Day 2, the fight to eat vegetables continues. I feel a bit lighter and have a little more energy, but also feel a little gassy (I know, gross). Yet, the challenge goes on, and yesterday I found myself at the hippie strip mall on Preston Avenue. I mean hippie with the best of intentions. There is a yoga studio, The New Body Mind Spirit, where I had the pleasure of speaking with a hippie instructor. Apparently if you are part of the elderly or pregnant population in cville, this is the yoga studio for you. They focus more on the “intention” than the movement like a traditional vinyasa. Next door to the yoga studio is Blue Ridge Eco Shop. This is basically a store that has more green than your stomach/wallet/house can handle. They have everything from clothes to lights to cleaning products, very cool.

And then in the corner a couple feet away is Café 88. What is it with Asian restaurants and double digit numbers anyways? The previous founder/owner of cville’s vegetarian haunt Ming Dynasty, Li Chen, started a new Taiwanese café. The place is teeny tiny like a little baby, and the menu is even smaller. While some might balk at that, there is something refreshing about having limited options…there are so many restaurants out there that give the consumer so much choice, it’s a task in itself to order.

My oatmeal breakfast at Cubano left me hungry for some vegetable loving, and Li Chen was there to give me what I needed. Specifically, she recommended stir-fried tofu with a ginger/basil sauce. Excuse me did you just say ginger and basil? A resounding “hellz yea” went through my mind, and instead I opted for a more polite, “yes m’am, ginger and basil will do just fine”. The really neat thing about this place is that their open kitchen is basically part of the dining area. You can see them make everything. While open kitchens might be the cliché “rage” at the moment, it certainly does make you feel better to know the restaurant isn’t hiding anything.

The kitchen assistant began to quarter my mound of tofu and toss it in a bowl with flour. I thought Li Chen would sit this one out, but as the tofu was prepped, she dominated the wok and made me the rest of the meal. The end result was a bento box with: stir fried tofu, stir fried cabbage, stir fried green beans, and rice with sticky soy sauce and a pickled radish. The portion was just right and the taste was good.

This was the first time in a long time I had ordered a tofu-only dish (why would you do that normally!?!?!?!), and I think I can up with a strategy on how to eat it perfectly. For some reason the tofy did not cool down, but I figured out when you waited say 5 min, there would be this nice thick chewy part in the middle. My lunch became a game of finding that treasure in each bite…and before you knew it, the tofu was gone.

After I had finished my meal and thoroughly read a coffee industry magazine lying on a table nearby, Li Chen made it a point to find out how my meal was. That polite and very welcome gesture turned into a neat conversation about how she has been here for 20 some odd years and has raised her kids here. Did I mention she is a huge cville fan? “What? You haven’t been to Monticello? You must go, its very beautiful this time of year”. I guess mama Li knows best!

Photo from Flikr

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