We have been running around like a couple of free range organic grain-fed chickens these days, but we are happy to do so. The Bistro is a great success.

People were lined up for a taste of our delicious coffee. And many people enjoyed a little treat with their warm beverages.

It was a pretty nice day, on Saturday,  so people were thrilled to relax out on the terrace.

We are very excited that the new bistro was featured on sweetspot.ca. If you didn’t see it yet, you can check out the story called Sustainable Sandwiches. Our online organic épicerie was also highlighted on the same site a while back, in case you missed it, it’s called Groceries to Go.

We were also featured on the website City Bandit: Your Guide to Steals & Deals. You can check out the blog post by Erica Leibner here.

Our new bistro is open from 11 – 7pm and we are located at 5887 Sherbrooke St. West.

Can’t wait to see you there!

Okay, so maybe it’s just us. But that’s okay, we could not be more excited for the opening of the new MyAntidote Bistro.

We will open at 10am at our brand new location 5887 Sherbrooke West in NDG.

Please come out for snacks and coffee and just to say hello.

Check out this blog post for more details.

The back of the book does a great job of summarizing what Animal, Vegetable Miracle. It says:

“Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.”

I think this book would be special even if it was told by a regular woman who (with her family) up and left her Tuscon, Arizona home to live in her husband’s farm house. But the fact that it was written by a prolific author makes it that much easier to read.

Barbara truly has a way with words. The book is not only a personal account of her family’s adventure in local eating, but it is chock-full of really great facts about, for example, our over-consumption of oil.

Her husband, biologist Steven L. Hopp is a contributor in the book, who writes, “We put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We are consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen–about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use–for agriculture, a close second to vehicular use.”

The third contributor to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is Camille Kingsolver, their daughter, whose musings sprinkled throughout the book.

I totally recommend this book. Maybe we can grab a few copies for the Bistro! See you soon!

On April 10 our new bistro will be opening on April 10th. We are located at 5887 Sherbrooke West in NDG.

For the special opening of the Bistro, we will be giving away treats, like organic coffee and muffins.

It surely won’t come as a surprise that all the food we are selling at the new bistro is going to be organic!

The recipes are made especially for MyAntidote, and if you like the food, you can buy the ingredients right at the bistro!

The menu will include organic, home made soup, bread, muffins, sandwiches, salads etc.

We are happy that the café will reflect our core values and beliefs.

We have been working hard to renovate the new space (yes, with our own four hands–and a little help!)

We are using refurnished chairs and tables and for the counters we are using an old bowling lane, taken from a local bowling alley when it closed.

The bamboo floor is from Montreal’s Bamboo Warehouse, and the paint we are using is eco-friendly.

We hope you can make it out to our grand opening!

Held at the Palais des congrès Friday to Sunday, the room was filled  with rows of tables of all kinds of like-minded people.

The booths were decorated very nicely, and in general, people were warm and excited to be there.

We browsed through the tables of body care: creams, soaps, and bath stuff. We saw suppliments, food (baked goods and dairy). There was a natural line of cookware, water filtration systems,you name it! If it was green and good for you, it was at the Expo!

We had a particularly nice visit with a woman named Anastasia, who runs Energi Bain here in Montreal. While her products are available online, you can also pick them up at stores across Quebec and Ontario (see her website for full listings, or to browse her products.)

She set up a wash basin for visitors to use her 100% natural homemade hand soaps and lotions. All of her stuff smells so good!

The Quebec Expo Manger Santé is taking place March 27 and 28 at the Centre des congrès for the 10^th year in a row. If you didn’t make it to the one in Montreal, we suggest you try to get over to Quebec City.

Maybe that sounds a little sarcastic. The truth is we are so thrilled, so excited, so anxious…. but so busy!

We found a location, signed the lease and are doing some heavy-duty renos to make the MyAntidote Organic Café perfect for you!

We found that the storefront we had in Montreal wasn’t cutting it. Our customers and people interested in our products were keen to have a place they could see, and taste what we had to offer.

So here we are, setting up the cafe. We have pretty much gutted it, top to bottom and are excitedly installing eco-friendly bamboo floors and  shelving. This place is going to be gorgeous and live up to the high standards of eco-friendliness that MyAntidote is all about.

At the café we will have ready to eat organic

• salads
• soups
• sandwiches
• deserts
• the best organic café au lait
• gourmet organic, local food like handmade jams, flatbreads, etc.

Here is a sneak peek inside the café (told you we are doing serious rennovations!). We will be having an opening party on April 10. More details to follow!

It's going to be colourful....

View onto the street

The event took place on Wednesday, February 24, from 9:00 – 5:00pm at the Coeur des sciences at UQAM on Avenue du President Kennedy. It was organized by Committee of St. Urban, in collaboration with the Tourne-Sol Community Composting Centre and GRIP-UQAM.

Mathew Gaddes @ the symposium

We have been swamped with the opening of our new store (more exciting news on this later!) and didn’t stay for the whole thing, but it was nice to make an appearance and donate some yummy organic food.

MyAntidote donated organic flour, organic milk, locally produced Cranberries & some organic lemons to the event, and Mathew Gaddes (the gentleman in the photo) prepared some scrumptious muffins and cookies.

More information of how the event was laid out can be found in the program.

We also preheated the oven for a really long time, so maybe that had something to do with the success this time?

The third thing that was different is that even though we used the thermometer in the same way this time, it seems somehow like the milk got hotter. Or frothier anyway. It looked really nice on top by the time it hit the right temperature. Like the milk you would find on top of your cappuccino!

Whatever the reason, we now know that we can make awesome home made yogurt.

I have been enjoying the plain yogurt with my muesli (the organic muesli we carry at MyAntidote is delicious!) Sometimes I just mix it with a bit of raspberry jam. Fresh or frozen fruit goes so well with the plain yogurt too!

I think next round I will try experimenting with adding vanilla extract.

We are trying to come up with a great idea for out next DIY food project. Do any of you have suggestions?

Oh, if only our yogurt looked like this....

It sounds like a daunting task, but those who make their own yogurt at home swear by it. For the cost of a tub of yogurt you can pretty much make five times the amount at home. Of course like any of these home made goodies, it takes time, and for many people, it’s just not worth it.

A little short on time ourselves these days, we took an afternoon out to try the yogurt thing. Before I lay out all the directions, I will tell you, the yogurt making was not successful.

With that said, it is supposed to be quite easy. I have a feeling I know what went wrong, and am very eager to try it again. When I can find the time!

We came across a blog post on mydailyplanet and the writer of that post said she got her instructions from therealfoodrevolution.

Here are the instructions we came up with. What I will say ahead of time, is it wasn’t the instructions that messed the yogurt up, but likely the fact that our stove is really old. The yogurt needs to incubate, and I think what happened was the oven just cooled down too quickly. The second thing that might have happened is yogurt choice. As they say in the Real Food Revolution instructions, you NEED to have yogurt with active bacteria cultures and the labelling on the yogurt we started with was a little ambiguous.

So, to start you need:

·         Milk – we figured 4L (a bag of milk) is close enough to 1 gallon

·         1 tbsp of plain, unsweetened yogurt with active bacterial cultures

·         A big parge pot

·         Candy thermometer

·         Jars that seal tightly

·         A whisk or spoon

·         Wire sieve to get rid of clumps (we also used a funnel to reduce the mess!)

Instructions:

1.    Preheat oven to 110F 

2.    On the stove at Medium-high heat, heat milk to 180F, 80C

3.    When it hits the temperature, remove the pot immediately from heat and cool to 110-115F (54 C)

4.    Skim the skin off the top.

5.    Add the tablespoon of yogurt and stir it in.

6.    Pour through sieve into storage containers.

7.    To incubate the yogurt, allowing bacteria to multiply, put jars in warm oven (shut the oven off).

8.    Leave jars in oven for 4 – 8 hours. Yogurt is ready when you can tilt the container and it looks like yogurt, not milk!

9.  Refridgerate.

We never made it past step eight. After 6 hours, the yogurt wasn’t very solid. At that point, we panicked and took the yogurt out of the oven. In retrospect, it might have been fine with an hour or two longer. I followed the Real Food directions for saving yogurt, misread the thermometer and then the whole thing curdled.

Sadly, I poured it into the toilet. I will keep you posted next time I try it out. Please let us know if you have more success!

We have recently given a shot to sprouting at home. Sprouting costs next to nothing and is much easier than we thought it would be.

Maybe you don't need to make this many!

All you need is:

• A Mason jar
• Piece of screen large enough to cover mouth of jar
• Small tupperware container
• Beans, seeds and or lentils

There are some types of beans that you cannot do this with. Like kidney beans.

A few good ones to try out are:

• moong (or mung) beans they are the little green beans that traditional beansprouts we use in stirfry are made from
• green lentils you will be pleasantly surprised at how tasty these sprouts are. They are a very fresh, crispy addtition to any salad.
• alfalfa
• red clover

Directions

1. Soak 1 – 3 tablespoons of your chosen seed or beans in a good amount of water in your Mason jar for up to eight hours
2. Dump water and rinse beans.
3. Place screen or mesh over the mouth of jar and screw the metal ring back on. Alternatively, you can use an elastic to keep the screen on.
4. Leave the jar tipped on a slant inside Tupperware container. The excess water will drain throughout the day
5. Rinse and let drain on a slant every day until you are happy with the size of sprouts. (3 – 6 days. Sprouts should be  3 to 5cm long.)
6. Store sprouts in covered container in the fridge.

It is important to be mindful of the risk for food poisoning. It is best to use organic seeds when sprouting, and you really have to be sure to keep them well-rinsed and mold-free.

It is fascinating to watch the little guys grow. There are many health benefits to eating sprouts. I get a kick out of the feeling of having home-grown food. You’ll see how easy it is after you give it a try.

Happy sprouting!