I’ve talked before about how not having a TV for over five years was one of the best moves I’ve ever made. It also became a luxury I’d partake of when I was somewhere other than home – sort of like being a kid and playing with someone else’s toys. But having spent the past couple of months in the States with family has meant finding myself in front of the TV quite a bit (see previous post).
Two of my favorites for completely opposite reasons: No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
I read Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential while I was doing patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu five years ago, and I can’t help feeling – or rather, hoping – that Ramsay is a Bourdain in the making. I mean at a level of real growth – where Ramsay is the starter or “mother,” and Bourdain is the whole sourdough.
When I watch Bourdain, I see a softened man, and hence a stronger one. I see a man who has taken a few beatings to the heart and soul and is constantly looking to discover all that is wonderful in his world. Naturally, he does. Ramsay, on the other hand is – pardon the pun – hell bent on finding everything that’s wrong. And that’s exactly what happens.
I know which one I’d like to dine with. What about you?
I have been spending very little time in the kitchen these days. And as you can see by the relative simplicity of what I normally make, that means virtually no kitchen time at all.
I’m going to blame it on the Olympics and American Idol.
Whatever you want to name as your reason for not wanting to bother with cooking (or un-cooking) – not that you need any reason at all – I wanted to share a nice little find that has brightened my current lazy-fare state. Get it? Oh dear. Maybe the situation is worse than I thought.
Sunshine Burgers. I first read about them on Choosing Raw; and, since I happen to be in the US with access to all the brands I couldn’t try in the UK, I decided, well, to give them a try.
They come three to a box, cost $3.49 at the local health-food store, and are made up of a wonderfully short list of ingredients: cooked brown rice, ground raw sunflower seeds, carrots, herbs, and sea salt.
That was good enough for me. I heated up mine in the toaster oven and sandwiched it between an Alvarado St. Bakery sprouted onion & poppy-seed bagel, sliced avocado, tomato, and sprouts. It came together in less time than it takes Shaun White to run through the halfpipe and even quicker than Simon Cowell can break your heart.
When I was training as a yoga teacher last October, the highlight of my day was not sitting down to meditate, it was sitting down to the two buffet-style meals from the ashram kitchen. Was it Thai night? Mexican? Or, my favorite, Indian?
If meditation is one-pointed focus, then I’m an expert. Give me an onion to chop or a curry to slurp, and I can concentrate so completely that time (not that it exists, of course) stands still.
So I was very excited to read this article in the New York Times about food and yoga, and whether you need to be a vegetarian to practice. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like labels. If you make the bulk of your diet plant-based and you throw in even a few minutes of yoga time a day, you’re making a huge positive difference to your body and the planet. Yoga means union, after all.
Did you know you own the ocean? A few months ago I introduced you to oceanographer Bruce Monger and his campaign to get everyone to realize just that. Check out Dr. Monger’s important new blog It’s My Ocean and stake your claim. You’ll find a whole host of ways to do it along with lots of cool information about what lurks beneath. The good news is that if you’re reading this site, you’re off to a good start. A great way to treat your ocean right is to reduce or eliminate your consumption of fish and up the whole, plant-based foods in your diet. Ahoy!
I’m not including this one in the recipes section since it’s not technically gluten-free; and besides, I feel a sandwich should be a spur-of-the-moment, no recipe-required sort of thing. Still, I make this combination quite a lot:
2 slices Ezekiel 4:9 Sesame bread
1/2 an avocado, sliced
A squirt of lemon juice
Grindings of black pepper
1/2 plum tomato, sliced
A few slices cucumber
A handful of salad sprouts
A good spreading of Phil’s Popeye Pesto
Sometimes people who can’t tolerate gluten have no problem with sprouted breads like Ezekiel, but if you don’t want to risk it then you could easily use cabbage leaves to wrap the rest of the ingredients. Or even a large corn tortilla. The sprouts are non-negotiable.
And you have to try the pesto.
new recipe: phil’s popeye pesto
My Mexican-food addiction has reached grande portions. On the road, in the kitchen – I just can’t get enough. This is my first foray into shopping for and cooking with dried chilies, and my, are we spoilt for choice in California. Check out this colorful guide to deciphering the saucy specimen.
new recipe: fast and fiery tortilla soup
After having spent six years in London wishing and hoping for some good Mexican food, now in California I’m running into as many taco places as I did pubs. And I’ve tried a lot of them. I’ll limit this list to the chain restaurants, not just because you can find most of them all over California and beyond, but also because they’re actually surprisingly good. All of them come with a salsa bar as standard. I’ll start from the bottom up.
In third place, my taco temptation is Chipotle.
I like Chipotle’s clean, modern look and overall lack of fiesta theme that all too many Mexican restaurants succumb to. Decent veggie options here, including the tortilla-free burrito bowl in case you’re watching your weight (or your gluten). The website’s pretty impressive, too.
Oh, but who am I trying to fool? My taco number two goes to Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill, with a decor as Monterey Jack cheesy as you can get. They have a grilled portobello and poblano “gourmet taco” that comes with the all-important corn – not flour – tortilla. My only beef (or should I say tofu?) with Rubio’s is that they use extra-tick tortillas. It’s just a bit OTT.
Which brings me to my newest and coolest discovery, Sharky’s Woodfired Mexican Grill. When I ordered my two-taco combo plate made with grilled veggies, I was a little worried about how little I would get and how much it would cost – $5.99 that, believe it or not, is expensive in taco territory. But when my plate was delivered (yes, you get table service here), with real plates and cutlery, no less – I was staring down at a massive meal of two over-flowing corn tortillas per taco, a nice helping of non-oily tortilla chips, and the kind of red rice and beans you’d find at a restaurant, not a fast-food joint.
Sharky’s bites on every point: organic rice and beans (served without cheese just for asking), ambience, price, and, most importantly for our purpose, the choice of either grilled veggies or tofu in almost every menu category. And I’m not the only one who thinks so: the people sitting next to my table on Saturday were at the same table when I returned on Monday. Amigos, Sharky’s has shaken up my world.
Happy New Year!
This is an article I wrote for a well-known raw website, but it was never published. And since a lot of you might be thinking of starting the year with a detox, I thought it was the perfect time to share it. May all your dreams come true in 2010, for the good of all.
There is a lot of conflicting information out there regarding raw food, let alone nutrition and wellbeing as a whole. One of the testiest topics I’ve come across is colonic irrigation. To cleanse, or not to cleanse? That is the ongoing question.
My first brush with colonic irrigation happened quite accidentally – well, as unintentional as finding yourself attached to a long-tube dangling from a bucket of diluted coffee could be. I was at The Sanctuary in Thailand, a resort and spa that became my home for two blissful weeks in January 2008.
When I arrived at The Sanctuary, I made a beeline for the legendary restaurant and its thick menu with page after page of mostly vegetarian dishes. There was a raw-food section at the back, one I barely took note of. I wondered how I was going to try everything during my stay, and when I cast an eye on the homemade bakery case, I knew I had to get a move on. Back then, my life revolved around food, and not in the healthiest way. I had trained as a pastry chef and built not just my travels – but my days – on what I was going to eat next.
Then I happened to stumble into the resort’s detox centre. I had heard murmurs about the fasts being supervised there and had seen people on the beach checking their watches before downing a handful of tablets. Just what the heck was going on here? I had to find out. Of course I had zero intention of not eating for several days in a row, or so I told myself.
Padding barefoot up the wooden steps, I spied a couple drinking watermelon juice at the bar. Trying to keep a low cover, I eyed up the chalkboard offering 3.5 and seven-day fasts. I could tell the couple was watching me, and soon I learned they were fasting veterans who, when they found out I wrote about food for a living and was obsessed with it, told me I absolutely had to do this. “No use coming all the way here if you’re not,” they agreed, “And no better way to confront your attachments to food.” Then they told me about the colonics, and with such zeal you’d think they were talking about a massage or bingeing out on ice cream, something I had been doing with abandon to cope with the tropical heat.
I signed up for the shorter fast and was sent off with a bunch of literature in preparation. And read it I did, but not before gorging myself on coconut ice cream shakes and goodies from the aforementioned dessert case as if these were my last few days on Earth. Looking back, I realize how counterproductive – even a waste of my money – this approach was.
We were told to switch over to the raw-food menu two days before the start of the fast, an idea I couldn’t get my head around and implemented reluctantly. My, what a difference a year makes! I now eat a “pre-fast” menu practically all the time, and with pleasure.
The fast at The Sanctuary is actually not a fast at all. You’re putting something into your belly about every two hours, be it psyllium husk and clay (something my gag reflex never got used to), mineral tablets, your choice of juice (coconut, apple, watermelon or carrot), and an evening vegetable broth spiked with cayenne pepper. The group atmosphere is almost cult-like with people popping pills in synchrony, but I’ll tell you: it works.
While you’re taking a lot in, you’re also evacuating quite a bit – via those colonics I mentioned earlier. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. If we were meant to have colonic irrigation, wouldn’t we have been born with the required equipment? There are a lot of arguments against colonic irrigation, and this is a legitimate one. But if the idea of it goes against nature, how about the mounds of unnatural stuff we subject our bodies to in modern times? I kept mulling this thought as I joined my fellow first-day fasters for a colonic demonstration given by Moon, the detox center’s lively manager.
Yes, a demonstration because, as I soon learned, these weren’t colonics at all but rather a super-sized enema self-administered on a colema board. Once inside the little colema hut, Moon stretched out on the board – fully clothed – and proceeded to give us a surprisingly tasteful step-by-step demo on how to do this.
Later that day, it was the moment of truth. I undressed from the waist down, double-checked the shaky lock on the hut door, and made myself as comfortable as you can on a wooden plank while “Girl from Ipanema” pumped out of the speakers and a giant bag of diluted coffee flowed into my bowels. If that sentence seems long, imagine what 45 minutes of this felt like. That’s how long my first colema took, and, as I would soon discover, I wasn’t alone.
Probably the best part about doing a group cleanse like this are the post-colema conversations, especially the ones started by men. Men, of course, tend to be slightly more squeamish about the procedure, and the ones in our group dealt with it by conjuring up a steady stream of comic material. In short, all we talked about was poop – how much, what color, what size. The buzz word at the center was “mucoid plaque,” a digestive by-product considered the holy grail of colon cleansing. There were pictures of the stuff in the literature we gaped at every day, and it ain’t pretty. We all secretly hoped to pass the elusive monster, but by the end of our fasts not one of us had produced a trophy.
Once you get the hang of a colema, it’s a breeze and goes fairly quickly, although the point of it is to hold the fluid in as long as you can before expelling it. One of the guys in my group was a wedding singer from Northern England, and he had us howling with laughter when he revealed he was able to hold the entire contents of the colema bag before releasing it. A medical marvel? Moon said he was one of two people he’d met who possessed this special talent.
As the days went on, I was amazed at how light and alive I felt. By the end of the fast, my skin cleared, I felt incredibly alert, and my little belly had disappeared. Of course, attributing these changes to the colema, the fast or both would be ridiculous. Let’s not forget there was plenty of sunshine, serenity and seawater. In short, there is no magic solution. It’s the total experience that counts. My time at The Sanctuary was magical and cleansing on many different levels – physically, spiritually and emotionally. I can neither credit nor discredit colemas.
But I can tell you I haven’t had coffee since.
Me post detox with Moon, the manager at the Wellness Center at The Sanctuary in Thailand.
I know I’m just sliding in with this one so close to Christmas Day, but it’s so good I think you’ll want to make it long after the holiday madness dies down. So, without (any) adieu, I present:
new recipe: please pass the pumpkin pie
I came up with this one last year from a mishmash of recipes, and this year I’m substituting almond milk for soy. One of the best parts about this pie is the crust made with oats and pecans:
I wish another experiment had proven as successful. For months I’ve been reading about raw apple pie and tried some at VitaOrganic in London. When a work colleague asked about my slice, I gave an enthusiastic “ok,” but the truth was I thought the pie was terrible. I thought I could do better; and, wanting to put a yet healthier spin on one of my favorite desserts, got in the kitchen and threw together this raw apple pie. Except that it was labor-intensive and messy, something I don’t mind and am happy to do most of the time. But I have no desire to try this pie. I’m not going tell you I love it just because it’s raw, or that I prefer it to regular ole apple pie. When you look at it you might wonder what I’m talking about. It sure does look pretty.
Or, you might be like my friend Sarah who exclaimed, “Nothing says Christmas like vegan and raw!”
I’m going back in the kitchen to bake an apple crisp. It’ll still be vegan, but I’ll be able to smell it.
Merry Christmas!
It seems that while I’ve been in the UK for the past six years the US has seen an increase in the number and variety of Asian-food establishments. Was Panda Express so popular before I left? I can’t remember, but I’m seeing them all over the place now. Then again, I was living in New York City back then and am now spending most of my time in suburbia. So they may have been around, just not around me.
My mom has been raving about Pei Wei. Billing itself an “Asian diner,” the place looks quite modern from the outside; and I finally decided to give it a try with her a few days ago. Nice! I love Pei Wei. Nearly all the dishes are offered with vegetables and tofu, so I was spoiled for choice here. I went with the Thai Dynamite that was supposed to be spicy, but having just spent five weeks in the hot-salsa haven that is Southern California, this barely made my tongue tingle.
What I loved most about this dish is that the vegetables were barely cooked–they were beautifully crisp and colorful. And the brown rice was just perfect. I couldn’t finish the whole thing, and it came to under $8. Pei Wei seems to be attached to malls, so if you’re doing some last-minute shopping, steer right past the food court and get yourself some healthier wok cooking at this place. It seems that over 41,000 other people agree with me.
Jessica Stone
Well hello there! I’m a globe-trotting American with an appetite for great food, optimal health and green living. Through demonstrations and coaching, my passion is helping others discover the joy in whole, plant-based foods. This blog is about putting a smile on your face with simple, delicious ideas that are good for you and our planet. I’m always eager to hear your feedback, so thanks for sharing the journey with me!
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