"Nearly Normal's:" Restaurant Review and Other Musings

While we were in Oregon, Phil's sister and her husband came down to the farm and we all went to town (Corvallis) to eat at Nearly Normal's, a veggie restaurant featuring what they call 'gonzo cuisine.'

I feel like our own life is full of 'nearly normal.' Like this turkey, one of our neighbors' birds, who's become broody and decided that this pile of fishing net floats is her clutch of eggs.

I was rude--I got too close and she's stalking off. Bad photo. Unfortunately, the resident weasel in the woodpile seems to have been pilfering quite a few of her eggs, judging by the shells in its poop...

At Nearly Normal's, you order food at the bar, right inside the door, and then seat yourselves. Most people sit upstairs, as did we--here are Phil's mom, sister and brother-in-law...

It's a beautiful, airy place and those screens and plants really help to mask the ugly air-conditioning unit on the roof right outside and divert your gaze to the trees beyond.

The menu is diverse and richly themed: it's easy to avoid tofu if soy's not your veggie, they have Mexican-themed and American-themed dishes as well as breakfast foods and a few curries and other Asian dishes.

I was enticed by a chipotle veggie and beans dish but upon inquiry it turned out that it was irretrievably gluten-laced. They have little sub-menus that tell what is gluten free and what is vegan and I was pointed to those--very helpful.

Is it nearly normal to dig up a whole mature apple tree, drive it 250 miles and plant it in your yard at the end of a long journey?

Or to replace the berries in your smoothie with peas, and then replace those with green beans (even though they don't taste as good) because the omega 3:6 ratio is better?

Ever since I lived in the Bay Area, I've found a pink flamingo theme cropping up in art and kitsch, in people's front yards and bathrooms, climbing their trellises. It sneaks up on me here and there in my life, and apparently it's part of Nearly Normal's theme too!

My husband's daughter's fiance has a bunch of pink flamingos in his yard, variously beheaded and mangled: it seems they make moose angry.

Underneath the pink flamingo in the Nearly Normal's upstairs dining room is the stairwell by which the food is brought up. I was impressed with how straight the waiter had our order: I imagine that could be a glitchy thing if people are ordering at the bar, with special quirks and requests.

You also get to collect your own silverware and bus your plates afterwards, and they have water on tap in both the upstairs and downstairs eating areas. The water was delicious, btw--not chlorinated tap water nor nothin'.

What is gonzo cuisine? According to their website, it refers to an emphasis on fresh ingredients, organic where possible, to inventing original recipes, using thoughtfulness in preparation and presentation of the food, as well as a cooperative work environment where even the cooks do dishes. Sounds good to me: the atmosphere was lovely in general and I could imagine I'd enjoy working in an environment like that.

Three of the six of us (including me) chose the curried veggies with tofu or tempeh, rice, raita and raisin chutney. My plate had neither tofu nor tempeh, and sliced cucumbers instead of the raita.

I had a nibble of someone else's tempeh and almost wished I'd had some: it's a fermented product and thus less worrisome than unfermented soy, and it was tasty! The menu listing did say 'curried vegetables' but I was somehow expecting more of a sauce on the veggies: it really was discrete vegetables over rice. I liked it, but I prefer my curries more saucy. That was the second time on my trip that I had rice on my plate, actually ate a little of it, and noticed no ill effects. A good sign.

Phil had a spinach lasagna and was happy with it. His sister had the pad thai, which turned out to be angel hair noodles on one side of the platter and veggies on the other (she was expecting the flatter noodles that usually associate with pad thai) but she said it was very good. His mom had the red thai curry. It looked a bit heavy on rice noodles and tofu and light on veggies to me, but she liked it (except for the tofu).

I thought the food was very good, especially for the reasonable pricing. It's down-to-earth rather than spectacular: a word that comes to mind is 'wholesome,' in a good way. I was glad that it's the kind of place that you can bring the more traditional 'meat and potatoes crowd' and know that they'll be happy too!

And I'd far rather be 'nearly normal' than 'normal,' I think--wouldn't you?

Celebrations-Restaurant Review and Goodies, and Some Fun Stuff

Happy New Week! We're up in Anchorage again after a much less stressful day on the road. Our anniversary, and it's been very social, in a happy kind of way. I hope you enjoyed my review of Tropical Traditions coconut oil and Hawaii stories. It's turned cold here again today and I sure enjoyed my coconut oil today. Later this week, I will talk about fats some more.

We went to Cafe Cups a few days ago to celebrate our anniversary together early. I've eaten out very little in Homer and this was a fun experience.

It was so pleasant to eat out in such a mellow, peaceful atmosphere. We were not rushed at any point, the two waitresses were friendly and fun, and enthusiastic.

I felt grateful for my easygoing cooked-vs-raw dynamic at the moment, as they were easily able to make their veggie curry gluten-and-dairy free for me.

And it was so beautiful!

Very interesting presentation: having the rice (which I didn't eat) in the middle with the curry in a moat around it. Lots of very interesting textures, where a lot of curries tend to have all the veggies in cubes. I appreciated that a lot of the veggies were almost raw, just barely steamed, including the carrots and mung bean sprouts (a great touch), although the eggplant pieces were a little underdone. There were even some olive pieces in there! It wasn't a 'traditional Indian' curry, but it was so delicious: lots of cardamom in the spice mix, which I love most, and lots of heat, which I also adore! I was surprised how much of it I ate, how good it tasted and how happy my tummy was afterward.

Phil was very pleased with his fish special. And I wasn't so pleased with the picture I snapped! Beautiful red kale garnish though...

A few other things to share: I took advantage of The Raw Food World's 17.5% off everything offer over the holidays and was once again delighted with how quickly my goodies arrived.

I got more Irish moss, my new favorite food, and some yacon syrup to try (man, that stuff is expensive! But a little goes a long way, I'm told). And a whole gallon of coconut nectar! It's low glycemic enough that I feel ok about using a little in dessert recipes, and it's so expensive in the 12oz bottles, as well as shelf-stable,  that this seemed by far the most sensible way to get it. That's probably going to last me at least a year.

I love to get things in bulk and know that I have a supply for long enough to make plenty of variations or experiments on a single theme, or just have a staple readily available. I think living far from the source might be part of why.

How about you?

My other splurge: some recipe books and some poetry books!

That pile of paper made me so very happy. The Poet's Companion is one that I've enjoyed using quite a bit before, and had borrowed and wanted to own. On Speaking Terms is a poetry collection that I'm reading to broaden my experience: and am so far loving. And the three raw recipe books--what can I say? I miss being part of that world 'in the flesh,' I owned no raw recipe books at this point, and I will use these lovingly until I have learned all I can from them, and then consider them beautiful things to share more widely.

A couple of final silly little things:

Check out our 'pant-tree'--we freeze-dried our laundry strung up right on the edge of the bluff. We agreed that some clothes-pins would be a good investment. Yes, we wheelbarrowed our laundry down from the truck! The bedsheet in the wheelbarrow looks quite stylish, no?

Check out that sunset reflected in the outhouse window!

And I personalized one of my notebooks!

I covered it with Yogi Teabag tags! Been meaning to do that for ages, and finally got around to it. I love how some of them are naturally dyed/teastained.

It's the perfect decoration for my notebook: lots of inspiring words, which often speak more to me than pictures. Given the size of my handwriting, it's especially fitting--here's a random page from inside the notebook!

Organic Oasis in Anchorage; Listening to Body and Pleasure in Tastes

I showed you some beautiful blue sky from the last few days: well, today, this was the view from our front door. Snowing, then sleeting, then raining, then snowing again. The wind roared us awake this morning: one of those times you really know you live 20ft from the edge of a bluff!

So, I want to tell a little story about how I finally got fed, and blissed out, in Anchorage, but first, what do you think this is?

It looks pretty obvious on here, but showing it on the camera view, we got guesses like 'fried eggs!'

Here it is...

...it's a seal skull that Phil was holding in front of the light bulb. Amazing animals! Those bones are so translucent, so thin! Enables them to dive down. Also, enormous, vast earsockets (you'd never guess from their little nubby exteriors) to cope with the pressure changes.

We'd been on the road for three weeks by the time we got to Anchorage, and were then roaming around for several days. I was so ready to be at home, and part of it is just finding it easier to feed myself at home than anywhere else. I'm learning how to become more flexible (and one wonderful friend we stay with sometimes always loves to collaborate on decadent salads, so it's not always difficult at all). But I'm also letting go of the impression that there's no 'healthy food' scene in Anchorage. The natural food store there is awesome if sticker-shocking. And one lateish lunch, after a long morning tied up in an appointment, we went to Organic Oasis for lunch. It's a big, open space that often hosts live music. Several people mentioned that it's cold in there, which worried me a little, but it turned out that we weren't cold this time.

I immediately felt 'at home' there, with the flats of wheatgrass hanging out, coconut waters, kombuchas and many other goodies in coolers...

I'd expected that I'd get a salad only, but I stuck on the smoothies page and ended up overcoming my restrictive feelings and getting one! All their smoothie options contain spirulina, flax oil and lecithin, and then three or so other ingredients. I got the 'peanut butter conspiracy,' whose three others were peanut butter, banana and apple juice.

'Twas a huge stretch for me - bananas and apple juice? Waaay too much sugar, right? And peanut butter? Waaay too many omega 6's (though the flax would help to balance that out). I got a small appetizer salad too, with avocado and a shiitake mushroom dressing, and shrimps which I gave to Phil.

Phil enjoyed the shrimp on his chicken gumbo. I appreciated that this place serves healthy meat options, as it means that my companion was able to get a satisfying meal too.
The salad was very good, but the smoothie was just so yummy and ecstatically delicious and thick and good! I really should have just had the smoothie: I was the fullest I've been in many months after that. And the funny thing: not only did I love the smoothie, I was blissed out for hours afterwards: not in a hyper or comatose way, I was quite functional. Just felt so happy and peaceful and loving and grateful.

I talked to my naturopath about it, half-expecting a scolding for having eaten those offending items. He actually congratulated me on doing so and encouraged me to do something like that on a regular basis! I'm still chelating, so whereas I'd thought I should still avoid all sugar until time comes to deal with the yeastie beasties, he says that I shouldn't deprive myself of the goodness those foods provide when we're not confronting the yeast yet. More importantly, he encouraged me to apply some of the delight I take in creating food for others to the food that I get to eat myself, and not to be so rule-bound with every single bite. I hadn't even thought about how my lack of appetite and general grossed-outness with food lately could be related to the whole austerity thing. I seem periodically to lose track of the fact that some pleasure can be nourishing.

So! Today I made a banana-spirulina-peanut butter smoothie for lunch! I used flax seeds, lecithin and some stevia - no apple juice. And oh, it was good. I was definitely happy again this afternoon, and so was my tummy.

I hope this (relatively) little moose also had a happy tummy. It's chowing down on a hubbard squash our friends had left outside their house as decoration. This is when it was still 10 degrees, so the thing was frozen hard: it was impressive that he could get anything off of it at all, thunk thunk thunk. I could have reached out and touched him when I came to take the picture: he was far too busy to be bothered by me...

What comes around and eats your decorations?

Back in AK, SAF Review, Natural History Museum

We're back in AK! The journey and all associated logistics went very smoothly, it was just so long. About 27 hours in transit all told, and we gained 9 hours! It's 8.15 here in Anchorage: since we arrived at midnight local time and had left our truck some distance away at someone's house, we did what we've never done before and spent the night at a hotel! I'm at Super 8 this morning, while Phil is hiking out in the cold and snow the long distance to where our truck was stored. It was about 10 degrees Celcius when we left London: here, it's about 10 degrees Fahrenheit! So, about a foot of snow on the ground and too cold to snow more.

Phil will be glad of the hike: in London he was underexercised and always looking for more ways to bust a sweat! Here he is using a dull old planer to try and take some of the concave out of my mom's ancient cutting board.

We're not going to be home for a few days, because circumstances and appointments next week dictate that we just stay in Anchorage through next Wednesday, so we'll be home just in time for Thanksgiving! I am so ready to be home right now: I want to see how my cultures and ferments are doing, and would have loved to have had more than a day's lead time to prep for Thanksgiving jollifications. But we'll make our best of some extra days of floating here.

I'm also looking forward to getting back to work and to a more regular schedule with the blog. What that will look like is something I need to muse about some more - any advice or requests? Meanwhile, of course, there are several more review and reflection posts backed up from our time in London.

We did manage to visit the immense Whole Foods Market in High Street Kensington,

with a branch of Saf Raw Food Restaurant in the upstairs food court

Saf stands for 'simple authentic food.' So, it sounds like an ethnic title but is actually an acronym. The simple' may be misleading, though: although the food prep and dining area is all plain, austere, linear and uncluttered...

and the plating style is simple and elegant, with good color and shape contrasts and space on the plate...

...the food itself is quite a gourmet experience and was not simple to prepare by any means, I'm sure. I was attracted by a couple of salad menu options, including a very tempting raw seaweed salad, but decided that in order to really try out what they had on offer, I should get something more 'raw gourmet.' Pictured above is 'Pesto au poivre,' from the appetizer menu. It should really be called 'fromage au poivre,' as the pesto is just a small layer in the cashew cheeze. The poivre is pink peppercorns crusting the top of the cheeze. Served with a small arugula (or 'rocket,' as they call it there) salad, some raw crackers and a beautiful balsamic vinegar reduction. Simple it may look, but there's some serious lead time to produce this innocent-looking fare. The crackers were beet and flax-based and quite delicious. Thinner, crisper and more oily than my crackers, and the one that I saved to take home for my mom held its crunch very well. Close to 24 hours of dehydrating there. The cheeze: probably cultured overnight. Delicious, creamy, slightly sweet, no overwhelming spice notes. The pink peppercorns had that delicious, slightly tannic, almost citrusy note, similar to hibiscus, with the addition of a mild spiciness. None of the dryness of the palate of black pepper. The pesto was a robust, straightforward basil pesto, also delicious.

I ate the salad, most of the crackers and half the cheeze, and took the rest home to share with my mum. She loved it all, and my youngest brother (who lives with my parents) hit the cheeze pretty hard and wanted to know where he could get more. This food was delicious and nourishing to the soul as well as the body. It was expensive, though. That plate at 7 pounds 50, was a pound and a half more than it cost to go through the buffet at Vita Organic/Vantra, where you could get a whole selection of different salads, stews, etc. And the entrees at Saf, which included raw options like pad thai and cooked options like beautifully stuffed squashes, were more like thirteen pounds. They also had juices, elixirs, and a smoothie option, and a dessert menu including raw ice cream, chocolate ganache cake, berry cake. So, Saf is a very different dining experience than Vantra. I was very happy to see both of them available in London. I would imagine myself going to Saf for very special occasions and to Vantra/Vita-O more regularly.

I didn't get a dessert at Saf, tempted though I was, because I thought it would hurt my pocket too much, and I was finally in a place, at this Whole Foods, where there was a variety of raw food bars and chocolates available for purchase!

Those 'conscious' bars are raw chocolate; there were a couple of other things as well on the other side of this display. Super-expensive, but I considered it my duty to buy a couple and try them out. A few such nibbles rounded out my  lunch for the day and will be the subject of another review soon.

We wandered around the Whole Foods some more: it was really something to gawk at! A huge olive and antipasti bar, all kinds of fine wines, great rolls of grana padano and parmiggiano reggiano cheeses stacked high, and even a special little cheese shop, with closed doors to spare us the stink!

And then downstairs on the lower ground floor, a fantastic selection of beautiful produce of all kinds, mostly organic, as well as fresh fish and meat counters. A big raw foods selection, packaged and ingredients both, a 'concoct your own granola' (or 'muesli,' as it's called in the UK) in the bulk area, a chocolatier, big frozen foods section. I was impressed with the variety of non-dairy ice creams available, made from coconut, cashews, almonds and rice as well as the soy kinds. Last time I was over, there was hardly any non-dairy ice cream available.  There was a whole aisle of chocolate beside the chocolatier counter too, and it really brought home just how much more expensive raw chocolate is over there: the chocolate aisle looked positively cheap in comparison, and it was all fine artisan brands!

I wish I'd taken more pictures: it was a truly impressive shopping opportunity. The most impressive contraption that made me giggle but also widen my eyes in awe was a separate side-by-side escalator for trolleys (aka shopping carts) for going up and down in the store. For all that huge quantity of stuff that you're going to buy. Going right into the center of town to buy groceries still seems counterintuitive to me, but of course back in the day, all the markets were in the center. I ended up with several very expensive little goodies that I'll review soon. Their checkout and queue system wasn't the best: they did like they do at REI, with a single line feeding to all the cashiers, and it seemed like a lot of space devoted to queueing without any added efficiency.

We walked alongside Hyde Park and down to the Natural History Museum, where we walked around enthralled until closing-time almost three hours later! It's so many years since I'd been there, and it was just marvelous to go with Phil, who is such a lover and expert on everything naturally historical.

Here is Phil with the front end of the blue whale: one of the most impressive displays, life-size, juxtaposed with a whole gallery of mammals.

Near the back end of the blue whale, you could pick up the phone to hear what the elephant said! Too funny.

 

I need to get back to being here in Anchorage with our friends, am on someone else's computer right now, but really wanted to get this out.

Lots of love to all, and I'll be in contact and writing more.

Visiting, Shopping and Body Image, Vantra Restaurant Review

It's been a whirlwind week in and around London! We really barely stopped for a moment this past week.

We saw a gorgeous sunset on Hampstead Heath (and a very cool dead tree that looks like anything you want it to)...

We enjoyed the filtered sunlight in the tall and narrow alleyways of Winchester.

We played with a pair of delightful twins (the children of some dear old friends) who loved posing for photos and then running away as soon as I pressed the shutter: two suspiciously swollen curtains...

and playing 'horses' on Phil's knee.

We visited Phil's stepson, a wonderful, welcoming person,

and spent some time with our beautiful niece, who (of course) adores Phil too, and her parents (I am so impressed with my brother and sister-in-law. Great parents, great human beings).

Traveling around the London area with public transportation is very doable, but is also quite tiring: lots of crowds, lots of walking between stations, lots of stairs up and down, lots of noisy public address announcements... And when I went shopping in Oxford Circus with my mum, I discovered that sometimes nowadays you have to 'queue' (stand in line) just to get back into the underground (subway) station!

The underground looks older - the trains that I remember spanking new in my teens are obviously close to twenty years old now, graffiti'd and worn-out-looking. Lots of renovations and line closures at awkward moments. But I'd never seen building materials stacked under the tracks before! See all those piles of blocks?

I was ambivalent about going shopping with my mum. First of all, I'm a terrible shopper. Second, I don't like crowds. And third, and worst, I had tried on an old pair of trousers (pants) at my folks' home, that I'd worn since my early teens and wore last time I was here three years ago, and they fitted just fine, except that I couldn't do them up! Admittedly, three years ago I still weighed in the double digits, which I no longer do and which most people say I shouldn't, but this threw me for a major loop and gave me little interest in buying clothes, eating, or doing anything except crunches!

But actually, we had a great time. The shopping itself was quite smooth, despite the crowds and the rain, and I learned a funny thing about clothes sizing too. In the photo below, the pants on the left are a size larger than the pants on the right, in a different style.

The purple cords on the left, in the larger size, were tight on my waist and loose elsewhere. The black ones on the right, a size smaller, were very comfortable and quite loose around the waist! Go figure... Not surprisingly, I got the black ones - and my mum got a pair too, so we were both happy.

By the time we got done, it was long past lunchtime, and perhaps I was a little more interested in lunch with that lesson in clothing sizes. And having made you cringe a bit with that body image talk, it's time for a restaurant review! I blogged earlier about our visit to Vita Organic and how they told us that their 'raw food' operation had mostly moved to their new premises in Soho Street.

Mum and I hiked down to Soho Street to find the new place, Vantra.

Liked the look of that mission statement! Liked the young coconuts (whole, not shaved) on the bar.

But 'coming soon' is the operative term: they have a beautiful buffet featuring a lot of raw salads and also a lot of cooked vegan food with sprouts and vegetables and beautiful sauces...

...all along the window to the street, a tempting arrangement... But they don't have any of the raw gourmet stuff yet: the lasagnas, pizzas, etc: that's all 'coming soon.' They do have nut milks and smoothie options, and we got a raspberry-cacao smoothie with nut milk and sweetened with coconut crystals to go with our lunch. One time through the buffet is 6 pounds per person, no sharing. All the plates and 'silverware' are compostable/recycled (great concept, I guess, for a new, up-and-coming place not to have to do dishes on top of everything.

Here's my plate:

(mostly raw, lots of sea veggies and sprouts, but I had to try those giant cooked mushrooms and a piece of aubergine (eggplant) simmered in coconut milk). My mum's plate:

We have some similar tastes! But I wasn't sure about the gluten status of those noodles at 11 o'clock on her plate, or the creamy mixture at 2 o'clock, so stayed away on the safe side.

Naughty me for having cacao, but my mum agreed that the smoothie was delicious! They brought a bottle of agave along when they served it, in case we wanted it sweeter. It was plenty sweet just as it was (no agave for me, thanks)!

She took a pic of me too (but it's a little blurry).

It was a delicious and satisfying meal, at a pretty decent price for central London. I was thrilled that my mum really liked it too, and that she was talking about going back with various friends of hers whom she's sure will love it. It makes me so happy when I can introduce someone to something I enjoy and have them enjoy it too. However, my search for a genuine 'raw' restaurant is still unfulfilled, although if you wanted to eat purely raw at Vantra or Vita-O, they do have a very extensive selection of salads, plus the various nut milks and smoothies. I was sorry that they didn't have any raw desserts, especially since they claim to espouse a low-glycemic philosophy, but truth be told, I generally prefer smoothies anyway.

I'll share more as I can. Just a few more days here, and I'm quite tired today and hoping for some slower-paced days. Back home is snow-bound!

How are you preparing for Thanksgiving?