Vegan Drinks is spreading around the USA! We started the New York Vegan Drinks last May. Vegan Drinks Los Angeles started up in September.

Salt Lake City Vegan Drinks starts tonight, January 5. It will be held this and every first Monday at the Vertical Diner from 8pm-10pm. Shout outs will begin at 9pm. Vertical Diner is 2280 South West Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah (801) 484-VERT. Follow SLCVD on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

Then, on Thursday, January 8, DC Vegan Drinks starts up. It will be held from 7pm-9pm at the Science Club, 1136 19th Street NW Washington DC 20036.

There are also convincing rumors of a San Francisco Vegan Drinks starting up some time soon.

All of the various Vegan Drinks are listed on this page of the Vegan Drinks website, which also has tips and suggestions for starting a Vegan Drinks in your town.

Chad from FoodFight! is on IM with me right now harassing me to promote the Let Live Foundation's new video section. As Chad says: "pretty awesome me thinks for everybody out there who can't go to conferences and such."

I'm embedding the "How To: Becoming the Media and Getting Creative" workshop here, cause that's what we try to do at SuperVegan:



"The Let Live Foundation is a non-profit organization based out of Portland, Oregon. Our mission is to inspire activism for animals through community based events that are both inclusive and inspiring." Right on.

As authors and publishing houses cash in on Average Joe's New Year's resolution to lose weight and eat healthily, cookbooks, self-help titles, and all things dietary under the sexy new subject heading "environmental responsibility" are crowding bookstores' new release tables—and for the love of green, Mark Bittman was not about to miss out.

The author of The New York Times' The Minimalist and Bitten blogs and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian offers the enviro-curious reader Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating (Simon & Schuster). Part counsel, part cookbook, Food Matters offers a simple Pollan-esque mantra: "Emphasize plant foods, and minimize animal products and junk foods."

Bittman isn't supporting veganism (womp womp), but he certainly renders reducing meat from the average American diet, or even eliminating it entirely, a reachable goal for those who haven't caught on. Though Bittman makes note of and derides the repulsive treatment of animals-as-livestock, animal welfare isn't his sticking point; it's the environment and all of the damage animal and junk food consumption causes it. Generally speaking, there isn't much not to like: he unfolds the more opaque ways in which the production of these foods damages the environment, offers a critique of the government's role in America's unhealthy taste for meat and junk food, and suggests how we might eat more consciously (while relentlessly invoking the maxim of his book). Finally, he offers recipes that are nearly all vegetarian and all include vegetarian versions, and many of the recipes are vegan.

Nonetheless, when I began reading Bittman's book, I was shocked by his show of unusual awareness and consideration. Last Monday, just a little more than a week before Food Matters published today, Bittman offered a recipe for Roman veal at Bitten. "If you can find veal shoulder—not always easy—that would work nicely here," he says. Why is a fellow who seems so sure about the damage and injustice inherent in especially veal production describe how to make the calf tasty? Besides, it doesn't jibe with his suggestion in Food Matters that we use meat for flavoring (if at all) and not as a main dish. (He does, however, stipulate that he eats consciously during the day but eats whatever he wants for dinner.) Indeed, many—though not most—of Bittman's recipes at Bitten and The Minimalist contain or hinge on meat.

It makes one wonder whether Bittman, like so many others, contradicts himself just to make money; I'd guess that the large majority of Times readers aren't vegetarian. I know some Emerson-loving Bittman supporter somewhere is mumbling something about hobgoblins. But how much pandering and inconsistency can we stand in the figureheads on the popular media side of the green movement?

Williamsburg vegan fast food joint Foodswings has reopened (no one even told us they'd closed). I haven't got much to say beyond what former owner Freedom just posted in our forum.

Foodswings is gonna reopen today. with it's new owners, new design & it's new bathroom! Go in & say hello. it's still vegan owned & operated & defiently worthy of your support. Thank you to everyone who supported me & my family ove the last 5 years!

Um, [sic]. So get on down to Foodswings and don't forget to leave a review on SuperVegan for the benefit of your fellow readers/eaters.

The rumor I heard was that the new owners are the same folks who own Park Slope vegan heavy metal bar Lucky 13.

Update, 1/5/2009: Official word has come through from new owner Melody (who also owns Park Slope vegan heavy metal bar Lucky 13): "I just wanted to share that Foodswings in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is under new ownership and has a customer bathroom now (!!), and you will also notice an improved staff attitude, new items on the menu, and improvement upon existing items and more consistency in the food. Please come by and check out the place now that we are new & improved."

When, more than a month ago, Slate labeled the vampires of Stephenie Meyer's paranormal teen romance Twilight "vegetarian," I hoped that Slate was unique in publicly--and I say "publicly" because the term was first produced in the novel--misidentifying the vampires' "compassionate" diets. But a small newspaper in London, London!, picked up the misnomer as recently as yesterday morning.

So I'm thinking: Really. Really? Come on.

For those of us—and I include myself in this group—who have painstakingly, and probably unsuccessfully, tried to avoid every gaping cultural footprint of Meyer's novel, the story is one of a 16-year-old girl and a vampire named Edward who fall in love but have no outlet for their desire, since Meyer, a Mormon herself, has fashioned a Mormon-friendly, sexless (but maybe kind of erotic!) story. One of Edward's many points of appeal? He spares humans and drinks the blood of other animals instead. See? He cares.

That's the insult, and here's the injury: the term is being haphazardly vomited up all over the media. There's a Twilight fan club called Vegetarian Vampires. There's a wikiHow article, "How To Look Like a Twilight Vampire," that advises fans what color contacts to sport for true vegetarian vampire authenticity: "Put on gold contacts if you are a 'vegetarian' vampire. If you do not want to be vegetarian, put on burgundy/red contacts. This step is optional. If you're a hungry vampire your eyes should be a dark color." And, worst of all--because teen girls are always worst of all--there are girls everywhere swooning at the thought of an anemic-looking, long-toothed fellow sucking on rabbits because, you know, he's a nice vampire.

So next time you're hungry for, uh, vampires, watch True Blood, where the blood is as artificial as the breasts.

Vague menu descriptions, Ill-informed wait-staff, greedy establishments who would rather take your money than inform you that the vegetarian food they're shucking falls far from the vegan tree, are the scourge of the vegan restaurant-goer. Restaurants guilty of the above create a fallacious illusion that what you're eating is vegan: when it's not.

So, SuperVegan readers, here's your chance to call bullshit on those culpable few who knowingly (or unknowingly) serve out the mendacity (after-all, some of us NYC vegans may be in the dark) Leave your tips, grievances, complaints and stink-eyed daggers in the comments section.

I'll start it out:

• Kate's Joint does not go out of its way to tell you that their "non-dairy" cheese is not vegan. It has casein in it. Bullshit!
• While Crif Dogs should get points for offering a vegan hot dog, they deserve a big fuck you for serving it on a non-vegan bun. Bullshit!
• It's quite nice that Red Bamboo has teamed up with Bamn Automat, but, other than the fries: nothing is vegan. Bullshit!
  

Update I got an email from Bamn Automat; although they do offer vegetarian items, only the salad is vegan.

It's that time of the month again! Vegan Drinks is Thursday at Angels & Kings bar in the East Village. We'll have the usual cheap beers ($3 domestic, $4 imports) and dollar off well drinks, as well as a crowd of wonderful people.


We'll turn down the music at around 8pm and encourage people to promote themselves, their groups and/or causes for 30 seconds. If you represent a veg*n or animal rights group, come prepared with your (very short!) spiel and literature.

Check out our map of restaurants near Angels & Kings where you can grab a bite after the event. And if you haven't already, link up with Vegan Drinks on Facebook and MySpace.

Vegan Drinks is held from 7pm-9pm at Angels & Kings, 500 East 11th Street (btw Ave A & Ave B), New York, NY 10009.

We've finally caught up with last year and joined Twitter. Our account name is supervegan. You can view it on the web at twitter.com/supervegan. If you're on Twitter, please follow us! If you're not on Twitter yourself, you can still see our updates on that page or via this RSS feed. Here's the latest bunch of tweets from us:
We'll use it to post quick updates--stuff that's too small for a blog post (or, more likely, that we're too lazy to blog), tell you things about SuperVegan, and who knows what else. It will also be a great way to reach the readership if our site breaks down (as it did recently).

We promise not to be boring! Go follow!

(If you don't know what Twitter is, I dunno look it up in Wikipedia or something.)

It's been a while since I last bragged about adding restaurants to our awesome NYC Vegan Restaurant Guide, so I figured a post doing just that was due.

Brooklyn

• Sunac Natural Food
• Willburg Cafe
• Am-Thai Chili Basil Kitchen
• Tao Palate (Spawn of Wild Ginger!)
• Vegetarian Ginger
• Boneshakers (Awesome Vegan-friendly Cafe!)
• Kush Cafe
• Caserta Vecchia (Cheesy Brick Oven Vegan Pizza!)
• Tofu on 7th
• New Green House

Manhattan

• The Cafe at 5C
• Lula's Sweet Apothecary (Wipes drool!)
• Community Food & Juice
• Dirt Candy (Vegetables cooked up fancy by ex-Pure Food & Wine chef.)
• Tawaa
• Dumpling Man
• Sympathy for the Kettle
• Moshe's Falafel
• Luxee
• Neighburrito
• T Salon at Chelsea Market
• Sal Anthony's City Gardener (Check it out raw foodies!)
• Soy & Sake (Bootleg Red Bamboo)

Queens

• Linda's Organic Kitchen & Market
• Peking Duck Forest
• Queens Health Emporium
• Fresh Start Health Food Market and Organic Eatery

Bronx

• Green Light Cuisine

If you wanna know about a restaurant that's been added to the guide before I get around to bragging, please subscribe to (or check often) the recently added restaurants page.

New York City is a paradise for vegans on Thanksgiving. Choose from the options below, and do make your reservations soon--these places fill up fast!

Angelica Kitchen is offering a $50 five course prix fixe menu.

Blossom has a $68 four course prix fixe menu, while Cafe Blossom offers three courses for $58.

Candle 79's four course prix fixe is $69, while sister restaurant Candle Cafe gives you four courses for $52, plus a la carte options.

Caravan of Dreams will serve a three course dinner for $22.

Counter's got a $45 four course prix fixe, plus an optional $30 wine pairing.

Curly's will be serving a $24.95 prix fixe menu. You can choose between soy turkey or maple-baked ham for your entree, plus a variety of sides.

Foodswings is offering their menu for $15 in advance or $18 at the door; Freedom posted the menu here in our forum.

Organic Grill will have a special Thanksgiving menu; you can choose between a tofu turkey or stuffed squash entree for $14.95, plus pick from a variety of Thanksgivingy sides.

Chef Ouiya has both prix fixe and a la carte options for delivery or pick up. Check out the menu here and make sure to get your order in by midnight Sunday Update: Wednesday at 10pm for Thursday delivery(!) or pickup (according to yolisekhmet in the comments).

Pure Food and Wine will be serving a fancy schmancy four course prix fixe for $72. I almost want to go here just to see how they justify offering the most expensive vegan Thanksgiving meal in NYC.

Red Bamboo will be serving their regular menu and a $20 Thanksgiving prix fixe menu. If you're going out of town on the day itself, Red Bamboo Brooklyn will offer their $19.95 three course prix fixe after 4pm on Thanksgiving Day as well as on the Tuesday and Wednesday before.

'sNice and 'sNice Brooklyn are both closed Thanksgiving day, but we recommend you stop by in the days before or after to try their awesome Thanksgiving Leftovers sandwich.

Next to its "normal" Thanksgiving dinners for eight or twelve, WholeFoods offers that same old Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner for one. For $19.99, you get curried apple pumpkin soup, a holiday roast stuffed with wild rice and dried cranberries, green beans with almonds, a mini pecan tart, and a firm reminder that the world considers you an isolated freak.

Also, if you're stuck attending a non-vegan Thanksgiving, you may want to pass along these tips if you're lucky enough to have a host who wants to accommodate you. Good luck!

UPDATE 11/24/08: It's Vegan Thanksgiving Week at Perelandra. Fresh seitan and gravy, stuffing, garlic roasted smashed potatoes, pumpkin tofu cheesecake and other holiday-ish foods every day this week. (Probably not in quantity enough to cater your banquet, but perfect if you're dropping by for lunch.)

If we're missing anything good, please let us know!

Are you bypassing the whole restaurant thing and cooking your own Thanksgiving meal? We'd love to hear what you're making; please share your favorite recipes and food ideas in the comments.