meansoybean

Look at what I made yesterday… the Sticky rice in lotus leaves from Chow Vegan’s blog.

In preparation for this, I took a trip to Hawai. Not the vacation spot, but the grocery store in Ville Saint-Laurent (1999 Marcel-Laurin). Have you heard of it? It’s a pan-Asian market that offers such a huge selection of foodstuffs that you have to visit to believe it. To give you an indication of what’s in store, they have an entire aisle dedicated to noodles — more than half of which contains ramen.Whenever I go, I spend about an hour carefully walking through each aisle — it’s that interesting, even if it’s not all vegan. (This is the place I used to buy vegan ready-to-eat, made-in-China, frozen sticky rice wrappers).

Anyway, lotus leaves and sweet rice in hand, I took a stab at making my own… sticky rice wrappers. Given that it’s a multi-step recipe, I think it went well. I neglected to soak the rice before cooking, chalk that up to not reading carefully. The leaves were a bit awkward to soak, as I didn’t have a large enough vessel to do it in. I used Yves Spicy Italian sausage, but next time I think I’ll use some sort of vegan asian “meat” instead, like the stuff found at Tiende Santé. If I could, I’d totally use a vegan chinese sausage, but the faux versions I’ve encountered have milk in them (why?!).

As you can see, I need to practice the leaf-folding, they look kinda funny, but it doesn’t affect the taste. I don’t have a bamboo steamer, so I just put a round cooling rack, without the plate, in the wok and used the lid. Besides being a little on the wet side, it turned out swell. Horray!

Before the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) first opened its doors in 2006, it had been, at that point, over a decade since I had been to a library that wasn’t built into a school. I remember being super psyched to visit this huge building the first week. The building is modern and, as I discovered, has a large variety of seating, some in almost-secret nooks.

Oh, and the top floor of the BAnQ houses music and visual media. The DVD section is always packed with people trying to find gems. The most impressive, though, is the CD collection. Imagine rows and rows of many different genres of music — real variety you wouldn’t expect from a government institution, not just “world” and “pop”.

Coming back to the original mainstay of libraries — books, I don’t know if you fellow Anglo Montrealers know it, but there are a ton of English books there. Cool ones, in fact. Like “Print Liberation” (DIY silk screening), or “The Boss of You” (sassy entrepreneurship for women). Actually, I was surprised to find these titles in their IRIS catalogue because they’re both recently published books. Nevertheless, I was glad to leaf through these books for free, because I have a habit of just buying books online — sight unseen. I’ve since decided that both books would make great additions to my book shelf.

Can’t find the title you’re looking for? You can submit media (books, DVDs, music, etc) purchase suggestions to the BAnQ via their website, here. If you include your email address, they’ll follow up with a form letter letting you know whether the suggestion will be purchased or not. I’m very proud to boast that every book suggestion I’ve submitted, about 15 since 2006, has been accepted. These include the Stitch and Bitch series and other craft books.

In conclusion, if you think libraries are dull, check out the BAnQ. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
(Libraries rock!)

I have to admit that I refer to Vegan With a Vengeance a lot, but it’s not like I’ve tried many recipes. The few that I’ve tried, like the Best Pumpkin Muffins, are mainstays in my kitchen. The Spanakopita is absolutely brill. It’s definitely a weekend recipe, since I like to be relaxed making this multi-step delight. My fav way of making this is to produce flat logs of stuffed phyllo, rolled along the long side. This way, you can chop each log in half and each serving includes the coveted crispy end.

US-imported spinach was cheap at the grocery store, and it had been awhile since I had spanakopita — plus a friend agreed to come over for a late-evening bite. My non-vegan visitor seemed genuinely impressed with the meal, saying that it was “really good”, but that’s probably because he doesn’t cook and couldn’t imagine someone would spend the time to make something this complicated (wink, wink, nudge nudge).

Truth be told, it’s actually a simple recipe, as long as you don’t go making crazy shapes or individual-sized ones. And, even though it’s a multi-step recipe, I find it very calming to make this amazing treat. Go figure.

I have a box of Kashi cereal that’s really awful on its own. It’s got puffed grains that taste and feel like the non-marshmallow bits of the old Pac Man cereal. Basically dry, dry, really dry cardboard. So I thought I’d try to liven this purchase error with a smoothie, because just drinking a smoothie can be boring.

The smoothie, like all others before it, was improvised with frozen blueberries and banana, soy milk, maple syrup, flax oil and peanut butter. Not bad… it definitely gave a bit of kick to the cereal.

But you know what I’m really jonsing for? The Saint-Graal at Crudessence… it’s layered raw cashew yogurt, fruit and granola all in one.