Potluck Galore

I’m still Soooo busy; Working on various projects, cooking up a storm at work and at home, hosting CouchSurfers, biking around (in the rain…), getting government papers and IDs renewed, and starting my “stage” at the Cafe L’Artere now too! It’s a co-op cafe that serves healthy food, showcases local artist’s works and hosts various events – I haven’t been yet but it sounds awesome! It’s located at 7000 Avenue du Parc, near the Jarry park (yay!) and I’ll be there for the next two weeks. If they like me, they’ll keep me, but I still plan on, hope to, work my last week at the Cuisine Collective… I’ll miss that place! Anyway, I have to go to bed really soon but I wanted to atleast get one post up for you all, so this one’s on the potlucks that have happened since!

Michael was leaving for 3 weeks to the Maritimes to play gigs in various towns, with various people, and he wanted to host a bad-@$$ potluck before he left. The theme? Asian potluck, deep-fried goods galore. With his rice and beer batter, he deep-fried perogies, vegetables, octopus (!!) and, the most intriguing to me, zucchini flowers. The latter was kind of soggy but still tasty.

With some truly amazing wakame seaweed marinated in sesame oil, Michael and I also made a variety of vegetable sushi (with pickled beets! Amazing.) A coworker of mine brought a refreshing cilantro salad, and others brought stir-fried veggies and noodles, springrolls, and, hmmm, something else…

The day before I had made a pie with a super-easy crust recipe (which I will refine and share with you all, hopefully soon!), some peach and prune slices rescued from the Jean-Talon market, and topped with seasoned oats. It’s obviously not Asian-related but I figured I’d pass it here. Pies are one of the things I really don’t have much experience with but, besides the canola oil which had a slight rancid taste, it was super tasty, was real pretty, and held together well.

I’ve yet to write about the “Champ d’Impossible”, but it’s a truly wonderful place. We held another potluck at the garden one evening and it was just splendid.There’s something special about eating outdoors on a nice evening with a bunch of nice people.

And delicious food! Wow, we all ate sooo much, we were still acheing the next morning… But it was so good! I brought over curried tofu scramble and some funky purple macarons gone wrong, Michael made the most beautiful rainbow-colored potato salad (again, with pickled beets!) and topped them with nestertions (sp???) – A pretty, edible orange flower, hot and sweet to taste. Other goodies shared were a quinoa salad, brandy-induced banana bread (made with magic!), hummus, a plate of bread, cheese, cherry tomatoes and basil, and looooove~. This was so wonderful that I decided to take the reins and plan to host some potlucks at the garden in the future, regularly.

It didn’t take long before the first one was in motion, even though I had lots of friends and strangers who informed me they’d love to but couldn’t make it – What a busy weekend! A total of 9 showed up, some originally coming from countries across the ocean, and it was yet again another wonderful feast. Nearby a group of people started building a firepit, a bbq! What an awesome idea. I’m already thinking vegetable kabobs… On top of that, they plan to do movie screenings there. I was glad to see someone else bring their guitar along. There wasn’t much of a jam but it was still pleasant, and I’m sure it’ll build up with time. Yep, I plan on doing this regularly, probably every two weeks, and maybe even every week, I dunno, it would give me a good excuse to go out to the garden, relax, eat outdoors, chat with other people, play some music… So far these potlucks have been very general, but I think it’d be fun to have themese once in a while, as well as a couple of raw vegan events. We’ll see. I’m thinking of trying it out on Thursday evenings too, since people usually make plans to go out on Friday nights. So… Stay tuned for future events!

Potlucks are just so awesome… Not only for the obvious of sharing delicious, intersting food, but meeting new people. At the Asian-themed potluck I got the chance to meet a woman who plays the guitar and sings just so beautifully. In a short span of thirty minutes she shared some tips with me and gave me some confidance to start practicing. At the last potluck I met a man who’s really into eating healthy and so we’ve decided to regularly get together and cook up some raw vegan food. Tonight we made some scrumptious pesto with sundried tomatoes, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, along with cheesy kale chips. I’ve been reinspired into the raw-food groove (Purna, you should be happy to hear this!) and am going to dream about zucchini pasta tonight… Goodnight!

About these ads