VeggieTalk

This past weekend, I took my older son Adam on a trip to look at colleges in Amherst, MA. The Amherst-Northampton area is home to the 5 College Consortium (consisting of U Mass, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke—a kind of paradise for us northeastern liberal types) and is in general, a very cool, progressive area.

Two of my good “food buddies” live in the area. Leslie Cerier, a vegetarian caterer, cooking instructor, and the author of several books, most recently Going Wild in the Kitchen, put us up for the night. Pictured above, a tofu chocolate mousse pie with teff crust, which she made for dessert in this pretty pie plate that I really liked. Of course, I really liked the pie, too—the crust is prebaked (you can use any favorite crust) and filled with chocolate mousse made of 1 pound pureed silken tofu and 1 3/4 cups melted vegan chocolate chips. What could be simpler? By the way, Going Wild in the Kitchen is a really lovely vegetarian cookbook, filled with innovative recipes. It has not gotten the recognition it deserves. It’s a fun book to use, warm and friendly, and most of all, the recipes are easy to make yet quite delicious. I love her blueberry cornbread!

After a brief visit to Amherst College, which did not excite Adam very much (too preppy and traditional for him), we met my friend Reed Mangels and her family for a picnic lunch on the grounds of a school where her 11-year-old daughter was playing soccer. Reed is the nutrition advisor to the Vegetarian Resource Group, a lecturer at U Mass, and a writer specializing in vegetarian nutrition (she also wrote a great foreword for my Vegetarian Family Cookbook), among other accomplishments. She laid out an tasty spread, highlighted by these “tea rolls” pictured above. Sorry about the funky photo; a menacing shadow fell across the rolls just as I took the shot! These are unusual rice rolls filled delectably with pad Thai; curried rice and tofu; lettuce, carrot, and bean-thread noodles; and a few others I can’t describe. Wow, were these tasty! I’ve really never had anything like them, as they were not quite like rice paper rolls; a little less delicate, a bit more substantial, and altogether a smashing treat. They were from a place called Fresh Side on Amity Street in Amherst.

If Adam ends up in Amherst (he especially loved Hampshire College), it would be comforting for me, with these two friends nearby. Ironically, Leslie’s daughter is looking at colleges in my area. So I told her that if she ends up here, we can be Guest Moms for each other’s college kids.

A few days ago, after visiting my brother in New Jersey, my family and I decided to stop at a Whole Foods Market, which we don’t have near us. I always think how fun it would be to have one nearby, but after this visit, I’m almost glad I don’t have that particular temptation. This is just the sort of “fun food field trip” I love, but this time, it seemed more like a regular supermarket than I had remembered.

First of all, perhaps at this particular branch (let me know what your nearby Whole Foods do in this department), there was a lot of produce, but so little of it was organic. What’s the big deal, then? The produce department at my local Mother Earth’s is a fraction of the size, but everything is organic, so I don’t have to waste a lot of time looking at signs designating “conventional,” “transitional,” and organic.

Since we’d be getting home around 7 pm, we decided to pick up some prepared foods for dinner. I picked up what I thought would be the makings of a nice meal that I could just pop out of the containers: Cashew curried rice, broiled tofu steaks, white gazpacho, and blueberry muffins. It all looked so nice on the plate, but most everything was so unpalatable that most of it will go uneaten. The rice was dry, but salvageable once I put a little water in it and warmed it up. The tofu steaks were topped with, not a layer of flavor, but a layer of charcoal. The white gazpacho had a grainy almond base, though it was supposed to be made with white beans, and aside from cucumber, contained nothing but tons of raw onion and garlic, which I loathe. The blueberry muffins tasted like pastries from the sixties, you know, the kind that taste like bricks and mortar. Oh, dear, they were not good for more than one bite.

Since most of this healthy looking dinner was inedible, I quickly made some hummus, and made some wraps with lettuce and tomato. We had, luckily, picked up some good whole wheat wraps, nice and soft, so the wraps came out quite yummy.

How about you? How has your experiene been with Whole Foods Market? Do you think its nickname, Whole Paycheck, is fitting? Have you had any similar experience with the prepared foods, or have your experiences been better than mine?