I always find myself on the Flickr vegan baking pool late at night, when there are no cupcakes to be had for miles. But it's good because it fills me with love for humanity or at least the humans that submit the photos to the Flickr vegan baking pool.

 Chocolate cupcakes with a dark chocolate ganache and a “dash-of-cinnamon” butter-cream icing - yum…

Chocolate Bean Espresso Cake

Granted, I'm an atheist Jew (atheist by choice, Jew by trade) but Christian Cupcakes have got to be some sort of mortal sin. You would be effectively eating the cross, the lamb and the bible. Is that kosher? Or is it the same thing as say, Gingerbread Punks?

But the bigger sin here has got to be that you need a “kit” at all. This site has a bevy of adorable looking bible inspired cupcakes and it's all D.I.Y. and stuff. How biblicious is Jonah the Whale?

I’m not sure what is vegan about this bunny. Is it that her butt cheeks peek out of her tennis skirt? Or that she eschews leather shoes and indeed all footgear all together? And just where is she running off to?

Connect the dots and welcome Regan the Vegan into our community. And be championed by a bear in a beret and shirtdress. Actually, if he were wearing Capezios and one of those big gigantic belts around the shirtdress I would swear that the artist knew me in 5th grade.

Thanks to calcuhater on the ppk boards for finding Regan.

Am I the only person who didn't know about this? Vegan Cooking School. It's an audio cooking show and a blog with a well informed and congenial host (which is where she differs from the PPK) named Tracy. The latest episode is a wonderful romp through the world of onion rings. Tracy fills us in on the best oils to fry with and not only does she cook with beer she also drinks some.

Search through the archives to find such yumminess as Apple Crumb Cake and Coconut Curry.

Here's the Onion Rings:

Nay sayers love to smugly state how they simply can’t afford veganism as they suck down their lattes and fire up their SUVs. This argument has always struck me as ridiculous and ill-informed or just plain argumentative. Vegetables can be expensive but omnivores eat vegetables as well don’t they? The main difference in your diet would be the change of proteins and vegetable based proteins are cheaper than animal-based proteins.

Today I’d like to discuss my favorite source of protein – the beautiful bean. My modus operandi has been to make a big pot of beans (1 pound of organic beans of almost any kind will hover in the $1 range) and use it throughout the week to create a variety of dishes using other pantry staples. Depending on how many beans I make this creates at least 5 meals for 2 for the week at around 15 dollars total. How can it get any more affordable than that? Here are just a few examples of what you can do with various legumes.

Black Beans:
Day 1 – Black Bean Burgers
Day 2 – Chili
Day 3 – Sauteed with Greens
Day 4 – Tamale Pie
Day 5 – Black Bean and Quinoa Salad

Chickpeas
Day 1 – Dill Hummus Sammiches
Day 2 – Moroccan Chickpea Stew
Day 3 – Falafel
Day 4 – Chickpea Samosas
Day 5 – Chickpea Hijiki Salad Sammiches

White Beans
Day 1 – Pasta Fagioli
Day 2 – White Bean Quinoa Croquettes
Day 3 – Roasted Garlic and White Bean Soup
Day 4 – White Bean and Tempeh Sausage Patties
Day 5 – Vegetable Soup with White Beans

Of course you can always just sit yourself down to a nice plate of rice and beans and I often do, it’s just nice to know that you don’t have to.

As far as time goes, cooking beans is not the time consuming thing it’s often made out to be. I usually set the beans to soak over night on Saturday night (place them in the pot you are going to cook them in with about 3 times the water to beans). On Sunday morning I drain and rinse them then add them back to the pot with clean water (about 2 times the amount of beans). I bring them to a boil and then simmer for a few hours. The active cooking time here is all of 5 minutes. Once cooled store in an air-tight container with the cooking liquid and call it a day. It ain’t nothing.

Of course the whole time you were reading this you had one thing on your mind: flatulence. Well, Changing the soaking water helps to cut down on the sugars that can’t be broken down, thus less bacteria forming in your large intestine thus less farting. Supposedly the more beans you eat the more your body adjusts to it and the less you fart. You can read more about it here.

I discussed beans with Erik Marcus at vegan.com on his podcast Erik's Diner so go take a listen!

Now I want everyone to make a pot of beans this week and report back STAT.

Happy New Year everyone! My one goal of the new year is to actually use my date book. I used to have a waitress memory – well, a good waitress memory not the kind that forgets your fries – but now I have the memory of a computer drone. Which means I wake up in the middle of the night panicking about something I forgot to do. Sometimes it’s a big thing (my cousin’s Bat Mitvah) sometimes it’s a little thing (return a dvd) but I always have to have something nagging me. I think I am trying to relive childhood tendencies of irresponsibility. It’s amazing to think of the patterns we unwittingly repeat throughout our adulthood. We as in me – not you. You are perfect and completely emotionally healthy. But I was wondering why I refuse to get my life in order and it’s simply that it’s not something I’m used to, it feels foreign and weird to me if I don’t have the parental voices of Netflix ringing in my ears. But I’m not considering it a resolution – I’m approaching it in a completely utilitarian way. I have a Slingshot organizer that happens to start on January 1st so I must use it. The awful part is that I have absolutely no idea where I put it. Ba-dum-dum. No, really I don’t. And I think I lost my digital camera, too.

Anyways, here's to a great year of tofu and cupcakes and murdering poor helpless broccolis.