One of the rare things I’ve found missing from my life as vegan is “milk” chocolate. I run into a lot of “accidentally-vegan” dark chocolate that has certainly widened my scope of chocolate-eating, but not very many people are tackling a vegan chocolate for those of us who, well, aren’t that into dark chocolate to begin with. So, when I heard there was a box of vegan milk chocolate (or “light chocolate” as NO Whey! is calling it) to be reviewed, I got excited.  And when I saw it was a Valentines assortment, my heart sang and angels appeared.  One of my great past loves was those heart-shaped box Valentines Day assortments. The boxes almost made up for the dumb holiday.

The NO Whey! Candies Valentines assortment is a sampler of heart-shaped chocolate in a tasteful (non-heart shaped) brown-striped box with white, pink and red (recyclable!) paper ribbon, accompanied by a candy menu with ingredient listings in red print. The box sparked memories of chocolates of yore (my pre-vegan days) as visions of Chunkys and Cadbury crème eggs popped into my head. The light chocolate, used for most of the varieties in the box, is very sweet and creamy.

I’ll start with the varieties that aren’t normally my favorites:

The Cream-Filled Hearts stood out as surprisingly on-target for that type of candy. The Cherries & Cream reminded me of the cherry/raspberry confections you’d stumble upon in the assortment box, but better as they weren’t cloyingly sweet (I actually finished this one instead of casting it aside). The Coffee Cream's creamy coffee-flavored filling was a nicely sweet coffee-in-candy alternative compared to the ubiquitous dark chocolate covered espresso beans you find everywhere (that are more coffee than candy). Remarkably, the chocolate covered cherry, My Cherry Amour, didn’t leak goo all over as I bit into the nice mound of sweet milk chocolate to reveal a perfectly respectable maraschino nestled in its creamy interior.

Then I got down to business with the chocolates I was most looking forward to, and for which I had the highest expectations!

Our friends aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel the Bob Barker have found the whaling fleet, and caught up to the Nisshin Maru factory ship. The Bob Barker is blocking the slipway of the factory ship, which means the Nisshin Maru won't be able to take on or process any whales. This means that despite the attacks against Sea Shepherd ships by the massive and government-funded Japanese whaling fleet in the past couple months, the unarmed Bob Barker and its tiny crew of volunteer vegans have still managed to stop this year's Antarctic whaling operations.

Four other whaling harpoon vessels are surrounding the Bob Barker, including the Shonan Maru #2, which rammed and sunk the SSCS vessel the Ady Gil. But as long as the Bob Barker is blocking the slipway of the whaling factory ship, the harpoon vessels and their arsenals won't be able to continue whaling operations.

If you are growing bored of anonymously eating the same dishes at the same old restaurants, Nasturtium might be for you. Nasturtium is the newest vegan dinner party in town. Hosted by Chef Scott Winegard, a friendly six-foot-something hardcore guy who has worked in the kitchens of various restaurants including Pure Food and Wine, Broadway East (back when it was veg), and Angelica Kitchen, the dinner party aims to bring his signature fresh twist to vegan dining and socializing. As a gardener does with the spicy, carefree edible flowers which inspired its name, Winegard plants seeds in the form of a delicious meal made of seasonal, locally-sourced ingredients and hopes that friendships and a colorful evening will grow.

AR photographer Jo-Anne McArthur has been documenting the Sea Shepherd Antarctic campaign this year, and many of her pics are now up at her website.

She's been taking photos from Sea Shepherd's heretofore secret ship, the Bob Barker. So you'll see a lot in these photos that you haven't been able to follow just from the press releases of the campaign.

You'll see things that happened to the Bob Barker well before its existence was made public. You'll see the crew getting the ship ready for the campaign, you'll see the ship getting surrounded by whaling ships, and you'll watch the Bob Barker crew rescuing the crew of the Ady Gil after the Shonan Maru #2 rammed the Ady.

If you're like me and some of your best friends are on those ships, these pics will seriously brighten your day.

PETA's Vegan College Cookbook: 275 Easy, Cheap, and Delicious Recipes to Keep You Vegan at School is aimed at students living in dorms, an experience I am a decade removed from. Still, I remain a fan of tasty food made cheaply and easily so this book excites me. Yes, nearly all the recipes are carb heavy, many are of questionable nutritional value, and most involve very few fresh vegetables beyond onions, but that's how college is. Shit is real! You don't have time to be sprouting mung beans and basting turducken. You've got books to read and beer to drink!

Frankly, I'm amazed at all the things you can make in a microwave (including cake!). So far I've only made spaghetti and meat sauce. While the sauce—thick with Gimme Lean—was deliciously seasoned, the pasta was a mushy nightmare I am loath to revisit. Though preparing a meal in a microwave is more like a science experiment than cooking, there is fun to be had, and possibly even a tasty cake or two to be eaten. I can't wait to start nuking more things! I think every microwave should come with a copy of this animal-friendly book.

Try some of the recipes now on PETA2.com!

Thank you, New York City. On Thursday, January 28th, in a little over two hours, we sold $1,450 worth of sweet and savory treats at our Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti! Not too shabby for a little bake sale in the corner of a bar on a frigid winter night. Sodopreca and Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti (ARCH) will receive their checks soon!

Extra special, cherry-on-top thanks to those of you who baked! We had the most fantastic line-up of treats -- Hostess-style cupcakes, personal pizzas, gourmet chocolates (thanks, Lauren at Sweet Compassion), spinach pies, brownies and cookies of all sorts, doggy- and heart-shaped gingerbread cookies (courtesy of Patti at Baked Ideas), more cupcakes (thanks to everyone who made cupcakes and Allison at Minor Treat) and even bagels!

This week's Vegan Drinks marked our 21st event in NYC. (Vegan Drinks is now in 19 cities! Welcome, Nashville!) To celebrate, we gave away Sambazon, Alex Jamieson's new book, Living Vegan for Dummies, and a couple of sets of the "Cookin' with My Crawdaddy" vegan cajun cookzines. (Thanks for the donations, everyone!) DJ Lil Ray kept the standing-room-only crowd happy with the good tunes as everyone patiently waited for their chance to order a drink or devour an apple cider donut.

We're hosting a vegan bake sale for Haiti at this week's Vegan Drinks NYC on Thursday, January 28 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at Angels & Kings bar! More than 30 talented bakers want to sell you amazing sweet and savory baked treats. Please come with small bills and big to-go containers and buy, buy, buy! All proceeds will be donated to Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti (ARCH) and the Dominican animal rescue group Sodopreca. Angels & Kings will also be donating a portion of its sales to the Haiti relief effort.

This month's Vegan Drinks marks our 21st event! DJ Lil Ray will be present to rock your world. Sambazon is bringing some of their açaí juice by for drink specials and giveaways. And, we'll give an autographed copy of Alex Jamieson's new book, Living Vegan for Dummies, to one very lucky winner. (Thanks, Sambazon and Alex!)

As always, the drinks are cheap ($3 domestics, $4 imports and $1 off well drinks) and the crowd is cool.



We'll turn down the music 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.

The main reason you should be getting your tickets right now to this Saturday, January 23rd's Mercy for Animals Celebrating Compassion gala is of course to support the grassroots group's amazing work on behalf of animals. But another great reason is the gala's exciting and mouth-watering menu featuring vegan foodie heavyweights like Match premium meat alternatives, VeganTreats pastries, Daiya cheese, So Delicious ice creams, and Frey Vineyards organic wines!

A few exciting highlights: chicken vol au vent, crab thermidor, and chicken-stuffed zucchini using Match and a baked lasagna with Match Italian sausage and Daiya cheese. (Yes, there are options for you silly folks who don't do fake meats too!) Catered by the Queens-based, all-vegetarian company Natural Delights, the gala will use local produce, 80 percent organic ingredients, and fresh herbs. Check out the full-menu after the jump.

Get your tickets now!

ATTENTION, EVERYONE: We've updated the shiitake out of our NYC events calendar, where we post all the super duper vegan events in and around NYC, notices of book and movie releases, announcements of restaurant openings, and all sorts of stuff you care about. Our calendar can be your calendar; click! and it's in iCal, or select the event on the calendar page and add it to your Google calendar. You can also receive updates via RSS (my fav!) or e-mail, and be alerted the very minute we add an event. Lots of ways for you to be an instant vegan event know-it-all/socialite/activist!

FOR EXAMPLE: If you subscribed to our calendar, you would know that this Saturday, January 23, is going to be insanely jamity packed with events--MFA's Celebrating Compassion Gala, 4 Course Vegan's seven-year anniversary, and author Mickey Z. speaking at Bluestockings. All three events are at basically the same time, so if you want to enjoy all of them, you'll have to bring a change of clothes and pay off a cab driver to taxi you back and forth and not peek at your hot body in the rearview mirror as you change, and you need to plan ahead for that, so, see, you NEED this calendar!

Besides pimping Bluestockings, 4CV, and MFA events, we've got goings on at Farm Sanctuary, NYC Vegan EatUP and NYC Vegetarian Meetup, NYC Animal Advocacy Network, and bizillions of vegan cookbook releases coming this spring. If the calendar is missing anything, hit us up!

This recipe is my very best rip-off of Dao Palate's pineapple fried rice, which I think is the shizzle (but EXTRA shizzle if you replace the lettuce with peas and soy powder with flaxseeds!). I made it as easily as possible, using frozen veggies and canned pineapple, cause when I get home from work I feel more like watching videos of fat cats than waiting in the KILL ME long lines at Pathmark/heading southward to Natural Land. You can totally make it with fresh veggies, though!

The whole she-bang takes about 20 minutes + rice cooking time = 1 hour, 5 minutes, not accounting for tofu-baking time because I used pre-baked tofu. If you have leftover rice, you can save 45 minutes of your life, with which you should make cupcakes for the bake sale to support animals in Haiti. (You KNOW I'm going to work that into every post until January 28 so save yourself the second-guessing and make those cupcakes!)

Pineapple Fried Rice
makes 3 servings