Montreal "Raw" Potluck

Montreal's "Raw" Foodist Potluck was the first thing I did when I got back to Montreal from Newfoundland. This wasn't some kind of New Year's Resolution to eat better or meet new, interesting people, but it just seemed like a good opportunity to learn more about "raw" food. I learned a little, but mostly I was overwhelmed by salads. I was expecting lots of heavy, interesting, nut-based dehydrated desserts that resembled cooked pastas and lasagnas, but for the most part the wide array of colourful vegetables were not dressed up as something they weren't (my biggest complaint with vegetarian restaurants and vegetarian food in general).

The pictures speak for themselves:

Nut-Paté Sushi with beets, carrots, and sprouts

The potluck took place at the Crudessence loft, an absolutely gorgeous kitchen and living room area with warm, wood decor and floor-to-ceiling glass windows where Crudessence teaches its raw food cooking classes. The colours of the food and the view from the window was the same feeling of visual rapture as walking into an impressionist art gallery.

Fruit Salad with Nut Milk, Honeydew melons, and green smoothie with banana

The fruit salads were served with dinner, while the "true desserts" (raw cakes and treats) were served after the meal. I don't think this corresponds with the raw food concept that fruit shouldn't be eaten with the meal. In fact they handed up a juicing guide at the even when you entered the room that explained that juicing is sometimes better than blending because the nutrients are much more easily absorbed and your digestion isn't slowed down by the fibre in the blended vegetables or fruit. Mostly it was referring to vegetable juices, though, as the sugar content of fruit juices is much higher than the pamphlet recommended to be having regularly. So if these fruit as going to be sitting in your stomach, fermenting while they wait for their turn to digest, they should probably be eaten 30 minutes before the meal. But that's no fun.

Beet salads,  sprouted lentils with lemon and nama shoyu, carrot slaws. Plain shiitake mushrooms with lacklustre tomatoes were my only disappointing find

My favourite salad (on the bottom) with fresh pomegranate seeds. I never buy them because organic pomegranates (and even non-oranic ones) cost a fortune and have a ridiculous carbon footprint...though every "raw" dessert I love uses imported Medjool dates, and my pecans certainly weren't local...or my lemons in the pecan-cranberry spread. I'm a "raw" food, locavore cheat...

Later in the evening the cakes came out. There weren't enough, and the ravenous
hordes of mostly not-"Raw" foodists stood in line for tiny spoonfuls of deliciously tangy "cheesecakes" and coconut soy ice cream. Fortunately, a spoonful of those cashew-rich concoctions is basically a whole serving. There were even daifuku (Japanese sweet bean desserts with cooked rice flour, beans, and refined sugar!). That's like bringing a meat dish to a vegetarian. Why would someone do that? Then the soy ice cream...everyone loved it, but seriously? I really don't think it was made from milk from soaked and blended soy beans...

Still there was more than enough food to go around (though a lot of dishes disappointingly ran out before everyone had tried some...A lot of people were surprisingly not into sharing). A late addition of zucchini pasta in pesto was more in line with what I had expected. The noodles were beautifully spiralized but the dish unfortunately tasted like nothing but water and fibre.

My biggest disappointment was how packed it was. You couldn't move and I felt a little xenophobically claustrophobic. I'm not really xenophobic and I'm not really claustrophobic, but something combines a feeling of being trapped in a suffocating crowd of people is the gist of it. I don't know if the potluck was full of people with New Years resolutions to eat better, but just thought it would be fun to come to a "raw" potluck, but it seems like the Montreal community of people who are actually "raw" is very small. most people had taken a cooking class from Crudessence once and either ate partly raw, mostly raw, or just vegetarian. There weren't enough seats and the waiting in line for food was as bad as the running out of certain dishes.

When I mentioned to someone I eat some kinds of meat and fish depending on how they're raised, where they come from, ho they're killed, etc. she said, "I don't know if we can be friends anymore," BUT SHE WAS KIDDING! (Mostly). Honestly, the people here were VERY nice and it was fun to speak with people who at least think about the benefits of eating healthily but enjoying quality food. It was not culinary nirvana and it would not convert a carnivore to serious lifestyle changes, but you eat with your eyes first, and my eyes were full. My stomach quickly followed.