble I love. It wasn’t overly crumbly and held together, not too yeasty and hippy-like. Place some salty vegan bacon on top (packaged, not sure which brand) and there it is. Making use of their delicious jam, the sandwich was smeared on all sides. A good serving of potatoes (or “nature’s prozac,” says CP) and some fresh fruit. That’ll hold me for 3 hours or so… until we reach our lunch destination.
Lunch. I don’t know how I found this place but wow. Wichita, Kansas’s all-vegan (my favorite compound word) d’Sozo is only about a month old but Executive Chef Miguel Larcher’s vision is fully developed. The huge space houses a natural foods store, a full-service cafe including a buffet and bakery, a juice and smoothie bar and plenty of room for seating. The extensive menu includes sandwiches, pizza, soups, crepes…. uh, vegan crepes!!! All food is the result of Chef Miguel’s extensive culinary background (read up on it here or take my word that the man has years of prestigious international training in vegan cuisine).
My crepe choice, the Asparagus Petite Crêpe [asparagus, béchamel sauce, pimento and fresh parsley] was a absolutely wonderful taste of savory French cuisine. I have had several vegan crepes in my travels (Atlas Cafe‘s in New York City and River House Creperie in Seattle come to mind) and none of them have been truly crepes. This was a crepe, a scrumptious and flavorful one stuffed with even more scrumptiousness and flavor. On the side, some more natural prozac, enormous wedges of seasoned potato. 
The Chef, who we had the pleasure of talking vegan with, offered us complimentary slices of his cheesecake. Much like the crepe, I have had several slices of vegan cheesecake in my day… nothing quite as delicately decadent and authentic in texture as his. Most vegan cheesecakes are dense bricks of ground nut or cold, gelatinous globs. This cheesecake I’d eat again and again… and again.
Here is Chef Miguel, who graciously allowed us to snap some shots. We had to! d’Sozo was a very special and unique find on our vegan roadtrip and I am happy to sing its high praises. And look, he even reads my blog! (Actually, I forced him to.) 
Wow. I am amazed by the last few days of eating. The last two weeks actually. It makes me so happy that there are vegan eateries popping up coast-to-coast, vegan eateries with a love for fresh and flavorful with innovative and creative menus… it does my heart and belly good.
As a young doe who read E Magazine and poured over Co-op America‘s Green Pages some 17 years ago, I can’t help but be partially frustrated by the speed in which the rest of the world has caught on to the green movement, can’t help but shudder at the greenwashing of the world’s major corporate players and how this shallow, surface-level concern for the planet has trickled down to the public… in the form of baby onesies, tote bags, hair care, MORE STUFF (the antithesis of sustainability)… touting witty messages of our intentions to recycle, to love Mother Earth, to be “green”. Boy, this stuff all gets my goat.
So yes yes, another rant about how the omnivorous diet is the number one contributor to environmental destruction. A ton of unbiased research makes clear, to those who want to know, what is well hidden about our food system and factory farming (see links at the end of this post). I promise I won’t go on and on as I know the 2 or 3 dear hearts who read my blog on the reg. deserve better than my yelling at them. They may, if so inclined, skip the paragraph below and proceed to my description of Otarian, New York City’s Low Carbon Fast Food Eatery. The rest of you, carry on.
I know that change happens gradually and, often, it begins as a fad. But I’m still an anomaly as a vegan, though the US has made some great strides. Through wider acceptance of preventative lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of illness and the country’s obsession with weight management, vegetarianism is beginning to make sense in many people’s eyes. Though not as widely accepted a view, vegetarianism is connected intimately with being “green”, like real green. Nothing impacts the Earth more than your dietary choices… not hybrid cars, tote bags, message tees, recycling, etc etc. So that is why Otarian, a new healthy chain with locations in London and Manhattan, came to be. Otarian’s CEO, Radhika Oswal, created the eatery as a “tangible display of {my} hope in the intelligence of human kind to understand, accept and adapt to a more sustainable way.” And their display is one of quality and authenticity, from the materials and design of the restaurant space, to product sourcing, to their packaging and waste management, to their energy and water consumption… it’s the real deal.
The food (all listed clearly as V): Indian Chutney burger: vegan patty, hot and spicy chutney mayonnaise, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, and red onion. Hearty and tasty.
Sweet potato chipets: Sweet potatoes coated in spicy crumb-mix. Delicious!
All vegan Choco Treat… not the greatest vegan dessert but a vegan dessert! A vegan dessert!!!
Please see my older posts:
Force Fed
Another Inconvenient Truth
Food Inc. Movie Review
Earth Day is Why Vegan Day
My family had a few extra loaves of Italian bread delivered with our Father’s Day meal a few weekends back. With VwaV‘s Fronch Toast recipe in mind, I gladly rescued a loaf from my father’s characteristic penchant for hasty disposal. This trait, through the years, has had me sifting through garbage bags for my important papers, etc that had been presumed rubbish. It became a bit amusing after a while. Eventually I learned my lesson (Everything of value and importance has its place. And that place is not in the common area.) and have picked up that habit of environmental order, equating it, like my father had, to structured and stress-reduced living… though not to his extreme… yet.
With food, I’m a little different. I see extended life spans, options for reutilizing. I hate to throw food out. So much so that I’d rather pack it in my weekend bags with half-baked ideas about incorporating it (e.g. pitch-black plantains, bushels of mint, dried up oranges) into meals with my boyfriend. (He has no such qualms about throwing away fermenting foods and throws out what I cannot.) I suppose composting will solve all of these peccadilloes when I have the space to do so. Anyway, I took the bread, knowing that if my dad didn’t toss it out when I was there (because I’d certainly object as one of those liberal environmental types), he would dispose of it when I left. So I get to make Fronch Toast, the loaf doesn’t clutter the kitchen and my dad doesn’t have to hear my rant about wasting food. A win-win-win.
Moving on to the Fronch Toast, Isa created the simplest and most delicious recipe for this breakfast staple. The corn starch and soy creamer coats the bread with a nice skin while the chick pea flour (the most wonderful flour ever) creates a moist egginess, for lack of a better word, that is characteristically French toast all the way. Topped with some real maple syrup and Earth Balance and you got yourself an amazing and quick breakfast. Top with berries and powdered sugar and impress all your non-vegan friends. Ah, this is the best afterlife for a loaf of stale Italian bread!
As a lover of food, I need to know it deeply. I want to. I’m reading Stuffed & Starved, The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System. It’s moving me in many ways. Firstly, it has been awhile since I have had the opportunity to read at my leisure, to read and not have to dissect each chapter with a group of young and green aspiring teachers. Secondly is its content. Food. It’s kind of a big deal… a big deal that most take for granted: the where food products comes from, the why it comes from where it comes from, the how (if you can stomach it)… the hidden world that kills, convenience-izes, manipulates, depletes the environment, bankrupts the world’s farmers and flourishes through food ignorance (more here)(And here on author Raj Patel’s website here). Yes, food… it’s kind of a big deal. Voting, condoning and enabling with your mouth and your dollar, we speak. So why not inform yourself. After all, these injustices are all for you, the consumer. In the face of all the atrocities committed for sustaining profits, isn’t that kind of empowering?
I am tacking on the vibrant color of some recent eats to this post… to show how delicious food awareness is. First, a perfect fruit salad: ripe mango, papaya, kiwi, honeydew, cantaloupe, pineapple with one huge fat big grape and a rind of raw coconut. This salad was $2.00 from the friendly men who set up their stand down the block from my apartment. Each piece tasted like candy. Besides the disposable packaging and fork, I’d say that this was the most perfect thing I ate all week.
In a surge of energy and a Fresh Direct order unpacked, I whipped up Isa’s Polenta Rancheros from Vegan Brunch. A layer of cumin and coriander-spiced tomato and black bean under a layer of buoyant fresh polenta topped with zesty cashew sour cream and one of my favorite garnishes, the green onion. This dish was food perfection: texture and taste. Cooking fresh and from scratch is one sure-fire way to contribute less to the scary world of processed, packaged foods. 
Oneness-Fountain-Heart is a vegetarian restaurant in Flushing, Queens run by devotees of the late spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy. Sri Chinmoy advocated for international harmony and… vegetarianism, hence the vegetarian cafes in his dedication in NYC (Annan Brahma and Cafe Panorama in Jamaica Hills, Queens) and across the country in Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego. Vegetarianism, under Sri Chinmoy’s teachings, is a means to establish purity of the mind and body. He believes that
“when we eat meat, fish and so forth, the aggressive, animal consciousness enters into us. Our nerves become agitated; we unconsciously become restless and aggressive. The mild qualities of vegetables, on the other hand, help us to establish in our inner life as well as in our outer life, the qualities of sweetness, softness, simplicity and purity.”
There are many spiritual paths that include vegetarianism in their practice as an extension of non-violence, a par for the path of spiritual progress, and/or the embrace of simplicity. Why on this very blog I have included reports on 7th Day Adventist eateries, to whom vegetarianism is a necessity and 130 year old tradition “to honor and glorify God and preserve the health of the body, mind and spirit” (source)(here); a cluster of Ital Rastafari eateries, to whom vegetarianism signifies a connection to nature (here); vegetarian, or Jai, Thai food straight from the source (here) and piggy-backed on the dairy-free Kosher (or Parve) world (here), as well as the “playing-animal-rights-videos-in-a-loop-on-a-prominently-displayed-television” type eatery, usually Asian and usually involving Supreme Masters (I’m talking about you Loving Hut). Though I respect these faiths, and all others, as an Agnostic, I’m in it for the food collaboration and accessibility. It is always a given that cities will have a Krishna eatery or a Buddhist vegetarian mock-meat dive in their international district. In a land where chicken is in all the salads, sometimes these options are a… godsend.
Getting back to my visit to Oneness-Fountain-Heart and the Sri Chinmoy Centres, who used to run a laundromat called Newness-Brightness-Happiness-Fullness (And yes Seattle, the restaurant Silence-Heart-Nest in Fremont). I had been to Oneness-Fountain-Heart once before years ago and had left with the eerie feeling that the all-male wait staff seemed far too benevolent to be normal. Putting aside those still-vivid feelings and my general suspicion of organized movements of faith aside, I focused more on the food this time around. Wanting to push to the presses my part 3 Burger Report (see previous post), I ordered their Ponderosa platter: a soy-science meat patty topped with a huge portobello mushroom that I mistook for a bun, grilled red onions, veggie bacon, tomato, lettuce and sprouts on a toasted whole grain bun with a very yummy BBQ sauce. The mash potatoes were not vegan so I had the side salad with mango-lime dressing.
Since I had no potatoes with dinner, I had enough room for dessert. They offered several vegan options, including a chocolate cake, apple tarragon sorbet and my choice below, a passion fruit pie. It was very delicious! The crust was a soft coconut-cookie base that complemented the two other layers nicely, a sweetened tofu layer and a soft, delicate and perplexingly textured tropical fruit chiffon. Perplexing because I wasn’t sure about how they got such a texture without whipped eggs! Very delicious and worth the trip back to Flushing on its own.
I’m going to keep on preaching… I plan to continue to honor the diverse faiths of the world through their cuisines as so many embrace vegetarianism, although I am quite sure the sensual delight I attain through eating is considered quite the vice…
See this food? I have eaten it and it has helped me to move from here to there to have me here typing this to you. See it? I put it in my mouth and chewed. Yeah, so what but: Have you ever paid attention to this process? Followed a bite from one side of your tongue to the other? Tasting texture. Mastication. This is no dirty word. Food touches our insides and all over, giving energy all about its path, starting first at our mouth. What else in the world to we ingest? Like fully and in abundance? Allowing it in. Allowing it everywhere. How is this not a big deal?
Tempeh roll at Dragonfly.
Sweet & sour seitan lunch special @ Em.
The Sag @ Bone Shakers.
All I could eat at Outback Steakhouse, on 5th grade class trip to DC.
Roasted veg sandwich @ the International Spy Museum in DC.
A big ass salad in the cafeteria of the Capitol Building in DC.
Pad Thai lunch special with summer roll and veggie dumpling @ Pad Thai.
A few years back I did my student teaching in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Reveling in the fact that I needn’t join the morning straphangers with a trip into Manhattan, I day dreamed during my quick walk to to N. Henry that I was employed by my fieldwork school, that I had gotten my certification, completed my degree and had my first classroom. This was an important time in my life. I had, after 5 years, bid farewell to an cozy office job in order to student teach, and had just ended a 6 year relationship. I was planning my 2-month stint in Thailand and compiling my graduate school applications. I have vivid memories of feeling invigorated with living, like I was finally getting to where I wanted be. I casually and contentedly strolled to my placement each morning, occasionally picking up a morning bagel to spread with the tofutti I had stashed in the mini-fridge. So, years later, it was nice to stumble back into that bagel spot, Brooklyn Bread, on a lunch break from my current teaching job in Carroll Gardens and realize I had been there before. Ok, so my knowledge of this part of Brooklyn is limited. I had no idea I now worked so close to where I did my day dreaming years ago… and I had no idea that Brooklyn Bread had such delicious sandwiches! I speak of the The Vegetarian Special. Grilled portabella mushrooms, artichokes, grilled zucchini, roasted peppers, arugula and Tuscan olive oil on their delicious fresh bread. Besides its perfect combination of taste and texture, the colors pay homage to the old school Italian cluster in the neighborhood.
A neighborhood can be accurately judged by the quality of their… Thai lunch special! So Em Thai Kitchen confirms the wonderfullity of Carroll Gardens. With big lunch portions and the inclusion of two, yes, two appetizers in their cheapo lunch special ($8), it is a great deal indeed. But more, they offer seitan as a choice for their standard dishes. Of course I rarely get anything but a big pile of broad rice noodles in sweet soy sauce and Asian broccoli: Pad See Ew. Better still, this is two lunches. After three scrumptious and delicate little dumplings and two sturdy spring rolls, I boxed up most of my entree and ate it the next afternoon. That is $8 well spent. Em also gets pluses for ample people watching (and natural light for food photos) on Smith street and a table set-up that caters to the lone eater. 
Of course I have to pay homage to my go-to for a quick and easy bite, Park Natural. I rather enjoy the vegan macrobiotic bento box and an original Synergy kombucha beverage. It’s kind of like my super value meal except, with my usual Greens+ bar, it runs me about $11 or so. Eeek. Park Natural is a great little health food store which supplements my regular grocery shopping/food errand running just a couple of blocks from my school. The meal always causes quite the stir with on-looking colleagues back in classroom, although here it rests calmly on my vintage fabric-dressed teacher desk.
I’ve seen this set of graphs all over the internet (i.e. numerous times in the What’s Hot section of my Google reader). And I am happy about this. It makes me feel more normal. Not that “normal” is an aspiration of mine or anything. But feeling normal is a different story.
The good people at PCRM put the graphs together in response to the 2008 Farm Bill (or what should be called the “Factory Farm Bill”) that got a nod from President Obama recently. So what’s the problem? Besides the fact that Mr. O pledged to cut funding to these monstrously powerful agri-powers-that-be (meat and dairy) and balked under pressure, one cannot help but see a huge disconnect here. With 73.8% of federal subsidies going to the meat and dairy industries, how can fruits, vegetables and grains make their way into more Americans’ homes and our schools, cheaply? With the meat and dairy industries running the show, how can we Americans afford to eat more healthfully, following the guidelines set by the federal government?! So meat and dairy stay cheap, despite their huge price tag (environmentally, health-wise, ethically, etc.) and vegetarian food stays expensive. And vegetarian food stays weird in the eyes of most Americans. The meat and dairy industries continue to profit. The ass-backward Western medicine industry continues to profit. Pharmaceutical companies. Fast food. Plastic surgery. Carbon footprints. Greenwashing. GMOs. The never-ending short cuts perpetuate. Our asses expand, the Earth turns to shit, billions of sentient beings are mass-produced to die and millions of other animals say, “You’re vegan? What do you eat?!” Certainly not what I’m being fed, thank you very much.
10 Reasons Why Love Stinks.
1.) You cannot will someone to action.
2.) We are, in the end, singular vessels of emotion.
3.) Outsides often don’t match the insides.
4.) Youth is wasted on the young. Love is wasted on the loved.
5.) The perceptive, sensitive and intelligent suffer easier than…
6.) Your parents messed it all up for you. Messed us all up.
7.) Because someone’s disinterest is, by design, alluring.
8.) It’s a social construct.
9.) Effort often does not equal output.
10.) What’s it really got to do, got to do with it?
Sweet thing CandyPenny hosted a Valentine’s get-together with the goal of heating the heart with spicy, tangy and sweet-inspired foods. The spread was magnificent and included a zest wasabi-infused ed potato salad, mole enchiladas with butternut squash, spicy glazed tempeh, sesame quinoa noodles and beer-battered sweet and sour tofu, along with plenty of sweetness. Em’s gorgeously decorated red velvet layer cake with cream cheese frosting and mocho cupcakes are still on my mind and taste buds, along with Marmonoius’s XO Key Lime pies.
Vegan Reporting By Location
