THE VEGETARIAN BLOG

Everyone loves Thai food -  well, almost everyone - with its creative use of flavor and delicious ingredients. If you’re lucky enough to make it there, even better. Vegans and vegetarians can have a good time at meal times in this southeastern Asian country as this podcast tells us. Tune in and veg out!

(Thanks Bill for the information!)

I spent the Easter holiday with a friend in a lovely beach house in a small village in Brazil. The place is a perfect mixture of greenery and seaside, and the tree-roofed unpaved streets are a joy to walk on, barefoot. Unsurprisingly, most restaurants serve fish in their menu which makes eating out somewhat challenging for a vegan. But … where there’s a will there’s a way and I soon met the Italian manager of a gorgeous open-air restaurant who created a delicious vegan past dish for me and even allowed me to bring my dog to the place, as the garden area is so spacious and exuberant that Dylan wouldn’t bother anyone (in fact, he became the star of the place). What is the moral of the story? Wherever you go, you can take your veganism with you. It’s a pleasant form of vegan activism: you get to talk about it - people are always curious - and set an example to other people who otherwise might never have been exposed to it. It’s always worth the time because you never know where the seeds will land.

The weekend is upon us, Valentine’s Day tomorrow and lots of new going on so here’s a round up of news treats. I’ll begin with a link to some political news. According to Capitol Weekly, assemblyman Pedro Nava , D-Santa Barbara, yesterday introduced three pieces of animal rights legislation. The first would reduce the number of un-spayed/neutered animals in shelters; the second one would make it a felony to be a willing spectator at a dog fight; and the third one allow a judge to bar a felon convicted of animal cruelty from owning animals for a certain period after their release.

More legal news: The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) announced earlier this week the establishment of the “Animal Welfare Institute Abandoned Horse Reward Fund.” Under the program, individuals providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone who abandons a horse in violation of state law will be rewarded with up to $1,000 by AWI. “We’ve heard time and time again from those defending horse slaughter that our fight to end this cruel practice has led to an increase in abandoned horses. The truth is that the number of American horses going to slaughter now is the same or higher than before the domestic plants closed under state law. In fact, killer buyers seem to be buying more horses than when the plants were open,” said Chris Heyde, AWI’s Deputy Director of Government and Legal Affairs.

A bit of fun: the LA Times’ Daily Dish blog has an interview with Post Punk Kitchen woman Isa Moskowitz, the Brooklyn-born creator of the TV website. “In an era in which so many are going vegan, vegetarian, turning to organic produce and locally grown food, what could be more useful than an online kitchen to provide you with fun, healthy, rockin’ recipes that are all vegan?”

And everyone’s favorite rock ‘n roll vegan, Chrissie Hynde gives an interview to Cincinnati’s City Beat about her new music, her vegan restaurant and, well, herself. “Chrissie Hynde moved back to Akron to care for her aging parents and quite possibly begin her own retirement. But, like so many times in her career and life, fate intervened. She opened a vegan restaurant, reabsorbed the Midwest atmosphere that defined her upbringing and then, after a six-year gap since the last Pretenders album, songs began to suggest themselves.”

Happy Valentine!

The International Herald Tribune’s Globespotters section published a nice, positive review on its London blog yesterday of an upmarket vegan eaterie called Saf , in London’s Shoreditch. However, it got something wrong:

The restrictions imposed by a vegan diet (no dairy, meat or eggs and predominantly raw – cooked below 48 degrees) would seem to preclude fine dining. But Saf, a chain with branches in Munich and Istanbul, has convinced sceptical restaurant critics that vegan food can be delicious as well as healthy. Saf’s arrival in London is good news for anyone pursuing a healthy diet — in style, or who is trying to detox after seasonal excesses.

The affirmation in the first line gives the impression that veganism means some kind of monkish way of cooking that requires exceptional skill, which is not true. And I don’t know where the writer got the idea that vegan food is predominantly raw and cooked below 48 degrees. That one defeats me entirely as I don’t follow such guideline at all. Sure, eating lots of salad and fruit is eating raw but I also cook my food, especially the grains that I love. I haven’t figure out a way of cracking a bean corn with my own teeth yet!

But in the comment box Kedar from Minneapolis made a rectification which is worth repeating here:

Nice article. But vegan food does not have to be raw (cooked under 48 degrees). Vegan foods come in all sorts of forms and can be cooked or not. The only restrictions regard animals or animal products. Everything else is fair game. You’ll find vegan burgers, vegan lasagna, vegan stir-frys and curries, vegan baked goods, and even vegan haggis in the UK. Raw food is often times vegan by default or by choice (as in Saf’s case), but it does not have to be (think sushi).

Well said. It’s good though to see a smart publication like the Herald Tribune writing about veganism, though, despite the minor hiccup in the reporting.

The New York Times has a favourable review by the often unforgiving writer Frank Bruni of Candle 79, a New York vegan restaurant, which, according to some web comments I read, is absolutely amazing. Here’s a snapshot of the review:

The restaurant gets top-notch produce from top-tier farms, and it’s lavish with a laudable array of mushrooms used in a variety of ways. In one appealing appetizer there were grilled trumpet royale mushrooms, served with crispy onion rings. In another there were fried oyster mushrooms. Candle 79 leaves no part of the garden untouched, no patch of the forest unplumbed.

So, if you live in the New York area and get the chance to eat at Candle 79, leave your comments about the place. Would love to hear what real customers have to say about it.