Edamame are young soybeans, best eaten warm and still in the pod and often served as a bar snack in Japan. I picked up a taste for edamame in the izakaya bars of Tokyo but I haven’t found them as easy to find here in Paris… until today at the friendly local Picard.
They are only 2€95 for a good size box, which is much better than the 5€ which I had previously paid at KIOKO. I actually didn’t get a chance to try them out as much as I would have liked since my kids wolfed down practically the full box, but thankfully I picked up several boxes! They come with a sauce for you to cook them up in, but I have never had them like that before so I gave the sauce a miss and enjoyed the straight taste of the lovely bean.
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***This picnic has already taken place!***
Vegan Paris Picnic Club is for vegans to get together and meet other vegans and have a nice vegan picnic.
This month we’ll be having a potluck picnic! What’s a potluck? A communal meal to which people bring food to share.
Vegan Potluck
Sun. May 24
Noon
Ile de la Grande Jatte
Métro: Pont de Levallois (NW end of line 3) Walking from the métro cross the bridge and take the stairs on the left down to the grassy picnic area.
We’ll picnic on the grass, so you might like to bring a picnic blanket. I’ll bring plates and utensils.
So everyone has an idea of how many we’ll be cooking for, please leave a little comment below if you plan on coming .
See you there!
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Over the Easter vacation I gave eco tourism a try in Italy with some friends at a vegetarian/vegan organic farm not far from Parma that I located with some internet detective work.
Il Paradiso dei Gatti is a small, cute farm up a mountain overlooking the Taro valley surrounded by great hiking trails and full of not just cats but also friendly dogs, chickens, goats, sheep, horses and geese.
Staying here included the room and all meals. Breakfast was served at 9 or when you wanted: tea, coffee, bread, cakes. I learned by day two to skip breakfast to save room for lunch and dinner. Our hosts, Georgio and Graziamaria cooked up a host of never-ending meals for us. It felt like Christmas twice a day. Lunch was at 1:00. Let me tell you about these meals. They were huge and long and consisted of course after course after course. Thank goodness for all those hiking trails!
Georgio and Graziamaria are very dedicated to organic and seasonal food, and in the mountains spring had not really started so the food was quite grain-based although they did bring in some green goodies from a neighbor’s greenhouse. Dinner was served at 8:30. Here is a long list of what we had to eat for those [like me] who are interested in such things!
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- Quinoa and greens in a flakey pastry
- Gnocchi in béchamel with truffles
- Chocolate pear cake
- Risotto with strawberries and a balsamic reduction
- Crispy breaded soy patties with chutney
- Sundried tomatoes
- Home made black olive tapenade
- Olive pizza
- Quinoa and peas baked in onion boats
- Sautéed kale (yes, unlike France, Italy grows kale.)
- Biscuit crust spread with raspberry preserves
- Basil pesto and béchamel lasagna
- Asparagus crepes
- Radicchio salads
And we fell in love with Grandpa’s lambrusco: who could resist open bottles on the tables? What a great place.
After the farm we moved on to Verona and Venice. These cities, based on Happy Cow’s list, have no truly veg restos. We tried to get into a ‘veg-friendly’ place, La Zucca, in Venice but they were booked. After looking at their menu I was not disappointed to miss out, as they serve the likes of rabbit and all sorts of fancy dead stuff. We stayed at an apartment rental when we were in Venice, which was cheaper and also meant I could cook some of my own stuff. In the Rialto neighborhood there are well stocked natural food stores where I got some soy products etc. to cook up at our little palazzo.
Of course, it was easy to order basic Italian vegan food almost everywhere: pasta pomodoro, pizza marinara, salads, antipasti, and wine. However, veal is almost always present on the menus, so as I ate my salad I did sometimes think I should really be out there protesting.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Holiday, Italian, Organic | 1 Comment »
The annual VeggiePride march will take place in Lyon on May 16. Based on their site and the materials available there, it will be a fairly militant affair with a message of animal solidarity and animal rights. Their manifesto is a quite useful summary in French of good reasons to be vegetarian/dairy-free vegetarian [although they don’t cover insect exploitation.]
There are a few vegetarian restaurants down in Lyon, according to Happy Cow. The one that looks good to me is Soline. However, I have not visited Lyon since I was a homestay student placed with a family of furriers back in the early 90s. I did not succeed in converting them to vegetarianism… maybe the march will!
The annual Veggie Pride march will take place in Lyon on May 16. Based on their site and the materials available there, it will be a fairly militant affair with a message of animal solidarity and animal rights. Their manifesto is a quite useful summary in French of good reasons to be vegetarian/dairy-free vegetarian [although they don’t cover insect exploitation.]
There are a few really nice looking vegetarian restaurants down in Lyon, according to Happy Cow. However, I have not visited Lyon since I was a homestay student placed with a family of furriers back in the early 90s. I did not succeed in converting them to vegetarianism… maybe the march will!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Everyday life | 1 Comment »
Vegan Paris Dinner Club is for vegans to get together and meet other vegans and have a nice vegan meal.
April 30th at 8 pm, we’ll be holding our next meeting, at La Victoire Supreme du Coeur. It’s a vegan restaurant which is centrally located at 27-31, rue du Bourg-Tibourg 75004 Paris (M° Hôtel-de-Ville) Tél. 01 40 41 95 03
If you would like to RSVP, please leave a comment below.
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It’s always good to know where your nearest vegetarian restaurant is. So I put together this little map. Click on the ‘knife and fork’ symbols for restaurant details.
View Larger Map
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For those who don’t believe that vegans can possibly be getting enough protein, one easy answer is hemp, which is 33% protein. Add to that the essential fatty acids and vitamin E and you have a very important food. Hemp seeds are nice eaten by the spoonful, generously sprinkled on salads, added to smoothies or made into hemp milk.
It used to be that Hemp seeds and hemp protein were on my list of items to stock up on when visiting the US or England (no, not Amsterdam)… until recently at an expo where I had the pleasure of meeting Christophe Latouche founder of L Chanvre M. Latouche is a passionate advocate for the benefits of hemp and his company sells a wide range of hemp products such as seeds, oils, skin care, and even chocolate. Their hemp comes from their farm in the village of St. Antoine in Bretagne. The farm is open to the public where you can do a workshop, taste, test, smell and live hemp. You can order from his site or you can buy their products at Anthylide here in Paris on Rue Pont Louis-Philippe in the 4eme.
Here is the recipe for hemp milk:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup shelled hemp seed
1 cup water
Flavoring (vanilla, agave nectar)
Directions: Place seeds in a blender and add a small amount of water (approx. 1 inch above the seeds). Turn the blender on at multiple speeds and agitate the seeds so they become a thick hemp cream. Then add either vanilla, agave nectar or perhaps only a ripe banana, and serve the blended liquid as a thick drink, or add water to taste for a lighter hemp milk. Optional: add berries, peaches, and/or papaya (courtesy of David Wolfe)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 4ème, Groceries, Organic, Raw, Recipe | Leave a Comment »
A green smoothie is a fruit smoothie with lots of fresh greens added to it. I think they are delicious and are a great way to add even more greens to your diet. There are loads of great recipe combinations available online and whole books written on the subject.
My fave is a recipe my friend Serenity Wood, author of Ginger: Exquisite Vegan Cuisine, taught me. You can easily vary this recipe: the original uses kale but you can’t get that here so I use spinach, mâche, romaine, Swiss chard, or whatever is in season. Mint is just coming back in season or you can use 1/2 tsp mint flavor.
Recipe:
- 1 cup green leaves, packed
- 1/4 cup mint leaves, packed
- 2 tbls raw tahini
- 3 frozen bananas
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/4 cup hempseeds
- 3 dates, pitted
Blend!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Raw, Recipe, Sunday | 1 Comment »
A friend invited me to a vegetarian cooking class at her yoga school: Centre Sivananda de Yoga Vedanta. This 3-hour class (held in French) actually began with a one hour lecture on aryurvedic principles. The instructor ‘om’-ed and chanted beautifully and had a saint-like aura. I found her approach really interesting and often inspiring and it felt good to hear someone in Paris say that if we eat an animal we are eating the emotions, the fear of the animal. Ah, compassion!
After the lecture in their big sunny yoga room, we moved to their on-site kitchen where we observed the making of Mung dal, veg Sabji, Upama, coconut chutney, endive salad, and halva. It was hard to wait so long, but once all this was prepared we were served a healthy portion. The menu was not vegan and they use ghee in most of the recipes but I was touched that the instructor very kindly used olive oil instead for me. I had to pass on the chutney and halva as they contained dairy.
I had the feeling this yoga studio took their practice and dedication to health very seriously and unlike any studio I’ve ever visited they prepare and serve vegetarian lunch for their students daily. A full meal is 7.50, just soup for 2.50 and they offer really delicious looking Indian vegan cakes for 2.50. I didn’t try these cakes but they looked so good, I’ll have to go back! Not everything is vegan though so you may want to call ahead before stopping by.
(Check their schedule of ongoing cooking classes.)
Centre Sivananda de Yoga Vedanta
140, rue du fbg Saint Martin, 75010
Métro: Gare de L’Est
01 40 26 77 49
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 10ème, Cooking class, Indian, Organic | Leave a Comment »
Although it is no London, there are plenty of Indian restaurants in Paris. My favorite has to be Krishna Bhavan, located in the Little Jaffna neighborhood between Gare du Nord and La Chapelle which is home to the city’s Tamil population.
It is said that Tamils consider serving food as a service to humanity, and it shows in the warmth of service you get at this 100% vegetarian restaurant. When you tell your server that you need non-dairy food they will try to make anything on their menu vegan for you. Last night our lovely, English-speaking waitress even went out of her way to reemphasize that everything she was serving us was vegan.
And she served us plenty, because the combination of low, low prices and delicious, delicious food is a deadly one. Last night we started with banana pakoras, which were plantain-like and savory. Samosas were next, in a philo-style pastry followed by idlis. I almost never see idlis over here so I had to order them and they were lovely with their curry and chutney accompaniments. The highlight was the finale of masala dosas: massive, deliciously crispy, potato stuffed lentil-flour pancakes. With my cardamom tea, I was very happy.
There is even more good stuff on the menu, although the one on their site is slightly different than the one they are actually serving at the moment. And if you are not in the mood for a restaurant meal, they serve the same food across the street at their take-out branch. Also in Little Jaffna you can explore the various grocery stores, boutiques, veg-friendly restaurants and cd emporiums in the bustling and welcoming community.
Pros: Vegan friendly, cheap and very welcoming
Cons: No beer
Krishna-Bhavan
24, Rue Cail, 75010
Métro: La Chapelle
01 42 05 78 43
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 10ème, Budget, Indian, Restaurant, Review, Tamil | 2 Comments »
