Last weekend, we went to my parents’ house for my dad’s birthday. Since it was one of those landmark birthdays, a number of other family and friends came in on Saturday for a little get-together. Since this get-together was a few days after my dad’s birthday, he had pretty much already eaten through the cake that my mom had made for him. So, we needed another cake for the group on Saturday.

Compassionate Cooks to the rescue.

I made a two-layer version of that cake. I was little worried, as doing vegan baking with a new recipe for a family of non-vegans is always a little dicey. However, the cake and the icing were easy to make and came out wonderfully. The only thing I’d suggest is to make sure you taste the icing… ours was too cocoa-y and needed some more sugar to even it out a bit.

The cake went over really well with everyone. My aunt declared, “You can’t tell there aren’t any dairy or eggs in this!” which is pretty much the reaction all vegan bakers hope for. The cake was moist (and stayed moist for days afterwards) and was really delicious. It’s a really good straight up, simple chocolate-chocolate cake recipe that I’m surely going to use as a go-to in the future.

I’ve gotten a few reports of people being told that the Veg Blog has the Download.Trojan virus attached to it. Has anyone here gotten that notification when visiting the site?

I may be vegan, but I hate Trojan horses.

Eric over at An Animal-Friendly Life points to this story in the Washington Post about how having to euthanize so many animals puts an enormous emotional strain on the employees at animal shelters. This just goes to support something I mentioned a while back, that with so many unwanted dogs and cats, there is no reason that anybody should be supporting breeders at this point. Adopting an animal from a shelter is better for the animals and for the people. Kind of similar to how not eating meat is also a humanitarian statement for all of those working in the most deplorable of slaughterhouse positions, huh?

This sentence caught my eye:

… the sweet-as-can-be pit bulls, a breed that Loudoun, like many jurisdictions, forbids shelters from making available for adoption.

Hm… is it only shelters that aren’t allowed to make them available for adoption? The organization we adopted our dog from regularly adopts out pit bulls. In any event, the idea of banning a whole breed from adoption is a bit short-sighted. I’ve met quite a few really sweet pits… there’s no reason they should have been euthanized (and, thankfully, they weren’t).

I really wish the public would become more aware at just how deep the problem is for companion animals and the people that are forced to kill them. I hope articles like this will help spread the word.

Yesterday’s open house for Poplar Spring went wonderfully. The food was great, the turnout was good, and Erik Marcus gave a great talk.

For those of you that couldn’t make it, or those of you that did and want to relive the event:

• My flickr photoset
• Erik Marcus’ talk (MP3, 33 minutes, 30 megs)

Sorry this post doesn’t go into much detail, but I’m really tired after a weekend with little sleep.

(First of all, I’ve gotta say I’m pretty embarrassed about this. I got this book several years ago from Dreena to review and thought I had reviewed it. Recently, I checked back and realized I hadn’t. So, this is a late review with many apologies to Dreena.)

The Everyday Vegan, Dreena Burton’s first cookbook, takes a different approach to vegan cooking than other cookbooks near it on the shelf. Since veganism is usually associated first with ethics and animal rights and secondarily with health and environmental issues, most of the popular vegan cookbooks have been written for those that gave up meat, dairy, and eggs for ethical reasons. However, as time goes on and “vegan” becomes a less alien word for the world at large, I think we’ll see more cookbooks marketed towards people who are simply interested in eating a vegan diet and learning more about it, no matter what path led them to it.

Here, Dreena starts out with a surprisingly lengthy section introducing veganism, food information, and the health side of things. In fact, a full quarter of the book is dedicated to covering ingredients, food preparation and storage tips, and individuals’ stories of coming to a vegan diet. The nice thing about The Everyday Vegan is that it’s about as far from heavy-handed as could be, so it’s extremely accessible for people who are just looking to add more vegan recipes to their repetoire.

Dreena covers everything from gravies and sauces to main dishes and desserts. About the only thing you won’t find is a dedicated breakfast section, though the “Muffins and Snack Loaves” section offers up some tasty suggestions that would work well in the morning.

One of the benefits of being extremely late in writing this review is that I’ve gotten the chance to try out quite a few recipes. Among the many that I enjoyed are warm, hearty recipes like the Creamy Potato Leek Bake, a very garlicky alternative to the standard mashed potatoes. It uses two bulbs of roasted garlic and five cups of leeks to form a base with mashed russet potatoes. It’s combined with a tasty sauce of vegetable stock, molasses, spices, and tamari.

Even more garlicky is the Creamy Garlic Tomato Sauce, which uses three bulbs of roasted garlic. This sauce took a somewhat long time to prepare and cook–about an hour–but it’s a great weekend sauce for those of us that love when a garlic aroma comes out of our pores.

The Everyday Vegan is single-handedly responsible for introducing my wife and I to the correct way to eat kale. Before this, we got kale and looked at it a little funny, trying to figure out how the heck to prepare it so that it didn’t taste bitter. Dreena’s simple recipe combines just the right amount of olive oil, sea salt, and shallots to result in a perfectly balanced set of flavors that make eating those dark leafies quite the pleasure.

There are a number of other quick and easy recipes for less-than-standard veggies, like asparagus (Quick Asparagus Saute) and fennel (Roasted Fennel with Carrots and Shallots).

I had slightly less success with a delicious sounding recipe in the dessert section, Blueberry-Orange Crisp Cake. Seriously, how good does that sound? While the flavorof the dish was fine, my version of it came out squishier than I would have liked. I suspect this was because I used a baking dish rather than a baking pan, because I didn’t have a pan of the right size at the time. I definitely want to give this one another shot, because just looking at the ingredients makes me hungry.

The recipes are well organized and the lists of ingredients very easy to read. Though the instructions are presented in paragraph form rather than step-by-step format, even longer recipes are easy enough to follow. There are eight pages of gorgeous color photos of the food in the center of the book, which will certainly inspire you to try them. There are no washed out, embarassing pictures of brown lentil loafs here.

The Everyday Vegan is a great addition to your cookbook shelf. Not only are the recipes accessible and tasty, but the information early in the book is a great read for people new to cooking or new to veganism while also making the reader excited about what they’re learning. It’s like, “Who put that reference book in my cookbook?” “No, who put that cookbook in my reference book?”

The Everyday Vegan is available from Arsenal Pulp Press. Dreena’s second book, Viva le Vegan was published in 2004.

Any veg blog readers in the DC/MD/VA area, I invite you to come and visit Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary’s open house this coming Sunday. Erik Marcus will be the speaker and there will be music and food and plenty of rescued farm animals for you to meet. It’s a great event and I highly encourage you to come out. If you’re thinking of attending, please RSVP to info -at- animalsanctuary.org and also let me know that you’ll be there so I can look for you and say hi.

Here’s the official announcement/invitation:

Dear Friend of Poplar Spring,

Join us for Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary’s eighth annual Fundraiser and Open House, to raise funds to continue the organization’s important work of rescuing abused and abandoned farmed animals.

Please bring a friend and join us for an educational and entertaining afternoon with delicious food, a live band, silent auction, entertainment for the kids, and an opportunity to visit with the Sanctuary’s many rescued residents.

Our keynote speaker will be Erik Marcus, author of Meat Market.

Sunday, September 25, 2005
1:00 to 5:00 p.m., rain or shine
Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary
15200 Mt. Nebo Road, Poolesville, MD 20837

RSVP to Poplar Spring at 301-428-8128 or email info -at- animalsanctuary.org

No dogs, please.

For more information, including directions to Poplar Spring, please visit: http://www.AnimalSanctuary.org

This is in response to the 100th Vegan Freaks blog entry, which discusses an article where Dr. Michael Greger argues that honey is vegan. I was going to post it as a comment, but it ended up being kind of long, so I’m posting here instead.

For the longest while, I always presented the “honey issue” as “not a big deal” to people when I told them what a vegan was. “Most vegans don’t even really make a big deal of it,” I told them, for the very reason that I thought it marginalized us even more. I’ll even admit to eating trace bits of honey for a few months after becoming vegan. I figured, “insects, eh… no central nervous system, it’s not a big deal to use their vomit.”

These days, I’m not so sure. Now, I avoid honey altogether, even when it means not eating my favorite whole wheat bagels. I scoot bugs out of the house rather than squash them. I’ll avoid stepping on a cricket not just because it would be messy, but because, eh, it’s just a little extra effort to avoid getting death on my shoe. I still don’t think the issue is a big deal, but the difference is that now it’s not a “big deal” to avoid honey rather than it not being a “big deal” about whether somebody does or doesn’t. Does that make any sense?

It’s one of those things that just seems to make sense. It seemed like a hassle at first, but before long it just seemed like the obvious thing to avoid honey. While I don’t break into tears if an insect hits my windshield, giving up honey’s simple… it ain’t a thing but a chicken wing. Or something.

Be sure to check out HSUS’s slide show of some of the animal rescues they’ve done over the last week.

This morning, I saw an announcement that my local library was going to be having a special event for kids to celebrate “National Chicken Month.”

“Sure, there’s bound to be some hypocrisy in celebrating the lives of animals that most people eat,” I thought, “but hey, it’s still kind of cool. It’ll raise some awareness, right?”

Turns out that National Chicken Month comes to us courtesy of The National Chicken Council and US Poultry and Egg Association. Sadly, the group says that in the past “the campaign has helped increase chicken sales by more than 50 percent¹ in September.”

Fortunately, the HSUS has a press release speaking out against National Chicken Month. They suggest alternate ways to celebrate this industry-created month, like writing to Trader Joe’s to ask them to stop selling eggs from cage-confined birds or signing a petition to help give birds equal protection under the Humane Slaughter Act.

¹ Isn’t it pretty evil that ThePoultrySite.com has pictures of cute little chicks when they refer to “broilers” and “layers”² as types of birds? There’s something wrong with classifying an animal based solely on how we use them.

² This site says that in a layer house, “[s]ince the [chickens’] manure is often stored for long periods of time, farmers only empty the manure storage a few times a year.” That’s kind of gross.

I haven’t commented here yet on Hurricane Katrina and the many, many animals that had to be left behind during the evacuations. I think it’s partially because I can’t look at the pictures or read the stories and still get it together enough to form a coherent thought about the whole thing.

So, I won’t attempt to. Instead, I’ll just encourage you to donate some time or money to Noah’s Wish or the HSUS. Don’t forget about the members of the families that had to be left behind.

Also, please read some thoughts from other bloggers who verbalize what I’m thinking better than I can at the moment:

• Almost Vegan: No Food Today
• An Animal-Friendly Life: Hurricane Katrina and the Animals
• Herbivore: The Other Victims of Katrina
• Vegan Chai: Katrina’s Snowballs
• Vegan.com: Erik’s Diner: September 1, 2005 (podcast)

I also want to remind you not to forget your local charities. Non-relief charities were hit particularly hard after September 11th and the tsunami as most of people’s charitable giving was directed at relief efforts. I suspect the same will hold true with this disaster.