We've certainly mentioned Sweet & Sara's marshmallow products before, but never actually reviewed them. First things first: they're delicious and everybody who tried our samples--vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike--was pleased and impressed! We tried four items (the complete S&S product line): Peanut Butter Smores, Original Smores, Vanilla Marshmallow Meltaways, and Toasted Coconut Marshmallow Meltaways.

Before we get to the review, note that Sweet & Sara is running a contest right now. Ten lucky winners will receive a care package of S&S goodies. To enter, e-mail sara@sweetandsara.com before 3pm on Sunday May 18th telling her a bit about why you want the goodies, how you like to eat them, if you have a favorite recipe, etc. Full details on their site.

Our semi-anonymous tasting panel included SuperVegan staff as well as folks who work for such impressive media outlets as the New York Times, Fox News, Gothamist, and Bed Stuy Blog. We also shared with Oriceida, our waitress at the Grecian Diner (a nice spot to go when you need french fries in Park Slope at 1:30am on a weeknight after blogfesting). It didn't seem like she'd ever heard the word "vegan" before, but she was very happy to keep eating the coconut Meltaways, citing their nice contrast between crunchy and smooth and the way they melt in your mouth.

This Thursday (May 15th) is Ask for Soy Milk Day at Dunkin' Donuts! The event is organized by the awesome DC-based activist group Compassion Over Kiling, following its success in getting two Maryland Dunkin' Donuts to carry soy milk. If your neighborhood Dunkin Donuts is one of the three locations that have soy milk, let them know folks appreciate it. If it doesn't, act shocked and (politely) ask the manager to get with the times.

Ask for Soy Milk Day just so happens to fall on the same day as Dunkin' Donuts' own nationwide promotion, Free Iced Coffee Day (10am-10pm), so even if you dislike their coffee as much as Rachel Ray does, you've got nothing to lose in your quest to increase vegan options in chain restaurants.

Don't forget that New York City's (and America's) first Veggie Pride Parade ever kicks off at Noon on Sunday, May 18th in Greenwich Village!

Veg*n individuals and groups such as VegOut and Black Vegetarian Society of New York will march, then culminate for a festival in Washington Square Park. Entertainment includes rock music performed by Cheryl Hill, lectures from Karen Davis (founder of United Poultry Concerns) and Odette J. Wilkens, Esq. (executive director of The Equal Justice Alliance, a coalition dedicated to the repeal of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act), and exhibitions from activist groups and corporations like League of Humane Voters of NYC, VegNews magazine and Wildwood Organics.

Check out amNY's cheery May 12th article on the parade.

Visit the Veggie Pride Parade website for more info.

FreshDirect, a purveyor of yuppie Meals on Wheels, and EatingWell magazine have partnered to launch a line of vegetarian 4-Minute Meals. The microwave-ready $7.99 entrees aim to "blend bold flavor with perfect portions of protein, grains and vegetables for deliciously well-balanced meals that pack fewer than 500 calories each." Hmmm… Of the eight EatingWell options, half are vegan. This doesn't seem like a big deal until you notice that they are the only vegan 4-Minute Meals offered by FreshDirect! (Well, eveyone's gotta start somewhere.)

Carmichael of The Vegan Hedonist; Shawn, an intern at Added Value's farm in Red Hook; Eva, a home chef who makes a mean batch of pirogies; and I sampled the vegan stuff. Here's what we thought:

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead opened to a nearly sold out theater this weekend in NYC, despite drama with the Tribeca Film Festival. The Troma produced film is billed as "cinema's first chicken-zombie horror-comedy…with musical numbers!"

Here's a supershort synopsis: A KFC-like fast food joint opens up on an ancient Native American burial ground. A group of college lesbian animal rights activists protest the restaurant, but fail to close it before zombie chickens hatch and reap bloody revenge on everyone in sight, including D-list porn star turned PETA activist Ron Jeremy.

SuperVegan will be celebrating its 2nd Anniversary the evening of Thursday, June 5th with a kick-ass party at s'Nice (Brooklyn). There will be more details in the coming week or so, but be sure to keep the night free. If you need convincing that we're worth saving the date for, look at all the fun we had last year.

SuperVegan was happy to be a guest at last night's Third Annual Brooklyn Blogfest, which was held at the ginormous Brooklyn Lyceum. We know Brooklyn is full of talent, but it was wonderfully overwhelming to be in a huge room teeming with borough residents representing about a hundred different blogs on everything from neighborhood politics to gardening. Major kudos to Louise Crawford of Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn for organizing the event and bringing everyone together.

Shout out to our friends at Bed-Stuy Blog, Sustainable Flatbush, Brooklyn Optimist, Walk Around the Blog, Creative Times, Psychosomatic Rants, Candy Penny, Not Another F*cking Blog, and Gothamist.

Huge thanks to Red Mango for keeping our energy (and blood sugar level) high with moist cupcakes and insanely delicious chocolate topped peanut butter rice crispy squares.

May is Bike Month in New York City and while there are dozens of ways to participate in the celebration, the event I am most excited about is The First Annual Doggie Pedal Parade (Saturday, May 17th, 2pm). The event, which is organized by the environmental group Time's Up!, seeks to combine two things the group loves-- bikes and dogs--in an effort to raise awareness about green transportation with animal companions, as well as the benefits of adopting an animal from a shelter.

Bike riding people and their dogs will meet in Union Square Park and ride through the East Village and Greenwich Village, making stops at dog-friendly spots like Animal Haven Adoption Center, Social Tees, and the dog runs at both Tompkins and Washington Square Parks along the way.

Some things that raise interesting questions have been collecting in my browser tabs bar. I thought I'd share them with you.

• There's a thorough post over at U.S. Food Policy about the scope of meat in rising food costs. It takes into account the rising cost of animal feed (and competition from the biofuels industry) and also the dramatic increases in meat consumption, especially in developing nations.
• A turtle named Myrtle, who was well known in the backyards of her block in Williamsburg was painted pink, presumably by some construction workers. It became quite a local "human interest" story. It seems like Myrtle will be OK, which is great, but I'm sure that most of those sympathizing with her story would have no moral qualms eating turtle soup.
• I've been noticing a similar disconnect in regards to Eight Belles, the racehorse who was driven to her death last week at the Kentucky Derby. The mainstream seems sort of upset about the abuse and effective murder of Eight Belles, but not really enough to realize that horse racing can be just as evil as their favorite bugaboo, dog fighting.
• And finally, Paola Antonelli, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art has "killed" a piece by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr called Victimless Leather. The tiny jacket-shaped object/creature was made of mouse stem cells and was kept alive via a nutrient tube. It (I actually feel OK using an inanimate pronoun here) grew faster than expected and clogged its own life-support system. Says Antonelli:

  [It] started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat...That thing was never alive before it was grown.

  I wonder how Antonelli thinks other "things" become alive?

This week's issue of Time Out New York is all about what makes us horny, and PETA has pretty much made it common knowledge that nothing is sexier than a vegan. So it should come as no surprise that NYC's most ethically fabulous vegan Joshua Katcher was chosen as the top profile in "Flesh Direct"-- a feature in which TONY readers posed nude and art-directed their own photos.

Katcher, who chose to modestly cover his twig-and-berries with a bunch of organic beets purchased at the Union Square farmer's market, said:

The green movement is finally becoming sexy-- and it's because of food. Food is like sex: You interact with it physically, you put it in your body. I'd rather have an amazing meal than mediocre sex.

I can get with that, but what I can't really get with is the photo of the naked vet examining a cat. Weird.

Update: New York Magazine's Grub Street calls the "vegansexual" spread "ridiculous," thus managing to criticize one aspect of vegan culture while simultaneously appropriating the language of our culture for street cred. See, we are a minority!