Anarchist Vegetables

My thesis has to be submitted by August 18th. Two weeks from tomorrow.

Phil kindly cut off the internet during the day today so I wouldn't be so very distracted. That was a good move; I finally got a few new pages written. A few more to go, plus editing and that should be that! So far I'm doing a very good job of not barfing.

This summer we've signed up with Jardins de la Résistance and have been picking up vegetables every other week. We figured that with just the two of us we couldn't eat the whole thing every week, and we were right. Today we picked up "basket" number 3.

Even after two weeks, there's always something lurking in the fridge that we've neglected. The first week it was the beets and radishes, this past week beets - again! - and some very sad broccoli. I'm embarrassed. There is no excuse! I love beets AND I bought myself a food processor recently, so I could just have peeled them and run them through the grating disc for quick and basically effortless beet salad. Terrible. If I'd anticipated them going to waste, I could have passed them along to a friend! My former roommate Brianne makes the best borscht I've ever tasted. She wouldn't have let them get all mushy and sad.

The food processor, though... it's a beauty. Our first week of anarchist vegetables, we got to take 30 "fleurs d'aïl". I'd never seen one so of course I didn't I know what to do with them, so I googled "garlic flowers" and bam! Turns out they're scapes. Scapes I'd heard of. Lib, Wolfie's wife loves them. What she does with them, well, that I didn't know.

The internet suggested making a scape pesto. Clearly it was time for me to make my move and purchase this machine I have long dreamed of.

The pesto turned out marvelously, although I didn't follow the What Geeks Eat recipe. My vegan friend Dru was coming to stay for a few days and I wanted to make something that he could enjoy, too.

I cut up about 25 scapes, removing the flowery part and threw them into the machine. Pulse! What power. I added some olive oil (I should really start measuring or keeping track of these things) and it really started looking good. I added a palmful (or was it two?) or pine nuts and it looked phenomenal. To compensate for not using the parmesan I gave it a three-fingered pinch of salt and a little grind of pepper for fun. The resulting pesto was nicely textured, herbal yet unctuous, with a serious garlic hit.



We've eaten it on sandwiches, crackers, pita, pasta, and have yet to go wrong.

Yum yum yum.

Vertical Farming

An op-ed in today's New York Times discusses the amazing potential of vertical farming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24Despommier.html?th&emc=th

Is there any reason not to proceed with these structures?? Your lazy butts are in this too!!

Le Resto du Village!

Tonight was visit #2 for Brianne and me to the Resto du Village and it was just as good as the first time. Better for me, actually, because I didn't overdo it. Last time I had a hamburger (just wonderful- good meat, beautiful toasted bun) and a poutine (again, fabulous thick gravy, piping hot, the cheese was tasty but a little soft, steak fry shaped fries but they were well-done and perfectly double fried) and then got the block Québecois the next day. Delightful. That was Friday. Today I initially said no to another diner outing but then, following in her father's footsteps, Brianne used her greasy breakfasty wiles (involving the magic words "it's on me") to win me over. :D Thanks, lady!

This time I ordered the Déjeuner Poutine (yes, that's right, the poutine breakfast). It was a small dish of poutine made with hashbrown-sized pieces of potato (like home fries, not tiny ones; the potatoes were about the same size as the cheese curds), an egg, bacon, fruit, and toast. The poutine served as my savory dessert to the "regular" breakfast food. The egg was extra large and perfectly sunny-side up, the bacon flavorful and crisp but not overcarbonized. The fruit amounted to an orange smile and an equivalent piece of grapefruit, but the toast (brown bread) was toasted just how I like it with just enough butter to make it interesting.

The Resto du Village is probably the most exciting food find I've had in some time. It's just a few blocks away from my apartment and it's open 24 hours. Brianne noticed today that it's also a bring your own wine/beer place. That's right, you can sit and drink your own booze and endless coffee at any hour of the day or night and eat perfect breakfast food or burgers or Chinese fried rice or shepherd's pie or raw vegetable platters OR ESCARGOT!!

In other news, Myriade is in the running for Best Independent Café on the Krups Kup of Excellence challenge. I don't know exactly what that means, but I do know that they should win. Pick "Montreal" and then "Café Myriade" here.

In other other news, I've quit smoking for the umpteenth time. Can you even count to umpteen? Didn't think so. This time I've picked up a little nicorette inhaler (affectionately nicknamed (nic-named?) The Puffer) that seems to kind of be working. I mean, the chemical burns my throat when I exhale but otherwise I can't feel what I've inhaled. That's not a very satisfying sensation. The upshot is that I can walk around - outdoors or in - with what looks like a tampon applicator hanging out of my gob and get an itty bitty fix, or so the box tells me. Today was my first full cigarette-free day in a few months. Tomorrow will be another good one.