vegansaurus!

Awesome celebrity news: Ted Danson goes vegan!  »

What’s that? Another distinguished, white-haired older gentleman has gone vegan? Which dashing silverback has made the choice to abstain from animal products in his diet, for the good of the world and his health? Why (as you may have surmised from the accompanying photograph), it’s Ted Danson!

Yes, Ted Danson, he of the delightful, departed Bored to Death, and most recently of CBS’ Cavalcade of Pseudoscience, Vol. 1 (CSI), has turned to a vegan diet to help himself “feel good and look fabulous,” according to contactmusic.com. Yes! Ted Danson, we’re all vegans around here and we feel good (reallllll good) and look fabulous, too! Welcome to the club!

Or, welcome back? Ecorazzi says that this isn’t the first time this silver fox has spoken of his vegan diet (or lack thereof), but you know, it took a couple tries for veganism to stick with some of us, too, so we’re going to remain open-minded and open-armed about this decision. You’re welcome as long as you like, Ted Danson, as is your ridiculously beautiful wife. It’s awesome over here in vegan-land! Stay forever!

[photo by Sharon Graphics via Flickr]

Not a fail, Eva Longoria. More like a beginner’s mistake  »

Dear Eva Longoria,
Hey girl! I just heard you tried to go vegan and feel kinda guilty about your epic fail. What’s this noise about not doing the research about how to nourish yourself with plant-based food? Passing out cause you subsided on salad? Not knowing almond butter exists? I’m just so confused. But don’t worry! For both our sakes, I’m here to help you with all this mind-boggling vegan stuff.

1.) I can’t help but feel that many people, when they make the transition from omnivore to vegetarian or vegan, don’t know what they are doing at first. It’s tricky to change your entire lifestyle and eating habits. Not to sound facetious, but there’s this tool a lot of us use called the internet. It’s great! I personally used it to find out how I could get my protein, iron, and vitamins from a plant-based diet! Then I made myself a handwritten list of how to make complete proteins and stuck it to the side of my refrigerator! Hey, like I said, I’m here to help you!

2.) You went from an omnivorous diet to a diet consisting of salads? Were you trying to go vegan or go raw? That’s some hardcore shit, Eva. I’d fail too! I mean, I tried a mostly raw diet and I didn’t last too long either. Let’s try some seitan buffalo wings before we move on to like, raw veggies in a collard green wrap, OK?

3.) If you need a personal vegan chef, call me. Seriously. I’ll move to Hollywood. I’ll move to Texas. Whatever you want, girlfriend. Let’s try this again. Your support system is in place!

Sincerely,
Jenny Bradley
(vegan chef extraordinaire)

The Empire State Building Shines Red for The Cove!  »

I just read on Ecorazzi that tonight the Empire State Building will be lit up in red to honor the poor dolphins and to promote the message of The Cove. The event was planned by racecar driver Leilani Munter. And John Leguizamo will be there along with the director and producer of The Cove. This is super-cool!

I’ll try to get a pic for everyone! Ew, that means I have to leave my house. Well, I’ll try to post a pic from NYT or something.

Ecorazzi Eats Restaurant Week! We’re all invited!  »

Ecorazzi Eats, beginning tomorrow, is a nationwide celebration of sustainable (bleh), vegetarian (OK), and vegan (huzzah!) restaurants! There are all kinds of deals and specials for this eco-restaurant week. It’s kind of exciting.

Let’s look at the restaurants participating! L.A. is really putting out; SF is not representing so well, but Berkeley is picking up the slack! That’s right, everyone’s favorite cinnamon roll shoppe is in on this:

Cinnaholic: Free “Old Skool Roll“ ($4.25 value) with the purchase of any regular priced roll.

Nice. You can afford Cinnaholic!

Sacramento is in on the action, too: get a free dessert or iced tea with any purchase at Sugar Plum Vegan Cafe!

As for New York, guess who’s going to Candle Cafe! THIS GUY:

Candle Cafe: A 10 percent discount for all dine-in customers that mention Ecorazzi Eats Restaurant Week.

Gobo in NYC is also participating with a three-course tasting at $25 per person. I do love a tasting! I think I’ll have to check that out too. 

There are lots of other restaurants participating in other cities—though none in Philly! Poor show, Philly, poor show. You can check the Ecorazzi Eats site for all the listings. So, who’s going?! Tell me which restaurant you’re going to! More importantly, who wants to go with me?!

Steve Wynn is all, “IN YOUR FACE, KATE MIDDLETON!”  »

Steve Wynn, American vegan gazillionbilliontribillion$$$$$aire and some woman 1/8th of his age are getting married the same weekend as Prince William and Kate Middleton. Here’s the joker Wynn and his terrified lucky bride-to-be!

I like to imagine Kate Middleton and Steve Wynn as Anne Hathaway and what’s-her-name—Goldie Hawn’s more unfortunate looking daughter? WHAT IS HER NAME? She’s in that awful movie that I’ve watched like nine times (I hate myself), Bride Wars. Middleton and Wynn grew up best friends, both dreaming of their wedding days (just like a woman!) and now, they’re 23 and 72 (respectively) and wedding dress shopping together and looking at china patterns and whatever rich people do before they get married AND THEN, they head to the Plaza to book it for their big days, and it’s only available one day and so they have to sabotage each other and duke it out to see which wedding REIGNS SUPREME. I think that’s basically what’s going on here, I mean Middleton obviously did something to Wynn’s face for him to look like that, right? OMG LAURA YOU ARE SO MEAN AND NO GREAT BEAUTY YOURSELF! Actually, you’re wrong, I am very attractive. HA!

Anyway, if I have to choose which wedding I’m going to, it’s totally Wynn’s because you know that menu is gonna be all vegan. Ecorazzi thinks Tal Ronnen is the chef so it’ll likely just be massive platters of Gardein stuffed with Gardein. I’ll take it!

Top 10 links of the week: a rollercoaster ride through veganism!  »

[Deer and Goose are BFF. Your cute animal viral video of the week!]

Ecorazzi had a post today where they quoted yours truly! In Martha Stewart, Honey and the Great Vegan Debate, they discuss the state of honey in the vegan community. Is honey vegan? Do bees count? Go comment and weigh in!

From City’s Best, “10 Meatless Musts in San Francisco.” Vegansaurus is about to drop a similar list so be on the lookout. Ours will of course be not only informative but also the funniest ever.

Recently, Huffpo did a piece about the best sandwiches in the U.S. and none were vegan. Now they’re all vegan! Huzzah! A bunch of vegan bloggers—like, everyone besides us—created vegan versions of each sandwich. Maybe next time we’ll be included, eh? Just kidding! Cooking is for the womenfolk.

Our Hen House (who I hear was at the Martha Stewart episode with me but I didn’t meet them!) has started a cool endeavor, The Gay Animal Series, about the relationship between gay rights and animal rights. Check it out! You will feel so cultured and smart, you can skip the next This America Life! Which works out great for me because when you rehash the episode to me in detail, that’s not actually a conversation.

The Village Voice has an NYC guide to tofu—imagine that! I love me some tofu so I’m all over this one. It’s all the best tofu from various restaurants throughout the city. I haven’t been to any of them. How come you never take me out anymore!

Head over to A Soy Bean for a recap of the NYC Vegetarian Food Fest last weekend. Treehugger has a review too but no pictures! There’s a few videos, but no pictures? We love the pictures! Abby Bean has a ton of pictures. Pictures.

Cheeky Chicago has a nice post on how to make a variety of vegan cheese-substitutes. Walnut Parmesan Sprinkles? YES DEFINITELY GIVE IT HERE.

For a little homespun fun, check out Laura’s The Week in Vegan at SF Weekly. Leave a comment, let her know you care! And let SF Weekly know we vegans are plentiful and emotive.

Babe in Soyland has a great post about veganism and the idea that it means AUTOMATIC weight-loss. Here’s a taste: “People need to know that vegans come in ALL shapes and sizes and that fat vegans (the ones I’ve met are proud to be both fat and vegan) aren’t doing something “wrong” in their vegan diets. There is no “stereotypical vegan”—unless the stereotype is having awesomely low cholesterol.” Read it and tell me what you think.

Finally, from Lovely Bike, a list of vegan bike saddles! That means bike seats. I’m partial to this first one they’ve picked out, it’s the hotness:

Olivia Munn gets rowdy on the Today Show  »

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

The whole incident is pretty funny and I don’t think it’s as bad as Ecorazzi makes it out to be. No blows are thrown, relax. Ecorazzi’s takeaway is that, “Olivia Munn + alcohol + uninformed remarks about animal cruelty = great television.” I’m hoping they are talking about the Today Show host making “uninformed” remarks because I don’t see what’s so uninformed about Munn’s remarks. Horse-drawn carriages are fucked up and barbaric. I’m glad Munn’s not a fake celebrity animal-rights activist and actually calls people out when an issue arises instead of keeping some PR-pleasing passive voice on the subject. Although, her brand is “just one of the boyz who tells it like it is but is still totally adorable and sexually accessible and OOPS I FARTED LOLZ” so that could be it, too. Either way, I’m glad she used her big mouth.

Munn is probably best known for getting naked for a variety of reasons, and for being a woman on The Daily Show. More specifically, the shit storm her hiring created—which culminated in The Daily Show displaying its true (asshole) colors regarding women. Anyway, I can’t tell if she’s vegan? Peta quotes her earlier this year on horse-drawn carriages:

The least romantic thing to do in New York or any other city is going on horse-drawn carriage rides…. [I]f you knew the pain and misery these beautiful animals endure just to fulfill the false symbol of uniting two hearts, it would actually break your heart. To see the horses in the harsh, cold weather being forced to cart people around the city is the farthest thing from romantic in my opinion.

Word.

Chow Down and All-Star Veggie Panel! It Was Crazy!  »

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

Like I mentioned on Friday, I went to a screening of Chow Down on Saturday. The movie was good; I liked it. It was hokey as fuck with all these cartoons and shenanigans but it was informative and comprehensive despite the scientific subject matter. The film focuses on two men who are faced with surgery for heart disease. Instead of surgery, both men opt to work with Cleveland Clinic doctor Caldwell B. Esselstyn and follow a “plant-based diet.” The results are very impressive; both men hadn’t had a single coronary indecent since changing their lifestyle even though they were told they would die without surgery.

The other aspect of the movie that was very interesting is it really goes into the business of nutrition in America. It has a lot of information about the hold that the milk and dairy lobby has on the USDA and the huge conflict of interest the government organization has when it comes to being a.) responsible for national nutrition recommendations and b.) in charge of promoting American agriculture. The film interviews the woman who created the first food pyramid and even then, the main component of the recommended diet—the bottom of the pyramid—was supposed to be fruits and veggies. The government rejected that and replaced the bottom with good old American grain. Ultimately, the first food pyramid was bagged altogether under pressure from the meat industry. What a tangled web we weave!

Guess what else: it was made by some Philadelphians! I knew the one guy in the movie was Philadelphian as soon as he opened his mouth. Hilarious.

So that’s the movie; it was fine, good even. But THEN! It was time for the Q&A with the all-star panel! This is when things took a turn for the awful. OMG I think I hate vegans! I know, I can’t believe I said that but these people were kooks! And so like cocky and self-promoting! Maybe I’m overreacting; it wasn’t really the panel that got to me, it was more the Q than the A. The panel included Gene Baur of Farm Sanctuary; Michael Parrish Dudell of Ecorazzi; Simone Reyes, some chick that’s on Running Russell Simmons (haaa, that was a hilarious inclusion); Victoria Moran, super-author; Alexandra Jamieson, super-author, Top Chef veganizer, and co-star of Super Size Me; and Gary Null, crazy-ass mofo. Also on the panel were Julia Grayer and Gage Johnston, the filmmakers.

I really liked Jamieson and Moran; Dudell was good and I liked him, but he said he would be a strict moderator and ended up being a total nancy. That was the problem: crazy people in the audience kept hijacking the discussion! They would make these barely understandable rants with the only question being like, “What are your thoughts on my rant?” I forgot how much I hate Q&As! I used to go to them for films all the time when my mom worked at the Philly Film Festival. You have these really interesting people there but all you end up hearing all about are the trials and tribulations of various audience members trying to get funding for their own projects. It’s the same with authors: “But how do I get my book published?” Oy! Give me a break.

The crazy audience was only half the problem; the other half? Crazy-ass Gary Null. Oh my god, I did a face-palm whenever he started talking. He’s a complete nut. Like Christopher Walken on crack. He only made sense half the time and he kept talking about getting people to be vegan through spirituality, which just isn’t my bag. The worst was that he was like making sermons with dramatic pauses and bringing in Martin Luther King and crap. And he kept directing his rants at the panel too—who the eff are you to lecture them? If I were the panel, I’d be like, Screw you, bro. And he barely let anyone else talk.

One theme that emerged in the questions was about inclusion and how to unite vegans; THEN at the end, this woman who organized the event came up to speak about this initiative she organized called NYC Goes Vegan. The whole event was supposed to kick off the start of this 21-day challenge. Granted, she was not the most eloquent and she really didn’t promote her initiative very well, BUT! The same people who were talking about uniting vegans and asking what we can do to reach the mainstream started talking straight-up shit on this woman WHILE she was talking! She was a very attractive, model-looking woman and she looked about 26—though she’s actually 38—and made a comment about facing old age and the older women around me like ‘bout had a mutiny! And they were talking trash on her “Valley Girl” speech. Is that how you spell inclusion?! Just petty. I was shocked. I wanted to stop being a vegan just to spite these people! Don’t worry, still vegan (I know you were worried).

Basically, your friend Megan was about to bust heads. It was a shame. I wanted to hear more from the filmmakers, like why they avoided the word “vegan” in the movie, and if the doctors are hesitant to talk about veganism and deliberately stick to “plant-based diet.” I would have also liked to hear a lot more from Moran, she was kind of awesome but didn’t speak much.

The movie was pretty good though and you can actually watch it RIGHT NOW on hulu. It’s only an hour long, you can handle it.

Ecorazzi Lists Top 5 Animal Rights Victories of 2009  »

Ecorazzi listed their top 5 animal rights victories of the year! They included California’s SB 135, which made tail docking illegal. Pretty exciting stuff!

Though the list is a bit premature, no? You totally still have 20 days to save polar bears and stuff. GET ON THAT, SLACKERS!

Image: Flickr/JelleS, via Creative Commons