Earth Day Phoenix 2013

It's Earth Day! One of my favorite days of the year. And today, I'm at Earth Day Phoenix with Cult of Kale and other friends, and we're handing out food samples, vegan information brochures, and smiles to all the attendees that come by our booth between 11am and 1:30pm. Come say hi!

[Maybe you were there? Thanks for stopping by!]

Here are the store-bought products we are sampling at our vegan info booth as well as tips for locating them.

Vegan Meats

Field Roast:

Mexican Chipotle Sausage (chorizo-like)

Italian Sausage

Smoked Apple Sage
Frankfurters
 

Found at Whole Foods, Luci's Healthy Marketplace, Phoenix Public Market, and New Frontiers Marketplace (Sedona & Flagstaff). Ask your local grocer to stock these!



Gardein:

Beefless Tips

Found at Whole Foods, Safeway, Bashas, Fry's Marketplace....and possibly others.

 

***

 

Non-dairy Milks

Blue Diamond Almond Breeze

Sweetened Chocolate Almond Milk

Sweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

Found at Whole Foods, Target, Sprouts, and possibly others.

 

 

Silk

Vanilla Soy Milk
Chocoloate Soy Milk

Found at Sprouts, Whole Foods, Frys Marketplace, Walmart, and many other grocers.

  

 

 

So Delicious

Vanilla Coconut Milk
Chocolate Coconut Milk (shelf stable)

Found at Sprouts, Whole Foods, and others.

 

Rice Dream

Horchata (shelf stable)

Found at Sprouts and Whole Foods.

The stores mentioned are not a comprehensive list of locations where these products are sold, just where I know they are. Check your local grocers, especially Fry's Marketplace, Whole Foods, Sprouts, etc. If you cannot find the products you are looking for at a grocer near you, ask them about ordering some in. The more requests they get, the more likely they carry those items.

If you are open to shopping online, you can also buy many of these products from Pangea, Food Fight Vegan Grocery, and Vegan Essentials.

***

Cookies

The cookies sampled were from the Whole Foods Bakery as supplied to them by Aphrodite Bakery according to the label. Whole Foods sells these cookies regularly, and they are quite delish!

If you'd like to make your own vegan chocolate chip cookies from scratch, here is the best recipe ever, from the Post Punk Kitchen and Isa Chandra Moskowitz. You should be familiar with all of the ingredients, except maybe tapioca flour and the almond milk, but that's not so strange nor hard to find. I get Bob's Red Mill Tapioca Flour from Sprouts and Whole Foods, but I know other grocer's carry it and other brands. Also, make sure you get the semi-sweet chocolate chips without any dairy (check the ingredients list).

Post Punk Kitchen's Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe


Thanks for your interest in veganism!  Feel free to browse the yellow-orange tool bar items at the top, they have the most information for new veg*ns. And please do not hesitate to leave your questions in the comments, tweet, post on facebook, or just plain email.

Vegan Bake Sale- TODAY!

VEGAN BAKE SALE
Saturday, April 14th 11am-6pm

Baked Goods  (Gluten-Free options) ** Raffles ** Handmade Vegan Soaps 

This is going to be pure sweet tooth satisfaction! Local artists, bakers and individuals are donating their time and goodies to make this one amazing bake sale! Help us help the planet, feel free to bring your own take home container.

RAIN OR SHINE
All proceeds go to Autism Speaks

Please Bring Cash!
Location: Strawberry Hedgehog Headquarters
526 W. Mariposa St.
Phoenix, AZ 85013
http://strawberryhedgehog.com

Life Gets In the Way

Nami's Biscuits and Gravy, served on Sundays...DELISH!

This isn't a personal blog, so I have been avoiding talking about why the posting has been so sporadic and missing lately.  But I wanted to let you know that I'm sorry and I know it's been a bit of a bummer. The fact is there has been quite a lot of family trauma and drama over the past few months, on top of constant overtime at the day job and schoolwork. I'm afraid it has just been too much for me, and the blog has suffered a bit as a result.

/Whinefest/ I didn't even get to participate in most of Terry Hope Romero's recipe testing for her global vegan cookbook as I had planned.(Sorry, Terry!) And I also won't be at this year's Earth Day Phoenix 2012 event handing out vegan samples as I had planned. Both are huge disappointments for me. I am, however, hoping to contribute to the vegan bake sale next month! And I'm thinking that I'll be able to get this blog back up and running shortly.

I have a couple local restaurant reviews coming soon, so look for those. And April 1st is my veganiversary. 6 years, baby! If you have ideas on how I should celebrate, let me know!

Great American Meatout 2012

From the Meatout.org Website:

"Meatout is the world's largest grassroots diet education campaign. On (or around) March 20, thousands of caring people in all 50 U.S. states and two dozen other countries encourage their friends, families, and communities to "kick the meat habit” and explore a wholesome, compassionate diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. The 2012 goal of Meatout is to distribute free vegan food samples to 30,000 people!"

Are you participating?


Highlights from the 2011 Meatout Campaign.

Charity Vegan Bakesale- Coming Soon!

VEGAN BAKE SALE
Saturday, April 14th       11am-6pm

Baked Goods ** Raffles **  Handmade Vegan Soaps

This is going to be pure sweet tooth satisfaction! Local artists, bakersm and individuals are donating their time and goodies to make this one amazing bake sale! Help us help the planet, feel free to bring your own take home container.

RAIN OR SHINE
All proceeds go to Autism Speaks

Please Bring Cash!
Location: Strawberry Hedgehog Headquarters
526 W. Mariposa St.
Phoenix, AZ 85013
http://strawberryhedgehog.com

7th Annual Thankful Veghead Menu

Wheat Berry Waldorf Salad

Sigh. I just cannot remember to take photos or delegate the photos to others sometimes. But I did manage to borrow from a guest who snapped a couple with her iphone. Here is the menu with recipe links for the Thankful Veghead Dinner. A very small and cozy affair this year.

Entrees
*Tofurky Roast w/ Savory Baste and Savory 'Giblet' Gravy
*Sage and Pumpkin Seed Encrusted Seitan w/ Roasted Garlic Pumpkin Sauce
*Almost Beef Wellington with Madeira Sauce


Sides
*Creamy Scalloped Potatoes (I added 2 tbl minced onion, 1 tbl minced parsley, & black pepper to taste to the sauce.)
*Green Bean Casserole (Native Foods)
*Tangerine Cranberry Sauce (Vegan Yum Yum)
*Wheatberry Waldorf Salad (Native Foods Cookbook)

*Christmas Kale Chopped Salad

*Spaghetti Squash (My sister made this and added Daiya mozzarella shreds, sage, and thyme to the squash.)
*White Chili (A guest brought this, I don't have the recipe.)


Christmas Kale Salad

 Dessert
*Boston Cream Pie Cake (Vegan Pie In the Sky)
*Apple Pie (My sister made this and subbed in vegan margarine and shortening & skipped the grains of paradise.) with Apple Cider Caramel Sauce
*Red Velvet Soda [Cup]Cake[s] with Pomegranate Spread and Buttercream Frosting [My sister made this as well, and added 1/2 cup margarine and more powdered sugar for proper consistency of the frosting.)

A photo of last year's dinner. This year's dinner looked a fair bit like this, though the actual recipes were different. Haha.



6th Annual Thankful Veghead Dinner (November 2010)

Apple Annie's Orchard, Willcox, AZ

Picking chili peppers.



A photo journey.

My sis, bro in law, nephew and I visited Apple Annie's and picked some goodies from the land. We missed the apple picking season by one week, but we got some green beans, chili peppers, jalapenos, poblano peppers, eggplants, and okra. Sunflowers, pumpkins, bell peppers, tomatoes, and squash were also available for picking. We went kind of late in the picking season overall, so I recommend hitting them earlier in October or late September. Picking yourself is optional, all goodies are also offered already picked, but it is fun and cheaper to DIY.

Fuzzy caterpillar dancing to The Ugly Bug Ball song by Burl Ives.

Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Butters (didn't look to see if vegan, but betting so.)

Purty Corns.

Green Beans. My most favorite.

Yellow Eggplants. Not a fan of eggplant, these guys conned me into taking them home anyway.

Apple Trees. (er, I think)

Drying peppers.

Urbanites visitng the Farm. Phone call while picking peppers? No problem!



Gourds



Sunnies.



Pumpkin Patch

Our Harvest Bucket

Four Vegetarian/Vegan Food Festivals

If you are like me, you haven't made it to any vegetarian/vegan food festivals yet. For one thing, we don't have one here in Arizona and attending one means a road trip. But luckily, Jasmin Singer of Our Hen House and VegNews Correspondent visits four vegetarian food festivals and gives us a taste of each.

The four: New York Vegetarian Food Festival in NYC; Mad City Vegan Fest in Madison, Wisconsin; Maine Vegetarian Food Festival in Portland, Maine; and NOLA Veggie Fest in New Orleans.

True Food Kitchen Special Deal via Ecorazzi

Ecorazzi is celebrating their 5th anniversary of existence, and they are hooking us up with special deals at vegan/vegetarian/sustainable restaurants throughout the country and offering prize packages through Facebook and Twitter. You have just this week to take advantage of each, October 12-19, 2011.

The Arizona/Phoenix area restaurant deal:

True Food Kitchen, Many Vegetarian Options, $$ (Phoenix & Scottsdale)

$20 vegetarian/vegan Pre Fixe Dinner Menu including appetizer, entree, & dessert. Does not include tax & tip.

Twenty smackaroos for 3 courses?! That is a sweet deal!

The Facebook contest requires you to 'like' the Ecorazzi Eats page, and then submit your name and email address.

The Twitter contest requires you to tweet a photo of your meal or someone eating a meal at the participating restaurant. For us Phoenicians, that means True Food Kitchen. I tweeted a pic of their drinks on the patio. ::fingers crossed!::

Go forth and get your special meal deal at True Food!

Vegan MoFo...The Vegan Month of Food

I almost forgot that I am participating in Vegan MoFo...aka The Vegan Month of Food, where the goal is to post every day in October about vegan food. If you are interested, there are a ton of vegan bloggers joining the melee and there should be TONS to read. The Vegan MoFo BlogRoll has the full list of participants and there are a couple of categorical RSS Feeds for MoFo Posts. Check it out.

Hug a Vegetarian Day! Coming September 30th...

Vida Vegan Con

This past weekend was the first annual Vida Vegan Con in Portland, Oregon. "...A professionally run, annual conference designed to celebrate, explore, and fine-tune the practice—and ever-growing community—of vegan bloggers." I didn't even hear about it til recently, and so I didn't even get a chance to think about going. Maybe next year. I am dying to visit Portland.

Anyway, if you went and you want to share your experience, feel free to post it in the comments or share a link to your flicker photos, blog recaps, or youtube snippets.

If you want to hear more about the event...someone put together a Google reader bundle, and The Vegan Backpacker pulled together a list of the vegan blogger attendees and you can check out their individual reports. And lastly, a link to the Facebook group, Vida Vegan Con Bloggers.