• Did somebody say VEGAN CHALLAH?  Oh yes, VegNews just did! It's going to be a good Hanukkah this year, Jews! (Is eggless challah possible?) Psst...I think I also heard them say "vegan gingerbread cookies." Who's up for a vegan gingerbread house bake-off? Hmmm?
• Farm Sanctuary reminded us to sign their Petition for the Pigs, a letter that asks President Obama to demand that the USDA extend legal protection to downed pigs. Yeah, um, did we all just assume that pigs were covered like certain other large mammals?
• Terry Hope Romero's vegan Latin cookbook Viva Vegan is available for pre-order on Amazon. See how dangerous—and hot—that knife makes her look?
• Metromix declared Dirt Candy's Amanda Cohen Chef of the Year. Amanda Cohen sounds like Samantha Cohen, which means THAT COULD TOTALLY BE ME ONE DAY.
• USA Today reported on school lunch standards: somehow less stringent than fast-food standards! Even KFC won't buy the chickens kiddies are eating as chicken plywood nuggets.

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a group that asserts that human beings must eat animals. The Foundation has been proliferating this article that attacks vegetarians who have the audacity to stay alive, despite the Weston A. Price Foundation's assertions that human beings must eat animals. I've been encountering a lot of pro-meat advocates that express the conclusions of the article, and they're common ones you'll see a lot, so it is worth going over them here.

As readers know, October was the third annual Vegan Month of Food. Started by celebrity chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz, vegan mofos everywhere posted daily blogs in celebration of our favorite subject — food! Vegan Month of Food kicked off with World Vegetarian Day and ends with a bang tomorrow at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. In addition to this sandwich of events, here is a completely subjective roundup of things that made October one mofo of a month!

In the Mainstream

Vegan for the Animals
Author Jonathan Safran Foer made a big splash with a taster from his new book Eating Animals, published as a feature article in the NY Times Magazine's Food issue. After reading Eating Animals, actress Natalie Portman went vegan and announced her reasons in her essay "Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan" for the Huffington Post (that counts as a MoFo blog, right?). Blink 182 drummer (and rehabilitated puppy-juicer) Travis Barker has once again seen the light. He says he's back to being vegetarian and "almost full blown vegan now."

Vegan for the Environment
We've been saying it all along but it looks like we may finally be arriving at a tipping point. Even mainstream sources and enviro orgs are agreeing that eating meat causes global warming and going veg reduces your carbon footprint. Omnivore's Dilemma author and foodie darling Michael Pollan stuck his foot in it by stating: "A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius." Then retracted the statement the next day. I thought it was fuzzy math to begin with (here's an interview with one of the original researchers and number crunchers), but I hope his blunder doesn't cloud the issue, which is that vegans have a substantially lighter overall effect on the environment than meat-eaters. Duh. Joining the bandwagon, the WorldWatch Institute's latest magazine asks the question, "Carnivorism and climate change: Is it worse than we thought?"

Ikea restaurants are pretty great places to eat. The views are killer (at least in Red Hook and South Philly, the only Ikeas I've eaten at recently) and the food is dirt cheap. While they're not all that vegan-friendly, I'm quite happy with getting french fries, salad, coffee, and a veggie wrap, all for about $6.

I'd also become quite a fan of Ikea's dark chocolate, Choklad Mörk, which boasts all-vegan ingredients and a respectable enough 60% cocoa content, and is a pretty good deal at 100g for 99¢. After a year or so of eating Mörk, I took a closer look at the nutrition info and was shocked to discover 4mg cholesterol per serving listed in the nutritional information panel.

I always thought dietary cholesterol only occurred in animal products. Yet all of the listed ingredients are vegan. Is there some animal ingredient in the chocolate that is not listed, or is the nutritional breakdown incorrect? (I am assuming that the "may contain traces of egg and milk protein" refers only to shared manufacturing equipment and would not account for such a significant amount of cholesterol being present.) A bit of internet researching reveals that plants do contain a small amount of cholesterol. But it's a tiny amount.

The Curious Waveform blog cites a study in the Journal of Chemical Education which claims this is uncommon knowledge even amongst chemists, and points out that "the USDA does not state the existence of cholesterol when it is less than 2 mg/serving, which is the case with plant products."

Mimi Kirk is PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Woman Over 50 of 2009. She's been a vegetarian for the last 40 of her 70 years and a raw vegan for a year and a half. An active lady who travels often, most recently around the US, Mimi occasionally stops by her home in Ramona, Cali., to tend her luscious garden and answer e-mails from jaw-dropped bloggers like SuperVegan's. (Hey, higher powers, would ya let me look half this good at 70?)

SuperVegan: I couldn't stop smiling when I watched your interview with San Diego's local news channel; you are radiant, glowing, and positively sexy. When Dan Plante asked why you became vegetarian at 30 years old, you said you started to think that you didn't want to eat animals. Did any particular event inspire you to cut meat from your diet?

Mimi Kirk: I was eating some sliced deli roast beef, and I had the realization that I was eating flesh. It turned me off so much that I couldn't even talk about it. I immediately stopped eating meat. In the next day or so, while cooking meat for my children, I smelled this acid-like smell, and that was it; I couldn't cook it anymore. I told [my children] that they were vegetarians, at least at home. Then I educated myself and saw some films on the inhumane treatment of animals and it convinced me further. I must mention I was meditating at this time and all my senses were heightened to all living things.

The first time I ate at Swingers I likened it to Kate's Joint, my beloved East Village diner, which may not be widely believed to be beloving worthy anymore. I was so happy! Not entirely vegetarian but surprisingly vegan friendly (surprise due in part to the cow portraits as wall art), Swingers has two locations (one in West Hollywood and one in Santa Monica) with near identical pop punk decor, sort of like when you get neighboring hotel rooms and they're mirror images of each other. Did I mention the waitresses wear goth catholic school girl uniforms?

Sadly, there is no Unturkey Club. Or Buffalo Wingless burgers. I don't think I've ever had a less edible veggie burger than the one at Swingers. But I'm getting ahead of my complaining... I have been to Swingers lots of times for lots of reasons: it was very close to where I was picketing during the writers strike and they gave us free foods (rumor on the street had it that the generosity was due to Drew Carey, a fan of writers, being a part owner), it's one of the few places in LA that's open almost 24-hours, non-vegans always suggest it as a compromise and it seems like a fair one. But here's what I've finally come to realize--explosive diarrhea is not a compromise I am willing to make anymore. I've tried their vegan pancakes (with and without chocolate chips), I've had their vegan sloppy joe, I've eaten their vegan nachos, their tofu chilaquiles, the vegan cobb salad, the vegan cheesecakes they used to carry and every single time, without fail, I spent the next morning paying a non-monetary price of the bathroom kind.

I'm not sure what they're doing over there. Is it the water? It tastes like it could be the water. We are close to Mexico, and this is starting to feel like a third-world country (we're paying our government employees in IOUs whaa?), but that's ridiculous. Even when I abstained from drinking their undrinkable tap water the results were the same. Is the vegan cheese not really vegan after all? (Maybe Operation Pancake needs to do some sleuthin'...) Possible, but a li'l casein wouldn't make me that ill. I have an on-the-stronger-side stomach (not quite carbon steel, stainless maybe. And here's the thing: I have talked to other vegans and they have said The. Same. Thing.

So let this be a warning to you, dear SV readers. Learn from my repeated suffering. I gave them many too many chances, thinking like an abuse victim that this time would be different. This time they wouldn't hurt me. THEY ALWAYS HURT ME. From the inside so you don't see it, and where it's easy to forget. But just like that lady from the Modern Love column in the NYTimes last weekend, I will no longer take part in this suffering. There is better vegan food out there for me in Los Angeles. Maybe not after 10pm, but still...

So, I'm browsing books on Amazon.com when The Vegetarian Myth catches my eye. I immediately begin to wonder how someone filled an entire book discrediting the fallacy that a plant-based diet is devoid of sufficient protein. To my dismay, this isn't what this book is about at all.

Instead, it seems that the author, Lierre Keith, who claims to have been a vegan for twenty years and is now suffering the consequences, wants to warn other vegans, vegetarians, and the sixteen-year-old girls she claims PETA preys upon against the same dangerous path.

Keith largely blames her veganism for her degenerative joint disease, hypoglycemia, irregular menstruation, exhaustion, ever-present cold, gastro-paresis, depression, and anxiety. She even goes so far as to prematurely blame soy should she ever contract cancer. She further warns of the increased susceptibility vegans/vegetarians supposedly have of suffering fibromyalgia, Alzheimer's, fertility problems, endometriosis, anorexia, heart disease, and mental and neurological disease. But not to worry: she has a doctor that works with her and other "recovering vegans."

I got a copy of The Vegan Cook’s Bible for my birthday, and it left me perplexed.

TVCB was written by Pat Crocker, an herbalist who’s neither vegan nor vegetarian, to provide plant-based options for veg*ns as well as people who want to eat less meat. Rather than use analogs, Crocker chose to “embrace the divineness of the ingredients I had to work with,” which means the stars of the recipes are vegetables and “whole” foods. From what I’ve tasted, Crocker has succeeded. I made the Roasted Garlic and Artichoke Spread, Maple-Glazed Cabbage Greens With Pecans, Sweet and Sour Tempeh and Eggplant Stir-Fry (I loathe eggplant, so I used zucchini and green beans instead), Chickpeas and Potatoes in Cashew Cream, Red Lentil and Buckwheat Waffles, and the Berry Chia Smoothie, all of which were delicious.

An informative directory of whole foods takes up the first third of the book; the entry for each vegetable, fruit, grain, etc., includes buying and storing information, culinary uses and a list of the recipes that call for that particular ingredient. There’s also a chart on what and how to substitute for white sugar, which is incredibly helpful if, like me, you’re trying to kick the stuff. (Among Crocker’s suggestions is honey, which isn’t vegan, but that’s easily replaced with agave.)

But while I enjoyed the dishes I tried, I take real issue with the book’s title.

Just by being vegan, we eat a much healthier diet than if we were omnis or even vegetarians. But there’s always new information waiting to be discovered. Is spirulina good for you? Is MSG harmful? Which are healthier, red onions or white ones? The answers to these and more probing questions await you in two new nutrition DVDs from Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for HSUS.

In Latest in Clinical Nutrition 2007, Dr. G reveals horrifying facts such as that we might already have cancer cells growing within us in the womb (yikes!). The good news is that by eating well, we can slow down their growth; only three spinach leaves a day can make a difference! (I did not know that.) Other gems: As far as lung cancer’s concerned, one joint is the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes. Spirulina and blue green algae contain neurotoxins that can lead to Alzheimer’s. A handful of nuts a day can cut your cardiac risk in half. And the good doctor has this to say about the fiber-loving ways of vegans: “Vegans are just regular people.” Argh! (Actually, I enjoy his corny sense of humor. I hope you do too, because the DVDs are rife with it!)

Former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker appeared on last night's Chelsea Lately to tout the benefits of his latest fad diet: freshly squeezed raw puppy juice.

Barker, a former vegetarian poster boy, ate meat for the first time in 16 years to speed the healing of a broken arm. He then gave up his vegetarian diet entirely after he was injured in a plane crash. Barker explained that his latest diet was inspired by the advice of his Los Angeles physician.

Puppy juice first made the news last month when former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin touted its age-defying powers on Oprah. According to Travis Barker, "Puppy juice is great for the skin. It gives my tattoos an awesome sheen, and it's totally worth the incontinence. Plus I haven't had a single herpes flare-up since I began using it."

Asked for his opinion, New York Times food expert Mark Bittman pointed out the environmental benefits of eating an overpopulated species, but added, "Puppies are cute. Why can't he just eat veal like everyone else?"

"It's cruel and barbaric to kill an innocent young puppy just for its miraculous healing powers," added celebrity chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz. "I'd only juice a puppy if I found one already dead, like on the street or something."

However, vegan expert Kathy Freston explained, "He only juices puppies that would be euthanized anyway. And if his doctors say it's necessary, well, who are we to judge?"