Vegan, Really Good!

I know there are a lot of people who live the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle and find it hard to have options when they go out to eat.

So here's a link to my review of Present Moment Café, a Raw Food Vegan place in St. Augustine, which is fantastic!

http://www.eujacksonville.com/pages/10-4-07/presentmomentcafe.htm

I would love for a place like this to open up in Jacksonville. Even the non-veggies (at least the ones that aren't freaked out by creative dishes) will love the stuff at Present Moment. The juice bar alone makes it worthwhile.

Here's a link to a great site with info on the Raw lifestyle and Raw

Restaurants, with plenty of beautiful pictures of what a well-prepared Raw dish can look like.

http://www.rawchef.com/index.php

This site will get you a respectable list of Raw Food recipes.

http://www.living-foods.com/recipes

Every Chip is a Gift from God! Or-- If it’s not Fabulous don’t put it in your mouth!

I'm an omnivore, which means, like a raccoon, I'll eat just about anything, provided I can open the damn package.

But, as someone who loves to savor things, I've come to a certain Food Philosophy that can be applied to other things in life.

If it isn't fabulous don't put it in your mouth.

Reject the mediocre in favor of an exalted experience.

We have to eat. It's required.

Therefore, wouldn't life be more pleasant if everything you ate were fabulous? So, don't bother eating things you don't absolutely love.

I also think you should be "present" every moment that you eat. Each bite of everything should be Experienced as totally and fully as possible. None of that gazing into the TV as you munch on chips.

Every Chip is a Gift from God in all its Fat Saturated Glory.

Paying attention to what you're eating not only increases your pleasure factor, it will also mean that eat more slowly and that you may, in fact eat less and get full faster.

Or that could be bullsh*t because I want the rest of the world to gain about ten pounds, skewing the average, thereby saving me from countless hours at the gym.

Whatever the case, you'll certainly have more fun in life if you cut out the things that aren't adding to the experience of personal satisfaction and pleasure.

Food and Memory

My next review is going to be for Columbia in St. Augustine. I'll post pics here soon, once I rifle through all my shots. I just have to say that I adore this place. I might be prejudiced because it's a sentimental thing. Foods and smells always have the biggest pull on a person when they remind you of something good. If it's something you used to eat at the kitchen counter as a kid, you're going to be as lost in the memory of that as you will be in the food.

That's what delights me about Columbia. It brings back memories of my childhood in Miami. My Peruvian baby-sitter Rosa used to feed me Pigeon peas and all sorts Spanish type dishes. I remember the Cuban bakery right next to the Hialeah apartment we lived in till I was five.

The thing I always look forward to at the Columbia is the Cuban bread. This ain't no pansy Publix version of Cuban bread, wherein they take the exact same dough they use for French bread and shape into a Cuban bread shape. Maybe Publix stopped doing this, but I stopped buying their Cuban bread so long ago because of this, therefore I have no idea if they still do that. They use the same or similar dough for just about everything. It's a base I guess. I still buy their French bread but then, I've never been to France and it's likely that I've never had the real deal.

If you're not willing to pay over $20 per entree, head over to the Columbia for lunch. It's got a nifty atmo. And, they've got parking on Spanish Street in Historic St. Aug. The restaurant has lots of natural light, lots of white arches, pseudo-Spanish architecture and a courtyard (which is not recommended in this heat). The Cuban Sandwich they serve at lunch is the real thing--God love 'em.

b.b.'s Pictures

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. These are pictures I took at b.b.'s in the San Marco area of Jacksonville.

Salt

Salt might seem like a weird subject to write about, but author Mark Kurlansky makes it interesting. he put out a book in 2002 called Salt: A World History. Anyone who likes historical minutiae or loves knowing about food history will dig it.

Salt sits on every restaurant table today, but in bygone times it was tremendously valued. Like any substance that humanity places a value on, it has its own mythos and customs. People have sweated and died for the stuff. Wars have been fought for the sake of salt. Probably more blood has been split over salt than any other substance, even oil, which is relatively young as a substance of value.

Salt has so many uses and so rich a history that it has been a symbol for many things, often at cross purposes: for sexuality as well as for purity. The author of this magnificent and well researched book speaks salt in fairy-tales, of industries dependent on salt and salt's preservative powers. It's not hard to see the grandeur of salt when Kurlansky writes of it, as it preserved the Egyptian dead and raised empires.

But here's a taste, just the first section of his intro:

"I BOUGHT THE rock in Spanish Catalonia, in the rundown hillside mining town of Cardona. An irregular pink trapezoid with elongated, curved indentations etched on its surface by raindrops, it had an odd translucence and appeared to be a cross between rose quartz and soap. The resemblance to soap came from the fact that it dissolved in water and its edges were worn smooth like a used soap bar.

I paid too much for it -- nearly fifteen dollars. But it was, after all, despite a rosy blush of magnesium, almost pure salt, a piece of the famous salt mountain of Cardona. The various families that had occupied the castle atop the next mountain had garnered centuries of wealth from such rock.

I took it home and kept it on a windowsill. One day it got rained on, and white salt crystals started appearing on the pink. My rock was starting to look like salt, which would ruin its mystique. So I rinsed off the crystals with water. Then I spent fifteen minutes carefully patting the rock dry. By the next day it was sitting in a puddle of brine that had leached out of the rock. The sun hit the puddle of clear water. After a few hours, square white crystals began to appear in the puddle. Solar evaporation was turning brine into salt crystals.

For a while it seemed I had a magical stone that would perpetually produce brine puddles. Yet the rock never seemed to get smaller. Sometimes in dry weather it would appear to completely dry out, but on a humid day, a puddle would again appear under it. I decided I could dry out the rock by baking it in a small toaster oven. Within a half hour white stalactites were drooping from the toaster grill. I left the rock on a steel radiator cover, but the brine threatened to corrode the metal. So I transferred it to a small copper tray. A green crust formed on the bottom, and when I rubbed off the discoloration, I found the copper had been polished.

My rock lived by its own rules. When friends stopped by, I told them the rock was salt, and they would delicately lick a corner and verify that it tasted just like salt.

Those who think a fascination with salt is a bizarre obsession have simply never owned a rock like this."

FLESH ART MEETS WALL ART

Like graffiti, tattoo art has had an effect on so-called "conventional" art. Tattoo artists are just that—artists. The difference is, they can't just scrap the canvas and go on to the next piece. Their canvas is the skin.

While the Bogda Art Gallery isn't exactly presenting traditional art, their recent show of tattoo art is an example of how far the idea of tattooing as an art has come in the last century.

The status of tattooing as an art has been elevated in recent years, making it more acceptable for people in all walks of life. Tats done on the neck and face still aren't accepted in corporate circles, but subtle tattoos everywhere else have made their way into the mainstream. In the twenty-five to twenty-nine year old age bracket, a whopping 36% of Americans have a tattoo. That's a higher percentage than the amount of Americans who smoke.

Tattooing has a long and rich history. In times past, it has been used to denote status in tribal cultures, sometimes telling you a person's trade, position and age. Tattoos have also been used to mark criminals and to communicate membership in secret societies, gangs and other groups.

These days folks get inked for some of the same reasons—to tell the world that they belong to a particular subculture, yes, but also that they love someone or that they love a particular style of art or just an idea. Many times a tattoo is symbolic of a life change. Whatever the reason, it's something that'll be with the person, sometimes for the rest of their lives (until they cover it up or have it lasered off).

Lots of tattoo artists have talent as artists, particularly those who work to design and develop tattoos. Custom tattoos have become the norm, and hardly anyone gets a design straight off the wall of tattoo examples.

Some of the art at the Bogda looks like it came straight from those walls a.k.a. "the handbook of typical tats." Skulls, hearts, swords and sparrows abound. If you've spent any amount of time in tattoo parlor, or if you tend to look at everyone's tats, you're going to get nostalgic and you might even want one: for your walls or for your skin.

Chris Ayalin's work, particularly the green snarling wolf surrounded by drops of blood and flies, is so over-the-top that you just have to love it, if only for the ludicrousness of it. I looked at that green wolf and realized that it was very possible that someone out there was permanently marked with something that looked like it belonged as the cover of a DIY death metal album.

Some of the canvas work is a surprise, like the Oriental-style gold leaf treatments from Stevie Floyd of Pegasus Gallery in St. Augustine. I also liked the goofy-looking giraffe from Brian Register of Peacocks Tattoo.

The most impressive pieces of artwork weren't on the walls, though, they were on the people hanging out at the opening. Flesh canvas Rob Shaffer modeled his arm, done in the style of a Hokusai Japanese wood block print. The artist was Stevie Floyd, who loves designing and tattooing Japanese artwork and Art Nouveau tats.

Stevie's prints were selling quickly at the opening. Most of the artwork displayed is fairly affordable, from $20 and up.
The Bogda will be showing work from various local tattoo artists through the 28th.

Life-altering Fruit

In my nearly never ending quest to find interesting foods and ingredients I keep a weather eye out for strange stuff on grocery shelves. I like the idea that merely one block away from your house is a place that holds the key to all these new experiences, experiences brought sometimes from half-way around the world.

This time I was in, of all places, a Wally World. Now, I try to avoid shopping here, but my nocturnal habits make it a necessary evil. It isn’t a place where I seek out the weird as far as food’s concerned (plenty of OTHER weird things happening in a Wally World to make up for it).

We were in the veggie and fruit sector when I saw something I had never seen before: TAMARILLO, it said, From NEW ZEALAND. Who was I to argue? There they lay, deep red with a slight shine to them, a lush burgundy waiting.

I picked it up. “What is it?” I asked my husband. “No clue,” he said, peering at the non-existent description that reasonably might have been under it in a Publix.

It was surrounded by peppers hot and peppers mild. “Maybe it’s some kind of hot pepper?” I asked hopefully. But there was no one to ask. Even at the best of times there is a distinct lack of knowledge amongst the produce handlers at a Wally World. Besides, there wasn’t a blue vest in sight.

So I took home my tamarillo. The tiny thing cost nearly $2 and confused our poor checkout girl. She helplessly flipped through her vegetable charts as the line behind us grew.

“Crap,” my husband said, looking back at the line of weary customers behind us “We’re THOSE people.” People of course, who hold up a line by having a ridiculously exotic item without a tag.

But we did make it through the line.

At home, I eyed my tamarillo as one would a potential nemesis. What was it? I wondered if I should just plunge a knife into it and find out.

And then there was the lure of the world wide web. Surely I could find out there. After all, the thing was in WAL-MART, it couldn’t be that terribly out of the ordinary.

To the interweb I went.

It wasn’t a pepper.

It wasn’t even a vegetable.

It was a fruit.

When I finally sliced it open, the center was filled with tiny, edible seeds, surrounded by a mild flesh. The taste of the tart fruit could best be described as a cross between tangerine and grapefruit. The texture in the center was a bit like pomegranate and the flesh around the center was the texture of a soft pear, a little less tart than the center of the fruit. I ended up loading it with brown sugar and scooping it from each half.

The tartness of the fruit lends itself well to chutneys, and it’s eaten as a breakfast fruit. It can be added to just about anything for just a bit of a mystery “zing.”

For recipes and a brief history of the fruit go to http://www.tamarillo.com

Where to get your Fishes!

I mostly eat fish when I go out, buying the occasional fillet at the market when the mood strikes. Because I don't buy fresh fish on a regular basis, I don't really know where to go--

Or I didn't, until I found Safe Harbor in Mayport.

Jacksonville tends to get a little compartmentalized, so not everybody is going to know about this place if they don't live in the area. If you live more than 20 minutes away, just grab a cooler to stick your fish in for the ride home.

Not only is it a great fish market, with shrimp right off the trawlers, they also have an informal restaurant that cooks up scallops, salmon, grouper, shrimp and all the essential underwater yummies in all kinds of preparations.

I'd say, if you haven't ever been over to Mayport, take a trip there this weekend. Go to Safe Harbor, enjoy the lunch and take home some fresh fish!

Safe Harbor Seafood Market. 4378 Ocean St Ste 3 Atlantic Beach, FL 32233


Market hours: Mon-Thu 9pm-5:30pm & Fri-Sat 9am-6pm

Marina Restaurant Mon-Sat 10am-8pm

Caribbean Food in Jax

There are more Caribbean Restaurants in the Jacksonville area than you'd think.
This week, I had to do a sidebar listing of as many Caribbean/Island eateries as I possibly could.

This was a tougher assignment than you might think.

First of all, half these places aren't even in the phone book. I know I missed some--like Rosetta's, because I didn't have time to drive out there and they never answered their phone.

Although I did travel around the city some, mostly I used the phone to gather info. I tell you, there's nothing like a thick Jamaican accent to aid in the art of miscommunication. That wasn't the only issue though--here I was, using my standard procedure, saying "Can you fax me a menu?" and the answer I get is "Our fax machine is down right now." After about the fifth one, I realized that most of these tiny places probably didn't even have fax machines. I just thought it was funny that each person on the phone at different restaurants decided that it was better not to admit that they didn't own one.

Anyway, Da Real Ting has the best jerk chicken. Too bad they're not open during normal business hours. The place is more like a club, opening at 9 pm- 3 am on Fridays & Saturdays and from 7 pm- 11 pm on Sundays. The crowd there can seem a little shady, but the chicken's worth it, damn it! Also, it's not the cleanest place I've ever been. It's still worth it.

But, if you're out and about during the day, Caribbean Sunrise Bakery is a great place to eat genuine Caribbean. Most people get their stuff to-go but the place is fairly clean and well run. Lots of kids get their beef patties there after school. The jerk chicken is very good and the oxtail is properly cooked. You might have had really tough oxtail in the past, but that isn't the case here. When cooked correctly, for a long period of time in wet heat (braised or stewed) oxtail can have an incredible flavor.

There are some downsides, like the neighborhood is a bit rundown and you're likely, as we were, to be approached by a panhandler with a well-rehearsed tale of woe, in which he needs just a few dollars to get home/eat food/fix his car. The guy that talked to us needed $16. I guess he was adjusting for inflation.

Autobots, Transform!

So, this new Transformers movie...I was waiting for it to come out with a mixed sense of anticipation and dread.

Anticipation because movie tech is able to do the 'bots justice and dread because movie scripts and plotlines suck ass these days. What if they did it badly? Would the pain be too much to bear?

Actually, the movie rocks. I think there are some fanbois out there that will disappointed in some of the changes and tweaks made to the 'bots, but by and large, those fanbois will be happy that they even made this...even if they hated it.
I had a few Transformer toys as a kid, but my nostalgia was sorta fuzzy. Unlike the guy that sat next to us at the preview performance, I do not have a tattoo of the Autobots logo and I can't name all the Decepticons.

But the movie jogged my memory and I even got a few "in-jokes."

The flick's weakest point is something it couldn't have done without-- Optimus Prime moralizing in a very deep voice, mostly about how humanity has a lot to learn but we have good in us, yada-yada...That's Prime alright...I'd forgotten how he tended to do that in the old series. No wonder Megatron always wanted to off him.

But I digress. My point here is that the film is worth seeing on the big screen, if only for the bad-ass robot fights.

Even if you know nothing about Transformers, you'll like the movie. (In fact, it might help.) The script is funny, the action movies swiftly and the perspective is human.
Read my official review from EU here: http://www.eujacksonville.com/pages/07-05-07/transformers.htm

Chocolate Mousse, without Lactose

I've got a friend who's lactose intolerant, so I've been trying to come up with rich-tasting, French style desserts...

The easiest thing I've made so far is a coconut milk chocolate mousse.

You'll need:
1 can coconut milk (Thai brand is pretty good)
1 tablespoon pure cocoa (no powdered milk or sugar added)
2 tablespoons white sugar

Take a can of coconut milk, unshaken and open. There should be a creamy layer on the top of the unmixed milk. Scoop the majority of it off into a bowl (you'll get a little over a cup of coconut cream).

Next mix the cocoa and sugar in a small bowl. Sprinkle the contents over the bowl of coconut cream and stir the contents well.

It can be served right away.

If you put the contents in the fridge, it will become more solid, but you can serve a dollop of this simple dessert with fresh strawberries in a small martini glass or on a plate, right away. The thickened mixture can be used like an icing. If you want to refridgerate it but want a looser texture, you can add a little of the coconut milk remaining in the can.

It doesn't take long to make, and it's very tasty and creamy! Most people won't know it's made with coconut milk.

Sunday in Downtown Jacksonville

Since my husband wasn’t going to be working on Sunday, I asked him to come with me on a trip Downtown. Because it was Sunday, I knew that not much would be open in the morning hours, so I settled on going to the newly renamed MOCA.

When we arrived, four employees were clustered around the main desk. They asked how they could help, and then explained that the gallery walls were bare as they were between exhibits. The new exhibition would be opening on the 26th.
Sean hadn’t seen the museum’s fascinating shop, so we started browsing. Quite a few items left over from Christmas were on sale. He found a ring he liked in the extensive jewelry case and I marked several items in my mind as future gifts for some of our harder to shop for relatives.
We stepped out onto the street fairly clueless as to where we should walk from there. Finally, we settled on walking to the Landing. Even if nothing was open, we knew we could count on a pleasant view of the river.

On Laura Street we stopped in front of a vacant building, sad because the architecture was majestic and beautiful. There are buildings all over the downtown area like this, and I hope to one day see them all filled and restored. As we stood there, looking up like tourists, a man, probably homeless, stopped alongside us to share in the wonder and mumble about the beauty of the building. He was difficult to understand because he had as many teeth as the building had unbroken windows, but his appreciation was clear. We hurried on, apprehensive that the conversation was a prelude to asking us for money, but later I wondered what he had been saying, and if it would have cost us so much to stay and listen to him.

My friend Siobhan, who’s from New York, says my mistake is that I make eye contact with street folk, but I’m Southern, and I have a difficult time treating people as though they don’t exist. One day I made the mistake of crossing Hemming Plaza and no less than three people of raggedy attire tried to strike up a conversation. I didn’t ignore them, but if I had, they wouldn’t have disappeared. I have given the homeless money because they’ve told me tales so outlandish that I felt they had earned the money simply for entertaining me. I’m certain that God has written “gullible mark” all over my face, in the sort of ink that only panhandlers can see.

Once at the Landing, it was apparent that everything was closed until the afternoon. Still, there were people out, enjoying the balmy weather and walking their dogs. I noticed the Downtown Ferry docked, and a few people boarding it. I had never taken the ferry over to the South Bank and so, of course, was filled with a deep desire to do so. It cost us $10 cash for two round trip tickets. We pooled what little cash we had (my husband reluctantly gave me his last dollar) and boarded the ferry. The dock at South Bank is just adjacent to the River City Brewing Company, the MOSH, the Maritime Museum and a spectacular fountain. We got a voucher from the captain for our return trip and headed to the River City Brewing Company for brunch. It was a steep $21 brunch, but the Snow crab legs, carving station and omelet station made it worthwhile. There’s just nothing like putting a freshly made waffle on a plate next to crab legs and shrimp, if only for the novelty of the thing.

As we left Downtown, we threw our remaining change to man playing a sax on sidewalk.

How to really, really enjoy chocolate

1) Close your eyes. Scientific studies have proven that the sense of taste is heightened in a dark room, so make it really dark and close your eyes once you’ve placed some heaven-sent chocolate in your mouth.
2) Don’t just chew and swallow. Chocolate only comes into its full flavor when it melts a little, so eat small bites and let it melt in your mouth before you swallow it. Some chocolate connoisseurs even keep a special warming pad to heat their chocolate to just the tasting right temperature, without being sticky. I’m not so hi-tech, though I do love it so.
3) Start with a clean palate. If you’ve eaten something sweet just before tasting your chocolate, your taste buds will be overloaded with the sweet taste and the chocolate will taste bitter. Coffee with chocolate may seem like a great choice, but you won’t get the full richness of your chocolate if you take strongly flavored coffee with it.

(The sweet confections above are from Claude's Chocolate's in St. Augustine)

gastronomic meanderings

Once a month, when I’m at the grocery store, I try to pick up some ingredient I’ve never used before. It gives my culinary wanderings a sense of adventure. Sometimes I even search for a specific item (like last year’s hunt for blue potato) just to see what it’s like.

Generally I’ll find the simplest preparation of the item so I can get a sense of what the ingredient is like, without having it get lost in other flavors.

I’ll tell you, blue potatoes did not change my life the way I thought they would. They’re really really starchy, so they would hold up well in a potato salad, but then you lose the pretty blue presentation. They’re also good pan-fried but, again, if you sear the outside you lose what makes them nifty—that weird-ass color. I think what made them so much fun was that it took me a little while to find them. I finally got them at Jacksonville’s Blue Buddha, which sadly is now catering only to their restaurant clients.

Now since I brought home a batch of dandelion greens, I’ve been really thoughtful. My husband hated, and I mean HATED, the dandelion greens that I stir fried with a bit of garlic, some oil and a little lemon juice. They are pretty bitter, but I was already imagining them in a heavy cream sauce with other ingredients. I’ve been thinking about slipping them in some recipe that they would be amazing in, despite their bitterness. I can’t resist the challenge of wowing my husband with some recipe that includes them.

Resolution Solution

My solution to the whole resolution thing is to make resolutions I can keep. For instance, I make a resolution like “I will wake up every day in the next year.” This is a terrific resolution because each day I can wake up with an immense sense of satisfaction, feeling slightly superior to everyone else. Sure, nearly everyone else woke up today (barring coma victims and those who have watched that “depression hurts” ad one too many times) but I am keeping a promise I made to myself.
Also, I don’t just make one super-simple resolution. I make as many as I possibly can, like: I will eat chocolate once a week, I will put music I love in my car CD player, I will make my cat happy and I will get a haircut this year. I write down as many as I can and spend the rest of the year being pretty happy. There’s another one: I will spend the rest of the year being pretty happy. Let me know if I backslide.
5 Suggested Resolutions for Celebs
I’ve noticed that more than one celebrity has interesting habits that could be combated by simple resolutions. With that in mind, here are my five suggested resolutions for the paparazzi hounded celebrity…
1. Wear Underwear. Unless you’re in the shower.
2. Gain weight. America is counting on you.
3. Refrain from racial outbursts, especially when you might be on camera.
4. Don’t get married. It won’t last.
5. Take care of a dog for a year before having kids
Your Resolution! We Want to Know!
The majority of resolutions aren’t made between December 28th- New Year’s Day. Most are made sometime in the month on January or as late as May. What’s your resolution? EU wants to know! Send a postcard with news of your resolution to c/o EU Jacksonville, Resolutions 5121 Bowden Rd, Suite 311, Jacksonville, FL 32216. Just drop us a creative line to announce your resolution or the success and/or tribulations of your resolution.