vegan tip/trick of the day

For an easy cream sauce to be used on pastas or vegetables, make use of Tofutti sour cream. Besides being great plan for fajitas, burritos and dips, this product is also a great substitution when you are looking for a creamy sauce.

There is no set recipe, but I usually combine the following to taste:

-- Tofutti Sour Cream
-- Lemon Juice
-- Earth Balance Margarine
-- Olive Oil
-- Regular (unflavored) soymilk, rice milk, or almond milk.

Stir over a low heat until all are combined. I'm sure you can make this really thick by adding more sour cream and margarine, but the calories will add up for sure. Instead, mix in a little bit of soft (silken) tofu to taste. Or just stick with a light sauce, which is what I usually do.

I just made this today and put it over fresh cooked broccoli and it was so yummy! Also, just adding the sour cream on its own to marinara sauce will give it a nice creamy touch!

please watch!

last weekend the HSUS (Humane Society of the US) rescued 1000 dogs from a West Virginia puppy mill. If you have ever thought about getting a "pure bred" puppy take a look at this and see how "pure" the breeding actually is...

The Cost of Steak

great LA Times article!

The Cost of Steak

Factory farms produce cheap meat, until you consider the rivers of sewage, the contaminants and the superbugs.

By Paul Roberts
August 23, 2008

If you are searching for signs that today's high food prices won't last, the latest report on the meat industry isn't promising. In May, a distinguished panel of scientists and meat industry officials concluded that the current "factory farm" method for mass-producing meat poses so many threats to public health -- from contaminated water supplies to deadly epidemics of E. coli E. coli -- that the whole system needs to go. The good news: Even meat companies agree that change is unavoidable. The bad news: Replacing factory farms with something "sustainable" likely means an end to 50 years of falling meat prices.

The report, from a Pew Charitable Trusts commission, takes a hard look at "confined animal feeding operations," or CAFOs, which produce most of the U.S. meat supply. These massive facilities house tens of thousands of cattle, hogs and chickens and generate not just huge amounts of meat but rivers of sewage, clouds of contaminated dust and nearly a fifth of all greenhouse gases.

The crowded, often unsanitary conditions promote disease, which has led to the overuse of antibiotics and to a class of superbugs that are resistant to those same antibiotics. Even the modern corn-based livestock diet causes problems. It makes meat fattier and may have helped some strains of the E. coli bacteria evolve from benign microbe to one of the deadliest pathogens in the food supply. And, of course, to grow all the grain we now feed our livestock, we've converted much of the Midwest into a huge corn and soybean plantation.

The only solution, the report concludes, is to replace the giant factory farms with models such as "free-range" operations that give animals more space and use different methods of feeding, sewage disposal and medical treatment. And that's where things get tricky, because most of the practices the industry is being asked to abandon have been pivotal in making meat cheap.

For example, grazing cattle on pasture grass would probably mean less disease and leaner meat, not to mention happier cows. But because the mega-farms confine livestock specifically to restrict animals from moving (and thus burning calories unnecessarily), and because corn is more calorie-dense than grass, CAFO-raised animals fatten faster and thus more cheaply.

Likewise, reducing antibiotics in meat production, though it may improve our health, will deprive the industry of the meat equivalent of Miracle Gro.

Because small, steady doses of antibiotics kill the low-grade infections that normally plague livestock, dosed animals spend fewer calories fighting infection and thus have more calories available for building muscle and bone. When fed antibiotics, livestock can grow 25% faster on the same intake of feed -- a critical point, given that feed is a meat companies' biggest cost.

Of course, we've long known that our meat miracle wasn't quite a free lunch. Yet we were willing to overlook the negatives because CAFOs made meat so abundant and cheap. Since 1960, for example, U.S. poultry output has jumped sevenfold while the price per pound, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by two-thirds. Prices for beef and pork also have fallen precipitously. And as we exported CAFOs to other countries, the entire world began to benefit from falling meat prices and rising dietary standards.

But as the downsides of factory farming have grown too large to ignore, we've had to admit that our meat is cheap only because we don't count all the costs: Taxpayers spend $4.1 billion cleaning up livestock sewage leaks and $2.5 billion treating salmonella. All told, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, CAFOs may be costing taxpayers $38 billion a year -- costs that aren't reflected in the retail price of meat.

If cheap meat is an illusion, will meat produced under better conditions necessarily be more expensive? Probably, even figuring in the savings in environmental and public health costs.

Today, ground beef from grass-fed cattle -- which would meet the goals in the Pew report -- sells for about a $1 a pound more than hamburger from a CAFO cow, while grass-fed beefsteaks are $7 more. Poultry and pork raised "sustainably" are also more expensive than their factory-farmed counterparts.

Some of that price difference will narrow in the future as meat producers refine a post-CAFO production model; even now, a small hog farm, if efficiently managed, can boast lower per-pig costs than the average mega-farm 10 times its size. The Pew commission argues that if taxpayers are willing to support small and medium producers with incentives such as accelerated tax depreciation and tax credits, the cost to consumers might be further reduced.

But don't expect to end CAFOs and keep super-cheap meat. Sustainably fed animals take longer to reach slaughter weight, thus reducing a farmer's annual output. Likewise, shifting from confined operations to a "free-range" model will require more land, at a time when farm acres are already in short supply. All of which means we won't be able to produce nearly as much meat as we used to, and a smaller meat supply means higher prices.

Paying more isn't what consumers want to hear just now. But when it comes to food, we're beginning to learn that cheaper may not always be better.

Paul Roberts' newest book, "The End of Food," was published in June.

Vegan Twinkies? NO WAY!

Check out this awesome article in the LA Times on The Vegan Spot in Silverlake!



The Vegan Spot: A vegan twist on comfort food in Silver Lake

By Jessica Gelt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 18, 2008

IF YOU think vegan junk food is an oxymoron, you've obviously never had a dairy-free "Twinkie" from the Vegan Spot. So great is the public desire for them that Silver Lake's newest vegan destination -- it's been open for three months -- regularly sells out of the golden-cake tubes filled with rich white frosting.

"I hadn't had a Twinkie in probably 25 years," says the restaurant's co-owner and chef, Sara Radovanovitch, about her first taste when the baker brought them in. "It was amazing. I'm eating something that totally tastes like my youth and it's not going to give me a heart attack."

The 31-year-old Radovanovitch has been a vegetarian for 20 years and a vegan for 10. Her robust complexion, tan skin and long, shiny blond hair repudiate the old myth that you'll waste away if you don't eat meat or dairy.

Still, Radovanovitch found she couldn't shake a hankering for all the forbidden foods she grew up with in the Midwest.

Like many vegans, she spent much of her time cooking for herself and became an expert at making what she calls "vegan comfort food."

She opened the Vegan Spot with her friend Miranda Megill, who owns a popular vegan restaurant near Sunset Junction called Flore. Radovanovitch was waiting tables there when the two hit on the idea of opening another restaurant with more playful, less straight-up healthful leanings.

At first glance, the menu makes die-hard vegans feel guilty just for looking at it. Roast beef and cheddar sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks, corned beef Reubens, turkey dinner sandwiches, nachos and French bread pizza are listed alongside a lengthy roster of salads, wraps and shakes that include decadent-sounding flavors such as orange cream and chocolate-banana-peanut butter.

Radovanovitch says the most popular menu item is the roast beef and cheddar sandwich. Made with homemade seitan (gluten flour and seasonings), sliced deli thin and marinated in a browning sauce to give it a beefy color, it's served on a crusty French roll and smothered with a cheese sauce made from nutritional yeast, flour, pureed carrot and soy margarine.

The result is eerily addictive but pleasantly light.

As Radovanovitch says, "I want to give people what they miss and what they crave. Only I want to give them a healthier version."

Vegan Spot, 3206 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A.; (323) 667-0116. Sandwiches, salads and wraps $8.95 to $9.95; shakes $4.95; street parking; open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; delivery available.

Speaking of Natalie P....

Seriously, how much do I lust after these shoes? I'd probably cut a toe off to have a pair... but then I guess I couldn't wear them, huh?

Beyond Skin Sale!

Quick! Hurry like a bunny over to Beyond Skin to save up to 30% off their amazing line of vegan high heels handmade in England! I have yet to own a pair (they average $300 - $600 American normally) but they are on my list of future "vegan splurges" (right there next to a pair of Stella McCartney boots).



The sale is composed of samples and knocks the prices down to a reasonable $65 - $75 for some. Although plus taxes and shipping I still don't think I can afford. : (



The shoes are custom made for you from a selection of styles and fabrics. Natalie Portman is a huge fan and has worn them to the Oscars and Golden Globes... You may or may not know that Natalie, a vegetarian by choice since she was very young, put out her own line of vegan shoes recently, sadly also out of my price range.

To check those out go HERE.




Ahhh... someday...

Fuck Yea!

COMING SOON! Corner of Beverly Blvd & Gardner...

babycakesnyc.com
myspace.com/babycakesnyc

What You Won't See on the Olympics Coverage...

Sometimes I knock PETA, but let's face it, who else is going to try and scream about China's COMPLETE LACK OF ANIMAL WELFARE LEGISLATION in the face of all the Olympics news coverage hoopla?

Yes, that's right. China is among a group of countries with no animal rights or welfare standards at all.

Just in time for the Olympics, PETA has bravely mounting a campain against the horrific and cruel dog and cat fur trade conducted in China. Read below.

"Man's best friend" killed for fur? It's not just a bad dream. PETA recently conducted an undercover investigation into the Chinese dog and cat fur trade to show you what the industry is so desperate to hide. Even our veteran investigators were horrified at what they found: Millions of dogs and cats in China are being bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death, and strangled with wire nooses so that their fur can be turned into trim and trinkets. This fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species and is exported to countries throughout the world to be sold to unsuspecting customers in retail stores. China supplies more than half of the finished fur garments imported for sale in the United States, so the bottom line is that because dog and cat fur is so often mislabeled, if you're buying fur, there's no way to tell whose skin you're wearing.

"Man's best friend" killed for fur? It's not just a bad dream.

PETA went into an animal market in Southern China and found cats and dogs languishing in tiny cages, visibly exhausted. Some had been on the road for days, transported in flimsy wire-mesh cages with no food or water. Twenty cats were forced into a single cage. Because of the cross-country transport in such deplorable conditions, our investigators saw dead cats on top of the cages, dying cats and dogs inside the cages, and dogs and cats with open wounds. Some animals were lethargic or frightened, and others were fighting with each other, driven insane from confinement and exposure.

Up to 8,000 animals are loaded onto each truck, with cages stacked on top of each other. Cages containing live animals are commonly tossed from the top of the trucks onto the ground 10 feet below, shattering the legs of the animals inside them. Many of the animals we saw still had collars on, a sign that they were once someone's beloved companions, stolen to be made into fur coats.

By the way, this is why I always tell people not to even wear fake fur. Some fur coming out of China is labeled "fake" because it is from a dog or cat, not the traditional mink, rabbit, etc.

If you need more convincing, check out Trent Reznor's great PETA video below:

Real Food Daily Revisited

There was a time when I used to eat at Real Food Daily on La Cienega once a week. I was a brand new vegan and in awe of a place where I could actually go and order anything on the menu. Obviously this was before I discovered Millenium in San Francisco, Madeline's Bistro in Canoga Park, Scoops Ice Cream in Los Feliz, or even Follow Your Heart (also Canoga Park).

But now, almost 5 years of being vegan later, I can't remember the last time I've been there. All recent memories of the restaurant have not been too highly rated. There was the time they made me a dish FORGETTING THE TOFU, and the service is never anything special. And every, every time I eat there, the food comes out of the kitchen cold.

Last year's (or was it the year before?) renovation also contributed to my decision to eat else where. What used to be a charming, neighborhood eatery, with bright yellow walls and colorful art and big tables, under went a transformation into a more "trendy" and hip West Hollywood restaurant-- indistinguishable with its pale walls, large "artsy" paintings, and now crowded with tiny wooden tables and rather uncomfortable chairs, not to mention the addition of several marginally edible raw items to the menu.

That being said, the reason I suggested it as the spot last week for my boyfriend to meet my dad for the first time, was not only my dad's somewhat mystifying affinity for the place (he is a life long meat eater and frequent patron of McDonald's), but the actual normalcy of the place. It's in a trendy neighborhood, it's brightly lit, has valet parking and is often packed with celebrities (and that's normal for LA). You can definitely eat there as a vegan and not feel weird, or out of place. It's mainstream vegan dining.

Anyway, I decided to forgo any carb counting and went for the TV Dinner, a favorite that you know is always going to be good. My dad got the same plus a soup, my brother got his usual (Tac O the Town) and the boyfriend played safe with a spinach fettuccine and tempeh meatballs. And you know what? It was good. And comforting. Despite the fact that they forgot my dad's soup until the entrees were out, took forever to bring out the order, and the place was crowded and noisy, we had a fun time. No one was concerned they would not like their food or be forced to eat something too experimental.

And for dessert we got the coconut vanilla cake... which really can't be beat...

RFD WEST HOLLYWOOD

Address:
414 N. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Phone:
(310) 289-9910

Hours:
Open seven days a week:
11:30-10:00 Sunday - Thursday
11:30-11:00 Friday - Saturday
SUNDAY BRUNCH 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

If You Live In California...

This is one of the most important things that will ever be on your ballot. In November, Californians will be asked to vote on a citizen initiative that would give farm animals some of the most basic freedoms -- such as the freedom to lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs. Called Proposition 2, the measure will have a direct impact on 20 million of California's farm animals -- and is expected to lead to a sea change in how farm animals are treated across the nation.

For More Info:

Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act