Vegan Mofo Day 19: falling behind...

The last few days have been rough. I had been feeling much better for a while, and then relapsed quite badly on Sunday/Monday (probably due to lowered vigilance re: food, particularly at restaurants). My naturopath had advised me to cut out onions, grapefruit, and oranges, and not to try reintroducing anything until I was totally stable; she also prescribed phosphorus as part of a homeopathic treatment. I was falling all these recommendations carefully and feeling better, and then in a fit of stupidity ate some "mystery hummus" at a restaurant, and the next day some veggie Pad Thai, again with sauce ingredients undisclosed.

The only thing worse than feeling gross is knowing you brought it on yourself. I saw my naturopath again today and she advised avoiding restaurant eating wherever possible, not eating anything if I don't know its precise ingredients, and... finding strategies to manage my anxiety.

Talk about terrible timing! This weekend I am presenting at AND co-organizing a huge workshop for 20 major scholars in my field flying in from all around Canada. I have hostessing duties, organizational duties, and my own paper to worry about, not to mention needing to remain alert and intelligent for two 12-hour-long days of intensive paper-workshopping with some scary-smart people. The whole event is catered because the days are so long. I've done my best to make sure everyone's dietary restrictions are accommodated, including my own, but I will not have detailed ingredient lists and I know that I should be bringing rice and veggies from home rather than risking it, but I know equally that I absolutely do not have the time. Wishing for a rice cooker right now...

Vegan Mofo Day 17: blender madness!!!

My new food processor has opened a whole new world of smoothies for me. I have always been a smoothie fan. A BIG smoothie fan. But now I realize that I've been doing it wrong. Because these smoothies are something else entirely. So smooth, so creamy, light and fluffy and just so incredible that I would happily eat them for every meal, forever. (That may not be true, but it's close.)

My current favourite (pictured below, two mornings in a row, and YES I eat them in bed) is mango, banana, and spinach. The first day I froze the banana; the second day I froze the banana and the mango and it took things into a whole new world of ice-cream-for-breakfast goodness. I've been eating these before my workout and finding them the perfect light breakfast. Tomorrow I'm not working out until the evening so I'm going to try thickening it up with some Vega and maybe some ground flax seeds.

(kind of looks like a bowl of guacamole; kind of tastes like heaven)

I've also been finding exciting uses for the beautiful raw walnut butter that me and my best friend the food processor made together. I adapted Chocolate-Covered Katie's single-serving pumpkin muffin by adding in a tbsp of oats, swapping out the pumpkin for roasted butternut squash, and probably quintupling the spices. I baked 'er up in a ramekin and topped it with raw walnut butter and Eden Organics' crazy-tasy Organic Apple Cherry Butter. The result was kind of insanely delicious.

(seriously)

Vegan Mofo Day 15: a juicy day in the big city

Just look at that ruby red juice! Okay, I may have enhanced the colour a bit, but only so that the image would match the taste.

Last night I caught up with some friends from my undergrad in Toronto, where we spent the night lounging in a schmancy hotel room and drinking all the wine, followed by a day of shopping and good veggie eats on Queen West. Unfortunately I have once again failed miserably to document my beautiful food, which is a shame, because the gluten free vegan banana nut pancakes at Fresh were enormous and divine, but had nothing on the tapas, appetizers, and cocktails we shared at Fressen (marinated olives, jicama mango salad, baba ganoush, and an asparagus bundle--"Steamed bundled asparagus on a bed of warm herbed quinoa with a light cream sauce and miso hemp butter" omg yum).

So instead this gorgeous Immune Boost juice (carrot, beet, apple, ginger, vitamin C, and echinacea) will have to serve as a metonym for the entire weekend.

Vegan Mofo Day 13: my new toy

I finally did it. I finally bought myself the food processor of my dreams.

I am so in love. I found it at Costco for an outrageously reasonable price. It's a Cuisinart 12-cup Food Processor, with a 10 year warranty and the kind of engine that dreams are made of.

So far I have made:

• breakfast soft serve (pictured below): frozen banana, frozen mixed berries, and Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer
• raw walnut butter: straight up walnuts blended into rich buttery goodness
• nooch sauce: nutritional yeast, raw almonds and pumpkin seeds, tahini, dijon mustard, and lemon juice
• chocolate berry soft serve: a cup of berries pureed with cocoa powder

Everything is coming out perfectly smooth and creamy and incredible. I am beside myself with delight. Seriously. I CANNOT STOP BLENDING THINGS. It's like the first weeks of my Bamix all over again. I think I might have a kitchen accessory fetish. Unfortunately this means that my brand new mandolin is getting very little attention. Next week I'm going to have to make some mandolin-friendly recipes to help it feel more welcome in my kitchen. It matches the Bamix, after all. 

(breakfast soft serve)

(my happy little food processing family)

Vegan Mofo Day 12: leftovermania!

Holy frustrating. I wrote a version of this post last night in bed, but when I hit "Publish" something went wrong (don't ask me, I'm not a computer) and the whole thing got deleted. So this version is a day late and a dollar short.

Monday was a day of tying of loose ends at the parents' place. We started making plans for Christmas, I managed to see my brother for a brief lunch visit, I spent an hour retrieving my things from where they had inevitably been scattered over the entire house... and of course we did our best to use up the weekend's leftovers. The 'rents are leaving on Friday for a three week tour in Ireland (LUCKY) and the last thing they want is a fridge full of weird vegan leftovers.

And so we have: Pumpkin Smoothies

There are a ton of recipes for these floating around the internets right now, and I can't claim that mine is the most delicious, but I will claim that it was EXTREMELY delicious. Of course I don't have a real recipe because I cook by putting things in a vessel (blender, pot, etc.) and tasting until I like it, but I can approximate. It was simple, rich, and filling (and felt like drinking a milkshake for breakfast).

Ingredients (serves 3):
3 cups pumpkin puree (home cooked, so waterier than canned)
2 super-ripe bananas
3 tbsp almond butter
3-4 tbsp flax meal
pumpkin pie spices to taste
almond milk added to reach desired consistency

For dinner we had a big mess o' leftover goodness.

Clockwise from the top: kale, asparagus, and red peppers, sauteed in a little olive oil with fresh garden mini-leeks and sesame seeds; "Thanksgiving risotto"; leftover spaghetti squash with slow roasted tomato sauce.

The Thanksgiving risotto -- as a friend has dubbed it -- was a culinary revelation. So fast! So delicious! So exactly what I want to eat every day forever! I had a leftover tub of long-grain white rice cooked in veggie broth, half a sweet potato, and some roasted zucchini that was basically squash puree (and could be easily replaced with pumpkin, though the zucchini was nice and light). Basically I threw it all in a pot (in roughly equivalent proportions) and cooked on medium, adding lots of water as I went to get everything really creamy. I flavoured it with rosemary, cinnamon, ginger, and a splash of maple syrup, then added in a fistful each of dried cranberries and walnuts. If we hadn't already had kale on the side I would have added in some diced kale leaves or something else green (you may be able to detect a few green flecks in the photo -- there was a little kale in the rice to being with).

Did I mention that this was so so good? In fact, the whole meal was a taste medley of semi-epic proportions. I heart leftovers.

Vegan Mofo Day 10: now we're cooking with gas!

This is a saying my Dad particularly likes. According to the Urban Dictionary it means:

"Efficiently performing a task after a long period of inefficient performance or possibly failed attempts at the entire task or certain steps in the process."

 So, I am officially now cooking with gas, which is to say, cooking up a storm and taking plenty of pictures.

I always cook more when I'm visiting family. They provide the groceries and I provided the meals; it's sort of been an unofficial family policy since I went vegan. Waffles are a particular family favourite, and we've had many variations, but we just keep coming back to pumpkin (not least because of the giant pumpkin my stepmom baked and has packaged away in the freezer in a dozen plastic tubs of goodness).

These babies are based on the near-legendary PPK recipe, with the important difference that I was working with Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pancake Mix, and thus started with three cups of the mix in place of all the dry ingredients. I was a little nervous about the results, but they were incredible: crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, perfectly spicy and pumpkiny and delicious.

(Waiting to be saved from the waffle iron.)

(Keeping warm in the oven.)

(The last scoop of batter ready to go.)

(Spread with leftover pumpkin pudding and drizzled with maple syrup.)

Dinner was the results of our roadside grocery shopping. I roasted a lovely spaghetti squash, and then roughly reinterpreted Vegan Dad's Spaghetti Squash with Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce.

I skipped the vermouth and leeks because we were keeping things simple, and added a big fistful of end-of-season basil from the garden. Dad added meatballs to his; I accompanied it with two grilled portobellos. The result was a totally gourmet-tasting feast of seasonal produce. The roasting of the tomatoes and garlic really brought out their sweetness. I added some roast-giant-zucchini at the end, which thickened the sauce up beautifully. Of course we had more pumpkin for dessert. Squash and squash with a side of squash? Don't mind if I do!

Vegan Mofo Day 9: thanksgiving in photos

I'm spending the weekend visiting my parents in scenic Kemptville, and enjoying plenty of down-time and the uncanny combination of changing leaves and unseasonably warm weather. Dare I say best Thanksgiving weather ever? We had our big family dinner at my stepmother's family's cabin, which was nice because a) we didn't have to host, b) I managed to avoid spending a lot of time around a turkey carcass, and c) I could bring all my own food and because they're used to my dietary peculiarities they don't ever bother commenting anymore! In fact nobody even voices curiosity about what I'm eating, they just let me go my merry vegan way while descending into their own food comas. Because yesterday was beautiful and I actually had my iPhone in alert, today's post is going to be a mini photo journal.

(breakfast: "Scottish" [aka steelcut] oats with banana and pumpkin seed butter)

(walking to the "island" with Elvis [the poodle])

(local flora given a helping hand -- or stick -- by my father)

(Elvis enjoying the lookout)

On the way to the cabin we stopped at a little roadside vegetable stand and bought some produce for Sunday night dinner. Nobody was tending the stand: a sign asked up to use the "honour system." Love it! Almost as much as I love a giant $0.50 zucchini...

(Elvis enjoying the foliage)

(a little Thanksgiving campfire action)

(dogs and a lake? Thanksgiving win!)

And now here's my personal Thanksgiving feast (I came nowhere near finishing this plate, but it sure looked special all heaped up like that). I made wild rice with kale and portobello mushroom gravy (just portobellos sauteed with garlic and a little olive oil until they get juicy, then simmered in veggie broth and thickened up with corn starch and plenty of nooch), and half a baked sweet potato topped with diced pear, walnuts, and cranberries lightly dressed with maple syrup and cinnamon.

Dessert (not pictured) was fresh pumpkin puree (SO MUCH better than canned, it's barely the same food) blended up with soaked dates and cashews, a little maple syrup, and pumpkin pie spaces, then topped with raw cashew cream. It was basically pumpkin pudding or uncooked pie filling, and it was absolutely divine.

(Look at those shamefully muddy paws!)

Vegan Mofo Day 7: a brief review of the Urban Herbivore

Today was a culinarily unremarkable day. There was a lot of green smoothie, a little bit of leftovers, and most of it was eaten in transit as I went from home to school to bus station to Toronto to Ottawa... But I did manage to fit in one "proper" meal, albeit in a huge rush.

A dear friend met me at the bus station and escorted me to the new Urban Herbivore location in the Eaton Centre's very swanky Urban Eatery. I have fond recollections of tasty grilled paninis and divine muffins sampled when another friend used to work there, and so I had pretty high hopes.

(photo credit)

Because I'm still off gluten and having a hard time with large quantities of raw veg, I opted for a grain bowl. Coming in at over $9 after tax, it's not the cheapest take-out option, but I'm willing to pay more for real food. For that price you get an ample serving of grain (quinoa or rice) with your choice of six toppings from their generous veggie bar and sauce.

I was sort of underwhelmed with this meal. The ratio of quinoa-to-vegetable was off (about 2 cups of quinoa and the stingiest serving of spinach ever) and the tahini sauce, while very tasty, was meagre. I opted for a simple combination: shredded carrots, baby spinach, roasted beets, marinated mushrooms, and a double serving of steamed broccoli. It was nice that they had such simple whole foods available, and many of the options weren't cooked in oil, which is rare. The beets and mushrooms were particularly delicious. Unfortunately, the quinoa had de puy lentils cooked right into it (normally a delicious surprise but not the greatest news for me considering that I'm still struggling with legumes); I ate around them as best I could but still ingested quite a few and had the tummy ache to prove it.

The plus? In half an hour I ate a healthy, balanced meal and was off to the train station. If for no other reason than the convenience I will come back. Though next time I'll probably opt for a salad.

Vegan Mofo Day 6: photo fail!

I'm having a really hard time getting into the habit of photographing the food I make. Case in point, tonight. I had two lovely ladies over for what we've been fondly calling "Trouble Table" dinners (that is, when we eat out we're always the "trouble table," harassing the staff with all our dietary restrictions: gluten free, vegan, soy free, legume free... Tonight we had a beautiful dinner of roasted acorn squash and eggplant, sauteed broccoli and bright red chard stems, roasted red, yellow, and green peppers, sprouted lentil and walnut balls, and raw fermented cashew cheese, followed by raw mini chocolate and lime cheesecakes (eaten with much oohing and aahing and mmming).

All the food was beautiful and simple and satisfying, shared with wonderful friends and a huge bottle of wine. But when I'm having lots of fun eating great food with my friends, taking photos is the last thing I think of doing.

Perhaps I was not meant to be a food blogger after all?

Vegan Mofo Day 5: the smoothie of my dreams

I love smoothies. I love them so hard. And I'm not a smoothie snob: I love them all. I love my spinach-and-kale-packed green smoothie that makes my roommates gag, and I love me a giant booster juice on a hot summer day. But the smoothie I had for breakfast this morning was something special.

Okay, it is not the most attractive smoothie in the world (khakhi is not a colour we associate with deliciousness). And it is not assisted by my drinking it out of a one litre Sleeman's beer stein. But forget about appearances! This was all about TASTE.

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie
serves 1-2 depending on COMMITMENT

Ingredients:
1 frozen banana
1 scoop protein powder (I used 1/2 scoop plain and 1/2 scoop vanilla chai Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer, hence the greenish hue)
1 handful raw soaked almonds and 2 cups water, or 2 cups almond milk
1/2-1 cup roasted squash or sweet potato (you could use canned pumpkin here, but I'm certain part of what made it so delicious is the use of home-roasted organic sweet potato)
cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg to taste

Blend the dickens out of it. Drink with great relish. Seriously, you should have seen me with my arm elbow-deep in this cup scraping out the last vestiges of smoothie. It was embarrassing.

Vegan Mofo Day 4: in which my blender gets a lot of use

This evening I got home from a long day of email-answering, grade-calibrating, and Evelina-reading, and wanted to do nothing more than spend my night in the kitchen. And that is exactly what I did.

After whipping up a quick dinner of sauteed garlic, ginger, kelp, and purple kale, in a simple miso-tahini sauce (served over more white rice -- naturopath's order!) I turned to the four huge jars of nuts that I'd left soaking overnight: macadamia, almonds, cashews, and walnuts. I had a plan to make an exciting surprise or to for my aforementioned foodie friend (who surprised me the day after my exam with a delightful raw chocolate torte).

First up: Mini Lime Cheeseackes

(date-macadamia-coconut crust)

(blending up the filling with my trusty Bamix)

(the completed cheesecakes, ready to go in the freezer)

I was inspired here by The Healing Kitchen's award-winning Key Lime Mini Pies, and decided to do a cheesecakey spin on them using my adorable little ramekins. The crust is a combination of soaked macadamia nuts, medjool dates, and unsweetened shredded coconut, with a little splash of agave nectar to help things blend (NB: I adore my Bamix, but making all these raw desserts with it is a pain in the butt!). The filling is half a ripe avocado, about 1 cup of soaked cashews, agave to taste, and the juice and zest of one lime. The avocado gave it a lovely light green huge, and the filling is so fluffy and zesty compared to the buttery richness of the crust. I can't wait until these babies are ready!

But because I can't leave good enough alone: Spiced Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

The crust, pictured above, consists of a fistful each of soaked almonds and walnuts, a liberal tbsp of cocoa powder, one medjool date, and about 1/4 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. The filling (not pictured, but amply sampled) is soaked cashews blended up with agave nectar, cocoa powder, and the juice of 1/2 an orange. It's richer and denser than the lime-avocado-cashew mix, but still incredibly delicious. I only made one of these, so somebody better be willing to share!

I find raw or semi-raw concoctions incredibly fun and satisfying to make. They're very messy and tactile and interactive and experimental... but I think I might need a better blender/food processor.

Vegan MOFO Day 3: what do I do with a sprouted lentil?

One of the foods I have been desperate to reintroduce into my eating repertoire is legumes. I love me a legume. They normally make up a very substantial portion of my protein intake and general deliciousness index. In the summer I throw a half cup onto a pile of fresh produce and call it a meal. In the fall and winter I prefer them cooked into things (like black beans in chili, chickpeas in stew, lentils in soup--you get the picture).

After an unfortunate failure to eat cooked lentils, I decided to give sprouted a try. I'm not normally a sprouter. I have nothing against it -- quite the opposite, in fact -- but I am notoriously lazy and terribly unlikely to plan any meal more than 30 minutes before eating it, so my beans usually come out of (no sodium added) cans. However, a dear friend and whole-foods-partner-in-crime absolutely swears by it. Cooked legumes give her terrible stomach pain, but sprouted they are her very best friends. So, figuring it couldn't hurt, I soaked my lentils overnight then threw them in a colander under a light dish towel and commenced thrice-daily rinsing. 

Much to my delight, in three days my lentils had developed adorable little tails and become crunchy sweet deliciousness. I sample a few on top of some rice noodles and sauteed veggies and they made my tummy very happy. Next I tried sprinkling them over veggie soup along with a generous portion of dulse: more happiness. Now that I knew I could eat them, it was time for something a little fancier.

First up: Roasted Acorn Squash with Garlicky Greens and Sprouted Lentils

This was my friend's creation, and I won't take credit for it, but I will document it. There is no recipe, because that woman doesn't cook from recipes, she cooks from pure instinct.

Ingredients:
1 medium acorn squash
about 3 huge handfuls of baby spinach
fresh garlic and ginger
dulse
sprouted lentils

After slicing the squash in half and cleaning out the seeds, she threw it in the oven to roast at 400 for about thirty minutes (until the whole kitchen smelled like delicious). She then washed the seeds and lightly toasted them in a non-stick pan.

Meanwhile in another pan she sauteed some finely minced ginger and garlic (maybe a tsp of each) until lightly browned, and then threw in the spinach and tossed it around until it was cooked down a bit, soft and bright green. She then seasoned it with the dulse.

When the squash was ready, we stuffed it with the garlicky green and topped each half with a generous handful of sprouted lentils and a little more dulse. The result was a sweet, savory, complex dish that paired beautifully with a light Beaujolais. Delicious!

Next: Lentil and Leftover Toss

Today I revisited my sprouty little friends in the form of what I am calling, for lack of a better term, my Lentil and Leftover Toss. In a frying pan I threw half of last night's dinner, a tupperware container of roasted eggplant, half a cup of sprouted lentils, and a little water. One everything was warm through I tossed on some more dulse (don't you love how that purple colour contrasts with the orange background?) and devoured it enthusiastically. To recreate, here's how I'd go about it.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sprouted lentils
1/4 head of kale, roughly chopped
1/2 head of broccoli, roughly chopped
2 tiny eggplants (or 1 cup) cut into one-inch dice
1/2 cup cooked brown rice (or other grain of choice: quinoa would be great)
1/2 cup of miso gravy (I use the recipe from Refresh, but any favourite recipe would work)
dulse to taste (or salt, if you prefer)

Toss the eggplant with a splash of olive oil and roasted at 350 for about 20-30 minutes, until nicely browned all over and tender inside. Meanwhile, steam the kale and broccoli just until cooked through (you can tell they're done when they turn bright green, but the fork test also works). Throw everything in a pan together and toss it around until it's all warm through. Add water as necessary to deglaze and keep the sauce from drying out.

Vegan Mofo Day 1: Of Stress, Food, and Blogging

(broth, dry toast, green tea, consumed in front of an open laptop)

 This photograph serves for me as a perfect visual icon of the month of September. I spent this month in a state of school-induced panic the likes of which I may have never experienced before. For those of you who are in or have completed grad school, the single word will be capable of striking fear into your hearts: comps. 

Or, at my university, Primary Area Qualification exams. But the jist is the same. You spend a year of your life reading an enormous list of books, and at the end of that year you complete a set of exams meant to indicate whether you are prepared to become a PhD Candidate, or ABD (all but dissertation). 

Now, I am not unaccustomed to stress. I have, after all, been a student for over seven years IN A ROW now. But I have never felt so totally overwhelmed and completely consumed by a task as I was by this one. I stopped sleeping. I stopped seeing my friends. I did very little besides sit at my desk for up to 14 hours a day studying. And worst of all: I stopped eating. 

To be honest, I still cannot say with total certainty that exam-induced stress was the primary cause of my ongoing stomach ailments. But I'm sure it didn't help. The point is that what started at the beginning of September as a little stomach discomfort soon evolved into a full-out loss of appetite, inability to eat most solid foods, and corresponding physical weakness and diminished energy (though the mid-month discovery that I could still stomach Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer was a saving grace). With the ability to eat went the ability to go for stress-relieving runs. Also went my main source of stress relief: cooking and baking. 

I am a stress eater. This is not, obviously, the healthiest relation to food, but there it is. When I am under a great deal of stress I bake myself delicious vegan cookies. And then I eat. Them. All. Without vigorous exercise and/or eating, I found myself totally ill-equipped to handle the stress of these exams. Hence my retreat into my office, my failure to establish even a semblance of work-life balance, and my current resolution.

I am taking advantage of Vegan MoFo to do two things. First: I am reclaiming the pleasure of food via this (previously grossly neglected) blog. Because I recognize increasingly that, without a non-school-related outlet I am too prone to devolve into an anaemic recluse, I am striving to make blogging a conscious form of self-care outside (though never fully divorced from) my academic pursuits. 

Second: With the exams now passed (YAY!) and over, I expected my health to miraculously return, but it has not. During the month, in an attempt to give my digestion a break, I cut out soy, gluten, corn, refined sugar, coffee/black tea, and originally legumes (I am starting to reintroduce them, with only minimal success), as well as most fats. Interestingly enough, I am starting to regain my physical energy, and am enjoying tremendous mental energy and clarity. Now working with a naturopath (who has me on a strict regime of probiotics, digestive enzymes, and congee), I am striving to recover. I am also interested in using this month, however, to explore the realm of vegan cooking beyond soy, gluten, and other common allergens. 

First up: a weekend in Toronto, and eating out with A LOT of dietary restrictions...

springing forward while standing still

Just as "fall back" makes me think of hibernation or of an attacking army turning on the defensive and retreating into its barracks to lick its wounds (so many metaphors! so mixed!), of fall as a moment in which we prepare for winter by slowing down, getting a little more sleep, lowering the speed of our day-to-day lives, "spring forward" makes me feel as though I ought to leap from my bed an hour early, greeting the dawn already in my running shoes, ready to bound down the slushy sidewalk in a fury of diurnal energy. Suffice it to say, it is 10:20 on a Sunday morning and I am still very much in my pajamas and my bed, contemplating the labour of making breakfast and wondering if I can get out of my evening plans because putting on proper clothes today sounds like a miserable idea.

My theory is that there are at least three factors at work on my mood this morning. One, sheer bloody-mindedness says, "spring forward? I'll show you springing forward!" and promptly goes back to sleep. Two, it is the sort of miserable grey day that I hold responsible for the emotional quality of most Celtic music and therefore vicariously for my current desire to eat a pound of potatoes and drink a bottle of whiskey in front of a peat fire. Three, I just completed Maria Campbell's Half-Breed.

I had already been thinking more than usual (for me) about indigenous politics in Canada because of the recent visit of Ann Laura Stoler to our department. During her engaging question and answer period (which was almost more enjoying than the lecture simply because of the delight of watching this woman's elastic brain leap from topic to topic with nary a sign of effort or strain) she brought up to the problematic of comparison or commensurability: what do we consider worthy of or capable of comparison, and why? She used the example of Americans refusing to discuss American foreign policy as a form of (neo?)imperialism, in part due to the paradigmatic status of British-Indian imperialism which prevent us from perceiving the technologies of empire as both indefinitely various in their forms and violent in their technologies. In encouraging the finding of unlikely connections, she pointed out the historical fact that, when attempting to find a workable model for apartheid, South African bureaucrats came to Canada to observe the reserve system and considered it an ideal example that they later drew upon significantly.

After the lecture we (the graduate students) had a long and lively discussion with Dr. Stoler about indigenous politics in Canada, touching on the shockingly recent abolishing of residential schools as well as contemporary examples of indigenous uprising that remain in our living memories: Oka and Caledonia. I also brought up the recent book by Christie Blatchford, Helpless: Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us, and the active protests at U Waterloo that prevented her from discussing this book (check out a typically anger-inducing National Post editorial on the event if you feel like getting your ire up). Dr. Stoler was surprised to find out the sort of information about Canadian politics that in no way trickles into American media, and we in turn were surprised (or at least I was) that a scholar so interested in writing "a colonial history of the present" didn't realize that the nation directly to the North was writing and rewriting this history every day, through biased media and deeply prejudiced books like Blatchford's, through ongoing protests and the creation of new sites of identity-articulation, be they digital archives or resistant documentaries.

It was in this context that I sat down yesterday to read Half-Breed, and began to wonder why I, as a Canadianist and a self-proclaimed anti-racist feminist academic have not thus far been more concerned with indigenous politics in this country. The baldness of Campbell's narrative, the impossible textual ellipses of personal and systemic trauma revealed more through the constant gaps in an otherwise "straightforward" narrative, the scarred and racialized and abused body so carefully never made-manifest yet so present throughout the text, all made me feel the shocking presentness of this 38-year-old memoir. Further, the scathing indictment of Canadian civil politics, of Canadian civility as a blanket that dehumanizes indigenous people in the guise of (white, colonial) care and compassion (and again re: Stoler I am thinking of the colonial politics of sentiment her), all revived viscerally my sensations of outrage when I read the publisher's description of Blatchford's book, which I will share here:

It officially began on February 28, 2006, when a handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. Over the course of the spring and summer of that first year, the criminal actions of the occupiers included throwing a vehicle over an overpass, the burning down of a hydro transformer which caused a three-day blackout, the torching of a bridge and the hijacking of a police vehicle. During the very worst period, ordinary residents living near the site had to pass through native barricades, show native-issued "passports", and were occasionally threatened with body searches and routinely subjected to threats. Much of this lawless conduct occurred under the noses of the Ontario Provincial Police, who, often against their own best instincts, stood by and watched: They too had been intimidated. Arrests, where they were made, weren't made contemporaneously, but weeks or monthlater. The result was to embolden the occupiers and render non-native citizens vulnerable and afraid. Eighteen months after the occupation began, a home builder named Sam Gualtieri, working on the house he was giving his daughter as a wedding present, was attacked by protesters and beaten so badly he will never fully recover from his injuries. The occupation is now in its fifth year. Throughout, Christie Blatchford has been observing, interviewing, and investigating with the tenacity that has made her both the doyen of Canadian crime reporters and a social commentator beloved for her uncompromising sense of right and wrong.

In Helpless she tells the full story for the first time - a story that no part of the press or media in Canada has been prepared to tackle with the unflinching objectivity that Christie Blatchford displays on every page. This is a book whose many revelations, never before reported, will shock and appall. But the last word should go to the author:

"This book is not about aboriginal land claims. The book is not about the wholesale removal of seven generations of indigenous youngsters from their reserves and families - this was by dint of federal government policy - or the abuse dished out to many of them at the residential schools into which they were arbitrarily placed or the devastating effects that haunt so many today. This book is not about the dubious merits of the reserve system which may better serve those who wish to see native people fail than those who want desperately for them to succeed. I do not in any way make light of these issues, and they are one way or another in the background of everything that occurred in Caledonia.

"What Helpless is about is the failure of government to govern and to protect all its citizens equally."

This story of equality before the law is an old one in Canada, and it is a myth that is still being deployed to claim total political equality while ignoring both cultural difference and the impacts of systemic racism and colonialism. All of which is to say, this morning I do not feel like we are springing forward at all. I feel like we are staying unbelievably still.