Mary’s Organic Crackers have become one of my staple foods lately. And since I use my blog/soapbox to write about things that I love and recommend, I felt that Mary deserved a shout-out.

Mary Waldner (interviews with her can be found here and here) was a psychotherapist for most of her career. A health-conscious mom and active baker, she was diagnosed with Celiac disease in 1994. Her son was also afflicted. Like many Celiacs (or those of us who find wheat gluten hard to digest), Mary soon discovered that it’s not easy to eat well because our society bases so many foods on wheat (wheat truly is in everything). When you also have a desire to eat healthily and avoid certain other foods (like GMO corn, trans fats, etc.), your options become so thin as to almost be non-existent.

Mary’s is a typical entrepreneurial success story: she developed her crackers at home, for her own use, and started to take them along to parties where should would eat them in lieu of chips or wheat crackers. relatives, friends and complete strangers started to like them, too. She made more and more crackers and started to give them away. In 2004, Mary’s Gone Crackers was founded and began producing the crackers more industrially (in the US, they’re sold as Mary’s Gone Crackers, and I can’t for the life of me work out why they would choose to change that in Canada). They now have US and Canadian distribution and are typically available in health food stores or healthy sections of regular grocery stores. At between $4 and $6 per box, they’re not cheap, but they’re totally delicious.

Mary’s Crackers are made from brown rice, quinoa, flax seeds, sesame seeds and (wheat-free) tamari. They have a hard bite and a satisfying nutty flavour and can be eaten by themselves, but they’re better with some hummus or another healthy dip/slather. Or you could serve them with cheese.

Best of all, Mary’s Crackers feel like they’re a sinfully delicious crunchy snack but are actually healthy food. When I have Mary’s Crackers around, I don’t feel any need to have chips (or other salty snacks).

Because every ingredient is organic and the crackers contain flax seeds, I’ve discovered that they’re best stored in the fridge. I do buy rather a lot of boxes when I go grocery shopping, and I’ve had the odd one go slightly rancid on me when I used to store them in my pantry, so now they’re in the fridge.

Breakfast these days is frequently: a bowl of oatmeal with organic maple syrup, a handful of cashews or almonds, a cut-up apple, and some Mary’s Crackers with hummus. Low nutritional stress, high satisfaction and good health. What more could you want?

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.

[amtap amazon:isbn=158479335X]

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

As an immigrant, I’m constantly in search of great bread in Toronto. Being German, I feel drawn to solid, chewy, darker sourdough and/or rye breads. Which are hard to come by: the Russian/Polish rye loaves are too light and fluffy, the Jewish varieties often have caraway seeds. Nice, but not pleasing to the German palate.

Discovering Thobors comes hot on the heels of a recent trip to Germany where we ate great bread – all kinds: seed-covered buns that were light and substantial all at once, the densest, moistest, most smooth-crusted rye bread you can imagine, and lovely 3, 5 or 7 grain breads that easily blew anything Whole Foods Market has ever made out of the water. To date, Dimpflmeier‘s packaged rye breads have been the most consistent option… but they pale a little when compared to Thobors’ crunchy, fresh goodness.

I’m particularly enjoying the seeded baguettes (sesame and poppy), which have a pully, chewy bite. I like my bread to put up a bit of a fight. Pair these with a nice and simple cheese – maybe something like a Morbier – and you’ve got a very European-style quick meal.

Highly recommended. It’s actually worth making a trip up Mount Pleasant for. You could easily combine it with a visit to Bayview Avenue and its little food boutiques. But while there are now at least four bakeries in a one-block radius near Bayview and Millwood, you won’t find break as good as Marc Thobors’. My recommendation on Bayview is tostick with Alex Farm Products for cheese and Passion Fruits for excellent produce.

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.

So I set out to find a good quality, simple, bagged China green tea that would make office use easy (I prefer loose leaf teas, but they’re just not practical for office use. And they’re a little bit precious :)

At Whole Foods Market, I came across “The People’s Green Tea,” an everyday China green by Republic of Tea. There are 50 unbleached tea bags in a tube-like package with a resealable lid.

This tea’s main characteristics are that it’s high quality but truly ordinary – making it easy to drink in a variety of scenarios. I’m drinking it for breakfast, and then a few more cups during the day, at the office. It’s very pleasant. And that’s pretty much all I can say about it.

There. My first blog post about tea :)

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.

What offensive, contrarian drivel. I’ve enjoyed reading Kitchen Confidential in the past for its ‘revelatory’ nature (then again, not sure why I didn’t know those things were going on in kitchens anyway). The Hezbollahs write:

We’re going to enjoy vastly improved, veganized versions of your masturbatory, blood-oozing recipes. And then we’re going to compile them, sell them in zine form, and donate the proceeds to vegan outreach organizations and farm sanctuaries–in your name. Anthony, I have to say, I’m really looking forward to the great work we’re going to do together for veganism.

The web. Such an awesome place. I’ll buy copies of the zine and give them to all my friends.

Only today, they had accidentally turned it the wrong way…

Seen today on Bloor Street.

So it’s a particular delight to find a vegetarian-conscious establishment in Huntsville, ON – a few clicks away from Deerhurst Resort, Hidden Valley and the Delta Grandview Inn, all popular area vacation spots. 3 Guys and a Stove is owned and run by Jeff Suddaby, who also has his own cooking show on Global, Who’s Coming For Dinner? (I’ve never seen the show, but after eating at the restaurant I’d be interested in checking it out.)

The restaurant itself is definitely rustic. It’s a two-level free-standing building along Highway 60 (washrooms upstairs, so definitely not wheelchair accessible from what I could tell). There are booths and tables on the ground floor (as well as the open kitchen and a large-ish bar), and tables only upstairs. Since it’s the middle of winter, I’m not sure what sort of a ‘patio’ or al fresco experience 3 Men might offer in the summer. The wait staff are friendly (in that lovely, small-town Ontario way – and I don’t mean to have an air of big city condescension about this, although I’m sure I do) without being overbearing or too in your face. The soundtrack is a stream of blues and r’n'b, courtesy of Galaxie Blues (a Bell ExpressVu music channel), from what I could tell. It’s certainly appropriate for the decor and ambience.

Okay, on to the food. It’s a biggish menu – one of those Restaurant Makeover chefs might say it’s a little too large – but the sections that concern us are right in front. The second page has ‘Rice – Pasta – Stews – Burgers’ and this is where the vegetarian magic is. Rice, pasta and stew dishes are “prepared as vegetarian entrees.” This means that vegetarians can order any of these dishes without worrying that they’re based on chicken stock or have hidden bacon bits in them. Omnivores can choose to add lamb, chicken, shrimp, scallops, etc. to these dishes.

After enjoying some tiny, freshly baked two-bite mini-buns with butter, we started by sharing Risotto Fritters, “with red onions, roasted peppers, French Brie, fried corn-dusted tomatoes and tart onion salsa.” These were really flavourful, especially the red onions (pickled, I thought) and salsa arranged around the sliced tomato base. The fritters themselves were tasty but paled a bit when compared to all the red bits on the plate.

The vegetarian main dishes we tried were a rice dish and a stew. The rice dish was the Curry Jasmine Rice, “with almonds, roasted vegetables, fresh pineapple, coconut, raisins, grilled bananas, sweet fruit chutney and wildberry yogurt.” It was tasty and provided a nice variety to the palate. There were some doubts as to whether the yogurt was truly vegetarian – most store-bought fruit yogurts have gelatin which is decidedly non-vegetarian. Other than that, though, this was a very tasty and satisfying choice.

The stew was Curried Roasted Vegetable & Red-skinned Potato Stew, also an Indian-inflected taste sensation. Described by the menu as “green chili tofu, raisins, pineapple, roasted almonds, bananas, sweetened coconut, peach chutney, blueberry yogurt & fried pappadum,” this dish lived up the delicious description. While I’m not sure why the tofu was called “green chili” (I would expect that to be a little hotter and more, well, chili-ish – instead, it was basically flavourless and a little too soft), I really liked the fruit flavours and crunchy almonds. And the pappadums were crunchy and added a nice ‘authentic’ Indian touch.

We declined dessert but were told that the White Chocolate Cheesecake is the chef’s signature dessert. At $14.95 a piece, it’s also an insanely expensive way to end your meal (mains were around $13), so it would have to be excellent.

Chef Suddaby has written a cookbook and also appears to have his own line of prepared foodstuffs called JEFF. These include coffee, jam, red pepper jelly and the like. It’s hard to say how successful these might become, but I imagine they’re more or less a vanity project.

All in all, a very positive experience and recommended if you’re vegetarian and happen to find yourself in Muskoka with an empty stomach. Worth a drive, and it might be a nice lunch destination for a day trip in the summer.

He described speaking to children in Toronto who could not explain where water or food came from, only that it was supplied by the economy.

Our deep disconnection from the environment, and increasingly our inability to establish even theoretical connections between the soil, plants and animals in our food chain and ourselves, is maddening and sad. Especially urban children, in the developed and developing world, have no idea where food comes from.

Increasingly – as Michael Pollan elegantly argues – food also isn’t food anymore. Most items we buy from supermarkets are industrially assembled from component ingredients (most of which are based on corn), containing chemical compounds that we wouldn’t recognize as ‘food’ if we were to examine them individually.

So it’s understandable that children don’t understand where food comes from. Adults don’t either. We are deeply confused and uncertain about the world we live in:

Suzuki also underlined the interconnectedness of humans with their natural world – a point not often made by mainstream environment critics. “We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves,” he said.

In a large pot, heat olive oil and fry onions, celery, garlic and potatoes until the onions and celery are soft. Add lentils, stock cubes, water and salt. Stir and bring to a boil at a high temperature, then boil at medium heat for 30-40 minutes until the potatoes are soft and the lentils are tender. Add curry and parsley, continue to boil at medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Using a hand blender (if you have one), puree about 30% of the soup to get a softer, smoother consistency. Take off the heat source and stir in your preferred sweetener.

The quantities are approximations – they should work, but lentil soup isn’t an exact science :) What you’re aiming for is something thinner than daal and thicker than a regular soup – it’s really a ‘stew’ you’re making.

Buy from Amazon.com

This is highly recommended. Great food and amazing pictures. For those who, like me, enjoy their cookbooks well illustrated, this is definitely worth buying.

(Direct URL: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0711217513/)

Thai restaurants are cheap and plentiful in Toronto, and it’s a very affordable lunch alternative to Middle Eastern or fast/junk food. Once I turned myself into a ‘committed’ vegetarian (one who makes sure he doesn’t eat anything based on meat/chicken stock or fish sauce), though, finding good Thai food suddenly became a whole lot more difficult as many dishes are based on fish stock ingredients. Recently, I discovered Jean’s Vegetarian Kitchen along the Danforth (a little further East than Greektown). It’s a fully vegetarian Thai restaurant that’s well worth visiting. While certainly not an incredibly comfortable place (the decor is pretty basic and it’s lit very brightly), the food is very tasty and there’s a lot of variety. The curries (red, green, yellow/Malaysian) are superb, as are many of the stir fries and soups. Jean’s also sells the mystery spice combination for its yellow curry, so I bought a jar ($5).

In South Africa, one of my favourite ‘indigenous’ dishes is bobotie. I say indigenous in inverted commas because the recipe is said to have originated in Indonesia (another Dutch colony) and introduced to South Africa in the 17th century. It’s a minced meat bake spiced with curry, covered by a thick blanket of a white egg custard. Served with vegetables, yellow rice and a sweet chutney, it’s tremendously tasty – real comfort food. Many years ago, I used to take pride in my home-made bobotie, but I’ve never attempted to make a vegetarian version of it. Now I think I’m ready to try, especially since there are so many great soy-based minced meat alternatives available. That’ll be a project for an upcoming weekend. (The BBC offers what appears to be a nut-based recipe for vegetarian bobotie. I think I’ll stick to fake meat instead.)

I also think that curry could be used meaningfully in all sorts of other dishes. For example, Alton Brown suggests to use cumin, coriander and grains of paradise in his recipe for lentil soup (it’s not vegetarian, but can easily be converted). That sounds to me only a small step away from just adding curry… and in fact, Google says there are a number of Ayurvedic recipes for lentil curry soup.

Curry (like so many other things: green tea, red wine, dark chocolate…) is also said to have medicinal properties (here and here). Although I know too little of Ayurveda to really comment, I’m willing to believe that what tastes good will also make me well. Let’s see if curry lentil soup works. There’s snow falling outside and I want snow day comfort food.

4 eggs
4 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon clarified butter
2 medium potatoes, cooked and cut in half-inch slices
2 medium onions, sliced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cloves

2 tablespoons ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ginger, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
pinch each of turmeric and cinnamon
1/2 bay leaf
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lime juice

Beat eggs, milk and salt together. Melt butter and make an omelet. Fold in half and cut into 1/2-inch strips. Heat oil and brown onions. Remove half of them and set aside for garnishing. To the remaining onions in pan, add cloves, coriander, ginger, chili powder, turmeric, cinnamon and bay leaf. Fry for a minute or two. Put in coconut milk and salt; simmer for 5 minutes. Add potato slices and omelet strips and continue simmering until thoroughly heated. Remove from heat. Stir in lime juice. Garnish with reserved browned onion.

Variation: Instead of omelet strips, poached eggs can be added just before serving.

While I’m typically a big Starbucks fan, a devoted (some might say slavish) follower of the McDonalds of internationally standardized, excellent coffee-to-go, I never buy their beans or ground coffee for home. I get my home supplies from Whole Foods Market, in keeping with my objective to consume more organic things – and also, quite simply, because Whole Foods’ coffee is much, much better than Starbucks’.

This begs the question: why can’t Starbucks sell ground coffee that tastes good at home? Admittedly, I’m a snob and I have high expectations. Here in Toronto, there’s enough on offer in terms of coffee (organic, fair trade, micro-roasted on the premises, etc.), and it all costs more or less the same, so it’s not necessary to buy beans from Starbucks.

This week, as the result of an embarrassing lack of planning (or an unawareness of the dire state of my coffee supply), I ended up getting some Starbucks ground coffee, sort of at the last minute. ‘Buying’ isn’t quite accurate, because a kind colleague had given me a Starbucks Christmas gift pack containing a small bag of coffee beans and a gift card. To get it ground, I went back, bought a second bag, and had the baristas grind it all up for me (who, incidentally, appeared to be scared of their industrial grinder – funny given that they handle high-pressure coffee makers all day long).

But, the truth is: at home, the coffee just isn’t anywhere near as good as it is when Starbucks brews it up for you. Here are some theories to explain it all:

1. Starbucks uses different beans/blends for its own brews in-store.
2. Starbucks has better/different brewing equipment. Or better water. Or those baristas really know what they’re doing.
3. The packaged experienced of asking for a “grande mild,” being asked, “Do you need room for cream or milk?” and getting a steaming paper cup with the brown sleeve actually creates much of the value of the experience, and that’s what you’re really paying $2.00+ for. The flavour is in fact secondary when it’s embedded into the experience.

I’m not sure which one it is, but I’ll admit that the third one seems most likely to me. I prefer to think of it not as a critique of globalization or a conspiracy theory, but rather a kind of postmodern irony that I joyfully choose to engage in several times per week :)