rilo rocks

check out indie-pop rockers rilo kiley's acoustic version of one of their best known songs, moneymaker.


jenny lewis, the band's lead vocalist, "strives to be vegan" and makes conscious decisions to eliminate animal products from her life (her self proclaimed weakness is cheese, namely havarti). an interview of lewis about her cooking and eating habits (as well as the habits of other indie rock stars) can be found at http://cookingwithrockstars.com/. she rocks, she's cute, and vegan (almost). word!

out,

~thorns

cake for dinner

this one goes out to all you naysayers out there :-) i know it's hard for some to believe that one can have a fulfilling food life without the inclusion of animal products but here is the proof that such fulfillment can be attained!

mountain mama natural foods is a local family-operated natural food store located just up the hill from our house. about a month ago, we started noticing that their in-house bakery was putting out vegan, gluten-free cakes. our first thought was: how good can a vegan, gluten-free cake be? our second thought (after trying a piece) was: where has this cake been all my life? my third thought: is it possible to legally marry a piece of cake? people, this cake was out-freakin'-standing. how good? well here is a picture of it:

i felt so bad for eating it all without sharing with you guys that i HAD to get another piece just to show you. so here is the second, yet-to-be-eaten version:
it is chocolate cake with peanut butter cream icing made from freshly ground peanut butter and other magical ingredients. Kendra is the bakery magician and i'm sure she sold her soul at a dusty crossroads somewhere to be able to do what she does with vegan and gluten-free ingredients. we liked the cake so much that we ordered a whole one for our anniversary. here's what we got...heaven in a pastry box:
besides the peanut butter version shown here, she's done chocolate-cherry, chocolate-orange, raspberry, mocha, and a couple others. all were amazing and i challenge ANYONE to be able to tell that it's made without animal products. for those of you reading from afar, i wish i could send you some of this amazing stuff. for those here in the springs, go see Kendra for your own piece...it'll change your world!

hiding the scales and mirrors,

~thorns

on easy decisions

amidst all the weighty things we routinely have to toil over from day to day, every once in a while we get to enjoy the respite of a truly easy decision. i was recently visited by two such easy choices. the first came after i hastily pledged to my lady friend that i would abstain from alcoholic beverages for the entire duration of her pregnancy/nursing. (clearly a case of my chivalry galloping off with my logic before i could do the math that it would be almost two years without beer!) the problem is that there were several bottles of unique microbrews including Rogue's Hazelnut Nectar and Dogfish Head's Raison D'Etre still left in the fridge from before i learned of our impending critter. so here's the easy decision: my aforementioned lady friend said, "you'll have to drink them or give them away." i tried not to knock her over getting to the bottle opener.
the other easy decision spawned from my recent research regarding vegan-friendly fast food places. through various vegan blogs and forums on the web, i learned that certain configurations of ingredients at both little caesar's and papa john's will render them vegan-friendly. so a couple weeks ago on a snowy thursday, i had to make the choice...still true to PJ's after all these years :-)

hoping YOU get some easy ones soon too,

~thorns

****update****

i've already broken my no-alcohol pledge...badly. progress, not perfection *sheepish grin*

in a vegan pickle

DVR = digital video recorder. device which records pre-selected offerings from our Direct TV service and saves them for endless frittering away of time that i should spend doing something productive. the thing'll hold a lot but, as with any storage system, old stuff needs to be cleared to make way for new. it's this task that i've grown exceptionally good at of late (and she says i never clean...ha!) and when i have my "cleaning" sessions, it's usually a show about food.

as any foodie will tell you, there is the normal pedestrian cooking drivel (rachel ray, sandra lee, guy fieri, etc.) and there are the standouts who haven't sacrificed their culinary integrity for the machine. these culinarians, namely jamie oliver and gordon ramsay, whose shows i have been watching, exhibit simultaneously complementing and contrasting elements (like any successful dish) and have re-ignited my love of and quest for gastronomical knowledge. gordon's curt and abrasive language and demanding kitchen codeare the perfect foil for jamie's endearing common english brogue and laid-back rustic cooking style.

now comes the pickle (pun fully intended). i've long wanted to go to some kind of culinary school and am feeling that tug pretty strongly now. my problem is that i'll surely have to renounce my vegan ways to follow the curriculum at any traditional school and actualize my dream of having my own restaurant. **yes i know i could open a vegan restaurant (and would LOVE to) but to work my way up to that level, i'm certain i'll have to do my time in non-vegan kitchens** in the immortal words of pooh, "oh, bother."

i'm constantly reading cookbooks, poring over various media on gastronomy, and collecting ideas for a vegan SLOW food place (on-premise/locally grown produce, international menu selections, composting, all organic food, etc) but i can scarcely get around the fact that i'll have to walk a non-vegan path to get there.

what say you? please share your thoughts. send a link to this post to your foodie friends and ask them to weigh in. in the meantime, if you want to expand YOUR vegan cooking repertoire, check out a couple of my other favorite blogs, Vegan Dad and Everyday Dish.

cheers,

~thorns