I have a secret to spill:

GoVeggie! or as I like to call it, Go Veggie Exclamation Point (GVEP), formerly known as Galaxy Nutritional Foods (which never had astronomical imagery as part of its branding, nor was it made on the moon), a switch I wrote about earlier, are the makers of the new vegan cheese products available at Trader Joe’s (a store that is so very good to us). Their new and improved shreds are their shreds, and their new and improved cream cheese is their Not Your Average Tub Of Cream Cheese (which I think should be called Above Average Cream Cheese). How did I find this out? I never kiss and tell! Wait. Yes, I do: some good ol’ fashioned sleuthin’ and um, this blog post.

To celebrate all the cheesy goodness, GVEP threw a rager last night that was hosted, and when I say hosted, I mean “Hi, how are you, thanks so much for coming, I’m Heather, let me feed your face!” HOSTED by the effervescent energy balls (but pretty), the Spork Sisters, Jenny and Heather. There were people; like Rory Freedman, who has given up cursing (oh, the irony for a Skinny Bitch!) and has a new book called Beg: A Radical New Way Of Regarding Animals coming out on April 23rd. Television’s Jason Wrobel who is waiting to hear if the pilot episode of his Cooking Channel show How To Live To 100 did well enough to get picked-up and in the interim told us all about the importance of Vitamin K2 (which sounds like Scrubbing Bubbles for your heart). And my friend The Insufferable Vegan and I both masquerading as QuarryGirl.

There was Sporktastic food:

Cream Cheese and Olive Tapenade Layered Dip, Mini Mediterranean Pita Pizza Bites, Saffron Scented Arancini with Mushrooms

There was drink:

Courtesy Frey Wines– America’s First Organic Winery

And there was a cooking demo, where I learned pepper is now just called ‘pep’ and a Vita-Mix is a ‘Vity’:

Heather & Jenny make basil oil!

And best of all, for one lucky SuperVegan reader (that could be you!) there’s a copy of Spork-Fed, the cookbook any vegan who wants to make Strawberry Cream Cheese-Stuffed French Toast must own, the cookbook I personally had signed by both sisters just for you, PLUS a coupon for one free GVEP product!

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment (make sure to leave an e-mail address!) telling us about the best or worst vegan cheese dish you’ve ever eaten, by Monday at noon, PT. Good luck!

Top to bottom: Renée French, Hazel Newlevant, Ben Snakepit, Liz Prince, and Sam Henderson, a few of the 55 contributors. Buy Digestate here and use code SUPERVEGAN12 for expedited shipping.

If you’re looking for a great holiday gift, or your books-of-the-year list is a little thin, or if you just like thinking about food and you like to read (which probably covers anyone seeing this blog post!) then Digestate: A Food & Eating Themed Anthology is for you.

While Digestate is available in some comic book shops, it’s not sold through the big online book stores like Amazon. The best place to buy it is directly from Birdcage Bottom Books. Usually they ship media mail only, but between now and December 25, use the coupon code SUPERVEGAN12 to get it shipped first class for the same price! (I promoted Digestate‘s Kickstarter campaign here back in June; I got my copy for supporting that.)

Digestate is an anthology featuring 55 comics authors and illustrators. At nearly 300 pages, this is a big book, but quality doesn’t suffer on account of quantity. While the range is wide (fiction and nonfiction, comedy and tragedy; some stories are personal, some more documentary, and some outright surreal), the storytelling and illustration are excellent throughout. Clearly the contributors were genuinely inspired and excited by the concept here. And clearly editor J.T. Yost chose his contributors well!

If you don’t like a huge portion of what’s in here, you’re probably one of those idiotic ingrates who doesn’t deserve books at all. Or food.

Yost is a vegan himself, and while there are several other vegan contributors, plenty more are not. Some of the pieces are even defences of eating animal products. But don’t let that put you off, vegan reader. The honesty of the authors (even when they’re ethically misguided) coupled with the high level of the work, gives this book signifiant intellectual and emotional weight which would be missing from a compilation of vegan propaganda and cheerleading. Digestate‘s diversity of perspectives is it’s biggest strength. This book doesn’t try to convert anyone, nor does it preach to the choir—because of its bredth and inclusiveness, it can’t.

Also, by not having a unified pro-vegan message, this book is going to appeal to a lot more people. Anyone reading it will be forced to think about where our (and other peoples’) food comes from, and that’s never a bad thing. The focus is overwhelmingly on the emotional and ethical aspects of food, how it makes us feel in the mind and soul, and who else is impacted by our food choices.

In a clever touch, Digestate‘s index indicates the dietary preference of each author: “vegan”, “vegetarian”, “omnivore”, “carnivore”, and some more specific: Ayun Halliday is a “lapsed aquariumatarian, current omnivore”, Dan Piraro is an “ethical vegan (as opposed to ‘health vegan’)”, John Kerschbaum is a “pretzel-enthusiast, etc.”, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg is an “omnivore who loves soy jerky”.

A lot of my favorite pieces in here are endorsements of non-vegan eating. And I suppose that’s how it should be: we share the world with non-vegans, and some of them are great storytellers. James Kochalka and K. Thor Jensen and (“omnivore”s alike) both contribute excellent and rather sweet stories about why they eat meat even though they know it’s wrong. “Successful Slaughter!” by Marek Bennet (“temperate woodland omnivore”) was just great storytelling and great comics; you’d have to hate reading to dislike it. And “How to Eat Chicken” by Sophia Weideman (“om-nom-nom-nivore”) is the least vegan thing in the world, but its themes of family, memory, responsibility, care, and love still make it totally affecting.

There are surprisingly few pieces here dealing directly with nutrition. I didn’t miss it. There are a few about eating disorders, but even those weren’t what I’d have predicted. Tod C. Parkhill (“picky eater”) and Alex Robinson (“omnivore”) contribute almost mirror-image autobiographical stories of men dealing with lifelong food-anxiety problems.

Some pieces are totally upsetting, perhaps none more so than editor J.T. Yost‘s illustrated version of a slaughterhouse worker’s testimony. Plan on at least a few minutes of shaking and trembling after you read that one.

Others are very, very funny. I literally (as in for-real in real life!) laughed out loud at Liz Prince (“vegetarian”)’s autobiographical gag-fest “History of Eating”, Victor Kerlow (“eats anything, preferably in sandwich form”)’s cannibalistic taco, and Ben Snakepit (“eater of tacos”)’s story of punk-commune-feeding-bands gone nauseatingly wrong.

Digestate also managed to throw me a few welcome curveballs. Lulled into readerly complacency by the many stories that pitch their agenda from the first panel, I was not expecting Anuj Shrestha (“omnivore”)’s ‘Foodies’, which begins as a totally pedestrian story of picky eaters at a restaurant, to be the most disgusting thing in the book.

Nor was I was not expecting a story set in a community garden near where I live in Crown Heights, about the chickens and people who look after them in (by Jess Ruliffson, “guilt-laden omnivore”). Something set so literally close to home made me feel a little bad just sitting home with book when I could be out there doing something.

The stories I liked most were the personal memoirs. Those I liked least (just a few) were merely collections of factoids. There are also quite a few jokey gag pages—special mention to the several from Sam Henderson (“vegetarian”) throughout. And there’s a slew of wacky goofs such as the aforementioned taco, Aron Nels Steinke (“vegan”)’s cracked fable “Scrambled Eggs”, Renée French (carnivore)’s animal-fable-without-a-moral, “Hegelbarger”, and Box Brown (“no dietary restrictions, cantaloupe sometims makes my throat itchy”)’s utopian future set “1000 years after meat” in which kids are still total jerks.

I could go on, but then I’d never finish this blog post and you wouldn’t know to go buy this kick-ass book. It’s truly one of the best things I’ve ever encountered (in any medium) concerned with what food means to us and how we experience it, socially, psychologically, and emotionally.

(A quick note to anyone who thinks “comics aren’t for me”: you’re probably thinking of the wrong kind of comics. I’m pretty sure this book is just fine for people who don’t read many comics: several of the stories are more akin to picture book pages than rows of panels. Indeed, some of the entries are just two-page-spread illustrations, including the Danny Hellman (“vegetarian”)’s past-present-and-future of meat-eating, and Kevin Cannon (“carnivore”)’s depiction of humans as maggots in a piece of beef (which somehow doesn’t read at all as gross). And the vast range of drawing styles makes it easy to find a comfortable place to start. Anyone who can read the Sunday newspaper funnies can handle this material fine. Feel safe buying this book for folks whose comics experience doesn’t extend beyond Peanuts or airline saftey manuals.)

Over in our bi-coastal SuperVegan Test Kitchens, we recently tried Galaxy Vegan Shreds, in two “flavors”, Mexican and mozzarella. So here is our Point, Counter Point style review:

Melting Point, Jason:

Do these shreds melt? Oh yes. They get good and molten, so feel free to enjoy recreating Mount Doom in your toaster oven like I did:

In addition to the pizza in that video, I also tried the shreds rolled up in Pillsbury crescent rolls, in mac and cheese, and on cheeseburgers. Worked dandy for all of them. it never got gooey in that way that I think a lot of people like their melted cheese to be. If you want gooey, shop elsewhere.

Counter Point, Andrea:

First, that’s not pizza. That is toast with ketchup and cheeese. That’s “pizza,” in a raw-menu-style co-opted way.

After first, this stuff melts, yes, but it’s 67% Daiya stretchy melt and 33% Tofutti slice oily melt.

Here’s a still photo of my actual, honest-to-goodness pizza with Trader Joe’s pizza dough, marinara sauce, Galaxy Mozzarella, a bunch of spices (list upon request) and marinated artichoke hearts. I also topped it with some Parmela. It was delicious.

Match Point, Jason:

Like when a new computer tablet comes out, the first thing everyone wants to know is how it compares to the iPad. So, how do Galaxy Vegan Shreds compare to Daiya? Well, they’re different. And that’s a good thing!

Galaxy shreds don’t have much taste. But if you’re as sick as I am of that distinctive aroma-de-Daiya, Galaxy shreds offer a welcome neutral. I couldn’t taste a significant difference between the Mexican and mozzarella; choose Mexican if you want white and orange. Choose mozzarella if you want white.

The package is resealable, which is a blessing. However, it took me a few weeks after opening it to notice its says to use it within 7 days. It still seemed fine. It’s a lot of cheese to eat in a week. But don’t blame me if you get sick.

The shreds are cornstarch-based, and soy-free, non-GMO, and hydrogynated-oil-free. And there’s no saturated fat (compared to Daiya’s significant 2g per 1/4 cup serving). Playing amateur food scientist, I’ll assume that this cornstarch is the reason these shreds are so, well, chalky before you melt them. To the point where they’re hard to work with and scatter all over the kitchen counter. The last ingredient is powdered cellulose, “added to prevent caking”. When do you need to worry about cheese caking? When it’s made of cornstarch, apparently! (Or when you’re making cheesecake, haw haw.) Anyway, not a problem when melted, but these are no good uncooked. But who eats uncooked shredded cheese?

(Galaxy also makes sliced and blocked cheeses, but those are soy based)

Counter Point, Andrea:

I already started making the Daiya comparison, jeez, it’s like you’re not even reading this, Jason.

But I will concede the following points: Galaxy shreds’ cup does not runneth over with flavor(s), the re-sealable packaging is an integral part of a more-than-single-use product lest the company support plastic waste, they last a lot longer than one weeks time (probably thanks to said re-sealableness), I also don’t want to be blamed for any sickness, and they are chalky like my 3rd grade teacher.

I disagree, however, that not having taste is a positive. This is a bad quality in both food and people. I could discern a slight difference in the two flavors, but I wish it was more than slight. A touch even. And I’m all for labeling flavors by colors, as seen by Slurpee’s “Blue” and/or “Red,” but those color-flavors have totally distinct tastes. And while white and yellow might not be that different on the color spectrum, they are on the cheese map. Cheeses are like people, each one has their specialty– things they should or should not be used for. I think the good people of Mexico would take umbrage with the monicker. And sick of Daiya or not, that is one thing they definitely have going for them– their newer flavors have their own flavor profiles; from the pepperjack to all the different wedge cheeses. And that’s what we want, right? Simulacrums of the things Regs eat? Unless you didn’t even like cheese in your pre-Vegan days, in which case all your arguments are moot. Awwww, snap.

In conclusion, we both agree that this new Galaxy line is leaps and bounds above their previous ones, a great option, and that you should try it for yourselves. To help, and in honor of Vegan Pizza Day this Saturday, the fine folks at Galaxy are giving away product coupons to three lucky readers! All you have to do is leave a comment (make sure you enter an email address so we can contact you if you win!) below and tell us what you’re gonna do with your bag of cheeese! Winners will be chosen on Friday and the rest of you can print coupons HERE.

Like a cute piece of jewelry or if you’re a hipster, a fedora, but for your food and tasty!

I’m talking about a new and exciting product called Parmela. It is a glass bottle (yes, that’s right, I said glass!) full of Vegan parmesan cheeese! It is good. So good that I’ve dumped it by the truckload on two meals in one day. I’ve tried it on pasta (YUM), I’ve tried it on garlic bread (YUM) and I’ve tried it on soup (YUM) and it was YUM to the third power.

It’s also the mouth-child of a couple of lovely locals that I can’t say enough nice things about, so I won’t say any.
Made from almonds, cashews, nutritional yeast, fermented soybean, soy sauce and veg. lactic acid, this stuff is leaps and bounds above a dash of nutritional yeast on it’s own or that stuff I used to use in the cardboard tube. It’s got a depth of flavor that previous subs have lacked. When the bottle is empty, which, at this rate, might be as early as tomorrow, I will wash and refill it with my salty salty tears.

Try it and let me know what you think, K? I especially want to hear about some creative, non-obvious uses. Request it at your local Whole Foods, and in the meantime, here’s a list of all the stores that carry Parmela.

In Southern California:
Figueroa Produce Market in Los Angeles
Locali in Hollywood
Viva La Vegan in Rancho Cucamonga
Grassroots Natural Market in South Pasadena
Pacific Coast Greens in Malibu
Beach Health Tree Natural Foods in Long Beach
Irvine Ranch Market in Costa Mesa
Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park -coming soon

In Northern California:
Never Felt Better in Sacramento, CA

Nationally:
New Frontiers Natural Marketplace in Prescott, AZ
Four Seasons Natural Foods in Saratoga, NY
Sidecar For Pigs Peace in Seattle, WA
Central Coop in Seattle, WA
Nooch Vegan Market Denver, CO
Eco-licious in Charlotte, NC – coming soon
Foodtown in Cedar Grove, NJ
Foodtown in North Haledon, NJ
Basil Bandwagon in Flemington, NJ
Food Fight! Grocery in Portland, OR
Vegan Freak in Denton, TX
VeganEssentials.com online store

PS- According to The Flavor Bible, my new favorite book, here’s a list of things that go with parmesan (meats excluded): basil, fava beans, dates, fennel, figs, stone fruits, garlic, grapes, melon, mushrooms, olive oil, pasta, pears, pizza, risottos, thyme, balsamic vinegar, and walnuts

Are your eyes as tired from reading all these posts as my body was from canvassing probably 50% of The Expo? Well, we’re almost there. Just gotta tie up all the loose odds & ends, in this, the final chapter– MISCELLANEOUS YUMS.

EDIBLE ACCESSORIES

Earth Balance Coconut Spread

I was not going to try this stuff, cause really, when you’re in Candyland, who needs a piece of toast with butter? I also had it in my head, for unknown reasons, that it would be sweet, so it was just pure gluttony that landed this sample in my mouth. What a pleasant surprise! Perhaps it’s because it had been out instead of in the fridge like I keep my marg, but it was super spready, extra extra salty, and not really coconutey at all. It was high on yums. I feel compelled to hunt down a tub as soon as the one I’m currently working my way through runs dry. It also says it’s great for baking and cooking, and I like to eat baked and cooked foods, so, bonus!

Vegenaise

Vegenaise is not new, you balk! No, it’s not, but their new line of flavored mayos and sauces are and holy wows were they good. New products include: Horseradish Sauce, Tartar Sauce, Roasted Garlic Vegenaise, Barbecue Vegenaise, Chipotle Vegenaise and Pesto Vegenaise. The chipotle and the pesto were particularly awesome and I love anything horseradish. Figure out something to make with these and get some immediately. Or, just put stop at your local Pommes Frite shoppe on your way home and slather ‘em up.

Food For Lovers

So in Chapter One, I told you about the Quesos and hinted at more to come. Here is the more: Country Gravy (which they were not sampling) and Chipotle Mayo (which they were)! Last year the lovers had one product and this year they had four! They’ve been busy and I’d like to thank them for it. The mayo was great and I’m dying to try the gravy. I mean, it’s white. Where I come from, gravy is brown, so I’m going to have to look into this. They say these two should be available soon, and most likely in all the same places the Queso is already in. I just looked at my calendar for “soon” and I didn’t find it. Could it be tomorrow please?

Green Garbanzo Hummus

I’d like to apologize in advance for my lack of information about this product. All I can say is that I was in a food coma by the time I got to here– where ever here was. I thought I grabbed some literature on it, but I guess I didn’t. And my internet search results for ‘Pure Nature Green Garbanzo Hummus’ came up with squat. But I swear, this stuff was real, as witnessed by the photo I took of it. Granted that tub was empty, but I swear I had like three samples, It was that good. So if you see it, and you trust me even though I’m totally failing you right now, I’d say buy it. I mean, life is an adventure and we like green things.

Nordic Naturals

The first two rooms of the Expo are dedicated to supplements. I usually high-tail it through to the foods. But this year, someone pointed out to me while zooming past the Nordic Naturals booth, that they had a Vegan Omega-3. Apparently a few companies do, but I only paused at this one (long enough to get a free bottle). Everybody’s always going on and on about Omega-3s and their Fish Oil. Blech. I’m not a fan of supplements, as I think they are too potent for your body to be able to absorb much of it, you pee most of it out, and your kidneys don’t appreciate it. But if they’re going out of their way to make a Vegan version AND they’re handing me a free bottle (a $49.95 value!) — what the heck (see above re: adventure). Unfortunately, I got the liquid form as they didn’t have any of the soft gels, but freebies can’t be choosers. Made from micro-algae, it claims it’s supposed to support normal vision, heart health, positive mood, immunity, and the body’s natural anti-inflammatory response but I only started taking it yesterday so, so far all I can report is this: the suggested dosage is 1.5ml, but the dropper only goes up to 1ml, so you have to do one full plunge and then figure out how to get a half of one. Annoying. Also, it doesn’t taste like any lemon I’ve ever had.

And then they lived happily ever after. THE END.

This past weekend I was your mouth at the Natural Products Expo West. I’ve already told you about all the cheeeses. Then I told you about the meeats. Now it’s time for the good stuff– The SWEETS!

Sweet Somethings

Coolhaus
I have to start off with my biggest blunder so that I have time to recover. I’ve seen Coolhaus trucks. I’ve been at places where they were and made sad frowny faces cause there was nothing for me to buy and devour. I’ve read about them and their brick + mortar that opened super close by in November. So thank goodness I was on a path of confrontation on Friday (first was Morningstar Farms, then Lightlife, then Justin’s Nut Butter), cause when I stepped up to the Coolhaus booth and asked when o’ when will they make me a Vegan Sammie, I was schooled by none other than Natasha Case, CEO, “We DO have vegan sammies!” And then she gave me a Ginger Molasses cookie sandwich with Mango sorbet, right then and there. I don’t know how it is that I entirely missed this. What a doof. I apologize, to myself and to you. Let me make it up to us now, by declaring for once and for all, that additionally available at Coolhauses are an awesome Vegan Carrot Cake and Vegan Chocolate Truffle Banana. Holy crap, right? We are the luckiest.

Eat Pastry

Eat Pastry is a conundrum. How is that dough supposed to make it to cookie form? I can assure you that if I had some at my discretion, it would stay in my fridge and be eaten by the heaping spoonful at a terrifying pace that would severely shorten it’s 12 month shelf life. Perhaps this stuff should be called Eat Pastry Dough. A line of refrigerated vegan cookie doughs sold in a tub that’s not big enough to stick your whole face directly into, flavors include; Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Chocoholic Chip and Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip. And for those gluten-free Vegans, lookin’ at you Samantha, there’s GF Snickerdoodle, GF Chocolate Chip, GF Sugar Momma. Here’s a coupon for $1 off if you’re curious.

Healthy Top

Have you tried Healthy Top Whipped Cream? From the MimiCreme people, this stuff will seriously change your mouth’s life. I’m not fucking around with you, Vegan People. Go get some right now and put it on anything that will let you. My idea was to get some of this, then walk two booths down to the conveniently located Double Rainbow booth, get a scoop of their amazing soy ice cream and put the healthy top on top, but it didn’t last the ten steps it took me to get there.

Choc&Nut

Craving some Nutella? Go forth from your nerd box and get yourself a jar of Choc&Nut! It comes all the way from France. Ooh la la! It’s also organic and they claim it is rich in iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, protein and vitamin E. I claim it is delicious and I bet there are all sorts of cool uses for it. Let me know what you smart people come up with.

So Delicious

Almond milk is my favorite kind of “freaky milk”, so it makes sense that I really liked So Delicious’ ice cream made from the stuff. There are seven flavors (even I could not try them all!); Butter Pecan, Cherry Amaretto, Chocolate, Cookies ‘N Cream, Mint Chip, Mocha Almond Fudge, and Vanilla. But, what I recommend, is the Mocha Almond Fudge BARS. These were gooooooood. The chocolate casing was perfect and had crunchy bits of almond in it and the Mocha Almond Fudge almond ice cream inside was, in fact, so delicious. PS- These are also gluten-free.

Hail Merry

I saved the best for last. Now here’s my disclaimer: I am totally prejudice against raw food. I am also annoyed by the new trend of combining Vegan with Gluten Free. That said, Hail Merry’s raw, gluten-free, Vegan desserts were my favorite new product at the Expo. Their lemon tart in particular was dessert heaven. Put a dollop of the aforementioned Healthy Top and I’m done. I’ve heard that they’re currently on sale at Whole Foods for 2/$7, so you can stock up.

Have we forgiven me? Which ones have you already tried? And what will you try next?

The Expo saga ends with Chapter Four, Miscellaneous Yums, coming soon!

I’m up to this vegan challenge…

The new Doritos Locos Tacos is a Frankenstein-like creation of stoner proportions; Bill and Ted’s excellent fast food adventure set to the tune of Dr Dre’s The Chronic. Basically, every 12 year old’s Mountain dew’d dream come true. And. Frankly. My 12 year old self is one jealous Em n’ Effer.

For a professional musician (on a budget) like myself who spends most of his time on the road – Taco Bell is a helluva drug.

I am not going to kid myself, to veganize Doritos Locos Tacos is less about cooking from scratch and more about corralling existing components (and recipes) to create the finished product. Besides ‘cooking from scratch’ would be a disservice to Taco Bell’s commitment to creating neverfreshalmostfood.

(I’ve substituted the tortilla chips in her recipe with store bought, ready made taco shells)

RECIPE #1

Vegan Doritos (Shells)

* 1 package Taco Shells
* 1 10oz. block Follow Your Heart Cheddar Cheese
* 1 1/2 tsp Onion Powder
* 1 tsp Garlic Powder
* 1/2 tsp Yellow Mustard Powder
* 1/4 tsp Red Paprika
* 3/4 tsp Salt*
* Dash of Cayenne Pepper

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line a rimmed baking pan with parchment paper. Grate the entire block of Follow Your Heart Cheddar Cheese as finely as possible, then spread out onto the parchment paper. Place the baking pan in the oven for 3-5 minutes, or until it’s fully melted but not burned. Allow the cheese to cool for a few moments, then use a paper towel to blot as much excess moisture off of the top as possible. Repeat the blotting process again after ten minutes.

Scrape the cheese into a bowl, and use a paper towel gently squeeze as much moisture out as possible.

Allow the cheese to sit another 10-15 minutes.

Make your spice blend by mixing together the remainder of the ingredients in a small bowl.

Place the cheese into a food processor, and blend until the cheese is a creamy, dry paste.

And now, the crazy part:
Use your fingers to rub each chip with a VERY thin coat of the nacho cheese paste.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and bust out another large baking pan.

If you don’t like a lot of spice, skip the next step and just sprinkle the seasoning blend on when the taco shells are on the baking pan.

If you like a lot of spice, place each cheese-covered taco shell in a large tupperware container or paper bag, and gently toss with the spice blend.

Lay the taco shells out on a baking pan, place in the oven for 2 minutes then turn and bake for another 2 minutes.

RECIPE #2

There are a multitude of copycat recipes out there for the filling. Top Secret Recipe’s version seems to be the most consistent (in texture and appearance) and evenly spiced. I’ve modified the recipe for one package of Yves SoynGround Beef and the absence of (meat) fat.

Vegan Taco Bell Meat Filling

• 1 tsp oil
• 1 Package Yves Ground Beef
• 1 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
• 3 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp seasoned salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp dry minced onions
• 1/4 tsp vegetable bouillon

Preparation:

Mix together all ingredients except the taco meat. Stir the spice mixture well making sure that all spices have been blended well.

Crumble Yves soy ground beef and brown in 1 tsp of oil; stirring well. Add taco seasoning. Add 2/3 cup of water to ground ‘beef’ and taco seasoning and simmer on medium low temperature for 15 minutes. Simmer until most of the moisture has cooked away.

Remove from heat when moisture in soy meat has dissipated but soy meat is not dry. Salt to taste.

RECIPE #3

ASSEMBLAGE

There is no ‘recipe’ for success in this stage of the game; it all comes down to ingredient layering. I used chopped icerberg lettuce, seeded and diced plum tomatoes, tofu sour cream and shredded daiya cheeze.

Taco Train: Filling – Tofu Sour Cream – Lettuce – Tomato and Daiya Cheese.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Final Thoughts? ‘Duuuuuuude it’s sooooo goooooood!’

This weekend I travelled to Anaheim, California to avoid Disneyland at all costs and attend the Natural Products Expo 2012, a whole convention center full of vegan peddlers. In the first chapter of my epic journey I told you about all the cheeeses that turned my tum into one big fondue pot. Now for Chapter Two: Meatless Technologies!

Meet Your Meeats

Hodo Soy

I told you about Hodo and their most delicious tofu products last year. This year, they had a new item called the v-EGG-an Salad. It’s a Vegan egg salad. For some dumb reason that’s me being dumb I missed tasting it but VegNews Magazine gave it one of their Best Of Show Awards, so it must be super good. Learn from my mistake, if you see it, try it!

Sophie’s Vegan Seafood

Sophie and her kitchen make faux fish products from a Japanese root called konjac. New this year are Vegan Crab Cakes and Breaded Vegan Scallops. I tasted both, but I never liked seafood, even a million years ago (appx), when I was zero to tween and not yet vegetarian. But my brother, a SuperCarnivore said the Crab Cakes were good and that is saying A LOT. Five or six years ago I had to pay him a dollar to taste one tiny sip of soy milk. So if you miss the fruits of the sea, give these a try!

Turtle Island Foods

From the makers of Tofurkey and those Sweet Italian with Tomato and Basil gourmet sausages I love so well, comes a ground beef product also available in chorizo style! They gave us whole tacos to try and they were tasty. If Soyrizo is too spicy for you (it’s spicy!) then this stuff will be a better fit.

Manischewitz

From Matzo to meatless burgers! Years of indentured Hebrew schoolitude left me skeptical of these Veggie Grillers, but I was forced to admit that my people can cook. These were some good patties of the “garden patch” variety, but they were savory, not sweet, which is what always annoys me about them. Available in regular and mini sizes, they would be a nice frozen product to add to the rotation.

Field Roast

Field Roast is like the Ferrari of fake meats. Their products look good, cost a lot, and go down fast. New to their product range is a line of deli meats (Wild Mushroom, Lentil Sage and Smoked Tomato) and frankfurters. They were giving out half a frank to people like me and I enjoyed it. I didn’t get to taste the deli slices, but the flavors sound interesting, don’t they? Way more gourmand then a hot dog.

Upton’s

I also finally got to try Upton’s Naturals! CORRECTION: They were NOT at the Expo last year, so I’ve been intrigued by reports of their snazzy seitan products for awhile. This year, four flavors were available: Traditional, Ground Beef, Italian Sausage and Chorizo, I tasted the Italian. Now any SuperVegan knows it’s not necessarily the meat but what you put on it, so while it’s great that they’ve grown enough to be able to exhibit this year, they still have a ways to go– just some ground beef in a cup is a tough sell, but that said, this was quite good. I want to try more like, IN stuff! Seitan, when done well, is my favorite form of protein, so it’s nice to have a ground beef replacement made of it instead of soy. Next year can you show us how to take those crumbles and form them into a solid burger? Then I think your booth would be more popular than Fabio’s (yes, Fabio.).

Gardein

Gardein is everywhere all of a sudden, aren’t they? I think they own all the land surrounding Daiyaville. They had more new products than most other companies had in general. 9 new products! 5 new frozen ones: beefless sliders, zesty marinara crispy chick’n fillets, terriyaki chick’n strips, lightly breaded turk’y cutlet, and southern BBQ riblets.

4 new refrigerated ones: meatless ground, homestyle beefless burger, classic BBQ riblet, and all american sloppy joes.

I got to try a slider, which tasted just like their regular burger but smaller, and the terriyaki chick’n strips, which I was surprised to like. I normally don’t care for the sauces Gardein marinates their meats in, but this one was fine, though I only had one bite. Future products include a breakfast pattie, and, let’s hope, the retail release of their commercial chick’n breasts.

And, in Vegan Gossip, I gave a couple booths hell, just cause. I chatted with the Morningstar Farms “chef” about why they can’t take those pesky egg whites out of their products. When? When will they do that? And even though he said he has been working hard to (he claims over 30 products are now secretly vegan like all the chicken ones), the company’s lawyers won’t take the egg off the ingredient list for fear of litigation. He said they have fights about it internally, all the time. But when I asked him about the bacon he said, “Oh no, those need egg whites for texture.” Boo. Hiss. I also voiced my displeasure to Lightlife, whose new veggie burger is not vegan, and Justin’s Nut Butter and their non-vegan candy bar.

That’s a lot of non-meat meat! Which one are you most excited to try?

Check back for Chapter 3, Desserts!

Heya SuperVegans! I return from my second sojourn to the Natural Expo West a.k.a. Veganomicon with blisters on my feet, new bulges in my mid-section, and tales to tell! So much time so little to see. Strike that. Reverse it. Taking a cue from the pain of my previous year’s experience, I went to the convention two times this time around. I saw people and product. I snacked and chatted. I snapped pics and took notes. And the fruit of this “labor” is a multi-post about all the best stuff I suggest you to seek out and purchase this year. There’s so much to HTML about I’ve decided to break it up into groupings, so as not to overwhelm you with all these delights. Part One? “Cheese!”

CHEEESE WARS

Teese

If this was a beauty contest they’d have the looks, the brains, AND the personality. I’m not gonna lie, these people are my favs and their products are awesome. I tried a lot of things at the Chicago Soydairy booth: their nacho cheese (which I want to be bathed in), their soft serve ice cream (which I want a trough of), their Dandies (which I want atop everything, and as a side note, please write to them and tell them to start selling their Marshmallow Fluff) and their straight up Teese. This stuff is outrageous for the following reasons:
A1. In their tube casing, they can be stored UNREFRIGERATED for appx. 6 months
A1.1.They are low in fat and have way less of it than Daiya. One serving size of Teese (28g) has 1.5g of fat, none of which is saturated or trans and only 50 calories. The same amount of Daiya will hit your hard Vegan bod with 6g of fat, 2 of which are saturated, and 90 calories. So if you’re chubbs and looking to loose a ellbees, this is the cheeese for you.
A1.1.1. They have four (4!) flavors: mildly spicy nacho sauce, mozzarella melts and stretches, creamy cheddar sauce perfect with macaroni, and cheddar melts and stretches.

Galaxy

Galaxy Foods has been around for a long time. They go back to the Days of Vegan Yore when sometimes it was better to eat no vegan cheese at all than what was available. Some of their products have been good (their parm sprinkle and their cream cheese), some not as much. Not anymore– they have seen the advancements brought to the Vegan cheese world by the likes of Teese and Daiya and have worked hard to meet them. Their new Vegan Mozzarella and Mexican flavor shreds melt, stretch, taste good, and launch in April. Good for you, Galaxy! If your cheeese costs my credit card less than Daiya I will buy these resealable bags n’stead.

Food For Lovers

The ever adorable couple had a few new products on display– the one that belongs in this category* is a Mild version of their Vegan Queso. If Original is too spicy for you (it’s pretty spicy!) then this stuff will be perfect. It’s got all the same flavor with none of the mouth pain. In other news, remember all that angriness over recipe stealing with Nacho Mom’s? Well Chris, Crystal & their high-powered attorney have been forced to sue their former food manufacturer seven times. A fan of a li’l Vegan Drama, this story would be a great one for Law & Order to rip from the headlines, dontcha think?
*other new products will be discussed in a later expo post

Daiya

Last and certainly the most giant is Daiya. These people built a whole Daiya City. Daiyaville. The Tower of Daiya. Mt. Daiya. Now I see where my $6 per bag is going!

Let me tell you about the new Daiya wedges you may have seen me prematurely mention on facebook. There are three flavors: Jack, Jalapeno Garlic Havarti, and Cheddar.

They were good! I made no less than three drive-bys to Daiyapolis for their primo samples. The Jack and Havarti were the best of the good, with lots of previously un-seen flavors. The Havarti in particular has a real nice kick to it. The cheddar is the same as their shreds, and is best used in or on things– it’s not as great on its own. They are soft in texture — more like Velveeta than Shreese. These guys should be available in all the same places the shreds are currently sold in in about 2-3 weeks for about the same price (read: $$$). Supposedly the packages reseal…

And lastly, in Vegan Gossip, I heard from the lovely ladies of VegNews Magazine, that a Vegan Brie might be in our not so far away future!

This is just the tip of the expo iceburg! Next up; Meatless Technologies.

Healthy eaters look away! This one’s for the Vegan with one to seventeen sweet teeth. Check out these amazing (and in some cases, new) snack foods!

#1. Birthday Oreos
Oreo is celebrating their 100th birthday with a specialty cookie that is their most delicious by 100x. These are insane bonkers delicious. Get them whilst available and feel free to thank me later or hate me when you’ve eaten so many your pants cut off circulation to your legs.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my near-sighted attention that these contain Confectioner’s Glaze, which some deem UnSuperVegan. Here’s some handy dandy reading material on the subject so that you can decide for your own Vegan Self.

#1. Vegan Thin Mints
Feeling left out of the whole Girl Scout Cookie Game? I mean, they’re not even made with real Girl Scouts. Check out these faux Thin Mints and satisfy the craving. TIP: freeze these for extra levels of yum.

Get a whole case, put on a cute uniform and resell them to all your vegan pals at Amazon.

Or just get them by the box here.

OR-or roll-up to your local Kosher market– they often carry them.

#1. Vegan Creme Eggs

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Hear that? That’s the Easter Bunny making his approach! Best order some Vegan Cadbury-style Creme Eggs courtesy Queenbalch on Etsy.

Or, if you’re LA based, Tweet at greatbrittania of Fakery Bakery fame, and beg her to make them again this year.

#1. Steve’s Ice Cream

This one’s for the New Yorkers. For now…
Have you tried Steve’s Ice Cream? Small batch, craft ice cream with unique combinations of ingredients that are locally sourced when possible, Steve’s has a whole line of coconut based Cremes that are some of the best I’ve ever had (I’ve been lucky enough to taste three!). They are not coconut-ey at all and are super extra highly delicious. Flavors include: Chocolate Almond Butter, Cinnamon Coffee, Coconut Cilantro Lime, Maple Porter Pecan, Mint Cacao Chip, Sugar Cookie Dough, and Tea Time. There’s also sorbet, for those who like that sort of thing. With a Brooklyn brick + mortar opening soon, check out the extensive list of shops where you can find a pint today!

The regular SuperVegan staff are a relatively un-pregnant bunch, so we asked the recently pregnant and now new mom Amy Rae Richardson to review this book for us.

I wish Sayward Rebhal‘s Vegan Pregnancy Survival Guide (published by Herbivore) had come out like 7 months earlier than it did, so I could have saved myself ridiculous amounts of time Googling, stressing myself out, and questioning everything I ate while pregnant.

This book is everything you need to know about how to take care of your body while baking a little bun. There’s endless information about vital nutrients, supplements and general dietary concerns that typically make a vegan pregnancy harrowing. Everything from what to eat and what to take before you’re pregnant, the down-low on iron levels, DHA and B12 during pregnancy, to what you can eat postpartum to keep your spirits high and increase milk supply. She also covers the what-to-do when suffering from some of the most miserable (and sexy) pregnancy side effects like gas, bloating, heartburn, swelling and hemorrhoids.

Sayward seriously did her homework writing this book. She arms you with all the facts and resources that will ease the tension of explaining a vegan lifestyle to a health provider during pregnancy. There’s also a nice fat section in this book on how to combat all the snarky questions comments you are definitely going to hear during a vegan pregnancy, and on the issue of raising a child in a cruelty-free home. Being confident in a vegan pregnancy (and raising a vegan baby!) during a time when you’re already overwhelmed, tired and confused is really difficult–I think this book is an absolute must-have!

At first glance I didn’t have much interest in The Part-Time Vegan: 201 Yummy Recipes That Put the Fun in Flexitarian; I’m a full-time vegan, so I didn’t really see the point. But once I started cooking—woowee! Cherise Grifoni’s recipes are surprisingly good. It’s not that I doubted Grifoni—I didn’t know anything about her before this. But once you’ve test-driven a lot of cookbooks, you stop expecting to be swept off your feet. And given the title, I expected to be only partially impressed, if that. Boy, was I wrong.

Not only is the book full of great recipes, it’s an easy “read.” Grifoni’s tone is conversational and jokey; flipping through her cookbook is like catching up with your smart-ass friend from college…albeit one who’s way off base about honey. And her approach to veganism can be a little confusing. She definitely doesn’t want to be seen as a preachy vegan, so she promotes a take-it-or-leave-it approach. And she doesn’t seem to want to pass up the occasional pastry just because it’s not vegan (she went vegan when she realized dairy was the culprit behind her migraines). But she also dedicates an entire chapter to Veganism 101, in which she provides a lot of great information. And how can you argue with statements like, “I’m here to let people know that even small changes in your diet towards veganism can help you lead a happier, healthier life”? Maybe it’s all a front, her laissez-faire approach to doing the right thing, to make it more palatable to the masses. A spoonful of sugar and all. Whatever the case, two of the three recipes I tried knocked my socks off, so at least as far as her food goes, I’m sold.

The first dish I tried was Honey Mustard and Balsamic Vinegar Green Beans. This side of green beans and broccoli cooked in onions and garlic and seasoned with (ahem) Dijon mustard and topped with nutritional yeast was really tasty. Next time I’ll go a little lighter on the mustard, but overall the flavor was nice, and it was a great way to bring green beans into my regular cooking repertoire. It wasn’t my favorite dish of the bunch, but it was certainly solid. The most baffling thing about it, though, was the serving size: Grifoni says it serves one, but my husband and I shared it and still had some left over.

Honey Mustard and Balsamic Vinegar Green Beans, minus the Honey.

Then it was onto the entree: Orange-Glazed “Chicken” Tofu, which Grifoni promised would be reminiscent of Chinese food. She wasn’t wrong. By the time the firm tofu was cooked down in the garlic, Bragg’s (the recipe calls for soy), orange juice, maple syrup and red pepper flakes, it had that almost-stringy, piecey look of braised chicken you find in some of the dishes at your favorite Chinese restaurant. But on their own merits, the texture and taste were perfect: not too firm or soft, with just the right balance of tangy and sweet. This was a radical departure from how I’ve cooked tofu in the past, and I will definitely make this dish again…and again. It’s something I could see eating cold, straight out of the fridge (that is, if there are ever any leftovers). Again, serving size seemed not to apply: Grifoni says this dish serves three, but the two of us gobbled it up without leaving a scrap behind.

The Orange-Glazed “Chicken” Tofu is similar to what you’d find at a Chinese restaurant, except you’re not hungry again an hour later.

But the highlight of the evening was the Chocolate Graham Cracker Candy Bars. (How many of the words in that title set my heart to racing?) When you’re first putting it together, it seems simple, so again, I didn’t expect much. But when I took my first bite, midstep between the kitchen and the living room, I literally stopped in my tracks and yelled, “Holy crap!” Yes, they’re that good. Even with some alterations. I couldn’t find vegan graham crackers to save my life (there’s that honey issue again), so I substituted Annie’s Chocolate Bunny Grahams. (FYI, roughly six bunnies equals one graham cracker.) Lining up the buns foot to foot and head to butt, I created a bottom sandwich layer, which I covered with cashew butter, then topped with six more chocolate rabbits. Because I was using bunny bites instead of one large cracker, I couldn’t pick the sandwiches up and dip them, as instructed, in the melted chocolate chips and Earth Balance, so instead I coated them with a layer of the stuff, then topped half of the goodies with coconut and the other half with coconut and chopped walnuts. This might not sound groundbreaking, but let me tell you this: These babies are divine. And after being refrigerated for a while, they harden and can be eaten like the sandwiches they were intended to be. But leave room, because you’ll find it hard to eat just one. Between the gooeyness of the chocolate and the cashew butter, the crunch of the cookies, and the softness of the coconut, there isn’t a whole lot more to say than, “O-M-G!” OMG indeed.

The only thing I can say about the Chocolate Graham Cracker Candy Bars is, “Holy crap!”

I’ll give it to Grifoni: She knows her way around the kitchen. And the cookbook: All of her recipes are labeled to make it easy to find what you’re looking for (high in fiber or protein, quick to make, or flexitarian, or easily made with nonvegan ingredients). She’s also included a section of Dinner Plans: an Appetizer, Main Course and Dessert whose marriage she’s already arranged. The Chocolate Graham Cracker Candy Bars are the dessert from Dinner Plan #8, the Backyard BBQ Wannabe, which also features Tempeh Dill “Chicken” Salad and Seitan Barbecue “Meat.” Other Plans include Spicy Sweet Cucumber Salad, Caramelized Onion and Barbecue Sauce Pizza, and Maple Date Carrot Cake (#1); Vegan Cheese Ball, No Shepherd, No Sheep Pie, and Tofu Chocolate Pudding (#7); and Strawberry Milkshakes, “Cheesy” Macaroni and “Hamburger” Casserole, and From Scratch Chocolate Cake With Vanilla Icing (#10). How much easier could she make it?

I might not agree with everything Grifoni says, but good vegan food can do as much, if not more, than a reasonable argument to change people’s hearts and minds. So while she might not have set out to expressly convert anyone, I think a lot more people will be eating animal-free thanks to her amazing vegan recipes.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2011.

Despite what a lot of people think, being vegan doesn’t mean you’re healthy—it’s very easy to be a vegan junk food junkie. So every once in a while, after doing some fairly consistent damage, I go on a cleanse. Recently I tried Kaeng Raeng, detox drinks in powder form that first saw the light of day in founder and CEO Lindsay Reinsmith’s kitchen, when she was trying to lose weight. I caught up with Reinsmith and asked her to give me the skinny on her stuff.

Your site says Kaeng Raeng is “committed to veganism,” and a portion of your sales benefit The Humane Society of the United States. How important is veganism to your company?

As an animal rights activist and a vegan, it’s important for me to have a product and a company that match my personal interests and to support these organizations. But it’s also important to put a face and a person behind Kaeng Raeng; it’s not made in China by a giant corporation with offshore customer service. We’re a small business in Northern California, and we care greatly about the quality of our product and about helping people see the health and beauty that come from a plant-based diet.

Where does the name come from?

Kaeng Raeng means “be healthy, be strong” in the Thai language. I’m fascinated with Thai culture and cuisine and its focus on animal-free living, and I was inspired by the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, the largest in the world. So Kaeng Raeng celebrates vegan eating and sustainable, animal-free living. And although we have a Thai name, Kaeng Raeng is 100% made in the USA with only local ingredients.

Each packet contains less than 230 calories, from an ounce of freeze-dried fruit, plus non-GMO soybeans, psyllium for fiber and L. Acidophilus for digestion and immunity. Why soy as opposed to hemp or pea protein?

When we were finishing the formula, we conducted focus groups all over the country and tested soy, brown rice, hemp and pea proteins. Getting a full serving of protein per day (45 grams) would require a significant amount of those proteins, giving the product an overwhelmingly poor taste and increasing the cost by nearly 100%. We respect that customers want a high-quality product without having to pay a fortune, so we use non-GMO soy grown in California. There’s a lot of conflicting information about soy, so we encourage people to do their own research. On a side note, we also found that mainstream consumers are confused about hemp, often equating it with marijuana.

Many cleanses recommend omitting or minimizing fruit because of the sugar content. Why is fruit the main componenet of Kaeng Raeng, and how do you prevent that sugar spike?

Kaeng Raeng follows the principles of a raw diet, centered on raw fruits and vegetables. KR is also more carbohydrate-driven than other plant-based diets that are focused on nuts and oils; this is for calorie restriction and energy during the short-term raw diet. The shakes are made primarily with fruit for taste. But while Kaeng Raeng contains fructose, it also contains a significant amount of fiber (13 grams per pouch), which regulates blood sugar levels.

You suggest detoxing with three powders a day for three or six days. Who benefits from what length of time, and are there any other differences?

We have customers of all different backgrounds, ages and body types. While we find that most people get the best results from our six-day program, many begin to feel better and get the jumpstart they need after only three days on a plant-based diet. We have three levels, which vary in cleansing power: Beginner, Veteran and Master. The Veteran and Master levels have significantly more fiber and are really designed for people who’ve done cleanses before or who already incorporate high-fiber foods into their diet.

Can the drinks be used as a meal replacement, too, or only as detox aids?

Kaeng Raeng is great as a meal replacement; that’s often how I drink it. It’s incredibly filling and is packed with so many things most of us don’t get in our daily breakfast or lunch, including a full serving of fruit, fiber, 15 grams of protein, two billion live cultures, and daily vitamins, including 100% of the required vitamin C and B12.

You suggest supplementing with raw fruits and vegetables, but the longer I let my drinks sit, the thicker they got; I was barely finished with one when it was time for the next! Is adding raw food a necessary part of the Kaeng Raeng cleansing process?

Adding raw food is not necessary. But we find that most people who are trying a plant-based diet for the first time have difficulty with a liquid-only diet, so we encourage snacking on raw food to make the process easier; it can also make the shakes sweeter or more flavorful. Remember, a lot of people eat an extraordinary amount of processed sugar every day, so easing them into the cleanse by allowing raw fruits and vegetables is a great way to help them keep from cheating or giving up.

Kaeng Raeng has been endorsed by Dr. Melina Jampolis, CNN Health’s diet and fitness expert, and Kim Barnouin of Skinny Bitch. Was it important to have a nonvegan health expert give you the thumbs-up?

We’re so happy to have the support of Dr. Jampolis, who’s not vegan but who definitely promotes a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. We’re a vegan company, started by a vegan, with a vegan product and supporting vegan organizations. That’s a lot of vegan! But not everyone cares about those things; they simply want something that’s good for them and, more importantly, that works. With so many competing products out there, some safe and some not, it’s great to have support from the medical community. It helps the general public decide what they want to spend their money on.

The fruit in your powders comes from local farmers in Northern California who grow organically, and you use recycled boxes for packaging and encourage your customers to reuse bottles. Why is sustainability important to you?

For a few reasons. First, there’s no better way to reduce your carbon footprint than to support a plant-based diet; the meat and dairy industries wreak havoc on the planet, contributing greatly to climate change. So having a vegan product was a no-brainer. Second, we support local farms and local suppliers. Sure, our product would be a lot cheaper if it was made overseas with the cheapest possible ingredients, and there are plenty of supplement companies that do that. But because we buy local, we know we’re protecting our customers’ health and lowering our own footprint. Third, small businesses create a lot of waste, so it’s easy to become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. We not only use local ingredients and recycled packaging, but our entire office structure is based around low waste. For example, we don’t produce paper brochures or materials.

The link between veganism and environmentalism is hugely important—I love when vegan companies incorporate eco-friendly practices!

Meanwhile, let’s talk taste and texture: When you add liquid to Kaeng Raeng, pieces of fruit rehydrate, so there’s actually something to chew as well as drink. And the flavors are great—fruity but not too sweet. My favorite was the Strawberry Raspberry Pineapple, followed by the Blueberry Blackberry Banana and the Mango Peach Pineapple. Any new flavors on the horizon?

Not at this time. But we’ve had a lot of interest in a “green” flavor that would be vegetable-based, so we’re trying to find the best way to produce that cost-effectively. And we hope to come out with a protein-free version next year, so people can add whatever type of protein powder they want.

Kaeng Raeng is available online in three- and six-day supplies of three packets per day. Choose from Beginner (gentle), Veteran (medium intensity) and Master (the highest concentration of fiber), ranging in price from $64.99 to $149.99.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2011.

Bottom line on Bee Free Honee: this stuff is really nice. It’s good for whatever I could think to try–in mint tea, on toast with earth balance, with peanut butter.

I can’t say I particularly miss honey, but there’s some things for which honey really is what’s called for–I don’t want to eat agave on toast, do you? And I consider this stuff a proper analog–it’s probably closer to real honey than Daiya is to dairy cheese.

There are some noticeable, if minor, differences between Bee Free and bee-made honey. Bee Free is perhaps a tad sweeter, it’s not as persistently sticky, and it also dissolves much more easily. But no question that Honee resembles honey more than it resembles anything else.

Flavorwise, notes of lemon, golden syrup, and apple juice concentrate are discernible … and, what do you know, those happen to be the ingredients!

And, to quote the manufacturer, “What makes this even more exciting is the fact that it is made in Minnesota, using strictly Midwest apples. The bottles and caps, labels, boxes that they are cased in are all from the Twin Cities. This product is as local as we could make it.” What an awesome alternative to the frighteningly under-regulated honey industry.

It’s worth mentioning that honey is only one facet of the exploitation of bees in our food production system. Plenty of harm comes to the bees who are trucked around and deployed to pollinate crops (including apples, sometimes–hopefully not the ones in this Honee).

Kudos for Bee Free Honee for knocking another item off the list of stuff that has no vegan version. My only real criticism is that it comes in a cylindrical plastic bottle rather than a bear-shaped one!

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2011.

When I lived in South Florida last year, I took a lot of shit for calling it a culinary wasteland. (Read: three vegan restaurants within a 75-mile radius.) That said, what the Sunshine State lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality, and it’s definitely not short on cool vegan peeps out to make the world a better place. I met one of those peeps, Katherine Botelho, at the Great American Meatout, and she’s since created a line of organic, vegan, gluten-free and (in SoFlo) local nut butters that range from simple to specialty. We caught up recently, and Katherine told me why she’s nutty for nut butter.

Hi, Katherine. Long time no see! Thanks for taking the time to chat. What led you to start Ethical Bounty?

I was inspired to create a business that would offer a product that’s familiar to most people, but kick it up a notch and put a unique spin on it. As someone who’s interested in natural and organic foods, I focused on nut butters. They’re so nutritious, and a great source of protein and good fats. I looked at what was available and thought, Something’s missing. Most nut butters contain added salt and oil and are produced using nuts that aren’t organic. Many also contain preservatives to lengthen their shelf life, yet in the end, they taint the purity of the product. I wanted to create a raw, organic option, and in more interesting varieties. I was also excited to offer the butters to a large scope of people via the web.

You offer straight-up nut butters like Pecan and Brazil as well as specialty flavors like Cherry Pistachio and Vanilla Almond. How did you come up with the combinations?

I had to put my imagination to work for the specialty butters, though some of the flavors seemed obvious. I wanted to do something tropical, so I thought, What fruits and nuts come to mind when I think about Hawaii? Pineapples and macadamia nuts. So Pineapple Macadamia Butter was born. Then I thought of pecan pie and came up with Maple Pecan Butter. A craving for banana bread (which I went through an obsessive baking phase with) was re-created as Banana Walnut Butter. And I actually had a dream in which I thought I could smell cinnamon and raisins cooking together—enter Cinnamon Raisin Cashew Butter!

Your Cinnamon Raisin Cashew Butter is amazing! The smell alone made me salivate, and the taste was a perfect combination of the flavors—not too spicy, not too sweet. I can’t wait to try the others! The one nut you don’t serve up, though, is the peanut. How come?

I decided to leave out peanut butter because I wanted to offer an alternative to the usual generic nut butter that’s available on store shelves; peanut butter can be found anywhere. I also took into consideration the prevalence of peanut-related allergies and thought it would be best to avoid processing peanuts on my equipment. Sorry, peanut people!

Since you add no preservatives, how long do your butters last once they’ve been opened?

All of the nut butters are made with absolutely nothing added—no oil, salt or sugar. I’m dedicated to providing an entire line of vegan nut butters that contain no added ingredients or preservatives of any kind. People often email and ask for an ingredients list; it’s a very short list. If you order Almond Butter, there are almonds in it. Cashew Butter, cashews. I recommend refrigerating the butters because of the lack of preservatives, and they’ll last for six months and beyond that way. Though hopefully people will find them too irresistible to keep around that long!

5% of your sales benefit charities that help animals. How did you choose the charities, and why is this important to you?

Here I am getting up on my soap box! As a longtime vegetarian, since age 14, and a vegan for 8 years, I’m very in tune with animal issues. And I choose charities where I’m sure my donations will directly benefit the animals. I strongly believe that we, as the “superior species,” have an obligation to look out for those who are unable to speak for themselves, whether it’s the dog or cat running out of time in the shelter, the rabbit in the laboratory being subjected to skin tests for cosmetics, or the male calf who’s cast off as a useless by-product of the dairy industry. These are all living, feeling beings who deserve to live out their lives in peace, dignity and safety.

You also use eco-friendly boxes to ship your butters and encourage your customers to recycle. Why?

We need to stop the wastefulness in our society and recycle whenever possible. This planet isn’t going to put up with us for much longer if we don’t change our ways. I think most people are trying to green their lives as much as possible. This is just my small contribution to the bigger picture. If we love the planet, it will love us back.

Do you also accept empty jars and reuse them?

I absolutely accept empty jars! I’ll discount the next purchase to anyone who returns an empty glass jar, and I’ve already begun to do that for my local customers. My only concern with offering this to internet customers is that the cost of shipping the jars back would outweigh the discount that would be applied to their next purchase. So I encourage everyone to recycle locally.

Any new, exciting combinations on the horizon? And any plans to introduce chocolate or other desserty ingredients? We SuperVegans love our sweets!

I absolutely loooove chocolate! Who doesn’t? I’m looking into introducing a nut butter that incorporates organic raw cocoa nibs, and I’m always open to suggestions. Many customer suggestions have already been incorporated into the site, such as providing nutritional information for each product. I’ve also received lots of great feedback about my butters, which I truly appreciate!

I’m also planning a line of seed butters, such as sesame tahini, hemp seed, and sunflower. And with the holidays on the horizon, look for upcoming gift combo items, and more surprises to come!

Sounds delish, Katherine! I look forward to tasting more of your nutty creations. Bring on the Maple Pecan!

Ethical Bounty is located in Pompano Beach, just north of Fort Lauderdale, in South Florida. Local delivery is available, with nationwide shipments made via U.S. Postal Service. Ethical Bounty Nut Butters are available in smooth and crunchy, with prices starting at $4.99 for 6-ounce jars of simple butters, and 16-ounce jars of specialty butters in the $17.99 range.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2011.

When we were invited to a vegan wine tasting at Candle 79, I was all over it! Who wouldn’t want to sample a variety of brand-new vegan wines, eat gourmet vegan food and spend the evening with some of the coolest vegan peeps around? The only question mark was whether I’d get out of work on time, as my day job is at a Very Big Fashion Magazine, and it was Fashion Week. Thankfully, the gastronomic gods smiled upon me and I was released at a decent hour, at which point I got what was probably the only available cab in all of Midtown—another sign that the evening was going to be a good one. So I made my way up to Candle 79, where the Discerning Brute, Joshua Katcher, was already waiting. (Be sure to check out his write-up of the evening.) We were soon joined by my fellow SuperVegans Sam Cohen, Deborah Diamant, Olivia Lane, and Jason Das, plus cooking superhero Terry Hope Romero and her husband, John. This had the makings of a stellar evening.

Vegan Vine is the first wine to use “vegan” as part of its brand name. The wine is produced by the 150-acre family-owned Clos LaChance Winery and Estate Vineyard from California’s Central Coast. Our host for the evening was Cheryl Murphy Durzy, daughter of the founders. Cheryl was as informative as she was welcoming, and we learned all about what makes wine vegan or not, and the various labeling and regulatory hassles that wine marketers face.

There are four fining agents used to get the solid remnants out of wine: gelatin, egg whites, dairy, and the most popular, sturgeon swim bladders, a.k.a. isinglass. The main vegan fining agent is bentonite, a type of clay. This is what’s used to fine Vegan Vine’s white wines; the reds are unfined. It’s worth noting that all of Clos LaChance’s wines are vegan, not just the Vegan Vine line, though the Vegan Vines are the only ones certified vegan by Vegan Action.

Each course illustrated by Deborah Diamant, who makes lovely sketches when you get enough wine in her. This was our appetizer, about which she noted, “The vegetables were a little salty, but the wine was smooth and refreshing and helped rid my palate of saltiness. Also, vegan white wine is harder to find than vegan red, and this is a great wine, especially for the price point.”

Clos LaChance is certified by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, and Cheryl mentioned some of the environmental and animal-friendly efforts they’ve made: switching from trucked-in chicken manure fertilizer to fungicultural waste from the mushroom farm next door, pumping the water from the low parts of the vineyard into the wetlands across the road, and causing an uptick in the local tiger salamander population. We also got into how much biodynamic agriculture relies on animal products—biodynamic wine is by definition nonvegan.

While regulators didn’t object to “vegan” being in the brand name, Clos was prohibited by the Trade and Tax Bureau from mentioning on the label that the product is produced without animal products. They’ve gotten around this somewhat by hanging an information-rich “necker” on each bottle. (As for the bottles themselves, Vegan Vine uses Eco-Glass, which is 25% lighter than the glass in a traditional wine bottle.)

And then service began. Oh boy! I don’t usually drink white wine, but Vegan Vine’s 2010 Sauvignon Blanc was surprisingly dry. There was something cool and almost refreshing about it despite the dryness, yet it also had a slightly tart undertone. The wine paired perfectly with the lentil-quinoa amuse bouche and the first course, ravioli with sautéed summer vegetables in white wine sauce and cashew cheese. The combination was seamless, in fact, because the ravioli was as delicious as the wine. The meal, and the tasting, couldn’t have started off more perfectly!

Deborah noted of the entrée pairing: “The celeriac puree is incredibly creamy! I could eat a huge mixing bowl of it. This red wine was a little flatter than the red that was paired with dessert, but who cares, because the puree was tremendous.”

The next one, a 2009 red blend, was dry but a little fruity, and not too sweet. It had a bit of an astringent smell when I was first going in, but thankfully the alcohol taste didn’t reveal itself on the tongue. This wine was Olivia’s favorite and Jason’s least favorite of the three. The wine went well with the walnut-crusted seitan, though it didn’t seem as much a match made in heaven as the white and the ravioli. Maybe that’s because I didn’t love the course as much. The vegetables and celeriac purée were good, but the seitan seemed almost a bit fatty, and I’ve never been a mushroom fan. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the wine, and, as with the white, I would definitely buy and enjoy it.

Deborah said of the dessert “I really didn’t think I liked figs. Apparently I do. I especially like them with ice cream, short bread cookies and a cabernet sauvignon reduction.”

By the time dessert and the third wine arrived, I had quite a nice buzz going, both from the booze and the company! The Fig Napoleon was delicious, with vanilla ice cream, cashew cream, and a reduction made from Vegan Vine’s own 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine had a super-dry taste—always a good thing—which was preceded by the most interesting aroma: slightly fruity, slightly spicy. Olivia thought she detected chocolate, and I could see why. But it was something else, and very intriguing. It turns out there are hints of anise in it, and while I’m not usually a fan, this had just a whisper of its flavor, and it worked. I really enjoyed this red as well, but I need to give it another try on its own, without the overwhelm of three rich courses and such a busy palate and impressive buzz.

I’ll say this: Kudos to Cheryl and her family for paving the way with their vegan, sustainable vineyard! And for bringing good wines with an affordable price point to retail venues and restaurants near you (be sure to ask your favorite places to carry Vegan Vine wines, distributed by Testa). Cheryl is incredibly knowledgeable about what makes the filtering process her family uses vegan—so much so that it’s shocking to me that she’s not vegan herself. (There’s always hope, right?) And I’m happy they came up with the idea for the necker so they can inform people about how animals are used in the wine-making process, despite the government’s attempts to keep such useful information off the bottle. I would love to try her family’s other wines—maybe at another pairing?—and hope they become more widely available too. In the meantime, how nice that we’ll soon be able to walk into a store on our way to a party and pull a bottle of really tasty, moderately priced wine with the word “vegan” on the label right off the shelf? I’m ready!

Assorted Super Foxy Sweets truffles in a snazzy wooden gift box, and a bouquet of Sesame Truffles. GIVE THEM TO ME. (Photos by Jean Schwarzwalder)

I am always so excited to find out about a new vegan business in New York, especially when the proprietors are making delicious sweets for me to shove into my face. February heralded the arrival of Dun-Well Donuts, and Cowgirl’s Baking opened its doors in March. And now, you lucky devils, we have Super Foxy Sweets, a Brooklyn-based gluten-free vegan truffle company offering beautiful and unique chocolate creations.

I interviewed Super Foxy Sweets founder Jane Gish, who was happy to dish on all the details about her new line of treats. Also, people, it’s my birthday this month, so now you know what to send me.

SuperVegan: Who are you and what are Super Foxy Sweets?
Super Foxy Sweets: I’m Jane Gish, a public interest law student, roller derby girl, and perennial kitchen experimenter. Super Foxy Sweets is a brand-new vegan, gluten-free chocolate truffle company. We offer these awesome truffles in lots of amazing flavors like sesame (totally transcendent), cinnamon chili blood orange, pistachio-cardamom, and many more.

SV: What was your motivation to start a truffle-making business?
SFS: A few things all came together: I absolutely adore sweets and chocolate but I don’t consume dairy. I also love to cook and bake without recipes–this truffle was born during a manic deep-winter cooking experimentation session. After I gave some to my friends, all of them had really amazing feedback about the taste and texture, and suggested I sell them! And so, Super Foxy Sweets was born.

SV: What are your current offerings, and what do you hope to have for sale in the future?
SFS:We currently offer gift boxes and sampler packs of a selection of our flavors through our Etsy shop. We also hope to be at several food and flea markets in Brooklyn and Manhattan this summer, where your indecision as to what flavor to buy will earn you a chance to spin the “Flavor Wheel” (think Wheel of Fortune, but with truffle flavors) and taste them in person. We also have been doing larger custom orders for wedding and party goodie bags, which is a great way to collaborate with a customer on an awesome flavor (like peanut butter and jelly). We’re also gathering names for a new program called “Sweets for your Sweetie”–a truffle of the month club that you get for your sweetheart, your roommate, your mom, or even your frenemy. Each pack will include several truffles in one or two seasonal flavors plus a little bonus in form of a love poem, useful phrases in Russian, a sea shanty, or some other such nonsense.

Jane has graciously extended an exclusive offer to SuperVegan readers: Receive two bonus truffles on every gift box bought through Etsy when you mention SuperVegan.com until June 5th! AND you can get free delivery anywhere in Brooklyn with an order over $25. GET ‘EM, GIRL.

Greetings from Anaheim, California where I have just been rolled out the door of the Natural Products Expo West after 4.5 hours of eating my way through the 5 rooms and a gajillion booths of convention. It was kinda the best day ever: not only did I get to meet the people who make the products that change my life, but I got to snack on said products and taste brand new ones! There was even a special surprise at the end. So here for you, is the highlight reel in photo blogeristic style (my apologies for the sub-par pics due to iPhone 3GS).

Part I: Cheeese Wars

Follow Your Heart
One of my first stops on the Expo Express was at Follow Your Heart, inconveniently out of snacks until my 4th visit. I finally got to taste their cheesecake, which was really yummy, their new line of vegan dressings (caesar!), and toasted cheezy bread. Yum.

Daiya
I was excited to find the Daiya booth and try their new Pepperjack flavor in the form of a quesadilla slice. It’s definitely got a li’l kick! No softballs from this SuperVegan, I asked the Daiya representative why o why are their bags not re-sealable? He told me that 8 oz bags don’t need to be, cause it’s not enough product to warrant it. I disagreed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually use a $5 bag of Daiya all at once. Then he gave me a story about a zipper being cost prohibitive. That the price of a seal that does the re is so exorbitant it’d make the resale price (even more) impossibly expensive. Hmm… I asked about slices or blocks in addition to shreds. If I want a grilled cheese, shreds are a messy, wasteful, pain, I explained. He said they aren’t working on that, but they are working on a version of their cheeses that are meant to eat cold. Weird. I also got to eat some pizza and a spoonful of mac ‘n’ cheese.

Teese
I was even more excited to come upon the Teese (Chicago SoyDairy) booth. I had heard tell they were offering samples of their mozzarella sticks and I heard right. Oh my holy wow. Not only were they delicious, but the CSD people are super cool. I chatted with Dan Reed, their marketing whiz, and told him about my tete a tete with Mr. Daiya. Their response: Hunh. OUR bags have a zipper! And lookee– they do! Hurrah! They said the zipper didn’t break their budget either, so something’s rotten in Canada, or wherever Daiya is made these days. Score one for Teese in the Vegan Cheese Wars. I also got to taste a marshmallow dandie, a slice of pizza, and a Dandie Tweet. How cute are these Peep alternatives? I promise you, they are so good they will blow your Eastery vegan minds.

Vegan Queso
Crystal Tate and her Vegan Queso is my favorite story of the day. Everyone was talking about her vegan nacho cheese sauce, and with good reason. It is insanely delicious, and I’m not just saying that because she gave me a whole jar to take home. Available in Spicy and Original (which still has kick), this creamy sauce is fat, soy, nut, dairy and cholesterol free. All mouth love aside, the rags to riches **she’s probably not rich yet** tale is adorable. Crystal, a young Texan lady with a Mexican heritage, started dating Chris, a vegan. She was not even vegetarian! They were young, they were in love, and they were broke. They pooled their money for food– $20/week. Crystal became a vegan and loved it, but missed some of her Mexican food stuffs. So, what does she do? She straps on an apron and invents it, of course! Voila, Vegan Queso is born. Chris and Crystal get married and their slogan? Food for lovers. Love it!

Part II: I Scream

So Delicious
When I finally made my through the crowd that had formed around the So Delicious booth (elbows out!) to the ice cream samples, I just assumed that the masses were of like-minded people, screaming for ice cream. I grabbed some samples (chocolate ice cream bar and butter pecan) when I noticed 6 or 7 policemen. Ok, what’s goin on? “It’s for a big loser.” Um, what? “One of the trainers from The Biggest Loser is here.” Ah, ok. I grabbed some coconut based blueberry greek yogurt and fled.

Coconut Bliss
Coconut Bliss had a whole station set up where you could choose from about 8 flavors. It was a decision making moment I’m calling Andrea’s Choice. Brutal! I went with Ginger Cookie Caramel. How could that not be good?

Soylato
I stumbled upon a booth called Soylato. They had two flavors– chocolate and berry. I went for chocolate (duh), was not expecting it to be good, and was happy to be totally wrong. This stuff was creamy, smooth and rich. Not gritty at all and a true chocolate taste. It’s brand new so I hope this stuff takes off!

Double Rainbow
Not the viral video. I gotta say, this one was my favorite. It was so good, and they gave out such generous portions. I had the mint chip and it was a check plus plus.

Part III: Meet Your Meats

The world of Meatless Technologies continues to advance. I tasted science. I also made sure to give the Morningstar Farms booth a giant FU for putting egg whites in … everything.

Lightlife
These guys had some serious real estate. They set up a whole hot dog cart in their city block sized booth! I happened upon them at the beginning of my pilgrimage and wisely decided to skip it in favor of saving stomach space for new products. I never would’ve made it as far as I did if I had partaken, but my stomach’s heart shed a tear not to!

Hodo Soy
Technology from the past, meet the future. Hodo makes some insane soy. I’m not sure I’ve ever had Yuba before but I hope to have it again. And again.

Sophie’s Kitchen Vegan Seafood
I appreciate Vegan Seafood on a conceptual level– I was never a fan of real seafood, so I’m not so into the convincing replicas either, but boy they’re convincing, aren’t they?

May Wah by any other name
For those of us in NYC, May Wah is a prized retailer possession. If you’ve left NYC, it’s loss is poignant. Finally, an American company, VegeUSA, is importing those same Taiwanese meats, repackaging them in English boxes and selling them to Whole Foods shoppers! Citrus Spare Ribs for all!

Turtle Island
Tofurky makes some of my favorite meat-like products. Have you tried their new Pepperoni? I wanted to grab a fistful of toothpicks, but I controlled myself and took one. I also tasted their frozen pizzas, but compared to the 4 others I tried, I gotta say, they have room for improvement. Check minus.

Gardein
Gardein’s next product to hit shelves is their Ultimate Beefless Burger. By the time I tasted it my mouth was numb and my tum tum was angry, but it went down easy! There are a lot of veggie burgers out there, I’m not sure what makes this one the Ultimate but it definitely wasn’t bad. I’ve written about Gardein products before– their sauces kill their meats, but this one doesn’t succumb to that problem as it’s sauce free.The problem instead was the sample sliders were loaded with mustard so I couldn’t really tell you how the actual patty tasted. I think it was good, but I’ll have to give it a 2nd try to be sure. I also tasted their Chipotle Lime Crispy Fingers (minus the finger), my fav product in the Gardein line (also sauce free).

Amy’s
I’m glad to be able to tell you about a couple new Amy’s products that were quite good. Glad because that means I successfully waded through the mob of people in their booth and managed to secure myself some samples– quite an accomplishment, really. First, they too have a new burger– the Sonoma. I’m not gonna fib, I can’t recall how it tasted at all, except to say I remember liking it. Sorry, but in case you can’t tell from this mega-post, I got in a bit over my veg-head! I also tried their vegan burrito, which was just okay (to be fair, I grew up in Los Angeles; I’m a Mexican food snob) and their new vegan pizza! Thumbs up. Better than Tofurky, but also made with Daiya. It went fast. I also hunted down their marketing rep and made plans for some exciting SuperVegan contests– keep one eye out!

Asherahs
By the time I got to Asherah’s I was so full I hurt. (where is the vegan Tums booth?!) I was afraid one more sample would be the straw to break my stomach’s back. I couldn’t do it. But these looked good. Another new burger to try. Be forewarned, their website has bad music. Also, the trend seems to be that every new vegan product is also gluten free. Are all special needs eaters being lumped into the same category? I heart gluten.

El Burrito
I have been a vegetarian since 1991 and a vegan since 1999. Even though I’m old, I can still remember what it was like back in those days– the only meat substitutes that existed in my local market were Gardenburger (the original flavor only, with cheese in the patty) and SoyRizo. We have come a long way, people. That said, SoyRizo is still delicious, and El Burrito now has a line of great tasting products. Three of them are vegan (Soyrizo, SoyTaco and Soy Sausage) and I got to taste them in the form of a lovely plate of food prepared for me by this nice lady.

ecoVegan
The show was almost over when I finally came across ecoVegan. They had run out of or packed up their samples. Has anyone tried it? They look like they might be good maybe.

Food For Life
In the utmost of irony, Food For Life’s booth was abandoned when I got there. No food for me & my life, apparently. And for full non-linear confusion, this happened at the beginning of my day (around 2pm)– it wasn’t even closing time. But I hear they have two new vegan products.: a burger (SHOCKER!) and chicken nuggets, called Moophrey and Cluckphrey, respectively. Here’s what the packaging looks like.

Part IV: Count Chocdrea

There must’ve been 100 (approx.) booths sampling organic chocolates, and if you can believe it, I abstained from almost all of them. I was on a mission– there was no time or inside space for them all! Here are the two stand-outs.

Justin’s
Justin’s claims to make the only vegan chocolate peanut butter cups. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but what is true is that these were ridiculous. I want them in my life on a semi-regular basis. They also have a line of nut butters that reach illegal levels of goodness. Warning: another music heavy web site.

Xan
I can’t remember where, but I’ve tried these before. They are the most beautiful chocolates with the most interesting flavors. I tried each of the four vegan ones they had there (raspberry, strawberry, coconut and ancho chili caramel). The ancho chili caramel (with purple metallic dust) was my fav. If you’re looking to win the heart of a vegan, I recommend these. Each one is like a piece of edible cocoa art.

Part V: Special Mentions

WARNING: Super Hummus contains soy
I got a good laugh at the Nasoya booth, who felt obligated to post this warning sign at the sample table for their new Super Hummus, that is actually made from soy beans instead of chickpeas. I’d like to think they took inspirado from us for the name.

Appropriately named, this stuff was super. Thicker than regular hummus, and creamier, the spinach garlic flavor I tried was exceptional. One of my favorite things of the day. Who’da thought?

They also brought in the lovely ladies from Spork Foods to make some tofu scrambles!

Tia’s
Have you heard the rumor going around that Kettle Brand has made vegan Doritos? Well it’s true! The Salsa Picante flavor of Kettle Chips new Tia’s line taste remarkably like some old school Doritos. They gave me a whole big bag! Sorry, no sharing.

Ethical Bean Coffee
There were a bunch of coffee companies at the show, and I am an unabashed addict, but by far the best was from Vancouver, Canada and Ethical Bean. This was the fanciest, techiest, and yummiest jolt of caffeine ever. Even Oprah said so, apparently. O, Oprah. Each bag is fair-trade, organic, roasted in a carbon neutral facility and comes with a unique QR code. If you have an iPhone, you can download the Ethical Bean App and scan your bag. It will take you to a site created for your specific bag of beans. It’ll tell you all kinds of stuff like where your beans were grown, a snapshot of the person who roasted them, tips for brewing. I have no idea how much this coffee costs, but I do know you need to be caffeinated in order to comprehend all the data available about it.

Montage: Earth Balance has a new line of coconut based products coming out, including a margarine, a spread, and a mayo. There was some line of vegan dairy replacements I’d never heard of before called WayFare to be on the lookout for; none were available for the tastin’. (If Andrea actually read SuperVegan, she’d have heard of Wayfare when Rudy reviewed their spreads–Ed.). I tried a really delicious bavarian pretzel from Kim & Scott’s. There are a lot of new vegan Indian food products coming (curries, samosas, etc). And someone has made chips out of falafel.

I called it quits and made my way back to my friends at the VegNews booth only to discover (from the founder of Veggie Grill and his friend) that Fabio was downstairs in a booth, right by the Chicago SoyDairy. Whaaaaaaaaaat? My belly and I ran downstairs, with 5 minutes remaining, past the Teesers. “How could you not tell me Fabio was here?!” “You don’t want to take your picture with him, take one with me!”

I found the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter but it’s still dairy salesman, got an autographed 8×10 glossy and my shoulder dislocated (not really, but almost). He was there hawking his line of non-vegan protein powder– Healthy Planet Nutrition.

Then I doubled back to Mr. Teese March, who I got to pose the same way, for comparison and my upcoming Natural Mens Calendar 2012.

My evening ended at the Irvine Veggie Grill with the fine fine folks of VegNews Magazine, Allison from Allison’s Gourmet (I learned I must try her vegan mac & cheese recipe) and Chicago SoyDairy. Sadly, even thinking about more eating hurt at this point, so I had some strawberry lemonade and watched, knowing I was missing out on the deliciousness. The company was excellent though.

So there you have it, my Natural Products Expo West Triathalon of Snacking, Chatting, and Drinking. I didn’t have time for beverages (Acai, acai, acai! And 40 tons of coconut water), supplements, or personal products like cosmetics. Next year I will fast beforehand, wear a muumuu, bring an assistant and go twice. Any volunteers?

Two tasters, Dave and Grace, consider the chocolate they just ate.

I invited a handful of friends over to my apartment to sample chocolate offerings from some local vegan-friendly companies and settle, once and for all, which ones should be filling your pantry.

It was nice to see so many different flavors and textures and styles represented–there’s definitely something for everyone. I also appreciate that a number of these companies are dedicated to producing candy that harms no one, including both animals and people–because no one is free when others are oppressed. And no one is happy without dessert.

The rules:
My five tasters were asked to rank each bite of chocolate they took on its appearance, taste, and texture using a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best). No one knew the brand names or what ingredients were in each piece, save for those that are potential allergens. While opinions varied widely on which chocolates were “the best,” I’m hopeful that the comments below will guide you in your quest for the perfect vegan chocolate to satisfy your sweet tooth.

The companies:

Sweet and Sara is based out of Queens and produces their 100% vegan candies out of a dedicated vegan facility. The cocoa Sara uses is rainforest-alliance certified from Ecuador, and the chocolate (i.e. the dipping chocolate used in her s’mores) is certified organic from the Dominican Republic.

Rescue Chocolate is a Brooklyn-based, completely vegan chocolate company that donates 100% of its profits to animal rescue organizations. RC’s products are all certified Kosher. The chocolate is sourced from a number of different countries.

Divvies is an allergy-friendly bakery in South Salem, NY that uses no eggs or dairy in any of its products but does not specifically seek out vegan sources for sugar.

Fine and Raw is based out of Brooklyn and aims to turn chocolate into “a form of therapy,” Fine and Raw is a 100% vegan, 100% raw, 100% organic and certified fair-trade chocolatier.

Cocoa V is a Manhattan-based chocolatier run by the team who also brings you Blossom and V-Note. They are the very first 100% vegan, 100% organic, 100% fair-trade certified chocolate shop. Their products are also certified Kosher.

The results:

Sample #1: Sweet and Sara’s Rocky Road Bark
Description: Sara’s famous vegan marshmallows paired up with roasted almonds and smothered in rich, organic Belgian chocolate
Appearance: 6.5
Taste: 7
Texture: 7.5
Comments: We started off our tasting with Sara’s Rocky Road Bark. The tasters weren’t too wowed by the appearance, but the combination of marshmallow, almond, and chocolate textures were a hit. Gwen from Brooklyn thought that it was “a little too dark, but with the other ingredients, it works.” Most of the tasters agreed that the marshmallow lent some good texture but not much taste. Dave from Brooklyn noted that the marshmallow “makes everything sweeter,” which might have contributed to the bark tasting dark but not bitter. Ida from Queens found the bark to be a bit chalky for her liking. Overall, this was a fun candy with exciting textures–the perfect chocolate, maybe, for someone who doesn’t like chocolate all that much.

Sample #2: Rescue Chocolate’s Pick Me! Pepper
Description: Pick Me! Pepper is a sweet ’n spicy dark chocolate delight for thrill-seeking palates. It exhilarates the senses tasting in turn sweet, salty, rich, and hot.
Appearance: 6.5
Taste: 8
Texture: 7
Comments: Rescue Chocolate is a vegan fixture around these parts, but I’d never before sampled the Pick Me! Pepper. I brought it to the tasting and let these five palettes have at it. Grace from Manhattan was not impressed: “I usually like spicy chocolate,” she said, “but this one almost tastes like taco mix.” Gwen agreed that it was “salty and savory, but not very sweet.” Ida and Dave both liked the saltiness of the chocolate and said it was one of their favorites. Molly from Manhattan found the spice appealing, but thought that she wouldn’t be able to eat very much of it–which those of us who have been known to eat an entire Peanut Butter Pit Bull in one sitting thought might not be such a bad thing.

Sample #3: Divvies BingGo! Benjamint Crunch
Description: A delicious gourmet semi-sweet chocolate bar with organic peppermint crunched up candies.
Appearance: 7
Taste: 7
Texture: 8
Comments: I spotted the BingGo! bar at a market near my house but had never before heard of the company or its products; apparently they are an allergen-free food manufacturer in upstate New York. Our tasters really dug the crunchy texture of this particular bar, though Grace’s comment neatly summed up their opinion on the taste: “Where’s the chocolate?” There were so many crunchy peppermints in the bar that we really only tasted that element. Molly said, “The peppermint overwhelms the chocolate flavor. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t really taste the chocolate.” Dave notes that this chocolate might be good crumbled on top of a cupcake or cookie; if you’ll excuse me, I have some baking to do.

Sample #4: Fine And Raw Lucuma & Vanilla Chocolate Bar
Description: A 75% cacao textured style bar with notes of bread pudding, toffee apple and burnt caramel.
Appearance: 7.5
Taste: 8.5
Texture: 8.5
Comments: Another new-to-me company, I spotted a pile of Fine and Raw chocolate bars at Sustainable NYC and decided to give the Lucuma (a tropical fruit native to Peru) and Vanilla a whirl. The texture of this chocolate was a big hit with the tasters, with words like “smooth” and “soft” flying around the room with the very first bite. Gwen really liked this chocolate, noting that the sweet vanilla flavor comes “right at the end.” Though usually unimpressed by raw chocolate, Grace thought this one was delicious. Molly, however, didn’t think that the vanilla or lucuma flavors came through strongly enough. Altogether, a majority of the tasters said that this one was their favorite.

Sample #5: Assortment of Cocoa V chocolate bon bons
Description: We sampled the Creamy Peanut Butter, the Salted Caramel, the Coconut Caramel, and the Citrus Passion Fruit bon bons.
Appearance: 9.5
Taste: 8.5
Texture: 8.5
Comments: Cocoa V’s bon bons are very pretty to look at–lots of bright colors and interesting shapes–but does the taste measure up? Our tasting crew was inclined to say “yes.” Ida sampled several of the different bon bons and declared that there wasn’t a single one she didn’t like. The caramels were also a hit with our tasters, though some thought that the salted caramel was a little too salty or that it completely overwhelmed the chocolate flavor. Honestly, I was just happy to look at these chocolates, with their spots and swirls, but maybe that’s just the former art student in me.

While the thought of cooking vegan is daunting enough to some people, the idea of baking vegan and gluten-free can sound downright impossible. Not so for Jennifer Katzinger. In Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book, Jennifer creates dishes that are suitable for even the most sensitive stomach, yet still delicious.

Roseann Marulli Rodriguez: Hi, Jennifer. Thanks for speaking with SuperVegan.

You opened the Flying Apron Bakery in Seattle in 2002. How’d you go from a B.A. in English literature and an M.A. in industrial design to running a bakery?

Jennifer Katzinger: Great question! I grew up baking. Almost every odd job I had in high school and through college, I found myself working in bakeries and loving it. I loved the warmth of the kitchens, the conversations, the creation of works of art I could watch customers enjoy with every sense. Meanwhile, while going to school I loved studying literature. After graduating from the University of Washington with my English literature degree, I continued working in cafés and bakeries. It was only then that I began to crave creating more permanent designs, pieces of furniture. After returning to Seattle from studying at Pratt in New York, I did work in the industrial design field and was absolutely thrilled and inspired to be doing so. In fact, I would very much like to dangle my feet in those waters again. However, the lull of the warm kitchen, smells and tasty creations were strongly calling me back, which eventually led me to open the Flying Apron Bakery with my father.

There’s no soy or gluten in any of the recipes in Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book, and you use alternative sweeteners. Why is creating a healthy product important to you?

It’s something I feel really strongly about, using unrefined ingredients and wholesome sweeteners and often using less sweetener than one would find elsewhere. We all love a treat, but why not have a treat be nurturing to our body as well as to our taste buds? I know how good it can feel to be balanced, and eating healthy food is such a big part of maintaining balance and presence. I would like to share this with others.

The Maple Butter Bars were rich and sweet, and the texture was a little grainy. They’re great for breakfast or the mid-afternoon sugar slumps.

Is everything in the bakery also soy- and gluten-free? Is everything you make there organic?

I actually sold the bakery last winter to be a full-time mom and cookbook author; my next cookbook comes out next fall, and I’m delighted with the new recipes. I believe Flying Apron’s new owners are maintaining the commitment to organics. All of the baked goods are still soy-free, I believe, although they do now have some savory dishes that contain soy.

When you owned the bakery, what did it mean for you to participate in the local farmer’s market?

It meant the world to me! The community experience was so rich. Participating in the farmer’s market came to be my favorite part of the bakery experience. Working with a group of other passionate folks excited about whole foods, being independent entrepreneurs and interacting directly with customers was such a thrill.

You also care about sustainability. When you first opened the bakery, a few of your products contained eggs and dairy, but then you went plant-based, partly because of the lower carbon footprint. Why?

It just felt right to go vegan all the way.

While your cookbook is labeled vegan, some of the recipes call for honey. Why honey, and why use the vegan label when you use an animal product?

Agave can easily be substituted for the honey. The honey question is a tough one. For me, honey is a local ingredient and therefore better from a sustainable standpoint, as well as being a healthier choice, since agave is fructose. That said, I ought to really study this more thoroughly. I hope I haven’t offended anyone by including honey in two of the recipes.

Are you vegan?

Presently I’m vegetarian and mostly vegan. My husband is vegan, and together we’d been vegan for over a decade.

The Coconut Heaven Cake with Coconut Heaven Frosting isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a little heavy and sweet, but absolute, well, heaven for coconut lovers.

You use oil instead of a butter substitute. What’s the thinking behind that, and how does it affect the end result? Are there any recipes that doesn’t work for?

I think oil is a more pure ingredient than butter substitutes, and all the recipes I create are made to use oil.

You call some of your cookies revolutionary. Please explain!

In a jocular way I’m saying that when I first developed these recipes and opened the bakery, about nine years ago, no one was baking goodies gluten-free and vegan in our area, so it felt revolutionary to buck the white flour, white sugar, butter and egg baking tradition.

You also mention that there’s tradition behind pie- and tart-making. What does that mean to you?

Participating in an act that has taken place for lifetimes before can feel very special. Of course, it depends on what the tradition is, but when it comes to something like making pies or doing yoga, it feels very special for me.

You give instructions for making cookies from leftover pie crust dough—that must be some tasty dough! Which is your favorite for making cookies?

I like the simple crust. It tastes light and flaky and tender and subtly sweet!

You eventually began to offer savory dishes at the bakery, and there are many savory recipes in the book, from soups to salads to entrées. Did it feel natural to expand in that direction?

Absolutely. I very much enjoyed diving into that.

My little gnocchis, waiting to be cooked.

All of the entrées have an ethnic flair, whether it be Italian, Indian or Russian. Was that intentional?

Yes. I guess another way I’m inspired is by other cultures’ culinary choices. I also feel that the more international things we expose ourselves to, the more we can be open to people of different backgrounds.

I made your Maple Butter Bars, which were great! And the Coconut Heaven Cake was absolutely delicious, though I wasn’t able to whip the frosting—the oil or the agave stayed separate, so I frosted the cake as best I could and put it in the fridge so the frosting would congeal. What did I do wrong? (In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t own a mixer and stirred everything by hand.)

I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the cake and maple bars! The frosting really depends on a mixer that can beat the oil into the agave or fruit juice.

The Gnocchi With Herbed Pistou—tender potato pasta in a pesto-like sauce—was divine. My first attempt at making homemade pasta: success!

And the Gnocchi With Herbed Pistou was amazing! The pasta had such great consistency, and the sauce was delicious. Though that too was more oily and less thick and pesto-like than I’d anticipated. Is that the desired consistency, or did I muck it up again?

Yes, Pistou is more oily than pesto, more like a flavored oil. I love the taste too! And the gnocchi are very tender, so always be sure to steam instead of boil them, as it says in the recipe.

Done! Thanks so much for speaking with us, Jennifer. We’ll keep an eye out for your next book. Best of luck with that!

Thank you so very much! All the best.

Alan Roettinger reminds me of an editor I once worked with. The fashion editor in question longed for the days when men and women dressed as if they gave a damn—not just for special occasions, but for going to the grocery store, doing laundry, whatever—instead of just throwing on jeans and a T-shirt. Private chef Roettinger has the same wish, except his centers around food: Even if we’re pressed for time, he believes, we should still be able to create elegant, flavorful dishes. To that end he wrote Speed Vegan: Quick, Easy Recipes With a Gourmet Twist. I asked the recent vegan about his inspiration for the book and how plant-based life is treating him.

Roseann Marulli Rodriguez: Hi, Alan. Thanks so much for speaking with SuperVegan.

I love the idea behind your book. I think most people get lazy and make the same dishes over and over just because they’re easy. I personally eat way more frozen meat analogs than I should probably admit to in public. What gave you the idea for the book?

Alan Roettinger: After my first book, Omega 3 Cuisine (vegetarian, with small bits of egg and dairy, but mostly vegan), Book Publishing Company and I were eager to work together again, so I asked for a project. After some deliberation, they handed me Vegan Quick—recipes that could be made in 30 minutes or less. If you’ve read my introduction, you know this was a little unusual for me; I normally spend as long as it takes to make fine food. It was a good exercise for me!

Roseann: When you started the book you weren’t vegan. So why a vegan cookbook?

Alan: As a private chef, my job has always been to work within the parameters of my clients’ diets and preferences, and I took this on in that spirit. It was a project involving food—I was born for this!

Roseann: Just before printing you started eating vegan and were feeling great. Congrats! Have you stuck with it?

Alan: Thank you! I have stuck with it—commitment is like that. I’d done considerable reading about factory farming even before the idea of writing a vegan cookbook came up, and of course I’d been eating all the food that eventually became the recipes in the book. While the book was in the last stages of the editorial process, I read Eating Animals, an exquisitely written book by Jonathan Safran Foer, which struck me as much by what was said as by what was not (no moralizing, no judgment). The decision occurred in my doctor’s office, when he was insisting I start taking statins to lower my cholesterol, which was on a steady upward trend. I’d been eating quite well by American standards—no fast food junk, no refined carbs, mostly plants, organic, etc.—and getting a lot of exercise. I’d also tried natural alternatives (oats, red yeast rice), but the numbers kept creeping upward. So I told my doctor I was going to go on a strict vegan diet and train to run the Pikes Peak Ascent the following year. I’d never been a runner. He was dubious. I never looked back. In six months my cholesterol fell from 289 to 130. And I did run the Pikes Peak Ascent. Ha-ha!

Roseann: Good for you! How’d you do?

Alan: I ran it in 5 hours 20 minutes. To be honest, most people don’t run all the way, especially above tree line. I was never out of breath, though, which is pretty important to note, since the conventional non-wisdom figures the lack of red meat in my diet would result in a lower red blood cell count, meaning less oxygenation. What slowed me down was the cramping in my legs and feet—damn things wouldn’t stay on task. I did run across the finish line, though, which ain’t bad for a guy 57 years old. My (younger) brother-in-law, who’s been running the Ascent every year for 20 years, beat me by only 10 minutes.

A plant-fueled Roettinger crosses the Pikes Peak Ascent finish line. Go, vegan!

Roseann: That’s pretty impressive! How do you feel now?

Alan: Fantastic, thank you for asking.

Roseann: So are you going to stay vegan?

Alan: I should make one thing clear at this point: I’m a human being. Human beings are by nature omnivorous, meaning we can eat anything we want. I’ve been steadily refining my choices throughout my life according to what works for me. Right now I’m eating strictly plant-based foods because I feel much better this way (and part of feeling the way I feel is because I’m not killing anything). But I haven’t stopped the refining process. I know vegans who aren’t very healthy, in part because they don’t eat very well—their focus is not participating in cruelty to animals, which is noble, but their choices are perpetrating a form of cruelty to their own bodies. So I find that it’s paramount to stay focused on life’s ultimate purpose (joy) and goal (to awaken). What I eat will change according to my needs and what I learn about health and what works; my purpose and my goal have not changed since I was born a human being. That said, I will add this about continuing my vegan diet: I have no reason to go back.

Roseann: So has it changed the way you look at food?

Alan: No, I still love food, and I love making food that thrills the palate. It has changed the way I look at farm animals, though.

The Peanut Sauce for the Tempeh Sticks—coconut milk, cilantro, Sriracha sauce, ginger, agave, lemongrass, salt and dry-roasted peanuts—is ridiculously delicious! It’s amazing over the pan-fried tempeh and great on its own—I couldn’t stop dipping my finger in the bowl and sucking it clean. My husband, not normally a fan of sweets, said the sweet-spicy flavor would probably pair well with dark chocolate. Hmm…

Roseann: Each recipe should take under half an hour to prepare. Does that include prep time? Why 30 minutes?

Alan: This was the challenge set before me: 30 minutes or less, all prep included. The only exception is that some recipes include what I refer to as “Jump Starts” in the first section, which are a few preparations that make it quicker and easier to turn out interesting fare in the allotted half-hour.

Roseann: They might be quick, but your recipes have a more dressed-up feel to them. Was that intentional?

Alan: Absolutely! I do this for a living. My preference is always to do my best to present food in the most pleasing way possible. This doesn’t always mean complicated or laborious; it simply means going to whatever lengths are necessary to create a pleasurable eating experience. We only go around once (that we know of).

Roseann: They also have a very Asian flare. Is that your specialty?

Alan: My specialty is rich people—whatever they want, I make it look good, smell good and taste good. I also try to make it so that good health results, which isn’t always possible when the client is bent on eating things that are destined to fall short (to put it as generously as I can). I do lean heavily in the Asian direction because I love the complex flavor profiles and the variety of textures, but in this book I also favor these cuisines because they naturally incorporate a lot of vegetables and plant-based protein. It’s a no-brainer.

The Tofu and Soba Noodles With Hot-Sweet-Sour-Pungent Sauce was tasty and satisfying. At first I thought I should have gone a little lighter on the tomato puree, but the longer the flavors sat, the sweetness of the tomato mellowed, and the dish’s perfectly balanced seasoning revealed itself.

Roseann: Will you continue to cook whatever your rich people demand?

Alan: In my view, compassion begins with the self and must be shown to all living things in order to be genuine. Although I no longer eat animals, I do understand that everyone is at a different point in their own personal evolution. No one forced me to eat the way I eat now; I came to this on my own. So yes, if my clients want prime rib, lobster and caviar, my job will be to present those creatures in a way that does justice to their sacrifice. If this strikes anyone out there as a compromise on my part, then I would humbly request that they help find me some wealthy vegan clients.

Roseann: We’re on the case!

Now, I thought I knew my way around the kitchen, but you incorporate ingredients I’d never heard of. Take Sriracha sauce, for example. Why so far off the beaten path?

Alan: The beaten path is, well, beaten! I’ve never wanted to stay in one place or follow the herd, so to speak. I grew up in Mexico, lived for a time in Europe and traveled to every continent. Why would I not want to reach out with my palate and skill to include as many different options as possible? When I finally moved to the United States, in the ’70s, I was shocked by the monoculture, the lack of fresh, varied produce. You couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee or a decent loaf of bread, let alone anything that vaguely approached what I’d become accustomed to. Now, fortunately, we live in a global village, so a lot of what one had to travel around the world to find is within the average city dweller’s reach. Sriracha sauce is catching up with ketchup as the condiment of choice. How cool is that?

Roseann: Very! So what’s your favorite recipe from the book?

Alan: I’m not the one to ask which is most popular; I don’t have the data to answer with any authority. And they’re all my favorites—if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have made it into the book! I made a bunch of things that didn’t make the cut.

After the Chocolate Pots de Crème set in the fridge, they have a solid, mousse-like consistency. I don’t usually add basil and black peppercorns to my desserts, but the flavors that really sing through are the orange zest and chocolate. Yum!

Roseann: There are a lot of salads in the book. Is that your go-to meal when you’re pressed for time?

Alan: Salads are actually fairly labor-intensive compared to many other things. I think they’re my go-to meal most often because they are what my body loves the most. I can almost hear it singing to me, thanking me and praising my wisdom when I eat fresh, succulent, beautiful salads. Mmmm.

Roseann: You incorporate some tofu and seitan, but most of your dishes are vegetable-centric. Are you anti-meat substitute?

Alan: I try not to be anti-anything; it limits my ability to understand. I just don’t feel the need to substitute meat. If I want it that bad, I can always just go ahead and eat it. The way I see it, if you’re going to leave something behind, it makes no sense to bring it with you. The world is full of interesting, exciting, highly gratifying things to eat. So why try to fool myself into thinking I’m eating something I now find repugnant?

Roseann: Understood. So what’s next for you?

Alan: I’m writing a third cookbook, due out in 2012. And of course, there’s the promotion of Speed Vegan, which has been a hugely enjoyable experience so far; I look forward to meeting and speaking with more and more people. I also hope to get my blog started, finally, by the middle of December.

Roseann: Great! We’ll keep an eye out for all of that. Thanks so much for chatting with us, Alan.

Alan: No! Thank YOU!!!

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2010.

Ricki Heller wants you to have your cake and eat it too—just without a lot of the ingredients you generally think of when you think about dessert. I took some of the recipes from her cookbook, Sweet Freedom, out for a spin, then asked Ricki to fill me in on how it all began.

Roseann Marulli: Thanks so much for speaking with SuperVegan, Ricki. How did Sweet Freedom: Desserts You’ll Love Without Wheat, Eggs, Dairy or Refined Sugar come to be?

Ricki Heller: Sweet Freedom is an outgrowth of my baking company, Bake It Healthy, which grew out of my cooking classes. I’d been selling muffins, cookies, bars and cake slices in health food stores across Toronto for a few years when I realized I just didn’t have the physical stamina to keep the bakery going anymore. I was responsible for all aspects of the business, so between baking, wrapping and labeling, and delivering the goods, I was working 16-plus hours a day. When I decided to close the company, in 2007, many of my customers asked if I’d consider private catering because they didn’t want to give up their weekly muffins and cookies or custom birthday cakes. I did cater for about a year but then decided that the best way for people to continue enjoying the treats was to have the recipes themselves, so I began to convert them for the home cook—and Sweet Freedom was born!

Roseann: You’re a registered holistic nutritionist. Why is it important that your desserts be healthy? Do you ever cheat with something “bad”?

Ricki: I got involved in holistic nutrition because of my own health issues, and I found that the only factor that really made a difference long-term was changing my diet. Back in 2008, when I began to slip up and revert to some of my previous eating habits—desserts with white flour and white sugar—I came down with systemic candida and had to return to a more stringent way of eating that I’d followed 10 years earlier. Now that I’ve been on a strict anti-candida diet for almost two years (it’s vegan, no gluten, no sweeteners except stevia, no mushrooms or other sources of mold, no sweet fruits, no alcohol or anything fermented—I could go on), I can honestly say that no, I don’t cheat. I think I’ve learned my lesson! I feel 100% better this way and am almost back to my old, healthy self. I’ve worked too hard to regain my health to mess it up by eating something sugary.

Roseann: Your dishes are free of additives, colorings, artificial ingredients, refined sugar, wheat and animal products. Why?

Ricki: As a holistic nutritionist, I learned that what we ingest can affect our health. It makes sense, that our cells are literally built from the substances we eat, drink and breathe—there really is nothing else that affects our physical being more. Given the many toxins in the world over which we have no control—the air outside, the many technologies that give off electromagnetic pollution, food packaging, and so on—I prefer to eliminate as many food-related toxins as I can. As someone who’s working to build a healthy immune system and a healthy body in general, I don’t want to fill my cells with artificial colorings, chemicals or refined ingredients, which contain almost no nutritional value—and sugar depresses the immune system! I originally cut out animal products as a way to decrease the toxic load on my system, but to be honest, I never really ate many animal products anyway. I consider myself someone who is naturally inclined toward a vegan diet, as vegan food is what appeals to me most, and by eating it, I feel most comfortable and energetic. I continue this way both for my own health and for the health of the animals.

My Mother’s Cheesecake is infused with lemon juice, lemon extract and lemon rind, and the crust is good enough to eat on its own. Even the skeptical omnis at our Thanksgiving meal gobbled it up!

Roseann: What was the biggest challenge you faced in baking without all that extra “stuff”? Did anything just not work and not make it into the book?

Ricki: The soy-free whipped cream was a huge challenge and probably the most-tested recipe in the book—over 50 tries! For the cookbook version, I simplified the original recipe that had appeared on my blog. The final cream is a wee bit heavier and less airy than the blog version, but it also has about 28 fewer steps! I also tried a meringue and failed miserably. That’s one texture that’s just very difficult to reproduce without white sugar.

Roseann: Was anything that succeeded a surprise?

Ricki: The gluten-free pastry cream was a bit of a surprise because it didn’t start out that way—I was attempting a baked pudding. But popping the mixture in a blender produced the most velvety, smooth, rich-tasting cream. It’s one of my favorite recipes now!

Roseann: You’ve had a pretty busy year! You received an Honorable Mention in the 2010 Cuisine Canada Culinary Book Awards, and your cookbook is one of the few listed on Ellen DeGeneres’ Books Ellen Reads page. Congrats! How did Ellen find out about your cookbook?

Ricki: Thanks so much! My blog readers and twitter followers are the most amazing people, and I’d say they’re mostly responsible. Back in April, I posted a blog entry about how much I wanted to be on Ellen’s show to bake for her and Portia, since they’re both vegan and refined-sugar-free, exactly the kinds of recipes in my book. I also tweeted during the day, and many of my twitter followers began to retweet the messages and email The Ellen DeGeneres Show, endorsing my book and recipes. Somehow Ellen found out about it and checked out my book. Next thing I knew, my book was on her page! It was an incredible surprise to see my cookbook listed next to Alicia Silverstone’s and Tal Ronnen’s. I’m still floating!

The Girl Scouts have nothing on Ricki! Her Classic Peanut Butter Cookies smell as good as they taste.

Roseann: That’s amazing! How is the book being received in general? Do you have any favorite stories?

Ricki: I’ve been really gratified by all the fantastic reviews the book has received so far, and I’m thrilled that so many people like it. It always delights me to receive an email from someone who made one of the recipes and enjoyed it. My favorite story remains one I’ve told before, about a mom who made a birthday cake for her eight-year-old daughter’s birthday. The young girl couldn’t eat wheat, eggs, dairy or refined sugar, so my stuff was perfect; there’s a great agave-based frosting recipe in the book that works beautifully for decorating, piping, etc. This family had eaten my frosted cupcakes before, so I knew they already liked my stuff. After the party, the mom called to tell me that the cake had been a hit with all the kids and their moms. Then she went on to say that it had also been the first time in her daughter’s life, in eight years of parties, that her daughter had been able to share in her own birthday cake with everyone else at the party. I still get a bit teary thinking about that, because I was so touched to be able to give that kind of gift to that little girl. It makes me incredibly happy to know that people who’ve felt deprived of their favorite sweets for a long time can once again enjoy them through my recipes.

Roseann: What are the most popular ones? Which is your favorite?

Ricki: Anything chocolate seems to be pretty popular! The Ultra Fudgy Brownies and Butterscotch Blondies With Dried Cranberries and Chocolate Chips are a big hit, as are the gluten-free, grain-free Coconut Macaroons. The most popular muffin was always the Sweet Harvest, which has hidden carrot, zucchini and spinach and offers up a full serving of vegetables in every muffin. My own favorite chocolate-based recipe is the Chocolate Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies; and my favorite non-chocolate one is the Spiced Pumpkin-Millet Pudding.

Roseann: I made your Classic Peanut Butter Cookies, My Mother’s Cheesecake and Chocolate Caramels, and when I started taking pictures, I realized I’d chosen three beige dishes! Regardless, they all looked and tasted great. I brought the cheesecake to an omnivore’s house for Thanksgiving, and everyone LOVED it!

Ricki: My Mother’s Cheesecake is probably one of my favorites, though I like the Chai Cheesecake, too.

Roseann: And the Peanut Butter Cookies are amazing—my husband won’t let me share them with anyone else! As far as the caramels go, though, I fell into the overcooking trap you mentioned, so it became hard like brittle instead of chewy. It was still spot-on taste-wise, though! And I drizzled some chocolate on top just because. How long did it take for you to get it right? Is the secret using a candy thermometer, or is there another trick of which I’m obviously not aware?

Ricki: Sorry about the brittle! It took quite a few tries to get the texture just right without a candy thermometer—honestly, the trick is just to make it enough times that you recognize the right texture. As I recall—this was two years ago now—it also depends on the burner, since “low” or “medium” on one stovetop isn’t the same as on another, as well as on the pot; the mixture in a smaller, deeper pot will cook more slowly than one in a larger, wider one, and timing is everything with that recipe. All this to say that if you don’t have a candy thermometer, your best bet might be to undercook them a bit and, if necessary, make caramel cups instead of firm caramels. That’s what a friend of mine did. She had the opposite outcome—her filling was too soft, so she made the cups. When I wrote the book, I really wanted anyone to be able to make the recipes, even without special equipment. But if I do a second edition, I think I’ll just say to use a thermometer.

I overcooked the Chocolate Caramels and ended up with something resembling brittle instead. But break off a piece and let it melt on your tongue, and it’s caramel yumminess all the way!

Roseann: Why did you include some raw desserts? Do you eat raw often?

Ricki: I do try to include raw foods at least 50% of the time in my daily diet, and I love raw cuisine. Since some of my favorite desserts happen to be raw, I thought I’d include them. They’re also great for people on a cleanse or a gentle detox who still want to indulge in something sweet.

Roseann: What’s next for you?

Ricki: My recipes always reflect where I am in my own life, so my current creations are all based on the anti-candida diet. I’m working on a cookbook with recipes that are all low-glycemic, gluten-free and sweetened with stevia, yacon syrup, coconut sugar or agave nectar. I’ve really enjoyed learning about gluten-free flours and gluten-free baking and can’t wait to share some of the desserts I’ve created with them. This time I’ll also be including some savory recipes—even I have to eat something other than dessert once in a while!

Roseann: Best of luck with the new book, Ricki! And thanks again for chatting with us.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2010.

Every year, Dr. Michael Greger, the director of public health and animal agriculture for The Humane Society of the United States, peruses untold numbers of medical journals for the newsiest of food news. He then presents the most notable findings in a quiz show format DVD. I dropped the good doctor a line and asked him to explain some of the more curious revelations from his newest releases, the 2009 and 2010 Latest in Clinical Nutrition.

Roseann Marulli: Hey, Dr. G! Long time no speak. Thanks for chatting with SuperVegan.

There’s a lot of information jam-packed into your nutrition DVDs. Some of it’s a no-brainer, like the fact that artifical colors are harmful and that having a cat or a dog is protective against cancer. (Well, we all knew companion animals make us happier, anyway.) But there were a few surprises, too. What was the most shocking thing you learned from the medical literature in the last two years? The most yawn-inducing?

Dr. Michael Greger: I continue to be amazed by our bodies’ ability for self-repair. Like, if you bang your shin on something it gets better—unless you keep banging it in the same place day after day. That’s what smoking does, daily lung injury. But when people stop smoking, their lung cancer risk after enough years approaches that of a nonsmoker! Isn’t that amazing? Our body can get all the crap out of there and heal. Same thing with the lining of our arteries getting injured day after day from unhealthy diets. All you have to do is stop it and your body will heal. Our bodies want to be healthy, if we would just let them. That’s what these new research articles are showing: Even after years of beating yourself up with a horrible diet, your body can reverse the damage, open back up the arteries—even reverse the progression of some cancers. Amazing! So it’s never too late to start exercising, never too late to stop smoking and never too late to start eating healthier.

The yawns come mostly from the cascade of studies touting the benefits of foods like berries and greens. I don’t even cover them anymore in my DVDs. Been there, done that.

Roseann: You’re always reminding vegans to take their vitamin B12. Now it turns out that a B12 deficiency can lead to schizophrenia. Does it make you nuts when you find out we’re not taking our supplements? Ba-dum-bum!

Dr. G: No, B12 deficiency can give you paranoid psychoses, which can be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia (though thankfully it may be reversible). But either way, take your damn B12.

Roseann: I’m all for natural alternatives, but they often don’t seem to work. As the research has borne out, homeopathy doesn’t do us a damn bit of good. On the flip side, though, coconut-derived shampoo kills lice better than pesticides. (Thanks for making me itchy, by the way.) Why is that? What other remedies were tested?

Dr. G: For the lice thing, it was just a study of that particular shampoo, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with diet. I just find myself debunking the claims of the multibillion-dollar natural-supplements industry, so I like to give props when I run across something that actually works!

Roseann: Those of us who like to eat our weight in food will be saddened to learn that caloric restriction improves memory. Equally dismaying for the sedentary among us is the fact that 30 minutes of exercise a day can reverse minor cognitive impairment. On the positive side, though, soy not only protects memory but also inhibits fat uptake. Skip the exercise, pound the soy?

Dr. G: Do both! Well, actually, eating soy while jogging might present a choking hazard, so maybe not. :)

Roseann: New products boasting health benefits come out all the time, but many of them end up being bunk (like mangosteen juice—which is also ridiculously expensive bunk). So while green and black teas are health-promoting, studies have shown that yerba maté can actually increase your cancer risk. How could a little old beverage be so dangerous?

Dr. G: One word: carcinogens.

Roseann: And unfortunately for a lot of our readers, there was no change to the findings that kombucha, spirulina and chlorella are harmful. What else is at the top of your “Get this out of your pantry now!” list?

Dr. G: I also talk about a bunch of things you can overdo, like natural licorice. In fact, the safety window is so small, it may be better to just stay away from regular consumption altogether.

Roseann: Another bummer: Not only are white potatoes less nutrient-rich than even Iceberg lettuce, they increase our risk of kidney cancer by 50%. Um, that’s a lot. White potatoes cooked using any method? Why?

Dr. G: Yeah, it wasn’t just fried taters. I can see why they wouldn’t be particularly health-promoting, but actually increasing disease risk? That was a surprise. Same thing with refined grains. I would have expected things like white rice, bagels, etc., to be just useless, but they can actually increase disease risk. Choose the grain, the whole grain, and nothing but the whole grain.

Roseann: Oh boy…

The vegetarians among us will be dismayed to learn that half an egg a day increases the risk of cancer. And members of the 420 club will be saddened to learn that smoking just one joint is the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarettes—an entire pack!—when it comes to lung cancer. But what I found really shocking was that just a spoonful a day of kimchi can increase your breast cancer risk twofold and your risk of prostate cancer 10 times. Cancer, cancer everywhere. Why?

Dr. G: Because people are ingesting, inhaling and generally being exposed to carcinogenic substances. We live in a pretty toxic world. Let’s not make it worse by going out of our way to add to our bodily burden.

Roseann: Other fun facts: Farmed fish are fed cow brains, beef is injected with ammonia to kill bacteria, and arsenic is added to chicken feed. Why would anyone in their right mind continue to eat animals?

Dr. G: Uh, have you seen McDonald’s advertising budget lately?

Roseann: Speaking of fun, your DVDs are peppered with corny jokes, cute animal photos and plentiful poop references. The Bristol Stool Scale actually illustrates what healthy feces should look and feel like, with vegetarians and vegans coming out (ahem) ahead of omnivores. When you go to cocktail parties, do you ask people to rate their stool as based on the Bristol Scale?

Dr. G: Let’s just say “Would you look at my mole?” is one of the more benign things I’m dragged behind closed doors to inspect at parties.

Roseann: On the positive side, just two teaspoons of vinegar with food lessens the blood sugar spike we feel after eating—and it’s calorie-free. And date sugar topped out as the healthiest sweetener on the planet. I love dates! Why are Hallawi dates in particular so healthy?

Dr. G: The healthiest date is the one you’ll eat the most of! But if I remember correctly, Hallawi just had a particularly high antioxidant density in the study I presented.

Roseann: More good news: Eating nuts can help us lose weight by increasing our resting energy expenditure. Not only that, it decreases inflammation and helps suppress cancer. Any old nuts, or some more so than others? The evidence in support of an inert lifestyle seems to be stacking up, yes?

Dr. G: Basically I’m talking about all nuts, except coconuts, chestnuts and betel nuts. Even peanuts, which, although they’re not technically nuts, can be considered part of the pack nutritionally.

Roseann: We also learned that what we eat can turn gene expression on and off, actually changing us on a genetic level, and that a healthy, plant-based diet can be as powerful as drugs and surgery, even better in many cases. So why are doctors and nutritionists still pushing animal products?

Dr. G: Mostly ignorance. Buy your doc my DVDs.

Roseann: Finally, in your DVD Flu Factories, we learn that the three primary threats to humanity are the global food crisis, climate change and pandemic influenza—all of which can be linked to industrial animal agriculture. Are we destined to eat ourselves to extinction, or is there hope?

Dr. G: I never thought I’d live to see a year where the number of animals killed for food would actually drop. Well, guess what? That happened in 2008, and again in 2009, with all the attendant nutritional, food safety, public, environmental and animal health benefits. We’re all part of a tremendous movement for change—it’s a very exciting time to be alive!

Roseann: I had no idea! That’s great news. Up with vegans, down with animal agriculture!

Thanks again for sharing your brain with us, Dr. G. Looking forward to next year’s installment!

Dr. Greger’s nutrition DVDs pack in more information than any mere mortal could possibly retain. Get them here, and 100% of the proceeds will go to The Humane Society of the United States. Or donate $30 or more to Mercy for Animals through
Nov. 30 and get the 2010 DVDs for free. You can also watch and/or purchase Dr. Greger’s presentation on swine flu and read and/or buy Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, with all proceeds going to charity.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2010.

Or, that’s the ideal, right? And aren’t we always searching for a vegan gummy as delicious as a Sour Patch with the elasticity of a common, gelatin-based gummy worm? Yes, ma’am.

These Goody Good Stuff gummies come pretty close. I tried the Sour Mix & Match pouch of amorphous shapes that look kind of maybe like a very round, very tiny and cute dog biscuit. About a 4 out of 10 on the sour scale, slightly less sour than Sour Patch Kids, these guys are super sugary–23 grams of sugar in nine pieces–, and deliciously fruity without the fake fruit flavor. They’re vegan (obvious plus) and gluten-free (I can eat them!). But, alas, they’re not all that in the elasticity department. Sure, they’re gummy like sticky, but not gummy like bounces back on your fingers as you pull one end into your mouth. Matt accurately said they’re more like jellies than gummies, which, if you like that sort of thing, makes these just right for you.

For those craving a sour-ish, fruity, sugary snack, these are IT. For those looking to replace the Haribo gummy worms in their lives, look elsewhere. “Where?” you ask. I don’t know! Do you know, readers, where to find hard vegan gummies, sour and classic? Please clue me in.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2010.