vegansaurus!

We didn’t have a link-o-rama for a couple of weeks, whoops. Good thing we saved up all those links, so you have tons of good reading for this weekend.

Let’s get some shoes! Vegan shoes, on sale through the end of the month. Ohhhh man, I wear a 7.5 U.S./37.5 EU if anyone wants to buy me a special present for being so great.

Can I kiss, like, everyone in Ghent? Last year, the city decided that Thursday would be Vegetarian Day, meaning city-run cafeterias &c. (they FEED THEIR CIVIC EMPLOYEES? WHAT?) and schools (ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS) would have to serve exclusively vegetarian food every Thursday. According to this week’s episode of the best radio show ever, Inside Europe, this is going really well. The kids love it, the citizens love it, and what the hell Ghent has 91 vegetarian restaurants?!! (note: download the podcast, skip to 49:20 to go directly to the pertinent story.)

Awesome Sharon of Veg Table is moving to Australia! Before she goes, she leaves us a final post on delicious local eating. Not included: her visit to Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles, which she wrote about just for us.

Speaking of linking to our own stuff, have you checked out the posts on John Mackey’s latest jerk-ass anti-fat-people bullshit, and on the travesty that is the new Weird Fish menu? The comments, they are many! We love it when you express your opinions, as long as you are civil/pertinent.

Super-smart Vegansaurus writer Steve contributed to the SF Appeal today, on the subject of non-meat-eaters keeping meat-eating cats. We are pretending not to be jealous that we didn’t ask him to write about this here first. Proud! We are proud, good job, Steve!

Vegetable tourism: in which British people travel the country in search of the birthplaces of famous varieties of produce. It’s quirky! Much like British people! But this seems more worthwhile (and tastier!) than, say, doing Jane Austen novel reenactments at Bath. That is like 10 lorries’ past “quirky” and well into “insanator” territory (READ OTHER BOOKS, GUYS).

Some grumplestiltskin at 7x7 magazine just can’t get over the fact that they don’t serve real actual from-an-animal cheese at Gracias Madre. Just, why call it “cheese” when it’s totally an amalgam of weird stuff, ugh.

Meat-smuggling: not just a single-entendre! Apparently some people do this because in Europe—mostly Italy—they do especially fascinating things with animal parts that are so much more interesting and authentic than the weird and fucked up things people do with animal parts here. GOD, you are SO GROSS, SHUT UP.

But gosh, maybe if the U.S. had laxer meat-import laws, people wouldn’t spend so much time murdering horses and selling their bodies for food. Right? Because meat-eating is like the hardestcore thrill-seeking, LIFE ON THE EDGE!! BEEF!

Oh, Michael Pollan. He doesn’t think it’s possible to make your own Twinkies! I can make you an organic, vegan Twinkie that tastes like French kisses from angels.

PCRM (employer of one of your Vegansaurus editors) made a list of the five best cookbooks of the decade, and guess what, they’re all VEGAN. The actual cookbooks I cannot endorse—one by certain pseudo-nutritionist insanators, another having been published roughly two seconds ago—but the point is that a vegan diet will save your life. Tell your everyone.

Michelle we love you: who wants to veganize the First Lady’s shortbread cookies? Come on, you want to.

Monsanto, the most evil of all agricultural corporations (that we know of), is facing an antitrust hearing from the Justice Department. Considering that “about 93 percent of soybean plantings last year” are connected to Monsanto, I’d say this is pertinent to us vegans. Although considering the DoJ is following up claims made by motherfucking DuPont, this may just end in (more of) our rage tears.

Someone is considering opening an exclusively vegan store in the Bay Area? WHAT YES PLEASE. Be nice and helpful and take this survey and let’s make this happen like yesterday.

Bitches hate Ingrid Newkirk: she is the Anti-Feminist Antichrist and PETA wages endless war on Sensible People’s Precious Sensibilities. Hey ladies!

Kelis “would demand [the chinchillas and minks whose pelts make up her luxurious coats] be put to death” if they weren’t already being raised on farms for the express purpose of being anally fucking electrocuted and made into those “luxurious” coats she loves so damn much. She also demands that the anti-fur brigade turn their attention other causes, like the poor people who pick vegetables, and sufferers of female genital mutilation. Because you know you can’t try to change more than one shitty situation at a time and VEGANS HATE HUMANS, I WOULD MURDER THE REINCARNATION OF EINSTEIN TO SAVE A RABID CAT, DID YOU KNOW?

Big ol’ vegan Erykah Badu released a bonus track from her (maybe) new album today, which is glorious.

Physically bigger vegan Georges Laraque (we’re everywhere!) is the best hockey player in the entire world ever, and raised a ton of money for Haiti recently. You guys I think we should start following the Canadiens.

Thanks, meat-eaters, for wrecking everything for the polar bears. Fucking THANKS A LOT.

Russia, on the cutting edge of being the total embodiment of a heartless fucking bastard, wants to get back on the cutting edge of space travel by sending a monkey to Mars. Don’t worry though, a robot will feed it! I wish this were from The Onion.

Here is an interview with the super-hardcore and super-amazing Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. She tolerates no bullshit and makes delicious food, we adore her.

Some employees of HarperCanada, inspired by friend-of-Oprah Tal Ronnen, took a two-weeklong vegan challenge. Apparently in Toronto it is hard to find vegan bread? I don’t know. Regardless: nice effort!

Forbes isn’t exclusively the domain of classist, poors-hating white dudes you want to punch in the face! It’s also the home of a guy who, following Mark Bittman’s advice, eats mostly vegan. He calls the diet “[his] health care plan,” awesome! If only my vegan diet would scrape my teeth and cure my astigmatism, we’d be peas in a healthy fucking pod!

A significantly less offensive magazine: Potluck Mania!, by super-vegan/author Joanna Vaught, which absolutely deserves its exclamation point.

Vegansaurus favorite Sweet & Sara were featured on the Food Network’s Unwrapped series. Hooray!! Also, thanks, now I am dying for a peanut butter s’more. Relatedly, make your own (terrifying) vegan marshmallows!

Coming soon to a bookstore near you (also available for pre-order on Amazon): Our Farm: By the Animals of Farm Sanctuary. The children’s book is a collection of poems written in the first person from various rescued farm animals that the poet, Maya Gottfried, actually met at the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. The poems are extremely sweet and full of personality, taking on very lively (and probably actually observed) traits of various animals in the farm. But for me, the full-color paintings and sketches made the book so memorable. The illustrator/painter Robert Rahway Zakanitch made some beautiful—and imaginative—portrayals of farm animals, often mixing full color paintings with whimsical pencil sketches.

If I had a kid, I would definitely read him/her this thought-provoking book. It humanizes animals that children normally expect to be on their dinner plate, but in such a subtle and creative way. The book is set to go on sale Feb. 9 for $17.99. It is a must-have for the little vegan in your life. While the book is intended for children 5 to 8, the illustrations are sure to captivate a child of any age.

The note at the end of the book, intended for parents, mentions the “huge, crowded facilities where [farm animals] are denied the wind, the sun, the green grass, and the warm dirt that they love,” urging parents to learn more about the Farm Sanctuary’s mission.

I’m a yogi, in the American sense: a couple times a week, I go to a class to practice Hatha yoga, mostly for strength and flexibility. I try to meditate at the appropriate time, but it’s hardly the focus of my practice. There’s a big difference between what I do and what real yogis do: they are trying to reach a pinnacle of meditative ecstasy and therefore achieve “liberation from all worldly suffering and the cycle of birth and death.” I am trying to look good with my shirt off.

When I read the New York Times article about food and yoga, I thought “now I know how new vegetarians feel when they listen to grumpy old vegans talking about honey.”  People really criticize each other about this stuff? Don’t they have anything better to do? What happened to the worldly suffering? But if you think about it, that’s intimately related. The first proscription of yogic teaching is ahimsa, the principle of nonviolence towards living things. How can one be liberated from suffering if one does not embrace nonviolence?

Good question! Let’s ask Sadie Nardini, who apparently started this whole shitshow by writing a somewhat schizophrenic piece about her yoga-practicing, meat-eating ways in the Huffington Post. The Times piece is about the rift in the yoga community between those who eat anything they please, and those who think yoga compels practitioners to (at least) vegetarianism. But below the surface, it’s just as much about the culture of judgment some find in the community.

Nardini’s piece is all about that judgment. Making a fairly offensive Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell comparison, she argues that meat-eaters need to “stay in the closet” to reach the good graces of top-tier yoga instructors.  It’s easy to imagine that she wrote the piece to drum up publicity: “I’m risking a lot doing this, as I am moving to a larger arena in my own teaching, and could turn off the very people who are taking me there” [emphasis mine].  But motivation regardless, do yogis need to be vegan? If they’re not, do they need to hide their diet? Can yogis judge each other for this stuff?

Here’s the thing: the rules are pretty clear. Even Nardini, in her rejection of vegetarianism, makes an argument from ahimsa. It’s a spurious one: she brings up all the canards we’ve heard a thousand times before, about plants feeling pain and insects being killed with the harvest of grain and really it’s fine if you just honor the animal you’re eating and first and foremost, some people just need to eat meat or else they feel yucky and self-harm is the worst of all. Of course, we know the answers to all of these ridiculous objections. If you clear them out of the way, ahimsa is pretty straightforward: avoid doing violence.

Yoga, the real kind, is like any other discipline. There are rules you have to follow. It’s certainly not desirable for yogis to pass judgment on each other for failing to adhere to the rules; ideally, that would be an internal drive. But the thing is, if you’re not following the principles of yoga, you’re doing it wrong. No judgment need be attached to that; it’s just an evaluation of the rules. Much as with “vegetarians” who eat chicken, or “vegans” who eat eggs, it doesn’t matter if your reasons are good.  And it doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.* It just means you’re not living up to the title you claim.

You can’t make the argument from ahimsa that it’s ok to eat meat; it doesn’t hold water. Eat whatever you want, but don’t pretend that you’re living up to the ideals of a yogi. Start your own thing, be a flexiyogini or whatever, but don’t dilute a meaningful term just because you want the benefits without living up to the responsibilities. We see enough of that already.

*OK yes it does, but because you’re killing chickens, not because you’re breaking rules.

This guest-post has been brought to you by Joel, of Joel and Nibbler.

I won’t get into the whole long boring story, but I’ve been staying in a company apartment on Fillmore for what feels like forever due to delays in processing my visa so I can go move to Australia. ANYWAY. I’ve found myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood, having to eat out every meal and thought I’d exhausted my vegan options.

Last night it was late so I thought, oh I’ll order a vegan pizza from Amici’s, but apparently I fall within their racist map of delivery intolerance.  UGH. So after a little Yelp sleuthing I discover some vegan options in a most unexpected nearby place on Eddy and Fillmore Streets: Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles! [Ed.: this is a place Vegansaurus has been meaning to try for a long-ass time but we are lazy and the Fillmore is so far away]

WHAT? No seriously, they have vegan waffles! And they are good—the buckwheat kind, and they serve them with Earth Balance. (Aww, the menu calls it “Earth’s Balance.” Adorable.) There’s also a vegetarian plate; everything on it is vegan and it is MASSIVE.

We’re talking collard greens, black-eyed peas, spicy potatoes, red beans and rice, and corn bread. Good grief, my left arm is going a little numb just remembering it. They were out of the red beans when I went so I got extra greens, which may have been my favorite part.

Also, the employees there were so friendly and nice and kept trying to bring us free coffee. Oh, and they will serve black people there, which is always a bonus, AMICI’S. Those plates were clean by the end of the meal. Gotta get it in now, since I’m about to move to a country where soul food doesn’t really exist and they still find blackface amusing, apparently.

We’ll miss Sharon A LOT while she’s living it up down under. Was that gross? I can’t even tell anymore. Anyway, we look forward to visiting her (preferably during a 50-year storm!) and eating the entire continent out of its vegan food, dino-style!

Chances are if you live in San Francisco and are an unemployed bum (“freelancer”), you’ve heard of El Toro’s and Pancho Villa’s Taco Happy Hours. Between the hours of 3 and 5 p.m., both venerable taquerias offer $1 tacos and $2 beers. While in the past I’ve had no troubles getting tofu tacos for the $1 advertised price, yesterday when my friend and I hit up the Panch, we were told that the only vegetarian taco eligible for the deal was the plain rice/beans/salsa deal…BUT I could get a meat taco for the happy hour price!

What the shit? The basic meat taco is $3, while the rice/beans/salsa model is $1.50. That means that you get a $2 discount per taco if you eat meat, and a $0.50 discount per taco if you don’t. What’s more is the tofu tacos COST LESS THAN THE PLAIN MEAT TACOS! THEY ARE $2.25!!! WHY, PANCHO VILLA/EL TORO, WHY?

Now, I love me some El Toro and I love me some Pancho Villa (more El Toro, because they have pico de gallo in their salsa bar, and I am like a fiend for that stuff), but I am not so in love with this veg discrimination, so I say let us rise up, vegans, and fight for our $1 tofu tacos! Contact El Toro and Pancho Villa and (politely and pragmatically) let them know that we’re on to them. End veggie discrimination now!

Tonight President Obama will address the nation with his first State of the Union address. There are two things I’m hoping to hear, and if he says them, vegans will have cause to celebrate.

The first thing: a renewed, post-Copenhagen commitment to fix global warming. This means Obama will need to urge the Senate to pass a clean energy bill. The Senate is now the world’s most dysfunctional legislative body, and lately it’s become a graveyard for good ideas, a modern day House of Lords, where ancient gray-haired idiots dither around as island nations drown, forests disappear, and more species go extinct. Seriously, the Senate sucks. (By which I mean, nice senators, yes you are all very important and wise, now pretty please pass a climate bill?) If they don’t pass a bill to reduce global warming pollution, then that gives other big polluters like China an excuse to do nothing. Obama needs to go there. It’s better for the economy, better for the planet, and better for the animals.

Now here’s the second thing: progressives have been furious over a proposed “spending freeze” that the White House leaked on Monday. It was a bad idea when John McCain proposed a freeze, so why is Obama all about it now?

Here’s a reason why this may actually be a good thing. First of all, it’s less of a freeze, and more like a slushy. Rather than taking a hatchet to the budget, Obama will propose increases in spending on areas that boost the economy, while proposing cuts to areas that waste money. The idea he’s pitching is to hold average spending steady starting in 2011 and call it a “freeze” to make your conservative uncle in Ohio swoon.

So why should we care? Because farm subsidies could end up on the chopping block, and that would be a very good thing. Less money to grow corn that no one needs, less money for slaughterhouses, less clearcutting, less money for megafarm corporations. We’ve already taken farm subsidies to task here in the hallowed halls of Vegansaurus, so if Obama cuts them in his future budgets, then I will kiss him on the mouth. It would be a significant victory for sanity in our food system.

We don’t know the details yet, obviously, which is why this is called a preview and not a psychic prediction. Disappointment is still very much on the menu because, it’s politics. And even if he goes there, lobbyists might still win anyway. So tune in and keep score at home, or find a SotU drinking game and pass out in the bathroom.

Tune out the iTablet/iPad/iWhatever that Apple is sending everyone in a tizzy over today, and win $50 of free stuff from iHerb! And no, iHerb isn’t an online medical marijuana delivery service, you big stoner; it’s a discount supplements retailer that sells practically everything. Every brand you can think of, like Now Foods and Twinlabs, and even some of the more obscure items, like vegan glucosamine. Best of all, they have fast shipping, so if you live in California, their free ground shipping will get your supplies in two days at the most.

I went over to Whole Foods to compare prices, because let’s face it, not all of us are lucky enough to have awesome co-ops like Rainbow nearby, and that sometimes means Randian nutjob John Galt Mackey gets our money. (I’m a Rainbow loyalist myself, but there’s only one Rainbow and a zillion Whole Foods.) Sure enough, iHerb was cheaper by an average of 20% on the supplements I compared. My usual Twinlab B12 dots were $19.49 at Whole Foods, $10.24 at iHerb.

iHerb also has a secret grocery section with baking ingredients from brands like Bob’s Red Mill and Arrowhead Mills. So if you do a lot of baking, you can load up on supplies once, then reorder everything again as a standing order once you’re about to run out. I’d love to see iHerb set up an automatic subscription like Amazon’s Subscribe and Save, but this will do in the meantime.

But  none of that really matters because listen up: you’re going to get $50 of free stuff from them just by answering a ridiculous contest question, which I am just now thinking up. OK, here goes. All you have to do is post the answer to this question:

In the movie The Stöned Age, what kind of car do Joe and Hubbs drive?

Then I’ll pick someone at random who answered correctly. And yes it’s pot-themed because it’s iHERB, get it?? I’m just killing myself with the dad jokes over here. Go ahead and cheat by looking at IMDb, I won’t know the difference, and you’ll impress everyone with your encyclopedic knowledge of mid-’90s coming-of-age cinema.

You can also get another $5 off by checking out with coupon code BUY123. So even if you don’t win, use that same coupon at checkout and save $5 anyway! Fuck yeah free stuff!

Set your VCRs, DVRs, and Bittorrent TV-stealy programs: Alicia Silverstone will be on Oprah today! She’ll be on with Michael Pollan (who I know most of you hate but I count anyone who goes around persuading Americans to eat more plants and less meat as an ally) with some footage from Food Inc. At this rate, the Oprahnator is going to need an entire show on her new TV network devoted to vegan cooking and food politics. (Hint, hint, and PS hire me to produce it, I’m not remotely qualified but I swear it’ll be good.)

Tune in today; check your local listings for times, or just watch the grainy version later on YouTube.

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) hosts a discussion on “The Economics of Streetfood” tonight, as part of its Young Urbanists program. It will feature speakers from the SF Department of Health, La Cocina, and Let’s Be Frank (a.k.a., Let’s Shut the Fuck Up About Grass-Fed Beef), and “delve into the motivations behind the streetfood industry.”

Be at the SPUR office at 645 Mission St. by 6 p.m. The cost is $20 for non-members (of SPUR, duh), and free for members. It sounds pretty great, maybe you should go! They promise “drinks and light food” as well, and if nothing else you can demand vegan options from the LBF dude, because come on.

It’s cold and rainy in the Bay Area! But I am neither whining nor complaining about it; when you are having a life crisis and more depressed than usual, you should not question a legitimate reason to stay the hell in bed all day, you know?

Luckily, in addition to sleeping your feelings away, you can eat them! That’s why I present to you today my mother’s recipe for fresh mushroom soup. It is hearty and healthy and warming and filling, so you can eat an enormous bowlful (or two or three or however many) and not add to your reasons to weep. What I’m saying is, this soup is John Mackey-approved, i.e., choke it down and it won’t lose you your PLATINUM DISCOUNT.

The directions are copied nearly verbatim from my ma’s recipe cards, which she keeps in a recipe tin she got from mailing in Grape-Nuts proofs-of-purchase a long time ago, when I was a small girl and cereal companies made it worth your while to shell out for postage.

Ingredients
2 medium onions, chopped
2 Tbs. (plus a little extra) non-dairy butter
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
5 Tbs. uncooked barley
3 fist-sized potatoes, diced
3 cups water
3 1/2 cups plain unsweetened non-dairy milk

Directions
1. Saute the onions in the non-dairy butter (we like Earth Balance at my house) in a pan.

2. Add the mushrooms, a bit more non-dairy butter, and continue to saute another 10 minutes over a low heat.

3. Place the onions and mushrooms in a large pot. Add the barley, salt and pepper to taste, the potatoes, and the water. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes. More water can be added now and then.
N.B.: Up to this point, everything can be done the night before, in which case you perform step 4 just before you plan to eat the soup. If you’re cooking to eat it now, the 45 minutes have fragrantly passed.

4. Add the non-dairy milk (we used soy) and very slowly heat soup, stirring constantly, just to the brink of boiling. A bit more or less milk can be added, depending on how you like the consistency of soup. Serve sprinkled with fresh parsley.

I like mine sprinkled with nutritional yeast as well, but I am in the minority around here. My ma reports that this recipe can be easily doubled, but you might not need to because it really makes a lot of soup.

Cheeposaurus here! Some good deals that even this penny-pinching, miserly immigrant can get on board with. Remember; please check your local ads for deals because stores tend to vary their sales from region to region. In other words, don’t blame me because you’re a lazy jerk. NOW ON WITH THE SHOW!

1) At assface Whole Foods:  Nasoya Tofu is three for $5, or three for $6 depending on the variety. Use this coupon on each item and cut your bill nearly in half.

2) Also at assface WF: Naked Juice is two for $5. Buy 10 bottles and submit your receipt for this manufacturer rebate. Also, sign up for their “Bare Believers” online newsletter and score a $1 off coupon to increase your savings. Look in the Whole Foods’ coupon book “The Whole Deal,” which should be near the entrance to the store; inside, there is a $1 off one box of Celestial Seasonings tea. Celestial Seasonings tea is currently three for $6, so use that coupon and get each box for a $1! Finally, WE FUCKING HATE WHOLE FOODS. Sorry, this blog is schitzo.

3) At Walgreens: buy $20 worth of Stacy’s Pita Chips and get a $10 Register Reward. Register Rewards are tapes that print out with your receipt and are used like store credit. They do expire, so use yours fast! If you live in the states listed on this rebate form, you can get additional savings (scroll through, as there are different rebate options depending on which amount you are purchasing).

Happy Couponing!

Cheeposaurus is our new weekly column written by one Ms. Annapurna. She is the brown sugar in your coffee and probably the woman you had phone sex with last night.

Mr. Shapiro (our fave!) let us know about this. Seems like a must-watch/must-tell-everyone-about SO MAKE IT HAPPEN, CAP’N.