I’ve always thought that tattoos are meant to be regretted, but I don’t think I would regret this one.

From Annie Mess

No, I mean, a whole nother vegan cooking show in Brooklyn! Learn how to fight zombies and make ice cream! (Hint: You need a cast iron pan for one and 2 tin cans for the other.) If you can’t see the video below, click the comments and you’ll be able to see it.

From Vegan Hedonism.

I look like a Jewish grandmother, but whatevers.

Video from the Secret Kitchen event! I posted this on my journal as well, but it wouldn’t embed, so I’m trying here, ’cause embedding makes everything a little more important.

ETA: It still won’t embed! Oh well, here.

I like the term “accidentally vegan” because it makes me think that once the manufacturers realize their mistake they’ll go ahead and fix it. Sprinkle in some vitamin D3 or maybe a little whey if they’re feeling cheeky.

Brooklyn is home to the ziggurat* of accidental veganism but I’m not going to tell you where it is because I don’t want you gentrifying it and magically turning my one dollar avocados into three dollar ones**. “Accidentally vegan” also tends to mean “loaded with hydrogenated fats and a healthy dose of high fructose corn syrup” but I still can’t help reading the ingredients on all the packaging just because it’s satisfying; croissants, halvah, cookies - all vegan!

Enter strawberry soymilk. This seemed like an okay choice, all natural ingredients and even some of those omega-3s. As a kid I always opted for strawberry milk over chocolate, partly to set myself apart from the masses, partly because pink is prettier and partly because it tasted good, like the leftover milk after eating Fruity Pebbles. So I thought this would bring back fond childhood memories. Instead it just reminded me that I hated my childhood. It’s not that it tasted bad exactly. It was more like that part of my life is over and it’s time to move on. I’m past my strawberry years, even past my coffee years, and well into my chai years, and I’m okay with that. But I wonder if the actual milk were pink would I have felt any different?

*7th grade social studies I have not forgotten you!

**Also, I’m writing something else about the store so I don’t want to dilute my message.

My feet feel like two blocks of pressed tofu but all the things considered I think that the NY Magazine event was a success. I'll start with the bad - even though I listed the good first. 1) The event started late and even though the kitchen was prepared to serve everything, we served about an hour later than we were supposed to. A lot of the food came out cold and the matzoh balls got gummy. And cold. 2) I think that some tables got screwed and had courses skipped or got less food because there were more people at their tables. We actually had extra food sitting downstairs for tables that got skimped out on but no one ever got them!

So because of the late start time I was kind of stressed out. My mom came downstairs to the kitchen to tell us that everyone was happy and enjoying themselves and the food, but she's my mom! She isn't gonna throw a cold tempura mushroom at me. And then my publisher came down and said the same. Chance of him throwing a cold tempura mushroom at me: only about 4% more likely. I read the reviews on Brooklyn Vegan and some were pretty bad, but studies have shown anonymous people on the internet to be 113% meaner than the general populace. When I combine the data from those factors I can easily grade everything as a solid B.

It seems like everyone had fun, and that is probably the most important part. Man Man was more insane than a drum circle in Tompkins Square Park in 1992. But they sounded awesome and there wasn't a random guy playing “the bottle.” (ie: tapping his empty 40 with a stick) They just may be my favorite newish band lately, besides the Prids.

I also saw some guy fall of his chair. If that isn't a measure of success then I don't know what is.

There are some pics up at NYC nosh, like this one:

Shiitake Tempura

Enough with this vegan parent baby killers thing already. I probably get 10 angry emails a day about it, all of which I ignore along with the emails about canine teeth, lack of protein and instructions directly from god to eat meat. But this op ed piece by Nina Planck really bugged me. I wrote a response to it elsewhere, but I'm posting it here for good measure.

For starters, Nina Planck, is not a doctor or even a nutritionist. She is a business woman whose business is selling meat and dairy to people, including her book about why meat and dairy are good for you.

There are plant sources for DHA yet she chooses to omit that fact. She does say that plant sources for essential amino acids are “inferior in quantity and quality” but offers no evidence of this. Probably because there is actually no evidence of this. Humans can synthesize enough DHA from eating plant sources rich in Omega-3s, like flax seeds. So if the mom is eating her omega-3s and breast feeding, DHA levels should be sufficient and free of mercury and other toxins that a fish-heavy diet would surely contain. However, I'm not a doctor, so here is an article about vegan pregnancy and infancy by someone who is.

She says that this has happened three times in four years, but I can think of only one other case where the parents actually were actually feeding their child cod fish liver oil and so this seems to directly contradict Nina's assertions that fish oils would have saved the baby. It also contradicts the very notion that this baby was fed a vegan diet.

Also, how many babies starved at the hand of omnivorous parents in the past 4 years? I bet that Nina doesn't have those statistics at hand. “Meat Eating Parents Starve Baby” doesn't make a very good headline. Also, how many vegan babies did not die of starvation in the past 4 years? Again, that would probably not make a very sexy headline either.

Finally, I just want to add some anecdotal evidence into the mix. The vegan children that I know have all been vibrant, happy and healthy. If anything good can come of this recent tragedy it will be that some responsible reporter somewhere in the world will decide to do a story about them.

Who are these elusive happy, healthy vegan mom and baby?

I love hoveringdog’s cupcakes. What’s more, I love that he is a guy and decorates them so beautifully. And it makes me wish that I didn’t think things like, “Oh wow! A guy who bakes cupcakes!” Someday “guy who bakes cupcakes” will be redundant.

PS Ladies, he is available.

Pistachio Rosewater 

German Chocolate

Green Tea

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks and the Vegetarian Food For Thought podcast has written a virtual bildungsroman of vegan baking - The Vegan Joy of Baking! I tried a few things last weekend and the coffee cake knocked my socks off, but who needs socks when we have vegan baking? You can try some recipes here and also preorder it on Amazon. It’ll be out in October this year. Congrats, Colleen!

I remember doing a demo against McDonald’s in the early nineties. We had the bright idea to not just protest but to bring food, too, that way we could offer people an alternative to a Big Mac. Genius, right? If only we had brought actual food that people wanted to eat. Instead it was, and the shame is with me to this day, Fantastic Food Falafel. Yes, falafel from a box. Now look at McDonalds, they’re even bigger, and it’s all our fault.

So it makes me happy to see these cupcakes from Sugar Crash Mobile Bakery’s debut, a benefit for Josh Harper. The revolution will be frosted.

> Sugar Crash myspace

> Sugar Crash Flickr photoset