Real chocolate

I just finished my Gnosis Chocolate bar (pronounced "nosis") and thought I'd drop a little note about it here. Gnosis is a New York company started by the beautiful Vanessa Barg. All of their chocolates are handmade (meaning they use absolutely no machines whatsoever), raw, and vegan. Even those fancy chocolate bars you find at Whole Foods will often be filled with emulsifiers, have unnecessary dairy added, etc. None of that here. It's pretty well known now that chocolate is extremely good for you in moderation. The issue, though, is what's chocolate? A Hershey's bar is not, if you get my drift. Gnosis' products are. This is one of those things where we ate chocolate, industry and food companies took over and gave us a watered down, artificial version, and companies like Gnosis are giving us options to eat the real stuff. I highly recommend you seek it out, which is available at some Whole Foods, Hanna's Bretzel in Chicago, and on their website here.

Stealth organic and vegan

I ate at a quick lunch spot in Chicago yesterday where I've been many times before called Hannah's Bretzel. Last time I went I forgot the actual cross-streets, looked it up online and saw from the website that it was 100% organic. I was pretty surprised considering I don't recall any signs pointing this out loud and clear like at Chicago's first all organic restaurant, Crust. I find this interesting and wonder if they don't think that people who care will know or figure it out, and people on the street are just looking for quick, tasty, "healthy" food -- which Hannah's clearly is. They actually have one sandwich, the Veggie Bomb, that's completely vegan (though it doesn't say so) and tastes amazing. The stealth nature of Hannah's organic status reminded me of a little juice shop that opened up near me in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago called Doc's. Doc's served a few kinds of soup and they were usually vegan, but they stopped pointing that out on their menue board because Mike, the owner, told me it scared people off. To a lot of people the idea of "vegan" is something strange -- something that requires seitan or boring tofu or weird healthy grains. Of course in truth tons of foods are vegan.

On the other side of the spectrum (I don't think Crust comes close to this side), you have Veggie Bites in Chicago. I'll write more about them soon as they represent a side of veganism that really defies logic and nuitrition.