The Vegan Brownie

The Vegan Brownie

I am fairly certain that I am the last one to the party on this particular issue, but that doesn’t matter, because I need to be honest here.

I can’t let this go unspoken, and it’s not because of guilt. There is no guilt. Not on my account. Instead, what I feel in the place of guilt is a kind of freedom, a rippling frisson of delight that has run through me and has made me feel like a young man trumpeting his first lover’s name from the highest hill out behind the barn.

So it is that I find myself coming here to share my feelings with the world. Or more correctly, with the six people who remember this blog and continue to click on the link in some spastic reflex, desperate for some kind of enlightenment.

To those six people, I say this:

I have just eaten a Vegan Brownie.

Literally, just now.

I just finished it before I started this post.

The story of this particular brownie is nothing new, is in no way earth-shattering. In fact, one could say it is as banal a brownie origin story as any could imagine. There was no radioactive cocoa powder, no shocking dose of sugary gamma rays, no aliens or Norse gods stepping down out of a flaming chariot to hand me a magical golden hammer. In spite of the complete absence of any of these things, which I’m sure we can all agree would be fricking awesome, I will go ahead and tell you the entirely unremarkable story of the Vegan Brownie and I suspect that you will come to treasure it as I have.

(the story begins now)

As many of you know, I sometimes go to The Big Smoke. Often, I go there as recently as yesterday.

Why I went there on this sunny yesterday morning is unimportant, clearly not as important as the Vegan Brownie or I would be explaining those reasons for this trip even now. Suffice to say that I was there and that I caught a ride with T.Jack and it was a glorious journey filled with the inspiring conversation and long moments of purposeful aimlessness that marks a vigorous dose of correctly applied Man Time.

Toward the end of our day, once our independently conducted business was complete, T.Jack and I convened with a third associate (The Wempster) at Queen and John for what each of us hoped would be a disturbing amount of Korean and Japanese food.

And it is only now that you realize that this is, in some significant way, a restaurant review, although perhaps not in the obvious way.

HoSu is one of those very Toronto Asian restaurants that has decided to focus on not focusing on one thing. This restaurant has done what many similar establishments in the city has done and that is to single-handedly bring together the favourite foods of two countries that have had for many, many years, “rocky relations,” which might be putting it mildly. I will leave it to your discretion as to how much you wish to research the ongoing tensions between Korea and Japan.

The popularity of this little establishment has been a minor source of annoyance for years. Luckily, the frustration of waiting for a table is eased by Pages next door, where discriminating magazine browsers can partake in the pleasures of Italian Vogue or Adbusters with equal enjoyment.

I will not at this point make any reference to the high number of cute waitresses walking around in the restaurant. Except for that one.

After a scandalously long wait, our third dinner companion - The Wempster – flew in wearing a peaked hat and began boasting of his wasted youth.

Was The Wempster at Woodstock? Yes.

Does he remember the concert? Somewhat, although he has no idea if he heard Jimi Hendrix or not. Apparently he was far enough away from the stage and just intoxicated enough to remember only the smell of the people beside him and the fact that his dad’s Boy Scout tents weren’t waterproof.

Did he father a child there? Inconclusive until the full range of DNA testing is complete.

I will not describe to you the flavour of the Red Dragon rolls, nor will I attempt to explain my lusty appreciation Dolsot Beef Bibim Bap.

What I will do, however, is tell you about what happened after we left HoSu.

Two shops and a jaywalk from the restaurant is a Starbuck’s and normally I couldn’t care less. I don’t drink coffee and although my fondness for hot chocolate verges on the erotic, there is only so much room inside a human body and my interior was already close to bursting forth. But T.Jack needed an Americana.

We began our assault on the western face of the Starbuck’s, entering with confidence and approaching the counter. After a cursory examination of the pastries, knowing full well I wanted none of them, I spied a chocolate brownie so dark it didn’t even look real. It was not so much a brownie as absence of brownie, a brownie shaped hole in the fabric of reality.

The sign in front of this brownie read “Vegan Fudge Brownie.”

“Vegan?” I blurted.

A HoSu waitressy looking barista was hidden behind a cake tray.

“Yes.”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Really.”

She nodded.

T.Jack snorted. “Vegan!?”

The Wempster shook his head. “Disgusting.”

I was drawn to this dense looking piece of chocolatey goodness.

“What does it taste like?”

The barista looked very earnest. She couldn’t have lied if she wanted to. And why would she? Was she being paid on commission? Was there Vegan Brownie kickback?

“Don’t do it.” T. Jack was very serious. “It’s awful. An offense to brownies.”

The Wempster snorted. “I don’t like sweets.”

“It’s made with applesauce. One point five grams of fat.”

The barista smiled.

I love applesauce.

I love chocolate.

I love brownies.

I love HoSu.

But I am full and therefore I am not hungry.

“It will make you sick.” T.Jack was so sure of himself. Welcome to the smuggery.

I nodded. “Give me that Vegan Brownie. Please.”

Starbuck’s went still.

The Wempster shot me a look.

“You’re not a Vegan.”

“That’s right. I’m not.”

The waitress bagged the brownie, a gleam of triumph in her eye. Maybe she was on commish…

T.Jack glowered.

“I thought you were full.”

“I am. If I ate it now, I would soil myself.”

“You’ll soil yourself no matter when you eat it. Think about what vegans eat. They are all rife with dysentery. They can’t control their bowels. Haven’t you heard of fecal urgency?”

I had, and it did give one pause.

But then I thought about a book I had noticed at Pages. On the front cover was written something about only eating plants. The book had gotten good reviews and it was on prominent display in Page, very close to Ron Jeremy’s autobiography. I took this as a good omen.

“T. Jack, you should know that Vegan Brownies are environmentally sound, and plus, they’re good for you. If I eat one, I’m helping the earth and making myself stronger and healthier. Look how young Sting looks. Do you think I can turn that down?”

I don’t know if Sting is a Vegan, but I know youthful when I see it. I jammed the paper bag into my pocket and we left, T.Jack sipping his coffee with an offended pout.

We drove The Wempster home, burned west on the 401, weathered a T.Jack snoring incident so loud and offensive that he woke himself up, and made it to the G.Dot just in time to finish an argument about global warming with a moment of grudging conciliation.

I thanked the T for a good day, went into my house and fell into bed, the brownie forgotten.

Today I woke up, walked to work blah blah blah and then, sitting at my desk, deeply engaged in the marking of your future leaders’ best writing, I remembered my Vegan Brownie.

It was still in my pocket.

There is nothing as perfectly likely to make a man want to eat a Brownie, Vegan or not, as marking English papers.

I dove into my coat pocket and retrieved the crumpled bag.

The contents of the bag was smushed, slightly stale, a bit crusty, but Vegan. Healthy. Guilt-free.

I didn’t eat that Vegan Brownie, I devoured it.

I tore it apart like a pack of hyenas with a baby gazelle.

Sure, maybe I went home and ate leftover macaroni and tuna fish casserole.

Maybe I will eat eggs and cheese for supper.

Yes, I will be cooking up hot Italian sausages tomorrow night and the night after that, I will probably just eat a bloody, bleating calf chained to a post by a ring in its nose whilst wearing alligator boots and a pair of mink lined leather chaps, but today, for a few minutes, I was a Vegan and I had a Vegan Brownie.

And I loved it.