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Vibrant is as Vibrant Does
Mile End Wheat Grass smoothie, Le Saint-Viateur (Berries, yogourt, etc) and Blushing Beauty- celery, apple and beet juice
For many of the days between Oct. 4th and 16th 2011, I subbed in for Valerie Legge at her juice bar Ô Jus in Mile End on the corner of Park Avenue and St-Viateur. She is the owner of Ô Jus, and she is also a life-coach who was recently in Germany and Italy giving a Coaching conference. Valerie is a Buddhist-inspired Vegetarian, Life-coaching Sagittarius inside and outside of Ô Jus. Her values translate directly into the business she opened. She has a philosophical attitude to starting and running her business; she spreads nutrition and good cheer. She makes delicious fresh juices and smoothies, home-made baking, paninis and soups and has a variety of high end hot chocolate, cereal coffee, teas and tisanes and coffee. She also has wheat-grass, all natural protein powder, organic lavender and home-made sorbet to complete her repertoire.
Valerie Legge- owner, life-coach, vegetarian, Sagittarius
Every time I work at Ô Jus, I get out of there feeling invigorated. Valerie has made a space that gives off positive vibes and attracts good souls. People gravitate to Ô Jus because they are vigilant about their health and what they put in their bodies, because they want something delicious to feel good, because they want to work on the computers or soak in the sun from the terrace or the front window or because they just want to talk and be around Valerie or in the store’s colourful atmosphere.
Wall of monitors at Ô Jus
View on Park Avenue
Valerie’s soups are comforting in the cold and always have an exotic twist: red lentil and coconut, chick pea, curry and mint, sweet potato, carrot, orange and ginger. She makes decadent and nourishing energy balls with dates, nuts, seeds and many things I can’t tell you…She also always has home-made muffins like banana and chocolate chip, Mindfulness muffins and lavender and lemon muffins. Her Cosmic Cookies attract regulars and are as delicious as a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie but with so much more: dried fruit, coconut, seeds, etc. They are dense and intense and very addictive…
The Colours and the tastes
Valerie has also allowed me to give workshops about detox regimes with a focus on juicing and smoothies and a workshop about high-protein home-made smoothies without protein powders: some vegan and some not. Workshops to come include Food and Mood and happy juices and smoothies (Nov. 29th, 2011) and green smoothies (Jan 2012). They are enjoyable and are an extension of the juice bar being a life-style institution and not simply an economic endeavour.
Workshop about detox dieting in 2010
I enjoyed the simplicity of working at Ô Jus, baking and making soup at a slow pace, taking in the heady smells. I also enjoyed the friendliness and curiosity of the clients who embrace health and well-being and share themselves. People chatted me up and exchanged business cards and ideas readily. This is particular to Mile End, I believe, and Ô Jus fits right in. In Mile End, for many, it is reasonable, even preferable, to take care of one’s body and live in a thoughtful manner. Health foods and nutrition are not for extra-terrestrials. It seems to beMontreal’s diet for a small planet mecca. There is junk food around like there is everywhere, but at Ô Jus, there were parents taking their kids for a fresh-pressed juice as a treat – new values are being nourished!
Workshop participants- detoxers for life!
Feel free to stop in to Ô Jus (5443 Park Ave.) and taste the fare. Get to know Valerie and open-up to the world where zen is common-place: celebrating the richness of the moment and the wonderful and simple treasures the Earth has to offer.
Ô Jus (5443 Park Ave.)
Conserving Autumn: Canning, Fermenting and Salting it!
Hot vegetables in brine, pickled spiced beets, salted herbs and ketchup
The weekend of October 21st to the 23rd was spent canning, salting and starting vegetables fermenting. Friday the 21st of October, Judith Colombo, elite member of the 4 COINS DE LA TABLE dinner club for […]
Hot vegetables in brine, pickled spiced beets, salted herbs and ketchup
Conserving Autumn: Canning, Fermenting and Salting it!
Hot vegetables in brine, pickled spiced beets, salted herbs and ketchup
The weekend of October 21st to the 23rd was spent canning, salting and starting vegetables fermenting. Friday the 21st of October, Judith Colombo, elite member of the 4 COINS DE LA TABLE dinner club for many years, went into the fields of D-Trois Pierres in Cap-St-Jacques and harvested cases of vegetables and herbs for the dinner club to transform. She is the agricultural co-ordinator of the largest organic farm on the island of Montreal, and, although she said this was a terrible year, boy she grew some beautiful vegetables. We had picked the date 3 weeks prior, and it was the very end of the season and the organic food hampers. Each member of the dinner club planned and brought the ingredients to transform a vegetable or two. Judith made a salsa with the tomatoes, peppers, onions and hot peppers. Jeremy made swiss chard in a highly seasoned lemon and garlic oil and vegetables and hot peppers in brine. Suzanne, Tisha and Majiza (mother and daughters) made sweet and spicy beets and started a beet sauerkraut, Ameur salted herbs, Gisèle pickled root vegetables and Mario (my blog techie) made a Portuguese tomato jam with porto and cinnamon. I bought some apples and nectarines and used the farm’s onions, celery and tomatoes to make catsup aux fruits (fruit ketchup). When I got home, I started a cabbage sauerkraut and a kale kimchi fermenting.
some of the beautiful vegetables Judith Colombo grew at D-Trois Pierres
We made 72 jars of stuff in an evening, and 3 buckets of cellar vegetables are still fermenting. It was a party of abundance, marking the changing of the seasons, and it was heart-warming to send each other off with a dozen jars for each household. The preserves are not only useful and delicious, but a reminder of the seasons, local production and the people that made the preserves with love.
Nectarines and tomatoes scalding in order to peel.
Just like in the old school
We were also reminded of how much work agricultural life entailed back in the day. We canned from 4pm to midnight, and we were numerous. However, a woman doing it by herself after milking the cows, tending the fields, cooking and caring for her children…I can guarantee she didn’t have time to complain about the change in temperature or ponder what to do with her life. Like back in the day, all of the women did all of the organizing, delegating tasks, gathering mason jars and were ready to work when they got there. The girls started work at 4pm, Judith around 1pm picking the vegetables and the guys trickled in around 6:30, 7 o’clock ready to drink beer. Jeremy knew what the work entailed as he does product transformation for Wing Noodle, but the other guys insisted we were there “to have a good time”. At the end of the night, everyone was wiped, but we were really happy with what we’d done. I think some actually realized that, although it was work, work does not always mean suffering. It is actually key in developing one’s sense of purpose, accomplishment and self-esteem. When you make the effort, you get the pay-off. Avoiding the effort is even more painful than digging-in. It is also nice to attack the work as a group, make a party out of it and help the other with their task. Each person has different strengths to offer.
Cabbage Patch- Mommy is that where sauerkraut comes from?
The canning was not done. I had a workshop with the Réseau d’Entraide de Verdun as well. We went out to D-Trois Pierres (in Cap-St-Jacques) the morning of Sunday October 23rd and picked carrots, beets, cabbage, herbs, rutabagas, white turnips, and some green tomatoes. There were 2 families and an individual. There was a buzz in the air. It’s exciting getting out of the city, and it was beautiful out. When we got back to the Réseau d’Entraide de Verdun, we made a fast sauerkraut, catsup aux fruits (fruit ketchup), salted herbs and pickled beets.
I loosening carrots from the ground
Some of the people that came out had never been to a farm before, and, before they came to the farm, some of the kids didn’t really understand that a carrot grew under the ground. They were mesmerized by the farm animals and just generally enraptured by the countryside. As with the dinner club, they also found out that a day of picking vegetables and conserving them is really hard work. Surprisingly, the kids out-toughed the adults, and it was a really magical…and productive day.
La verdure
First time Canners
Ladybugs that followed us back to Verdun, at one point we realized there was about twenty of them on the fluorescent lights at Réseau d'Entraide
Rosy cheeks- a little tired, still going hard
The weekend of Oct. 21st to the 23rd was a work sprint like in the old school. It didn’t pay, but it stocked the shelves in quite a few pantries for winter and got together dear friends from the dinner club and other Verdun citizens that wanted to learn to preserve the fruit, vegetable and herb fall bounty. We were put back in contact with the Earth, and we remembered where vegetables come from, that people grow and harvest them and the work that goes into transporting and preparing them. It ended up being a celebration of the seasons and a breath of fresh air and solidarity. Stay tuned for more cooking parties of the sort.
The troops on the move
I've never seen so much Catsup aux Fruits in my Life!
Modern Canning
I have been organizing a dinner club for the last 8 and a half years. What is a dinner club you say? Well, MY dinner club goes like this! We are a bunch of friends joined through our common interest in cooking, eating and trying new things. But what do we do? We get together […]
Normandy theme dinner December 2010
I have been organizing a dinner club for the last 8 and a half years. What is a dinner club you say? Well, MY dinner club goes like this! We are a bunch of friends joined through our common interest in cooking, eating and trying new things. But what do we do? We get together one Sunday a month and each individual, duo or team has a task to complete for the dinner. The tasks rotate each month. What are the tasks? The first task is to make the main meal, decide the theme and find a place to host the dinner. The theme is usually a geographic region, but can be other things like: raw, vegan, mezze, local and in season, etc. The other tasks are: appetizers, salad, soup, culinary history/thematic music/thematic activity/thematic story, bread and condiments, dessert and drinks corresponding to the theme. There 12 real members right now and a few auxiliary members (boyfriends and girlfriends) that come once in awhile.
I started the dinner club in January 2003 and we have since done the themes: Local and in season, Louisiana, California, Maryland, the deep South, Amerindian, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, England, France, Brittany, Normandy, Italy, Southern Italy, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Gypsy, Spain, Tapas, Morocco, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Syria, Iran, Israel, Turkey, India, Greece, Russia, China banquet-style, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Korea, North Korea, the Mediterranean, Detox, raw, vegan, Tex-Mex, murder mystery, sugar shack, bento box, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, beer and the Middle Ages and many more.
Stuffing capon for the Mediterranean dinner
The dinner club is one of the things that brings me the most joy in the world. It’s like a tasting fest once a month. You have to do research to complete your task- so you get new ideas, play with unfamiliar ingredients and become acquainted with the stores to buy them. The dinner club puts you out of your comfort zone, and after completing your task, you get to taste everyone else’s stuff, and hear about how they made it. It’s like a trip to another time place or pop culture zone. It’s also fun to eat like a king and do it in good company. Dinner club has also become my surrogate family since all my family is in B.C.. The regularity, the ritual of everyone presenting their dishes, the games and sharing food is conducive to fraternity and gemütlichkeit.
Why world domination? Well, you can go anywhere in an evening or with a theme. The sky is the limit. We celebrated our 8th anniversary by eating in the metro, but I’ll talk about that another time.It is also a club that brings together all kinds of talents and perspectives around a table. We have a noodle and sauce maker/Martial Arts Guru (Jeremy), one of the best waiters in Montréal (Phil), a web page designer/street artist/experimental musician (Françis), an agronomist (Judith), a biological statistician/agronomist (Ameur), comic book artist (J-P), Chef/Hip-Hop and Tap teacher (Majiza), Care Aid (Suzanne), Family go-to person at the hospital (Tisha), web page designer (Martin), DJ/Computer technician (Mario), and a free-lance Chef and cooking workshop coordinator (me). We also have many cultural backgrounds: the Islands, the ghetto, Berber, Portugese, Québecois, West coast, Chinese. Really, if we put all our super powers together, I think we could take over tomorrow. We also deliberately take time to do the things we love: eat, cook, dance, play and fool around. Dinner club is structured but it is the anti-grind.
At one point we had a geo cities web site called the Food Exchangeists which may be revived. Our slogan was Some Want to Eat, Some want to Talk, Some Want More. We thought if we presented it as a swinger’s club, we’d get more traffic. Unfortunately, we didn’t feed it and geo cities shut down.
Pork roast with andouille, cider and veggies for the Norman dinner
Sounds like fun? It is, but it wasn’t always stable. I have to admit it wasn’t my idea either. My Mom had a dinner club when I was little, and they only did 4 dinners because it was too hard to get people to come regularly. I was marked by those dinners. I started my own in 2003. I was 20 years-old and it was while I was doing Canadian Studies at McGill before I worked in the industry. There was like 14 of us, but within a year, there was only four of us and it was like that for about six months. The numbers would go up to 16 then drop to six or eight, but I would say that there has been a minimum of 10 people at each dinner for the last four years. The most stable members (the core) have been coming for about five years. If you don’t have the commitment or passionate people, you really can’t develop the concept, you can only get by and do the minimum. Since the members have been more stable, we’ve been able to do folk story sketches, play games and people aren’t stingy either about their contribution.
For the fall of 2010, we had two French girls with us: Amélie and Véro, one Normande and one Bretonne. In December 2010 before returning to France, they hosted Normandy and had food brought from France. We had the dinner at Nuart Café and it was amazing. The food was wonderful and we were on a high: they were leaving, we acted out Norman folktales, I had just started my business Les 4 Coins de la Table and I was starting to embrace my newly single life. I announced that in January 2011, it was dinner club’s 8 year anniversary. We had to do something epic. Françis had suggested eating in a metro train a few years ago, and I threw it out there. Maybe it was the trou Norman but there was hype in the air. Everyone raised their glasses “in” and we were all screaming with excitement. LET”S DO IT! ON LE FAIS! AAAHHHH!!!
If you have questions, comments or suggestions about Dinner Club, don’t hesitate to contact me. You can contact me if you would like to start your own.
