Ever been to a MAGICAL city? My idea of a magical city would be one that feeds me truly delicious vegan food from the time I drag my ass out of my 10,000 thread count sheet covered bed until I pass out from too much tequila at night. Have you ever experienced such a thing?
Colibri Custom Catered Travel is committed to serving travelers who seek sustainable and organic farm-to-table, gluten free, and/or vegan cuisine. Now that I have your attention, the locale for this fabulous vacation happens to be Travel + Leisure Magazine’s #4 pick for top ten world destinations: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
For seven days and nights, your trip includes all custom catered meals, outdoor adventure, town and farm tours, musical performances, tequila tastings, cultural experiences and more. A spacious hacienda in the middle of the historic center of town provides both private rooms and spacious dining areas under one roof. Your hostess and founder of Colibri, Cate Lazen is not only a former San Miguel de Allende resident, she was also diagnosed with celiac disease years ago and she knows how hard it can be to trust a restaurant with our vegan or gluten-free needs. Hence, a business built around the freedom to travel and eat well without worry. Cate is quite magical herself and the cost of the trip pays off in spades just to hang out with her!
Hold on to your sombrero, there is MORE! Colibri’s vegan chef Alicia Rivero has fantastic ideas for stuffing our vegan pie holes. Just to mention a few, how do these sound? Artichoke Dip with Basil Infused Olive Oil, Panzanella Bread Salad with Fresh Herbed-Tomato Sauce, Farm to Table Pizzas, Potato Gnocchi with Truffle-scented, Pesto Sauce Braised Eggplant in “Creamy” Saffron Sauce, Root vegetable Latkes with Red Onion Compote, Breakfast Granola with Nut Milks and Fresh Berries, and French Toast.
The list is lengthy, but these are just a few that sound drool worthy. Colibri supports sustainable farming, non-GMO foods, responsible water use and fair treatment of farm workers. San Miguel de Allende’s organic movement is in high gear, promising fresh, seasonal produce that serves as the foundation for vegan dishes. . Through Colibri you will get your foodie on responsibly. Check out how to get a tan, meet a hot lover, and eat your brains out without Montezuma’s revenge on their Facebook page.
Keri Siry lives in New Jersey with her 2 dogs Sammy and Honey Bee, new cat Hank and her 4 year old daughter Gemma and husband Darryl. Vegan for 8 years, Keri loves to share recipes and meatless know how via her blog at the Politics of Food.
You can buy these Vegan Bacon Guinness Salted Caramels on Etsy! And before anyone freaks, it’s the vegan type of Guinness! That’s bacon and beer in a caramel. EAT IT, OMNIVORE BITCHES. No, I mean, really, eat it. It’s delicious.
Gabby Wild is a young, driven animal activist. This year, to raise awareness of and money for endangered species, she’s wearing exactly one outfit every month, each one designed around a different endangered animal.
January’s animal was the amur leopard, and January’s outfit was this dress, designed by Althea Harper.
February’s animal is the bactrian camel, and February’s outfit is a jacket, top, and pants, designed by Laura Zwanziger and Max Gengos.
You can find out more about Gabby’s 12 in 12 for 12 project at her site, where you can also donate to help save the animals she’s supporting. She’s got some awesome designers participating (love you Jay McCarroll!), and I love the image of a veterinary student (she studies at Cornell) working in a lab in a floor-length gown.
Also this video about why she chose the bactrian camel is pretty charming. [Can’t see it? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]
I also appreciate that not all of the animals she’s supporting are cute and cuddly, which can be an issue with “save the animals” causes. Some of the animals she chose are kind of ugly, or terrifying in that way that generally benign animals can totally freak you out (river dolphins give me the ultra-creeps and I don’t know why). But Gabby Wild, being an apparent super-human, cares about animals ugly and adorable, and has a unique way of showing it. What are you doing this year for the world?
[video]
Looking for a child or romantic partner, but too busy/tired/misanthropic/low-wage-earning? Room for love in your heart, but no space for another human in your life? You need a pet, my friends! And just in time for Valentine’s Day (and Galentine’s Day, and Palentine’s Day*), the SF SPCA is hosting an Adoptathon! Get the pet you need at the price you can afford! Attend an animal-behavior workshop! Get a tattoo of your pet! Meet an Animal Planet celebrity!
Beginning Friday, Feb. 10, from 4 to 8 p.m., attend a cocktail party at the SF SPCA Adoption Center hosted by Jackson Galaxy of My Cat From Hell. Ken Een of Frisco Tattoo will doing animal-themed tattoos! The next day, Saturday, Feb. 11, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., you can attend Jackson Galaxy’s Cat Mojo Workshop, and get his help finding the adoptable animal for you.
Throughout the weekend, the SF SPCA will offer reduced adoption fees on all cats and dogs over six months of age: $10 on Friday, $11 on Saturday, and $12 on Sunday. Yay, pets! Go find emotional fulfillment in a mammal that won’t ever lose interest in you, or find you anything but perfect.
For details on all the Valentine’s Weekend Adoptathon events, visit the SF SPCA website, or call (415) 912.1742.
*Feb. 13 and 15, respectively.
[photo of actual SF SPCA kitties by Nyxy via Flickr]
We posted last week about PCRM’s* idiotic cheese campaign and just hoped it would go away, but they’re back this week with even more ridiculousness. Neal Barnard, founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, wasn’t content with spreading crap on his own site; he wants to infest the rest of the internet with his rationalizations. Barnard’s piece on Crazy Sexy Life is super-disappointing and filled with hateful rhetoric disguised as caring. Moreover, so much of this shit is ludicrous coming from someone who is a PSYCHIATRIST—aren’t you supposed to care about the emotional wellbeing of others? I feel bad for anyone who was under his psychiatric care. BUT MOVING ON.
Here’s the deal with this campaign: If PCRM wanted to tackle the issue of clogged arteries from animal cholesterol, why not show that? Because people of ALL sizes deal with it, and it’s HONEST. Oh, yes, but it’s not as provocative as the big belly.
What REALLY sucks about this campaign is that it sounds reasonable and supportive, but it’s actually the same old crap (“I’m not racist, but…”). The hypocrisy of Barnard’s “of course fat people shouldn’t be shamed because they’re HELPLESS VICTIMS OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY but we should totally SHAME FAT PEOPLE SO THEY STOP BEING HELPLESS VICTIMS OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY” approach — it’s so twisted! I’ll leave you with this bit of business that reader/occasional contributor/great person Rick Kelley left in the comments on our last post. It’s outstanding, and helps to explain exactly what’s so fucked about this tactic:
The “angle” these ads use — namely, “fat bodies are disgusting, so go vegan” — is shared with countless advertising campaigns selling every sort of bullshit imaginable, to all of our detriment. They posit a particular kind of “desirable body” and shame those who fail to attain it. Branding veganism as a weight loss strategy doesn’t do anyone any favors, and it doesn’t make new vegans (unless week-long fad dieters count). These ads have nothing to do with health, not anymore than some soap or deodorant company is committed to health (and a garden-fresh scent). No one is disputing the health benefits of a plant-based diet — Forks Over Knives is routinely embraced, recommended, and celebrated throughout vegan circles, most definitely on this site — but rather rejecting the notion that a “vegan brand” to sell “ethical eating” by way of a “stop being so fucking fat, fatties” campaign is anything but mean-spirited and counter-productive.Here are a few reasons why, from the practical to the ethical:
(1) More than anything else, this resembles diet ads, and constructs veganism as a diet. Diets are by their nature temporary and end-goal oriented. If someone goes vegan to lose weight and they don’t, it seems unlikely they’d continue. If they do, it seems likely they’ll stop after they’ve attained their goal.
(2) Whether or not someone loses weight, the use and property-status of nonhumans isn’t remotely addressed, because there is no framework or analysis to understand it. You can go through a two-week vegan diet weight loss plan cloaked in fur and leather, occasionally shooting a dog, as easily as not.
(3) It’s alienating and reinforces notions of vegan exclusivity, superiority, and contempt for human animals.
(4) By playing into normative ideals of the human body, it reinforces patriarchal notions of beauty. Despite the inclusion of a male-presenting body in the ad, no one being at all serious would argue that advertising (including this one) primarily targets men. The idea here, as FUCKING EVERYWHERE, is that female-presenting bodies are by definition thin; if not, they are gross and in need of recuperation (i.e. shaming).
(5) By focusing on isolated, individual bodies (and certainly not whole bodies) outside of any world they might inhabit, it erases people’s lived experiences. It erases the fact that different cultures view bodies in different ways; it erases the realities of people’s access to healthy foods, which are enormously pre-determined by class structures; and it erases the most basic fact of all, which is that we live in these bodies we find ourselves in, the social value of which is determined by things often outside of our control (like fucking PCRM ads, apparently).
To end this manifesto/comment, I’d just point out that one thing a “vegan movement” (should it ever arrive) needs to do is to link nonhuman animal oppression with all the other oppressive structures that dominate our lives (like patriarchy, class oppression, racism, rigid systems of normative ideals, capitalist marketing as a means of social change, etc.). Damaging nonsense like this hurts that future effort.
SING IT!
I encourage PCRM (and really everyone ever) to read Health at Every Size, learn about our so-called “Obesity Epidemic,” and read up on the big business of fat hate. I wrote this same shit to PETA last year but you know, since PETA and PCRM are literally in bed together (UGH MY EYES! Seriously, picturing that just sent shivers down my spine), it can’t hurt to remind them. Show compassion for everyone and work on effective campaigns that breed love and respect for all. THE END.
*PCRM has such great campaigns, why are they focusing energy and money on this one? My experience is that Animal Rights groups that focus on too many campaigns just do them all poorly. Why not work on one thing and do it really, really well?
HBO has a new show called Luck. It’s about horse-racing, a “sport” I understand has been losing popularity for decades and is probably still around because it, like dog-racing, is legal to bet on in states where gambling is only otherwise legal in Indian casinos. Which speaks very highly of it as a “sport,” right? Definitely you want to be in a place people frequent because of the opportunities to gamble while wearing enormous hats presents.
Luck is a show about a dying American pastime made even weirder by the vernacular specific to this pastime that, because it’s dying, very few viewers of the show understand. Have you read the internet during the past six weeks? Everyone who talks about television is all, “Oh Luck, the dialog is impenetrable and the actors are all individually and specifically creepy and threatening, and the last show its creator made was also a thematic mess, but he also did Deadwood and HBO means ‘Serious Television Business,’ so we’re going to pretend to love it! Horses!”
My first point is, you’re probably not watching Luck, and you shouldn’t, because it’s nonsense. If you are, though, you may have noticed that in place of the standard “No animals were harmed” notation in the credits, there’s a line that says “The American Humane Association Monitored the animal action.” That’s because animals were harmed during the filming of this television show, specifically two horses, which actually suffered such serious injuries they had to be euthanized. No, I don’t know why veterinary medicine hasn’t solved fatal horse injuries; it seems awfully 19th century to still be putting horses down when they break their legs, right?
HBO tells the New York Observer that yeah it was totally tragic that we got those horses killed, but after the second one died we “suspended production” to figure out how not to kill any more horses while filming our television show about this shitty sport that fucking wrecks horses specifically bred to be fucking wrecked and that no one except the people involved in their wrecking gives a fuck about—that is, they’ve “adopt[ed] additional protocols specifically for horse racing sequences” and they’re earning that AHA-trademarked “No animals were harmed” line that will appear in future episodes’ credits.
Sorry two horses had to die before you figured your shit out, HBO and the producers of Luck, but you’ve got David Milch and he’s a genius! And horse racing was once upon a time the sport of kings or whatever. So you’ve got that going for you.
[photo of (Brazilian!) horses by Eduardo Amorim via Flickr]
Vegan Ryan Gosling knows what’s up. I want him to invent some cheese in my pants! WHAT SORRY.
Get the tissues: “As bounty hunters with bush knives entrapped them in a circle and moved in for the kill, the only thing this mother orang-utan could think to do was to wrap a giant protective arm around her daughter.”
Luckily, rescue group Four Paws saved the orangutan and her baby. They were released back into the wild in a more remote and safer area. Jeez, I am so thankful. And what were these men trying to kill the mama and baby for?: palm oil. The Borneo palm oil companies are said to be offering £70 (about $110) for each orangutan killed on their plantations. So sad. And bounty hunters aren’t the only problem, there’s also severe deforestation due, again, to palm oil. One preferred method of clearing is uncontrolled fires that have killed thousands of orangutans. Fucking A.
Four Paws has some really great programs in place to help orangutans, they seem like an awesome organization. You can donate to them here. I found this palm oil free shopping guide. Does anyone have any other resources about palm oil they recommend? I feel like palm oil is my worst issue, it’s just everywhere; it’s overwhelming. Any tips for me? I’ve heard that organic palm oil doesn’t have the same issues and is fine to eat — do you know if that’s true? I quit regular Earth Balance awhile back and only buy the organic kind and the AMAZING coconut spread! It’s amazing!
via Daily Mail
You guys, there are a few places in San Francisco you can get fried pickles, but maybe you are too lazy to leave your house? DID YOU THINK OF THAT? Yeah you did, lazy. And here at Vegansaurus, we support your right to be as lazy as you wanna be. If you’re one of the unwashed masses that won’t or can’t go outside, who are we to stop you? NOBODY!
We’re here to help you in your agoraphobic craze for fatty fried goodness. Enter a recipe for vegan fried pickles from Vegan Happy Hour! YOU’RE WELCOME AND GOOD NIGHT. We assume you can go to bed right where you’re sitting now, that’s why we say goodnight. Livin’ the dream!