Here are my answers to the survey that everyone is taking from Liz at Food Snobbery. And also, a photo of our improvised long handle potato masher (patent pending.)

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

Vitasoy Creamy Original. It’s the soymilk that made me like soymilk. And although I still have a place in my heart the size of an 80s healthfood store for Edensoy Carob, I usually have some Zen Soy chocolate around.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

a - Golbki (polish cabbage rolls) for Ryan MacMichael

b - Polenta Rancheros, which I’ve made before I just have to write the recipe down because I lost it. I have to stop losing recipes.

c - Super fluffy pancakes. I love my basic pancakes but I’ve been craving super fluffy ones so I’m working that out. It’s tough to make them not mushy in the middle.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

Nooch and chili powder. Is there any other topping?

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

I don’t know how to qualify most disastrous because there have been so many disasters. The most painful thing was being pissed at someone while chopping red peppers with a hatchet (!) and slicing off a finger tip. The most inedible was when I was 16 and tried to make this wheat gluten stuff from my favorite Chinese place without a recipe or any knowledge of cooking, really. It was basically vital wheat gluten and soy sauce with garlic powder that I fried. It was as nasty as it sounds. I’m surprised I ever cooked again.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Can I be a loser and just say dill pickles?

6. How do you organize your recipes?

In cookbooks. Ha!

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

If it doesn’t go to my veggie broth stash it goes in the trash. I didn’t rhyme on purpose.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Olives, tofu and escarole but that’s just how I’m feeling right now.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

Not the time I got a perm and ate Steak-umz.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

The Black Label stuff.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

Tongs aren’t an appliance.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

So many, but thyme if I had to choose one.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

Tofu Cookery by Louise Hagler.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Blueberry at the moment.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

Pesto is always a delicious safe bet.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

Tempeh - the odd man out.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

Brunch.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

Where to begin? What isn’t?

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

Lima beans, peas, sorbet from a hundred years ago.

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Nothing! I did all my shopping yesterday.

21. Favorite grocery store?

This is the wrong answer because they sell foie gras, but I really love the Fairway in Red Hook. The right answer would be the Park Slope Food Co-op. I also love the Union Square Farmer’s Market.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

Meringue. Not because I miss it or anything but because I’m sick of people asking how to veganize it. I don’t get it. Is anyone seriously missing meringue?

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

No one checks my blog, actually. Right now I’ve been liking Vegan Dad (even though he kinda disses me), Get Sconed (as usual), and Cafe Veg News. I also check Fat Free Vegan and What The Hell religiously. Oh, and my bff’s blog A Stranger In The Alps, but I just linked to it yesterday so I don’t wanna’ go overboard. Plus all the others I link to right there—->

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

That rice milk chocolate. Dagoba, is it? Terra Nostra.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

My olive oil is really expensive. Oh, smoked pistachios.

26. How did you get so pretty?

I am really sick of this question! It’s genetic!

There have been studies that show butterflies more attracted to paper butterflies that are bigger and more colorful than real butterflies, and I figured that’s what was happening with my FedEx guy. He would approach the door of my building, get enraptured with a shinier buzzer than my own, ring that one, walk away in an endorphin riddled daze, forgetting to even leave a tag on my door.

But on Saturday, the day that a proofread manuscript of Veganomicon was scheduled to arrive, I knew something far more sinister was afoot. I sat here all day, tracking the package with space age technology. Running downstairs every 2 minutes just to make sure. Only to be disappointed by a 3pm update informing me that I wasn’t even home. My first thought was that I was actually long dead, a ghost caught in limbo, foolishly awaiting the arrival of a package that would never come.

But then it occurred to me - FedEx hates veganism.

A quick google search confirmed my hunch. A boolean* string of “fedex veganism” turned up a mere 446,000 hits. Meanwhile, “fedex meat”… an earth shattering 1,090,000.

I immediately bitch voiced the FedEx lady and was forced to take my earthly trappings all the way to the macabre industrial park where FedEx houses their demonic minions, each keeping close eye over our packages, caressing them with their talons, grotesque mouths agape and spilling acidic drool over their surfaces. Few are allowed in and even fewer are allowed out. But it was a chance I was willing to take.

Long story short, I brought a photo ID, signed on the dotted line, picked up the package, littered in their parking lot out of spite and now I have the manuscript and can send back my edits! Note: the unicorns will not be included on the final cover.

*I don’t actually know what “boolean” means.

Manuscript plus toe

Fizzle guards the Veganomicon, nay! Veganism!

It’s like I’m studying for the bar