meansoybean

Just a quick pic from Sunday’s dinner over at a friend’s. The ingredients were very simple: margarine, red onion, garlic, veggie stock, arborio rice and a lot of red wine.

I had a pearl barley winter squash risotto disaster awhile back and… let’s just say I need more practice making this kind of dish.

Sorry in advance for the bad photo. Crappy camera phone and low light don’t make for pretty pics.

Thanksgiving Sunday I went out to Aux Vivres for dinner. Now, I’m an early-adopter type so I’ve been known to try their plate of the day special. That night the blackboard boasted Moussaka Royale. I didn’t notice it then, but there was no description. When it arrived at the table I was skeptical and disappointed, feelings that stayed with me to the very end of the meal. The base consisted of TVP and brown lentils. Then there was a very thin layer of eggplant covered in, I kid you not, almost three inches of mashed potatoes topped with béchamel sauce.

Totally not what I was expecting, in terms of moussaka. Aux Vivres rarely uses TVP, in fact I think this is the first time I’ve encountered it here. I don’t like the taste of TVP on its own, it has to be mixed in something. The lentils were just murder for me. I wish there had been more eggplant slices — that’s the whole point of moussaka! And WTF was up with all that mashed potato? The lack of costly eggplant and abundance of cheap, cheap potato was suspicious at best.

For the next little while I’m going to stick to my tried and true regular menu picks; the dahl, the dragon bowl with tofu or the sirocco sandwich on chapati. Something you need to try if ever you go: I stopped eating their BLT on chapati shortly after Aux Vivres moved to their St-Laurent location, only because they cheaped out on the coconut “bacon” and filled it with lettuce. But I recently picked it up again, brilliantly combining it with a side of dragon sauce. I highly recommend it and wouldn’t have the BLT any other way. Try it!

BTW if anyone from Aux Vivres is reading this, you should totally make a portable sandwich version of the dragon bowl.

Edit: Ever wonder what’s in that crazy Dragon Sauce? Right this way…

How perfect is this picture?! Can you believe all I did was resize it?

The roast was an ad hoc creation, consisting of one each of celeriac, red onion and French onion. The baking sheet was then filled out with multiple sunchokes, carrots, and potatoes. A nice coating of olive oil with a sprinkling of dried thyme and rosemary, salt and pepper. The finishing touch was about a 1/3 cup of dry white wine drizzled over top before covering tightly with foil. Into the oven at 450°F until soft, then it’s foil off under the broiler til nicely browned.

The tofu briefly soaked, then baked under foil, in the Italian Tofu Marinade in Veganomicon. It still turned out great, though. The slaw was sliced thinly by hand, tossed in a bit of apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar.

This plate is 98% organic, which is pretty damn cool, if you ask me. It tastes as good as it looks too. Yeah!

This week we’ve got celeriac, sunchokes, onions, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, purple cabbage, mesclun and rapini. There were also turnips but I traded them out for more onions. This was a really good year for onions, actually. I’ve got a cook’s stash of organic red, yellow and French ones.

Speaking of turnips, last weekend I discovered I don’t like turnip purée. I knew I was taking a chance by making it… I never understood the mouth-feel appeal to smooth mush. I think I used too much agave nectar, and it turned out sickly-sweet. So I’m kind of traumatized by turnips for now. Talk about a big bowl of wrong.

But I found a tasty way to use up the celeriac and sunchokes; two things I would have traded if I could, but there’s a one item limit. It was wet and cold when I picked up the basket this afternoon. It was raining, then there was freezing rain and then a bit of snow fell! Killing two birds with one stone, I warmed up the house with the oven and made a relatively easy dinner… a root vegetable and tofu roast. Check it out tomorrow, the pic is amazing!

Fruit to Go Strips are basically dehydrated fruit purée. I find that they make a good addition to a car emergency kit, you know, just in case you’re stuck without food for a short while. I had a stack leftover from last winter and started to wonder about its shelf-life. The packaging only had a code, and what seemed like a 24 hour time stamp. I promptly shot off an email and got this explanation:

[...] Sun-Rype Fruit to Go Strips have approximately a one-year shelf-life from the date of production. They do not expire; however, we suggest enjoying within 1 year from the date of production for optimum quality.

Complete production coding information is printed on Sun-Rype “Fruit to Go Strips” and can be found on the back flap of the packaging. Your example: 7143 #3 13:20. This ink-stamped information is translated as follows:

- first digit indicates the year the product was manufactured; “7″ indicates the product was produced in 2007
- next three digits indicate the day of the year out of 365 days (Julian Calendar); the “143rd” day of the year = May 23
- #3 is an internal reference code
- last four digits denote time the product was produced using a 24 hr. clock; 13:20 indicates the product was produced at 1:20 p.m.

Therefore, this product would have been produced on May 23, 2007 at 1:20 p.m. [...]

So there you go.