Whats Fa Dinna?

last night we had dinner at Vegetarian Paradise 2, on W 4th street. It’s right next to Red Bamboo, which I haven’t tried yet, but both are owned by the same people, and they both serve totally yummy fake meat pan-asian/soul food fusion. Or something. It’s kinda junk-foody, definitely heavy on the gluten, but mad delicious. We split a scallion pancake, which was very cakelike and tasty, and an order of General Tso’s “chicken.” I thought the Tso’s was decent, but didn’t really have the punch I expect. It was much tangier and more citrusy than I’m used to for that dish, but my expectactions are based on getting really cheap ghetto Chinese food General Tso’s tofu, corn syrup, peanut oil, MSG and all.

This dish was definitely more lovingly prepared than those usually are, but they could hold some love- like putting cut up celery and cucumbers in a hot dish! WHO DOES THAT?!? Otherwise it was good, and we two did not even finish it all so there are leftovers. Tso-tally awesome.

I’d go back to Veg Paradise- the service was exceptionally friendly and fast, ambiance was unobtrusive and relaxed, except for the drop of water that periodically condensed on the ceiling and fell on my head. They didn’t pressure us to buy drinks or dessert, and didn’t mind that we were splitting an entree. All in all, very cool.

Here’s what is not so cool: Late last night, we discovered cockroaches in the apartment, which almost sent me into a catatonic fugue state. We smashed about 20 very tiny baby roaches that appeared to be hatching before our eyes from the faucet fixture, many more escaped, including a larger, more developed baby that scrambled up behind the cupboards. The roaches must have been feasting on the tiny bits of food stuck in our drain catch.

Sick. more on that later, I’m sure.

So after a fitful night’s sleep of digesting pure wheat gluten, and having nightmares about roaches crawling into my ears, I slept in and grabbed a delicious Polish donut from the bakery for my ride to work. I intend to finish my unremarkable egg salada sandwich, with the health bread and the sundried tomatoes, for lunch.

I have been peeling through my bookshelves lately, trying to settle on something to actually read cover to cover. One of my failed attempts was a macrobiotic primer, written for American idiots by an American idiot who found it his calling to interpret the will of Macro-God Michio Kushi. So I gave up on that book pretty quickly, but not without trying, for half a day, to do the good work of Kushi and eat macrobiotically.

I should add that I think macrobiotics is amazing, a great idea for anyone to try if they are unsatisfied with their health, mood, outlook or appearance. I loosely kept the diet for almost two months and ever since I have tried to base my diet on whole grain foods, fresh vegetables and soyfoods. A year of employment in a fancy French-style bakery-café put a significant damper on that. But nobody’s perfect, and now that I’m a 9-5er I have much more control over my diet once again. Also with the Hearty Roots veggie order coming in full swing every two weeks, we have a vast supply of local, organic produce.

So anyway. I went to the health food store near my work, found pre-made macro vegetarian noodle and rice dishes which weren’t all that expensive, and tried one out. It was delicious seasoned brown rice with vegges and seaweeds and smoked TVP or tofu floating around in there. I had that for lunch, then remembered the Jarlsburg, romesco and arugula sandwich I had packed in my bag. Drat. I had that as an afternoon snack, completely negating any attempt to reduce caloric intake, eat only pure, whole foods, and avoid dairy. This delicious and seemingly healthy sandwich broke all the laws of macrobiotics.

So anyway, that was that. The next day I had leftover tofu scramble and rice (not bad, not bad) that we made Sunday morning after a long and steamy hunt through Ridgewood, NY for some tofu. Flashback to Sunday: We discovered tofu at the Stop n Shop on Myrtle Ave, past Fresh Pond, along with scads of other delicious, exhuberant fake meats like Gimme Lean! and SmartBacon. We had a total bean feast that day- tofu scramble with tempeh bacon chopped up in it, black beans, toast. Then we went to a vegan BBQ down the street and ate smart dogs and portobello burgers. I wanted to barf all over the place and felt especially bloated on Monday, but damn, fake meat tastes good and i don’t do it all that much.

Fast forward to the present (actually, past- it’s Thursday!) evening (Tuesday) we had a light dinner at Bonobo’s Vegetarian restaurant, a raw vegan café in Gramercy. It’s pricey, terribly lit, sterile and the hum of the machines in there makes me immediately tweak out and get psycho, but they make a delicious salad and you can get all kinds of weird, delicious “nutmeat” pates and patties and things all up on it. I like the food there so much but I always feel a little bit funny afterwards, like I’m the guy in that movie Altered States and because I’m depriving my body/mind/mouth of the usual bad-for-me things, I’m sort of slowly reverting into a moneylike state. I guess that’s the idea of calling a place Bonobo’s. So we ate that, and of course, a few hungry hours later in the same neighborhood, found ourselves scarfing multiple orders of fries from the infinitely more romantic Shake Shack.

So much for macrobiotic eating.