vegansaurus!

Animals in space, bunches of books, 1 million events, ovine poetry, the Panda Channel, AND MORE in this weekend's link-o-rama!

Welcome to this weekend’s link-o-rama! This time, with images! First we have for you a ton of events, because what are you doing this weekend? Well, a whole lot NOW, right? DUH OF COURSE.

If you missed Mine when it played earlier this year, you can catch it tonight, Saturday Feb. at 7 at Hollywoof, with your dog(s)! What? OK, it’s this crazy fundraiser by Dogopolis, and actually there will be a double-feature with Sniff. If your dog is unhappy all cooped up because of the bad weather, this is how to make it up to him/her. It’s at Dogpile Dogs, 1338 Illinois St., and the doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Too much for you? Take your dog to the Grateful Dogs Rescue happy hour at Doc’s Clock (2575 Mission St. at 22nd Street) from 4 to 8 p.m. today. Proceeds will benefit Chico and Georgie of GDR.

The BAARN Activist Showcase is tonight, at the SF SPCA (243 Alabama St.) from 6 to 9. Admission is free; there will be snacks. Don’t show up too drunk after the GDR happy hour, OK? That is seriously unprofessional.

Hey South-Central Bay! The super-cool kids of the San Lorenzo Valley High School Animal Right Club are having a bakesale for Haiti on Thursday, Feb. 11 at noon on the Senior Lawn! I am being 0 percent sarcastic when I say super-cool kids, I wish we’d had an Animal Rights Club at my high schools. Good luck, SLVARC, you guys are The Best!

Everyone’s favorite CELEBRITY VEGAN CHEF Tal Ronnen will teach a course on plant-based cooking at the California Culinary Academy on Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. You can attend! RSVP by Monday (Feb. 8) to Kristin Treat. If you can’t make it, he’ll be at the Whole Foods (ugh) at 1765 California St. on Thursday, Feb. 11 from noon to 2 p.m., giving a demonstration featuring Gardein.

Vegansaurus’ beloved Rocket Dog Rescue is holding a fundraiser on Thursday, Feb. 11 at Elixir (3200 16th St. at Guerrero Street) from 9 p.m. to last call to benefit a puppy with Parvo and a puppy with a cleft palate. Per usual, there will be a raffle with terrific prizes, plus vegan cupcakes, and local cewebrity bartenders! Be there or be a big selfish jerk!!!

Check out Soul Food For Thought/The Real Roots of Liberation on Friday, Feb. 12 at the Herbst Theater (401 Van Ness Ave. at McAllister Street). It’s sponsored by the SF Vegetarian Society, In Defense of Animals, and Go Vegan Radio, and is a celebration of Black History Month and a benefit for the International Fund for Africa. Get your tickets now; get more information from Bob Linden of Go Vegan Radio.

Don’t forget, the next SF Vegan Bakesale is happening on Saturday, Feb. 13 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Ike’s (3506 16th St. at Sanchez Street)!! It’s going to be great and you know it!

And now, your weekend reading
The 2010 Big Eat SF by 7x7 magazines names eight items that are verifiably vegan, in a list of 100. I believe this is better than last year’s list, even though at least two of these items are cocktails.

The President wants to decrease farm subsidies! And increase funding to school lunch programs, using the money the government wouldn’t be subsidizing devil-companies like Monsanto and DuPont! I am dreaming, aren’t I?

The greatest nation in the history of nations, Iran, put a bunch of live animals in a rocket and shot it into space on Wednesday, because Scientific Progress. The animals include one rat, two turtles, and an undisclosed number of worms. There is no word on what will happen to the animals, but Iran is totally talking to GOD, so that’s all right.

The Manolo tells Kanye and his incoherent “defense” of wearing fur to shut it.

Boldtype makes a (non-comprehensive) list of fictional works with animal points of view.

One of Vegansaurus’ founding editors returned to her hippie college for hippies this week! We’re so proud of her! We also hope she gets lots of use out of PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook, which apparently makes copious use of the microwave. One of my worst cooking-related college memories involves tacos and a grease fire; one of my best involves a vegan pineapple upside-down cake. Tell us your college cooking stories, please! If you are not yet in college, Vegansaurus does not advocate your reading so many swears. KIDDING! Swears are the best.

This is not news but we never mentioned it so: Thailand has a Panda Channel, and you can watch it online on Lin Ping’s homepage. You’ll probably need a fix since China repossessed Butterstick on Thursday.

Blue whales have changed their songs. Apparently they’re singing lower, which makes the reporter anthropomorphize them into Barry White-style manly men who are more potent and way more into boning than they used to be. Nice one, LA Times.

Valerie Laws is a poet who has spray-painted the words of a sheep-related poem onto the backs of actual sheep. Then the sheep wander around and inadvertently create new poems. Because sheep don’t have to put up with enough stupid shit from humans.

SFGate launched a Bay Area food carts feature this week, using Google Maps and Twitter. Social media! Obnoxious nouns! Honestly though this seems fairly useful, at least for those of you who don’t already know how to track your favorite food carts online. FYI: we love Bike Basket Pies and Banh Mai.

The Humane Society is currently taking entries for its annual Spay Day contest. Enter your pet and get everyone you’ve ever connected with to vote for it. Each vote costs $1 and all proceeds go to charities chosen by the human companions of the pets you vote for.

Jonathan Kauffman of SFoodie says that unpaid food writers can be excellent critics, too, as long as they hold themselves to the same ethical standards as big-time food writers. Thanks, JKauff; we do try over here.

The European Union is looking to list bluefin tuna on the endangered species Appendix 1, which includes “pandas and some whales;” this would “effectively ban international trade in the fish,” because there are so few of them. Nice job, sushi-lovers. Though should we say, nice job fish-eaters the world over: there is no such thing as sustainable fish at all! Yeah, a total lie.

Aw, has anyone seen Orion Levine’s missing ant, Ant?

Remember that big exposé of the Bushway slaughterhouse by HSUS in November? Three months later, absolutely nothing has happened. Awesome show, great job, USDA!

Vegan bakesale for Haiti a great success!

Guess who went to the vegan bakesale this weekend: STALIN! Just kidding! It was me. A few pals and I headed over there Saturday afternoon. Let me tell you all about it!

Because of the rain, Mercury Cafe hosted the bakesale, and damn, was it poppin’! There were tons of people and tons of baked goods. We ended up buying kind of A LOT of stuff. The omnivores were OBSESSED with the purple sweet potato bars. They were definitely good, but my heart was taken by a delicious slice of “monkey bread.” If you are like me, this is the first you’ve ever heard of monkey bread. It is not made of monkeys, nor is it for monkeys. Monkey bread is a delightful collection of balls of dough with cinnamon sugar baked in between. Holy hell, it was ooey-gooey awesomeness! Of course I also had some yummy mini chocolate cupcakes courtesy of Sugar Beat Sweets and ever-lovely Vegansaur Jordan. I love the peanut butter frosting! It’s salty-sweet. And why do things taste so good when they are mini?! Except mini-corn; it’s not as good as regular corn. That’s right, I said it! Mini cupcakes, though, off the hizzle!

Let’s see, what else did I try—kind of everything! I’m so serious; I’m having horrible sugar withdrawal as I write. I’m half-sugar, half-human! There were super-excellent pumpkin muffins, yummy maple oat scones (the food of my people!), crazy peanut butter oat cookie things, pineapple muffins and chocolate cookies galore! There were even these Swedish cardamom buns that my Swedish friend tried; she said they tasted like childhood! Really, everybody was beyond pleased. I for one was ecstatic. I spent a lot of money, ate my feelings, and $3,375 was raised for Haiti! Yay!

The PPK has the details on other vegan bakesales for Haiti across the country.

Beautiful collage photographed and assembled by my friend Emmet (the Swedish cardamom bun taste tester!). Thanks Emmet!

Bakers needed for next SF Vegan Bakesale! LET US DO THIS!

If you’re man enough to wield a spatula in the name of delicousness/cute animals, please email me! Everyone from professional bakers to 50-year-old dudes living in their mom’s basements are encouraged to bake! As long as you have the skills (or a good recipe), we want to pick up what you’re putting down. And put it into our mouths so please be sanitary. Last year we raised over $10,000 for charity with these bakesales so let’s totally pass that number x 10 this year. That’s a cool million folks. Further, I’m bad at math. BUT THE POINT IS: we need you!!

This bakesale will benefit Harvest Home Sanctuary, a new(ish) farm animal, cat, bunny, and dog sanctuary with all sorts of special and magical animals who need their vet bills covered, and Cycles of Change—hard to explain what they do in a few words but basically it’s about helping disadvantaged adults and youth to learn about and use bikes. They’re pretty much the greatest, read more about them here! These are two more-than-deserving causes so we hope you’ll bake your little buttocks off for them!

Actually important details
Saturday, Feb. 13 (the day before Valentines Day! Sweets for your sweet/Eat these sweets and you won’t die alone! We gotta work the couples and the singles!), 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in front of Ike’s Place. FINALLY AGAIN, email laura@vegansaurus.com if you want to bake!

New Year Resolutions, for vegans!

In the spirits of ringing in the new year (WOOOO NEW YEAR WHAT WHAT IN THE BUTT) and reflection and improvement, we Vegansaurs are sharing our new year’s resolutions with you, dear readers. It can be easy to forget that there’s more to being vegan than abstaining from animal products, so we’ve looked really, really hard into our routines, habits, and patterns for ways to do better in 2010, and here they are! Time to get preachy! What! YOU LOVE IT!

1. More activism! Broad, I know. So let’s break it up into two kinds. The armchair kind: Call and write to politicians. The Animal Legal Defense Fund’s state rankings are up and there’s room for much legislative improvement for farm animals (besides, uh, not eating them entirely). The active kind: Spend some time volunteering for the animals each month. Leafletting, vegan bake sales, coastal biking fundraisers, petitioning, volunteering at an animal sanctuary, starting a new animal activism Meetup group—it’s all good! Seriously, you guys. The SF Vegan Bakesale has made over 10 THOUSAND DOLLARS for charities last year. That’s insane. You can totally get that going in your town. Yes, YOU! 

2. Donate! Let’s say you send just 2 percent of your paycheck to an animal organization you support. That could add up to a lot, especially if you’re rolling in it!

3. Bring lunch to work. Every time I buy a salad, a plastic container sits in a landfill for about 450 years. I’m never buying a salad again. AND THOSE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD FOR ME. God, just eating candy from here on out. Candy that I BRING TO WORK WITH ME IN A REUSABLE CONTAINER! Win-win!

4. Along the same lines, cook more, eat out less. And invite people over to eat more often (especially if they’re not vegan!). Hey, that’s one less chicken who has to die, right? Plus, with websites like VegWeb and a million billion new vegan cookbooks out there, you gotta start testing recipes. Your life will be better when it has homemade cookies in it, trust.

5. Start composting. And while we’re at it, do all the Al Gore stuff. Get rid of the car, swap out light bulbs, etc.

6. Stop using palm oil. Why? Harvesting it clears out the rainforest and leaves elephants homeless. 

7. Get more of our meat-eating friends to go vegan, or at least get them to pledge to go meatless a few days a week (for those who need baby steps, you know who they are). Meatless Mondays, anyone? And while you’re at it, for gifts, why not give a copy of Eating Animals, along with some tasty vegan candy? So what if it’s kinda preachy, you’re already their crazy vegan friend and there’s a chance they’ll read it and learn something. If not, it’ll go in a junk pile and someone else will pick it up. Better than than giving lame, generic bath salts or lotion, right? Oooh also, adopting animals from a farm sanctuary is a great gift too! Everyone loves a chicken, even if it’s not dinner! Right? Right!

8. Get the companion animals on a vegan diet. It’s long overdue, guys. Laura feeds V-dog to Hazel and that bitch weighs 70 pounds, you feel me?? 

9. Buy less stuff. Or, at least, buy less NEW stuff. There are a million secondhand, consignment, and used clothing stores around. You can do without that dress from Delia’s. I don’t care that it cost two dollars. Wait, two dollars? Link plz? THAT WAS A TEST.

10. Ask for more vegan options in restaurants. It’s super simple, and it often works. Hypothetical, best-case scenario: I go into Mozzarelli’s and ask if they have vegan cheese. They say no, but they’d love to know which one to buy to offer their customers. I say Daiya (of course). They put it in their restaurant. It can help to bring in samples of excellent vegan products for them to try, like vegenaise and Dandies. Prove that vegan = delicious and MORE CUSTOMERS: CHA-CHING. Done.

11. This is less a resolution and more a request, but if someone could please crack the following vegan foods in 2010: clotted cream; meringue; angel food cake. KTHX BYE.

Got some of your own? Let us know! Happy new year, y’all!