vegansaurus!

How to, yo: Mold the best pizza crust!   »

I just had a pizza party with my family! And I broke my mom’s pizza stone, the night before Mother’s Day. I’m a terrible person! I’m not sure the iTunes gift certificate, coconut wax candle and cock blocker I gave her will make up for slamming her stone in the oven and demolishing it. It was an accident! But since she is a great person, she didn’t even get mad at me. My mom is the best.

I want to give props to Chef Mitch at Source for giving me the inside scoop on molding pizza crust. I was a pretty good home cook before; however, working side by side with him every day has taught me so much. If you come into Source, tell him you love the hints on Vegansaurus. It might render him speechless, which is no easy feat—that guy loves to talk! But I love listening, so it is a match made in restaurant heaven.

Now, whether it’s homemade or store-bought pizza dough you are working with, it is the easiest and best to handle at room temperature, so let your dough sit out for an hour or so. That way when you stretch it, it will stay where you put it. Also, play with the outside edge, which will be the uncovered crust, as little as possible. If you can get away with not touching it at all, that is great: It will make for a wonderful, light, “eggshell” crust that will rise beautifully and impress everyone. Shape and stretch your crust from the inside out. However you do this, DON’T TOUCH THE VERY OUTSIDE PART! That’s it. That’s all I’m trying to say.

This outside crust here is a little extreme, as in, it’s HUGE. But the dough was cold and I had a hard time stretching it. You don’t have to go this big, but you know what they say: Go big or go home! The outside crust was so light and fluffy, I felt like a pro. Do you like how I made myself a half-cheese, half-veggie combo? I need options! And remember when some of you were like “Daiya is gross, it tastes like glue”? Well, I really like it. Follow Your Heart soy mozzarella is my numero uno, but Daiya is my mistress! They better not make me choose, because I love them both so much.

Product review: Squarebar! For all your vegan bar needs!  »

Since Clif Bar got in seriously hot water with ethically minded folks everywhere due to the company’s lack of transparency regarding its cacao-sourcing, I’ve been on the lookout for a bar with the same nutrition content, consistency and crunchiness of a Luna or Clif bar.

Squarebar, a relative newcomer to the vegan bar market, comes in three flavors, and comped me one of each: cocoa almond, cocoa crunch, and cocoa coconut. Each flavor is squishy inside and crunchy outside, and yes, I can honestly say I believe they will definitely satisfy any Clif or Luna cravings.

These are high in protein, which is pretty groovy if you plan to use these to fuel your hike from a meditation circle in Dolores Park to your girlfriend’s sixth-floor walkup in the ‘loin. The cocoa chocolate tastes the most like chocolate Clif bars, but without the gunky vitamin aftertaste. Perfect!

While not raw, these bars are gluten-free, organic, non-GMO, and sweetened with two of my fave low-glycemic sweeteners, coconut nectar and stevia. I’m partial to raw things, but if you like Luna or Clif bars, these will seriously satisfy without the guilt of supporting a company that won’t expose its sourcing practices. Squarebars are available at local health food store or order them online.

This is Vegansaurus raw correspondent Sarah E. Brown’s latest post! Read more by Sarah on Vegansaurus, and visit her personal blog, Queer Vegan Food.

CLOSED: Win a copy of John Schlimm’s Grilling Vegan Style!  »

Hey good-looking! You like to grill? Summer’s right on our doorstep, here in the northern hemisphere, and John Schlimm, author of The Tipsy Vegan,* has a new cookbook to teach us vegans how to grill as seriously as those meat-eaters. It’s called Grilling Vegan Style, and you totally want to own it.

This book looks extensive, too. Learn how to grill watermelon! Sandwiches! Pies! S’mores! Basically everything you can physically place on a grill, John Schlimm will teach you to grill, but, you know, Vegan Style, because dang it, barbecue isn’t just for dead animals.

Impress your friends this summer at the park with your grilling genius! Finally host those backyard barbecues with the skills to back up all that panache (I’ve always loved your panache). Show the grilling fanatic in your life that you, too, have mastered the art of cooking over an open flame!

Want a preview? Here’s a trailer:

Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]

We’re so excited about this because we have a copy of Grilling Vegan Style to give away! All you have to do is leave us comment telling us either your highest vegan grilling achievement, or your greatest vegan grilling disaster, by noon PDT on Friday, May 18. We’ll pick a winner and send the book your way! Even if you live outside of the 48 contiguous states of America! So please, comment, enter, and get ready to spend the summer reeking of smoke and pride of accomplishment.

*Endorsed by Megan Rascal!

Update: Contest is closed! Thanks for playing, everyone!

Bust Magazine Craftacular, at the Seed in New York! June! Go there!  »

Aw, remember the early 2000s, when I was a budding feminist at Humboldt State, taking my women’s studies classes and reading Bust magazine? No? I loved Bust’s feminist/pop culture flair, and if you’ve ever been to Arcata, you’d know why it’s referred to as “behind the redwood curtain;” things like technology and pop culture do not easily get through. It was like living in the ’70s! It took four days to get a Netflix DVD in the mail! I didn’t know how an iPod worked until late 2006! Man, I miss that place.*

I still pick up the odd copy of Bust, usually when I’m in Rainbow, reliving my hippie college days (being in Rainbow IS the Arcata experience, right here in SF). Except now I know how to use an iPod! And I listen to pop music!

Bust is hosting a Vegan Craftacular in New York this summer! They are teaming up with The Seed to bring you a two-day expo of food, art, crafts, demos, and speakers! How fun! Go to it, and then tell me everything!

Bust Magazine Craftacular at the Seed: A vegan experience
82 Mercer St., between Broome and Spring, New York City
Saturday, June 16, 10 a.m to 7 p.m.
Sunday, June 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Buy your tickets here!

*Sounds a lot like my experience at Davis in the early ’00s, says the editor who did not own an iPod or a cell phone until 2006.

Meredith Vieira is vegan because she “didn’t want to be a hypocrite anymore”  »

Meredith Vieira, onetime ringmaster of The View and current Lady About Television, has been vegan for going on two months! Good job, Meredith!

She discussed it on an episode of ABC’s The Chew, which is, um, an eating talk show? D-list celebrities talking with their mouths full? Not entirely sure. But ol’ Meredith was on the May 2 episode, and Mario Batali made her vegan fritto misto, which you can make too thanks to the magic of TV on the internet:

[Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]

Ecorazzi brings us the money quote:

I’ve done a lot of stories on the way food is, you know, processed in this country—animals—and it’s very disturbing. And so that was part—I didn’t want to be a hypocrite anymore, and also health reasons.

Our advice to you, Meredith, is to work those celebrity-chef connections and middling star power to eat as deliciously as possible all the time. Show off how well vegans eat, influence some fence-sitters not to be hypocrites, too!

Lady Gaga has a new meat dress; I’m torn between disgust and indifference  »

Yes, this is Lady Gaga’s new meat dress. I find it disgusting but I’m also like, um, it’s no worse than a leather dress. Then again, leather is made of animals but it’s kind of hush-hush; people like to pretend it comes from a tree, whereas this dress is a celebration of killing animals. Then again-again, maybe it’s better to stick it in their faces, like yeah, this is totally gross, but it’s no different than your leather dress.

Those giant meat things around her, those are fake, right? They look fake but I don’t know, meat looks crazy. If they were real, I’d be like eff you to effing hell. 

God! I hate everybody! Why can’t they just stop torturing animals? They get mad AT ME for being vocal about my veganism, and I’m like, OK, what’s something that actually upsets you? How about sex trafficking? What if sex trafficking was in your face every waking hour and everyone you know and love isn’t just compliant, they are standing in a line leading out of the brothel eagerly awaiting their turn. Fuck.

The weeklong vegan experiment failure: How was your first vegan week?  »

Whitney Filoon of the Dallas Observer* tried to follow a vegan diet for a week, but only lasted five days. She says she was “grossly unprepared, and too busy to cook many meals” and so set herself up for failure. I’m sorry, Whitney! You really should try again. As evidenced by the above photo of the Dream Cafe’s You’re So Vegan breakfast, Dallas isn’t a vegan wasteland.

It seems like a lot of these “vegan for a week” writers don’t last very long, or are very happy, and I feel like a lot of the time it’s because of poor planning before going vegan, and then not making much of an effort to be vegan during the experiment. Like, what if Whitney here had asked her friends to meet her at a vegan restaurant, or stopped by a place for a giant delicious vegan sandwich before going to the non-vegan place with her boyfriend where she finally quit? Adopting a new diet can pose challenges, but that’s true for every change in routine.

What I want to know is, what was your first week as a vegan like? Has it been too long for you to remember? Or was it just last week? My first week of the first time I went vegan was like a magical adventure—my then-roommate and best friend convinced me to try being vegan with her, and I said, Sure!, and we went shopping for soy milk and hummus and ate bean-and-avocado sandwiches, and it was great. Of course, whenever I get to explore new sections of a supermarket is a good time to me, and also I was 19 and into experimentation. But what about you? Spill your first-vegan-week guts!

*Disclosure: The Dallas Observer is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the paper I work for.

[photo by madame.furie via Flickr]

Awesome blog alert: Vegan Miss!   »

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this vegan blog, Vegan Miss, but it was pretty recently, and I was like “man, this chica is brilliant.” Then I realized I knew her. Kind of.

Lexy is from the Bay Area, and lives in Chicago! Back in 2008, I went to an event she organized at her college (she was president of the Vegan Society at Loyola—she’s a real go-getter), at which she got Colleen Patrick-Goudreau to speak! It was amazing, and I got my copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking signed! I emailed Lexy shortly afterward to thank her, and thus began my first friendship conducted exclusively over social media.

The years passed and we fell out of contact, but then I found her blog. Check it out! As if you needed further incentive than my enthusiastic “DO IT,” take a look:

Country fried steak. Thank me by inviting me over for dinner when you make this, deal?