vegansaurus!

Born Free is currently working to free two dolphins, Tom and Misha, from a tiny pool in Hisaronu, Turkey. They are at some bullshit “park” that is not yet open, as it doesn’t have the proper papers. This picture is Tom being examined by vets; Misha couldn’t be examined at that time but she is favoring one side and they think she has balance problems. Born Free wants them released for rehab immediately. The pool is small and totally polluted—so polluted that the people who entered to catch Tom are now on preventative antibiotics. GROSS!

I HATE WHEN THEY MESS WITH DOLPHINS! I know, I always say this about every animal, but dolphins just seem so sentient, like they’d feel the torture very deeply. Misha and Tom were both taken from the wild in 2006 and arrived in Hisaronu this past June, reportedly in the back of a fruit and vegetable van. Fucking awesome. Way to go guys.

If you’d like to help, sign Born Free’s petition to free Misha and Tom. You can also join their Facebook group which has info on how to help, emails to write, and how to donate. FYI, on the Facebook page, they are calling them the Oludeniz dolphins. Oludeniz and Hisaronu are apparently two resort towns next to each other. I’m like a geographer over here.

[Photo from Born Free website]

Have you ever wanted to drop E but not really because you are on a more orthodox spiritual path and, like, this isn’t sophomore year of Vassar anymore? WELL, guess what? This is your jam. Spirulina-chlorella tablets are chewy, cheese-like, protein-filled algae pills that you crush up with your teeth—you know, like most pills. Similar to the drug that my neurologist papa says puts Swiss-cheese holes in your BRAIN, these tabbies make you feel like you are swimming in a pool of happy feelings without causing you to wake up in your roommate’s bunk bed wearing only her little sister’s boxers.

This is the latest post by Vegansaurus raw correspondent Sarah E. Brown. It originally appeared here. Thanks, Sarah!

This pug plays old-school fanboy with the O.G. batman theme. God bless the world!

The San Francisco Animal Control and Welfare Commission will hear public comments on the proposed ban on the sale of animals tonight, and we need your support! All you have to do is show up to the meeting place, line up at the microphone, and when it’s your turn to speak, state your name and your support for the ban. That’s it! No need for a speech or a song or ANYTHING CRAZY—it’s so simple, your five-year-old niece could do it. Actually, bring her too, people love articulate children.

Be in room 408 at City Hall by 5:30 p.m. BAARN is taking charge of this informal call to arms, and they report that at the last meeting on the ban proposal, opponents far outnumbered proponents, so we had better get over there and be polite for animal rights!

The next round of SF Food Wars is going to be bigger and better than ever, you guys—the Great Salsa Champion-chip [sic] will be held on Sunday, Sept. 12 at the Ferry Plaza, and competitors get a $15 stipend to buy ingredients at the Ferry Building Farmers Market! Tickets for eaters cost $16 and go on sale this Monday, Aug. 16, a whole 300 of them this time (bigger space!).

To apply as a competitor, email SF Food Wars with the following information: name, phone number, and email address of entrant, and name and description of dish. And do it RIGHT NOW ASAP, places go fast. Be bold! Be daring! Make some damn salsa and win it for the legless kitty! Or personal pride, whatever motivates you.

The non-cooking rest of you can buy tickets at the SF Food Wars site beginning Monday at noon.

It’s that time again—this Friday is Vegan Happy Hour at the Hemlock Tavern (6 to 9 p.m.!)

It’s a potluck, vegans, so bring some food! I know it can be tough to get food together by 6 on a Friday evening, so I’ve come up with some quick, easy, and cheap ideas for stuff to bring. Read, make, and bring on down to VHH to enjoy with a beer or six.

1. Roasted chickpeas: strain and rinse 2 cans of chickpeas. Toss in a baking dish along with some olive oil and whatever kind of seasoning you like (garlic and lemon; curry powder; etc.). Bake at 350 F for 20 to 30 minutes, tossing occasionally. This keeps well overnight, so make it on Thursday, throw it in a container, and bring it to the Hemlock on Friday!

2. Bruschetta: grab a bunch of tomatoes and chop ‘em up. Mix together with some minced garlic, olive oil, sea salt, and basil (fresh is awesome, but dried is okay). Grab a baguette on the way to the bar, and you’re set! The tomato mixture keeps overnight just fine.

3. Cornbread: Easy as fuck, cheap, and travels well: recipe.

4. Quinoa salad: Make this the night before for best results. Cook some quinoa and let it cool. Chop up some veggies to go in it (I like Mexican theme with green onion, tomato, avocado, corn, and black beans, but you can do whatever. I bet Moroccan-style with chickpeas, tomatoes, and spices would be awesome as well). Add some olive oil and some kind of acid (vinegar or lemon/lime juice, or both). Season with some salt and pepper.

5. Roasted veggies: chop up a bunch of veggies (go to a farmers market—things are cheap right now) and throw in a baking dish with some olive oil and sea salt. Bake at 350 F until the veggies are tender.

For the super-lazy, check out Trader Joe’s veggie fried rice (just pour the contents of the bag into a skillet and fry until cooked through. DONE); vegan frozen pizza (Tofurky makes ‘em, and so does Amy’s, though be careful with Amy’s—the only vegan one is the cheeseless one); Trader Joe’s apple strudel (in the freezer section— follow the instructions on the box and then lie and say you made them yourself); spiced nuts (Trader Joe’s sells some pre-made varieties, or you can make your own—they’re super-easy and delicious!).

I hope that’s helpful for all you working stiffs, and see you on Friday!

Even though Chelsea Clinton’s wedding wasn’t as vegan as it was made out to be, it was vegan enough to prompt the New York Times to tackle the pressing social issue of vegetarian weddings; specifically, whether or not a vegan or vegetarian bride should serve meat at her wedding. Not to miss an opportunity to add their reasoned opinions to this important discourse, both Gawker (The Vegan Wedding Article the NYT Doesn’t Want You to Read) and Jezebel (Is It Selfish to Throw a Vegan Wedding) followed suit. Oh goody—I can smell the bullshit from here.

First up, The Times. In what is the most reasonable article, The Times actually doesn’t say much beyond giving a few examples of vegan/vegetarian (or half-vegan/-vegetarian) couples who have either had or not had meat at their weddings, and then thoughtfully relating the story of one poor soul forced to endure a vegetarian wedding back in 1999 (which he is still talking about—can we say first-world problems?). Thankfully, this mensch was able to sneak out and find a chicken parmesan sandwich mid-reception, so he didn’t wither away and die. What a trooper! Unfortunately, the experience scarred him so much that he’s still sore about it 11 years later. Isn’t that just like vegans—forcing you to eat their stupid vegetables and then refusing to foot the bill when you have to spend the next decade dealing with your PTSD in therapy!

Next up, Gawker. Oh, Gawker. First they say vegans are a good lay because we’re, um, “sinewy”? And then they say that the food “dilemmas” that inevitably occur when vegans get married are boring (and then write an article about them). A couple things come to mind: 1) Those dilemmas pretty much ONLY come from butt-hurt meat-eaters who can’t handle eating a single veggie meal; 2) “Sinewy”? Yeah, I guess I don’t expect much better from Gawker on the topic of veganism, but still. Couldn’t they at least be snarky in a way that makes some sense? I’m the one who’s supposed to have the B-12-deficient brain fog, amirite?

Finally, Jezebel. Jezebel thoughtfully posits whether or not having a vegan wedding is selfish. Hmmm. What a good question! Let me riddle you this, Jez: is it selfish to have a feminist wedding? I mean, why would you impose your kooky beliefs on your wedding guests who spent ALL this time showing up for the free food and booze? HOW INCONSIDERATE THAT YOU EXPECT THAT THE GUESTS AT THE WEDDING YOU’RE PAYING FOR TO RESPECT ONE OF YOUR DEEPEST-HELD BELIEFS! Jesus fucking Christ! So it’s okay to ask/demand that folks refrain from imposing their gender-role fuckery on your wedding, but it’s totally selfish and unrealistic to serve vegan food. Ooooo-kay.

Maybe I’m not the best person to be writing about this, as while I am married, I have little tolerance for weddings (mine was 10 minutes long at city hall; the bride wore Levi’s). I don’t really see why it’s so hard for the vegans getting married to lay down the fucking law and tell people what’s what in the same way all couples tell people what the dress code is or where to sit, and I don’t see why it is apparently such an offense to ask a meat-eater to eat a single vegan meal. Are all meat-eaters such huge whiny babies, or just the ones who write/comment on the The Times, Gawker, and Jezebel? Do their moms still cut the crusts off their bread for them? What do they do when the vending machine is out of their favorite beef jerky? How the fuck do they survive when they are only able to function when every single thing in the universe is perfectly tailored to their preferences?

In the end, I know these kinds of articles are cheap comment/page-view grabs by blogs/publications that should be able to do better but usually don’t bother to. I know that responding to these kind of cheap blood-pressure-raisers doesn’t really do much except probably garner me a few more uptight comments (hi, commenters!), but whatever. Vegans, go forth and have vegan weddings. Fuck the haters, and make ‘em eat broccoli. The New York Times will see them in 11 years for their story.

Since I moved to NYC, I’ve acquired a gaggle of friends from Spain. You know, the Spain in Europe. I swear, I have never talked about being vegan this much in my life! First they don’t get it, then they think I’m crazy, then they ask a million questions. The main question just being, “why?” and then we move on to defensive omnivore bingo (though to be fair, they are way less annoying about it than defensive omnivores from the United States). Meanwhile, when I did a semester abroad in Madrid, I was totally delighted by their vegetarian restaurants. I guess my Spanish friends missed those.

A friend of mine from the Spanish crew, Luna, who seems to have finally run out of vegan questions, has taken to making me vegan lunch all the time! Can you say, SCORE?! Today we had couscous and tomatoes, Trader Joe’s edamame and Trader Joe’s vegetable gyoza. The gyoza was the bomb! (I should mention that while all the ingredients are vegan, it shares equipment with shellfish. FYI and GROSS.) They make a perfect light lunch or a nice dinnertime appetizer. We ate them with a bit of soy sauce—just a bit. I had four but I prob could have eaten seven or 100 of them.

I don’t know if it’s just the way Luna makes it but the Trader Joe’s edamame is like the best frozen edamame I’ve ever had. I’ve tried other brands at my house and it’s just not as good as when Luna makes it! By the by, Luna is totally hot and needs a green card.

[Photo credit: ME, FOOLS! Sorry I don’t have a “before” of the gyoza bag but I was so hungry]

We tried No Worries last year at World Veg Fest and fell in love. I mean, in luuuuurve. We ate so much vegan Adobo that we had to be wheeled out of this event dedicated to healthy living. OOPS! Anyway, at Veg Fest, the No Worries team was talking about plans to open in the Jack London Square area of Oakland and now we find out it’s really happening and they’re hiring (GET A JOB, LAZY! Also, we assume that by “welcoming appearance” they mean that you should pop a few buttons at the top of the blouse, honey.) Vegansaurus HQ(ish) is within spitting distance (how uncouth!) of their new location and you best believe we’re gonna be hitting this place up on the regular. And by on the regular, I mean I am the bird lady currently standing in front of their building. Don’t be afraid to say hi, JUST NO EYE CONTACT.

UPDATE: Heard from Jay at No Worries and he says they’ll be opening at 1442 Franklin St in downtown Oakland in September. So not spitting distance but walking distance (even for me, the laziest of JLS residents) (oh! and close to 12 Street BART!)

Thanks to David Surcamp for the heads-up! He’s the dude who brought you those ridiculous Weekend Ruiner cinnamon rolls at last’s SF Vegan Bakesale. Bow down!

Sway opened this summer in Noe Valley. It’s a boutique with a selection of affordable clothing chosen by a vegan buyer with great taste. Sway is part of a local chain—there are stores in Alameda, Berkeley, Concord, and Oakland—that reminds me of a less-expensive, less-trendy LF or Urban Outfitters: boho-chic styles like skinny jeans, flowered shirts, dresses, and jumpers, the store caters to the same teen-to-30-something demographic. But what struck me was the variety of vegan fashions for sale.

“We definitely offer a large array of animal-friendly shoes and belts that are fashion-forward,” says buyer Michelle Halprin. “A lot of my vegan friends—especially those coming from out of town—stock up on our non-leather shoes and bags because we are able to get the looks that are often only available in leather.”

Michelle says for as long as she can remember Sway never carried leather or any other animal products. Some of the jackets are wool and the occasional shoes leather due to costumer demand, but she buys vegan fashion whenever possible. Even Sway’s owner is vegetarian.

Not all items at Sway carry Vegan Action’s relatively new “Certified Vegan” label, outside of the purses they carry from Urban Expressions. She hopes more lines will carry the label in the future. For now, Sway’s non-leather brands include Pink Duchess, Miss Me, Soda, Qupid, Dreams, and Breckelles. Purses include sleek, buttery soft ones by Ebisu, Super Trader, Urban Expressions, and Let Them Eat Cake. This fall, find more non-leather purses by Flying Tomato and cool non-leather jackets.

Sway is located at 3979 24th St. at Noe Street. You can also follow the store on Twitter.

This is Vera Churilov’s from Nourish the Spirit’s first post at Vegansaurus. Thanks, Vera!

Organizer Francisco writes:

Ready for ANOTHER vegan bakesale??!! You bet! This time it will happen in the city of San Mateo on August 21, 2010!! So we need bakers and we need them fast!! The charities for this bakesale will be The Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco and Pets in Need.

So let’s help the homeless and sweet, adorable cats and dogs with a vegan bakesale! If you want to participate and create some delicious vegan goodies, contact Francisco and LET’S ROCK THIS!!

I also know that Francisco needs tables and other supplies so if you’re in the San Mateo effort and can help a(n adorable charitable) vegan out, holler!

Update: The sale will take place next to the EVO store at 159 S. B Street in San Mateo!

Pamela Anderson loves animals! She paid all the expenses for the transport of 50 homeless dogs from New Orleans to a pet adoption program in Virginia, less the two she adopted herself. That is a good thing that a person with money can do. [photo credit: AP]

Get busy with these events!
Tonight eat snacks from Vegansaurus pals Fat Bottom Bakery at the Oakland Art Murmur! Also, there’s art, and wandering around Oakland, where it may be warmer than the city! Double-also, art shows very frequently serve free liquor. Go expand your cultural horizons, starting around 5 p.m. and continuing until it’s not entirely clear, but not very late (8ish?).

Tomorrow, Saturday Aug. 7, Oakland gets to be awesome again (!) and host this month’s SF Underground Market. Which is technically a “Bay Area” underground market, but, all right. It’s at 24th Street and Broadway, runs from 5 to 11 p.m., and has a $2 entry fee. There’ll be live music, drinks for purchase, and all kinds of food vendors. The location, incidentally, is three (big) blocks from the 19th Street BART station.

If you didn’t find what you wanted in Oakland, or were unable (TOO LAZY) to get there, probably you should get over to Hayes Valley Farm on Sunday, Aug. 8 for the Fresh Produce Free-For-All. It is exactly what it sounds like, apparently, and it sounds like AWESOME. Hayes Valley Farm is on Laguna Street between Oak and Fell Streets, and the Fresh Produce party is scheduled from 12:30 to 6 p.m.

Alternatively, you could participate in the protest honoring the 40th anniversary of Lolita the orca’s capture. It will be held at “Six Flags Discovery Kingdom” (formerly known as Marine World Africa USA, the saddest not-SeaWorld your Vegansaurus ever visited) in Vallejo from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

More protests next week! On Wednesday, Aug. 11 protest the opening night of the Ringling Bros. circus in Oakland (everything is happening in Oakland now! And HBIC Laura just moved there. This is not a coincidence). The protest will be at the Oracle Arena (7000 Coliseum Way) from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and our pals at Cinnaholic are offering 20 percent off to every protester who brings in a flyer from the event! More details about this and other circus protests here.

Educate yourself with these thrilling news items!
This week in Meat news, British people found themselves accidentally drinking milk and eating meat from cloned cows. Whoopsie daisy! Esquire wouldn’t mind cloned meat, but thinks in vitro a much better (and safer) idea. England is exporting miniature cows to the U.S., which SFoodie considered “might save the planet,” what with their being extra-small and needing so little food and water and space (the better to pack you on the feedlot, my tiny ones!) Good made a super-disgusting chart of the “average American” annual diet, which include 110 pounds of “red meat,” and 600.5 pounds of non-cheese, non-egg dairy products. So that’s all milk and yogurt and cream? Ew. Christina Pirello reminded the omnivores that their hamburgers are totally disgusting, though she didn’t “[go] all vegan on [them],” just suggested, like, the Dan Barber way, Dan Barber’s so great! (no he’s not.) Erik Marcus pointed out that it wasn’t so much the “meat” component in the “cooking meat led to human intellectual development” theory as the “cooking” part. Shut Up, Foodies! wondered how owners of an emu farm could slaughter and eat the birds who literally hug them.

What Fucked-up Things have people been doing to animals recently? Germany’s wild boar population has rapidly increased, and the number of whom are radioactive due to the lasting effects of the Chernobyl disaster has quadrupled. HA HA HA AWESOME. Scientists at the Emory University School of Medicine published research that may explain “the molecular biology of fear”; they studied this by giving “mild” electric shocks to mice. Kerry Ressler, the researcher interviewed for the LiveScience article, really loves his wife and three children. On the subject of fear, military veterinarians are diagnosing dogs with PTSD now. Specifically Gina, a bomb-sniffing German Shepherd, who has been in recovery for a year after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. She’s well enough to work on domestic bases, and maybe she’ll get redeployed to on of our Middle East quagmires, just like our human troops! It’s nice that dogs get treated equally to (straight) people in the U.S. military, isn’t it.

Awwww, isn’t it cuuuuuuute? Anthropomorphic cows selling dairy products! It’s not at all reminiscent of Suicide Food! And Mouila, the oldest gorilla in England, turned 50 on Monday, and her keepers threw her a birthday party, complete with “presents wrapped with [sic] special gorilla-friendly paper.” I’m sure it was always her dream to live in freezing-ass, foggy fucking England and be a baby machine for Howletts Wild Animal Park.

One item of non-terribleness: the guidelines for the first complete replacement for the Draize skin test was adopted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in July, which will, according to PCRM, replace “the rabbit method for most chemicals and products.” Fewer bunnies being tortured really is wonderful.

In our Bay Area, people on the Supplemental Nutrition Program (a type of food stamps) can now use their funds at farmers markets in Healdsburg and Petaluma. That is a really great idea! But considering that the federal government made a big fat cut to funding for food stamps this week, who will have the funds to buy fresh, local produce? Our jerkface governor doesn’t care about who will pick any of the produce from anywhere, vetoing a bill this week that would have guaranteed farmworkers ONE DAY OFF in every seven worked, and overtime pay for over eight hours worked in a day or 40 in a week. You know, like you’d get in an office for making after-hours copies and drinking soda, or sitting around waiting for deadline DOING NOTHING. As opposed to, maybe, picking fucking strawberries in the hot sun all day, every single day. New York City won’t commit to preserving all of its existing community gardens, despite protests—why have a garden when you can have condos?

A pitbull saved a chihuahua from being devoured by a coyote! Stop hating pitbulls already, they are as good a dog as any other. Turns out that the earliest known domesticated animal was, indeed, a dog, and that the act of domestication and bonding with animals may have taught us humans to “learn about and care for fellow creatures.” Speaking of which, Ethical Pizza rescued a baby pigeon at the Daly City BART station yesterday! A tiny baby pigeon only three weeks old! YOU GUYS.

The New York Daily News had a little spotlight on Latin American vegan food in NYC, which our crack team of Megan Rascal and sometimes Figaro will get right on reviewing for you! And Team VeganMania won the Sixth Annual Brown Cow Ice Cream Trough Eating Contest, with a separate trough of Chicago SoyDairy’s Temptation vegan ice cream! Obviously, vegans and our delicious dairy alternatives are the fucking best, HOORAY.

Oh, motherfucker. You never know where a news story will lead you, right? Like how “The USDA is full of racists! Black people are taking over the country and ruining it for all the white people!” hideousness turned out to be “A USDA employee grew as a person before coming to work at the USDA! Andrew Breitbart is a disgusting racist and people are shockingly willing to listen to him!” Or the “evidence of widespread corruption” that shut down ACORN that were actually complete fabrications? Nasty stuff.

Here’s another one! But there isn’t any conveniently edited videotape, and the victims aren’t humans, so it probably won’t get much attention. It deserves outrage, though. See, the other day, some grumpy Republican senators released a report criticizing some of the projects that had received money through the stimulus program. Naturally, the writers of the report gave these projects extremely ridiculous titles, so as to stir up as much shallow controversy as possible. “Yoga and hot flashes!” Who needs to study the effects of yoga on reducing hot flashes in breast cancer survivors? That shit is INSANE! Replacing the windows in the Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument? But it is closed and the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t plan on reopening it! And anyway, just the WINDOWS? Are you trying to give John McCain a rage-induced heart attack right now?

The most controversial, or at least the one that received the most frivolous name and onto which ol’ Nevadan crazypants Sharron Angle latched quite firmly, is “Monkeys Getting High For Science”—more specifically, a $71,623 grant to the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center to “[help] protect very important research that will have significant impact on public health in regards to cocaine addiction and the issue of relapse.” On monkeys. And yes, that does sound fucking crazy. What are the scientists of WFUBMC talking about, and are they really experimenting with monkeys and cocaine? Is this even the most important part of the story?

Considering the rest of the story is like: “The report is very accusatory, doesn’t get its facts exactly right, and the senators probably could’ve better spent their time passing some motherfucking legislation, those lazy bastards,” yes, it is. A quick keyword Google found the official WFUBMC faculty pages for Michael A. Nader, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology, and Paul Czoty, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology and pharmacology, both of the WFU Translational Science Institute and Primate Center. These two gentlemen are particularly important because, listed under their names are their recent publications, the majority of which are credited to both of them, and which go as far back as April 2006. Of Nader’s 41 listed articles, 26, or 63 percent, are specifically on the effects of cocaine (or withholding cocaine from already addicted) monkeys; one is on the effects of MDMA on monkeys. Of Czoty’s 32 listed articles, 19, or 59 percent, are on the effects of cocaine (or withholding cocaine from already addicted) monkeys; he was a contributor to the study on MDMA and monkeys.

The spokesperson for WFUBMC told a half-truth, at least; the stimulus money didn’t create a new program to “get monkeys high for science.” It’s in its fifth year, at least—I couldn’t find anything earlier using the search feature. Animal experiments are fucking disgusting, but animal experiments using cocaine? Where did the cocaine come from? Does WFU have permission to grow coca and process it into cocaine? That is the only ethical option for obtaining the cocaine—you can’t imagine scientists buying it off the street, and if so, that would actually make them the most evil scientists performing research in the name of “helping people” since the atomic bomb was created. Because you know drugs have a really, really high human cost, and unless you can ethically source them—just like your food, and your clothes!—you should not consume them.

But: the monkeys. They make the monkeys “self-administer” the cocaine, which seems eminently more despicable than giving it to them like medication or food. Just, here you go, monkey, here’s some cocaine! Take it! There are several studies on the effects of “the reinforcing strength of cocaine”; one on “Vulnerability to cocaine abuse in socially housed female monkeys”; and this one is my favorite: “Impulsivity and vulnerability to cocaine self-administration in adult rhesus monkeys exposed to cocaine in utero.” They give cocaine to pregnant monkeys, then give cocaine to their babies once they’ve become adults! Just to, you know, see what happens. Because rhesus monkeys are EXACTLY LIKE HUMANS! All this work, creating generations of cocaine-addicted monkeys, will provide us with so much valuable information on—what? How to cure cocaine addiction in humans? Except that, again, monkey physiology is not human physiology; a rhesus monkey’s brain is not a human’s brain. How are these scientists so sure the horrific things they’re doing will have any positive effect on humanity at all? Further, what gives them the right to perform these obscene experiments on any nonhuman, non-consenting animal—it’s their humanity, right? Their implicit human superiority?

Agreeing with useless, time-wasting politicians is irritating, but they probably did us a favor calling attention to these gross experiments. Of course they did it all wrong, but they weren’t paying attention to the important parts: the parts where the government is helping to pay for Wake Forest University to continue to torture monkeys with drugs. Everything is terrible, hooray!