vegansaurus!

quarrygirl:

today’s episode of quarrygirl presents features m cafe de chaya, my favorite spot in los angeles to get decadent yet healthy food. the restaurant focuses on contemporary macrobiotic cuisine, and other than fish, the entire menu is vegan. whether you’re craving a hearty burger, a slap up breakfast, or something light like sushi or salad, m cafe has it all.  we caught up with chef lee gross to talk about healthy eating and the best dishes for everyone at m cafe. check it out!

photos by cindy choi.

Anyplace that serves a healthy vegan hollandaise sauce on top of kale is a place I want to be. Like all the time.

Park Wilde of U.S. Food Policy updated us on the lawsuit this week, and it is not looking good for those sneaky NPPC jerks. Per some newly unredacted documents pertaining to the sale of the slogan—which, remember, has been funded by mandatory fees paid by pig farmers through the pork checkoff program—there was never any other buyer for “The Other White Meat” but the NPCC, and moreover, they knew that no one else would ever want it. It wasn’t worth the $36 million that with interest over 20 years amounts to $60 million paid by the pig farmers (who, again, didn’t agree to this deal, didn’t want this deal, didn’t have any involvement in this deal besides funding it), and now everyone knows it.

It appears that pork checkoff program monies have been used for almost entirely shady purposes. What got HSUS interested in them was their suspected illegal use for lobbying against animal welfare initiatives that HSUS has been pushing for years. This revelation about “The Other White Meat” is only one gotcha, but it’s a big, obvious one. The dirtiest corporate secrets are always in the accounting, right? Tsk tsk, NPPC.

Take a look at the unredacted document at U.S. Food Policy. I can’t wait to see how those 100 percent anti-animal-welfare jerks at NPPC are going to respond. I hope it’s more whining and accusations of bullying!

[Photo by Giang Hồ Thị Hoàng via Flickr]

Above is the menu for Vegan Drinks tonight—looks good to me! Word is there will also be gluten-free injera so I think some will be stoked about that. And yours truly will be spinning records along with my new BFF DJ Grand Format. So come on down! 

If Americans are being honest with themselves—if anyone who eats meat is being honest—there is absolutely no reason killing horses and eating the yielded meat is intrinsically worse than the thousands of other animal killings that happen in slaughterhouses around the country every day. If you’re alarmed that the wrong meat was slipped into your frozen lasagna, that’s reasonable. (Vegetarians, of all people, can appreciate the perils.) But if the very thought of killing horses disgusts you in a way that killing cows or pigs does not, you are entertaining an odd delusion that eating a big steak cut from a cow is elegant while eating similar meat cut from a horse is low-class and vile.

Dreamy meat-avoider Cord Jefferson has some words for outraged, snobbish omnivores regarding Europe’s ever-expanding horse meat scandal.

As vegans, we obviously want all meat-eating to stop, but until then (FIGHT FOREVER, PLANT-BASED SOLDIERS) we can at least point out the blatant hypocrisy involved in turning your nose up at horse meat and then gleefully eating cow organs. You shouldn’t be deceived by food labels; nor should you think that eating any one animal’s flesh is morally superior to another.

What do you think? Are you horrified and a tiny bit smug but totally keeping it to yourself because no one wants to hear from the smug vegan?

[Photo by Eduardo Amorim via Flickr]

Hey pals! The NYC Vegetarian Food Festival is this weekend. Huzzah! I missed it last year, I heard it was hella packed. I’m not one for crowds but people were saying it was awesome. The vendors look dope! I may have to grin and bear it this year. Crowds be damned!

Vedge is just on a roll. Not long after partnering with William Sonoma, GQ is now calling them one of the “most outstanding restaurants of 2013.” The writing is a bit obnoxious as, well, Standard American Dieters always are. The writer comments that the diners looked “like regular folks. None of the men were pale and languid. None of the women wore a belt made from a garden hose.” A garden hose belt? Hang onto your petticoats, ladies! But really, thank goodness there were no sissy-looking vegan men there. How dreadful would that have been? Imagine. OMG the worst. 

As usual, mainstream media is behind Megan Rascal. I reviewed Vedge right around this time last year. I went there for a belated birthday dinner with my sis. In related news: TODAY IS MY BDAY!

The local news reports on an extremely urgent problem: rabbits are eating the wiring of cars parked at the Denver Airport. To their credit, the parking lots seem to be using bunny-friendly methods of discouraging this furry vandalism, namely bigger fences and predator urine to scare the goobers away.

I’ve parked my car at this airport a lot lately and had no bunny damage. Maybe the bunnies know I’m vegan from my Vegan Van bumper sticker, and thus spare me from their reign of terror? Maybe this is an organized rabbit campaign against animal abuse? Pretty indirect, bunnies. Let’s rethink your strategy.

Oh, bunnies. Can’t live without them, can’t let them near your car. 

It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! Yay, Paul! Yay, Animals!

Happy Friday!

Yesterday, New Jersey’s Times of Trenton editorialized in favor of criminalizing the use of gestation crates for pigs, concluding: “Imagine the outcry if dogs or cats were subjected to such treatment.” And check out this great op-ed in yesterday’s New Haven Register in favor of a similar bill in Connecticut.

Want to read about a mind-blowing company that offers immense promise for farm animals? Check out yesterday’s Business Week feature on Hampton Creek Foods, and this cool new videoabout them.

Wondering how British consumers may be changing their diets in the wake of the horse meat scandal? Both Reuters and The Economist have fascinating pieces this week about it.

Finally, if you have a burning desire to know my thoughts on the Animal Ag Alliance’s view of the Super Bowl “God Made a Farmer” ad, here’s my latest piece!

Video of the week: Pig eats cat. Yep.

Here are the details; see you there!

** Vigil for the Turlock Hens: Saturday, February 23, 7:30 pm, Turlock, Calif.**

PLEASE SHARE: A group of first responders and compassionate citizens will be gathering the evening of Saturday, February 23 along the roadside outside of A&L Poultry in Turlock to honor the lives of the 50,000 hens who were abandoned at this egg factory farm in 2012.

February 23rd is unforgettable. This day marks the beginning of the monumental rescue in 2012.

Let’s remember the lives of each and every bird on this one-year anniversary. To join in, please contact turlockhenvigil@gmail.com. Candles will be provided to all vigil attendees.

I’ve been seeing so many stories lately about animals with various leg or paw injuries getting specially-designed tools to help them get around like they used to. I wonder if differently-abled (is that the term we use? Don’t be mad, I just don’t know the least offensive term) people think this is nice or if they think it’s weird the way the internet is so excited about these animals. There is something sweet about it though. So many animals get put down (or worse) if something is “wrong” with them and people really aren’t culturally obligated to help them, so when they go out of their way to improve the lives of these little animals, it does seem nice. Here are the stories I’ve seen lately:

Piglet on wheels:

Goldfish gets some help floating:

Kitty gets help from High School robotics club:

And of course there’s London, the pup with his own Ducati:

My new friend Mohit Jain has recently launched a line of all-vegan, super healthful sauces called Saucee! Each of their all-organic sauces is designed to take the guesswork out of what your meal should taste like. Just grab whatever ingredients you have on hand—veggies, bread, Megan Rascal’s favorite chickpea frittata recipe, rice, salad—add some Saucee, and suddenly it’s a spicy delicious time!

Saucee sauces are pretty spicy! Mohit sent me three flavors: capsaicin, turmeric, and kale. I loved them all! The kale is mild, but the capsaicin flavor almost made me wanna ask my landlord to turn off my heat! If you dig spicy it’ll be your new Sriracha. Each sauce is focused around ingredients that rock: capsaicin, turmeric, kale (did you know you can have kale sauce? Yes you can!) maitake mushroom, and flax. Bottom line: Mohit and his team are geniuses!

Each of the Saucee sauces is 100 percent organic, vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, with no crappy added colors (hello Sriracha!), fillers, or stabilizers. There are no additional sugars or oils, and they only use organic vinegar as a preservative. Just the good stuff.

The Saucee team just launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the word out about their delicious sauces and sell some bottles at the same time. Get involved so we can all buy their sauces everywhere and always! 

I love superfoods. I admit the category is meaningless, but I don’t care. If it’s a food called super and it’s vegan, especially raw vegan, I’ll eat it, praise it, and buy it in bulk from websites run by guys with hair to their knees.

Popular superfoods include açaí, hemp, chia, maca, camu camu, yacon root, coconut oil, lucuma, hakuna matata,  , whatevs. YUM. But why do we call lucuma a superfood while kale, that perfect, easy-to-grow veggie, has tons of nutrients and doesn’t cost your 401k match contribution?

Superfood Kitchen by Julie Morris demystifies some of the more esoteric superfoods, but also includes more readily available superfoods like kale and sweet potatoes, which, as we all know, are kickass nutritional sources. I love that Julie shows how superfoods of all kinds can be prepared deliciously!

I decided to make the Hearty Kale Salad featuring kale, scallions, nori,  avocado, miso (I used chickpea miso), and apple cider vinegar. I enjoyed it for lunch with a dash of sauerkraut and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. Totally loved this recipe!

Some of the recipes in Superfood Kitchen are downright genius: Açaí Berry Jam made with chia seeds, flour-free Sesame Flatbread, Maca Chocolate, and more. I could inhale this entire book, and the pictures are GORGEOUS. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book for superfood snobs and plain-old vegan food lovers alike!