• Race Illustrates Brutal Side of Sport - New York Times
  Let’s get this straight: there ain’t a humane way to race horses. Hopefully the sad event during the Derby will help highlight this.
  (tags: horseracing horses news)
• VegCooking > Celebrate World Vegetarian Week With a FREE Veggie Burger!
  Coupon here for a free veggie burger at Johnny Rockets, if you have one near you. (Yes, the burger’s vegan. I asked.)
  (tags: coupon veggieburger johnnyrockets free)

• Top 10 Recipes 2008 | Vegan.com
  (tags: food)

Lio (April 30, 2008)

(If you’re having trouble seeing it, click the “wide” button at the upper right corner of the page.)

• Panda Express: Chinese Food, Wok-Cooked and Served Fast
  “Our entrées are prepared using a chicken base; we do not offer vegetarian meals.” Wow. “Chinese” food with NO veggie options. Awful. [via vb reader GoGMU]
  (tags: pandaexpress restaurants)
• Tainted Raw Milk Sold By Clarion, Crawford County Dairies - US Recall News Alert
  “Consumers who purchased raw milk from Piney Ridge Dairy Farm… Should discard it immediately due to the risk of listeria monocytogenes contamination,”
  (tags: raw dairy recall)
• Allergy Alert on Undeclared Dairy in 11-Ounce Single Serve Silk Soymilk Chocolate Flavor in Plastic Bottles - US Recall News Alert
  It “may contain an undeclared milk protein.” I’m hoping this is in the “processed on the same equipment as” situation and not an actual, intended ingreident.
  (tags: silk soymilk recall)
• Global Voices Online » Japan: Where has all the butter gone?
  “Empty shelves in the dairy section of grocery stores across the country have not seen a shipment of butter for days…” Hey, sounds good to me. [via Consumerist]
  (tags: food shortage japan dairy butter)

In my pre-veg days, I just bought the cheapest soap on the shelf.  In college, I think it was Jergen’s soap that was 99 cents for three bars.  Eventually, though, I got tired of the chemicals, the animal tallow, and how the soap seemed to disappear way too quickly.

I became a soap nerd.

An interesting thing about running this site is the stuff I get to review.  I get cookbooks, food, and, now, soap, thanks to Howard from Howard’s Vegan Soap.  And I’m not ashamed to admit I look forward to trying new soap.

Howard’s comes in three varieties: cinnamon, liquorice/poppy seed, and basil/lavender.  All three contain natural, food-grade exfoliates.  The cinnamon one has the most intense feeling exfoliate, actual pieces of cinnamon stick ("great for rough, dry skin, eczema, or psoriasis").  The poppy seeds and dried basil act as milder exfoliates in the other two soaps.

The soaps all smelled wonderfully gentle, not overpowering and I’ve gotta say, the rough exfoliation that the cinnamon bar provided felt really good.  My naturally dry skin definitely benefited.

Howard’s site has a lot of great information about his soap-making process and why vegan soaps are better for your skin as well as the animals.  One thing I learned: soap companies will actually add chemicals to make their own product deteriorate faster.  Well that explains why I went through so many bars in college…

So, consider this a recommendation.  If you prefer buying from vegan businesses, you’ll want to add Howard’s Vegan Soap to your list.

You’ll also want to check out Howard’s new project: Vegan Jobs Online.  The site is aiming to become a central location to find vegan-owned businesses whether you’re a consumer or a vegan job-hunter (the only type of hunting permitted by The Rules of Veganism).  Though it’s still in its infancy, it’s off to a good start.  Keep an eye on it.

The Portland massive (Vegans for Animal Advocacy, No Compromise, Food Fight!, and Herbivore) will be putting on the Let Live Animal Rights Conference from June 27-29.  Even though I’m planning to attend AR 2008 this year because it’s nearby, the grassroots nature of the Let Live conference is much more appealing to me.  Why’s Portland have to be on the other coast?

Topics include Verbal Self Defense, Student Activism, Understanding Direct Action, Understanding Our Audience, Building Good Group Dynamics, and others, with presenters including Will Potter, Mark Hawthorne (I’m currently reading his new book, Striking at the Roots), and recent immigrant-to-Portland Isa Chandra Moskowitz (The Post Punk Kitchen).  Cost is a measly $10.  Here’s to hoping they make mp3s of the presentations available for purchase afterwards.

• The Associated Press: Union head claims USDA tried to intimidate employees
  Union chief Stan Painter said that following a mad cow disease scare in 2003, he […] was told to drop the matter, and […] then placed on disciplinary investigative status.
  (tags: usda slaughterhouses inspection union news)

• McDonald’s USA - USA Core Menu Items by Ingredients
  Wow — not only do McDonald’s French Fries contain beef flavoring, they now contain milk as well. THEY’RE FRENCH FRIES, YOU BIG DUMMIES! [via Speedbump Kitchen]
  (tags: mcdonalds frenchfries ingredients milk)

Man, this review’s overdue.

Back at the beginning of the year, I sat down with my wife (not vegan, but nearly so) and my sister-in-law (straight omni with a serious dairy addiction… I’m sure she’d love that classification) to try out a handful of flavors sent down by the kind folks up at Wheeler’s.

Buzz started forming about Wheeler’s from the moment they started handing out ice cream in 2007 at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival.  Wheeler’s was started by Damion, who used to work for Carvel.  He makes the ice cream using a method developed in 1832 by Augustus Jackson.  That’s old school.

Here’s a compiled summary of our comments on each flavor:

Pumpkin

This was my favorite of the bunch.  It’s a really unique idea for a flavor and tastes exactly what you’d imagine pumpkin pie in ice cream form would taste like.  It’s super creamy and intense.  Love it, love it.

My wife liked the richness and thought it was thick, much like pie.  Sis-in-law said the taste lingered a little too long afterwards, but still liked it because it wasn’t overly sweet.

Butter Pecan

Seriously: vegan butter pecan!  It’s been ages since I’ve had butter pecan ice cream, but this is exactly how I remember it.  Creamy, nutty… just great.  Sister-in-law tasted a sourness and indicated a preference for its dairy counterpart.

My wife said, "I could eat a whole tub of this."  I didn’t ask her to clarify if she meant an ice cream tub or a bathtub because I know my own preferences would have tended towards the latter.

Black Raspberry

Not normally my favorite flavor, but I enjoyed this.  My sister-in-law liked this one a lot, comparing it to a sorbet.  She said the sour taste she was getting with the other flavors was less out-of-place here.  My wife said she liked it a lot, but missed the bits of berry.  "Might have been good with bits of black cherry, too."

Pina Colada (with alcohol)

Good, but not my favorite.  Nice chunks of pineapple and coconut.  Not as smooth of a consistency as the other flavors.  Both of the other tasters liked it a lot, ranking it among their favorites.

Double Chocolate Chip

Uber-chocolatey.  Smooth and creamy with nice, small chunks of chocolate.  I thought there was a very slight aftertaste, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  My wife loved this one, liking both the taste ("a chocolate lover’s dream") and crunch.  My sister-in-law said it was very rich and that it "tastes like [dairy] chocolate ice cream" even though she prefers a sweeter chocolate.

Overall impressions of Wheeler’s

We’re at an interesting point with regards to vegan ice cream in the US.  We’ve pretty much reached the peak with companies like So Delicious (their mint chocolate chip and pomegranate chip are awesome) and Temptation (everything is awesome), but Wheeler’s every bit as good.  So, it’s awesome.  And more awesomeness is a good thing.

Where I think Wheeler’s will really succeed is in their niche of custom specialty flavors. Check out some of the flavors they’ve perfected already.  I’m really curious to see where they take their business and what they do in terms of distribution.  Because, really, the world needs to taste their pumpkin ice cream.  And I want to be able to get some at a moment’s notice.

Like, now.  Now would be good.

You can visit Wheeler’s site at icecreamproject.com and keep an eye on their blog for frequent updates about tasting events around the country.

Downtime, part 2

The server the Veg Blog is hosted on hit some rough patches over the last few days. There was the 36 hour outage to start the weekend and then a disk failure to start this week. Fortunately, data was moved safely (with no loss, as far as I can tell) and things seem relatively stable now. Remind me to make a backup of things just in case, OK?

My presentation

Thanks to everyone who asked how my presentation at UMW went. While the crowd wasn’t enormous, about ten people, it was a decent enough size for me to start getting more comfortable talking about veganism and animal rights in front of a group. About half of the attendees were vegetarian or vegan and the other half were meat eaters, with one or two of them falling under the “considering vegetarianism” heading. I think the presentation itself went relatively well… I was a little nervous, probably went overboard with “um”s, and could stand to make more eye contact, but overall I think I hit a decent enough balance of information and humor.

Afterwards, there was a discussion amongst the veg*ns in the group about challenges faced with family, at school (like the cafeteria staff using “vegetarian” and “vegan” interchangeably when labeling food), and even a little talk about the welfare vs. abolition argument that was the fancy trend in 2007 and may rear its head again now that the AR and TAFA conferences are in sight. It took a little prodding to get an omni to talk, but eventually one did speak up and say while she respected vegans a lot, she “liked meat too much” (slide 3!) and wouldn’t ever give it up. While I didn’t get to delve into that any more deeply, she did say she thought that vegans needed to be more active than just being vegan. This sparked some good responses. Morgan, who organized the talk and heads up the AR group at UMW, said she thought that being vegan was the most active thing one could do because it’s taking a belief and living it every moment of your life. Another recently converted vegan spoke up and said she thought it was hypocritical for people that protested for animal rights to not be vegan.

All in all, it was a good talk and I hope everyone there enjoyed it. Thanks to the UMW crew for having me out. Let’s do it again.

I’d hoped to record my talk, but completely forgot until about 1/4 of the way through. Here are the slides if you want to take a look.

Lunch with Bazu

Today I had lunch at the always-excellent A Taste of Burma (their site is down as of this posting) with Bazu of Where’s the Revolution. Bazu’s been a long-time commenter on the Veg Blog, so I was happy she was able to take some time out of her visit with family to meet up for lunch. She’ll be posting pictures of our food over on her blog when she gets home.

A few minutes before she arrived, I had a chance to talk with the owner of A Taste of Burma, who’s possibly one of the nicest guys on the planet. I asked him a question that had been burning on my mind for the last couple of months. You may remember I wrote a while back about the amazing fermented tea leaf salad that they make using really hard-to-get leaves from Burma. I’d gotten addicted to it and eventually looked up the recipe only to be shocked to see that every recipe called for fish sauce and dried shrimp powder. I feared the worst, but was pleasantly surprised when he told me that while that’s the traditional way of making Lephet Thote, A Taste of Burma doesn’t use fish sauce or the dried shrimp. Phew. Crisis averted.

Guess what I ordered for lunch today.