Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for, beginning with Roch, our families and friends, and after my bike accident, I am very thankful to be alive.

Today is also the first day I’ve had a chance to get out and walk around Figueira da Foz since arriving here after the accident on October 7. Up till now, I’ve mainly been resting and recuperating in the hotel.

I’ve been staying on a raw vegan diet to give my body foods that are as nutritionally dense as possible. The exception has been a big bowl of soup a day. I can’t count how many times we’ve been saved by soup here in Portugal. Almost every restaurant big or small has vegetable soup on the menu, some for as little as 1.25€, rarely for more than 2.50€, all of them without exception have been good, really good, or amazingly good.

While I rest at the hotel, Roch has been bringing me a double portion of vegetable soup from one of the local restaurants. You can tell that this soup is home-made, there is a depth of flavour you just can’t get with bullion cubes. Some days there’s more carrots, other days there’s more cabbage, some days there are chickpeas, other days there are beans, every day the soup is scrumptious.

I was looking forward to getting out and about today so we first went to the municipal market to stock up on more fruit. We wandered rather aimlessly afterwards, just enjoying the day. Since today was Thanksgiving, we decided to have a Thanksgiving meal out and as such, while strolling the streets of Figueira, we made a point of peeking at the various menus we passed along the way. We ducked down a small side street and noticed a quaint little home-grown restaurant with a billboard menu on the sidewalk. We went to take a look but there wasn’t much on offer for vegans… but looking inside pass the front bar area of the restaurant, we saw a back room filled with locals. We had to eat there.

Roch managed to convey to the very sweet woman who came to greet us that we were vegan and after she asked us to wait for a moment, she came back to seat us. We started the meal with yet another delicious bowl of vegetable soup, followed by rice, potatoes, chickpeas and a mixed salad of lettuce, carrots, beets, corn and onions. Everything was simply prepared without any pretention, just down to earth goodness that we happily ate up with much thanks and gratitude. The total was 12€ including bread, a little carafe of red wine for Roch and a bottle of water for me.Read more