My fiance and I have been considering adopting a dog for a while now. I’m well aware that dog’s are not just cute, little play toys that you feed whatever they’ll eat and play with them when you feel like it. I realize that dog’s are a HUGE responsibilty. It would mean no more spontaneous sleepovers and lots more cleaning up and babysitting. Somehow my fiance is not so convinced and has given me some ‘required reading’ before we even consider browsing the shelters.

I’ve been reading the book “The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dog Training” by Paul Owens. Stupid title; great book. Somewhere in chapter two it touched on the nutritional importance of your pooches diet. Being super into nutrition and health myself, I was intrigued.

It talks about the “4 D’s”. DISEASED, DISABLED, DOWNER and already DEAD animals when they arrive at the slaughterhouse.

What does this have to do with your dog’s nutrition, you ask? Uh…your dog is probably eating it.

After reading further on what actually goes into the majority of most dog foods (and cat food), I was HORRIFIED! Dead, sick animals and even peoples pets that had been euthanised and pumped full of chemicals?! Barf.

I did a Google search and found some excellent info on The California Dog website in an article by Deb Dempsey that basically reiterates what the book says. Please read it here.

All I can say is don’t be a dumbass and feed your pets anything you wouldn’t eat. If you have decided to take an animal in and treat them as one of your family members, at least have the decency to do a little research on what you are going to be putting into their systems every day.

Read the label on your pet’s food. Choose diets that do not contain harmful by products and chemicals like BHA, BHT, and ethoxyqin.

Some brands worth looking into are Nature’s Variety, Eagle Pack, California Naturals, Innova, Wysong, Old Mother Hubbard, Halo, Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance or any of the diets in The Natural Health Bible for Dogs & Cats.

Image by Chrissie_Un

The day before the event is when I first heard about the Farm Sanctuary’s Walk for Farm Animals. So much for staying on top of the 50,000 social network connections I have.

Thankfully, I was able to get in contact with Karine, the super cool organizer, just in time to see how we could help.

“For more than 2 decades, Farm Sanctuary’s annual Walk for Farm Animals has helped spread the word about the treatment of animals on factory farms and raised funds for rescue, education and advocacy work.
The walks are an important part of Farm Sanctuary’s history and their outreach and fund raising efforts. They are also a great way for supporters to help send a positive message of compassion and hope for farm animals.

Each year, the walks are more successful, attracting more participants and raising more money to help abused animals. They are positive events that bring people together who care about what factory farming is doing to animals, to other people and to the environment.

Walks occur across the U.S. and in Canada in September and October. Walks are organized and run by volunteers, and it is their commitment and talent that makes the events so successful. All of the generous contributions go straight to Farm Sanctuary. ”

Being the broke ass that I am, I was sadly only able to contribute $20. After mentally scanning the leftover ingredients in my kitchen, I figured we probably had enough stuff to whip up a couple goodies and bring them down to the actual event that Saturday to give away to the participants. A few hours and a brownie or 2 later,
we were all baked out and ready to contribute!

We set up a table, borrowed a donation jar and mingled for the next 2 hours. I was stoked to see how many people showed up and were ready to walk! Not only that, but the $5, $10 & $20 donations being dropped into the donation jar was super encouraging.

We saw some familiar faces and got to know a few new ones while listening to some sweet tunes on the hill.

.

After a couple introductions and awesome speeches, everyone gathered up their signs & gift bags and headed out to represent.

I’d like to say we walked proudly with our signs held high but in all honesty, we skipped the walk since we had a million other things to do. It was great to be there for a couple hours and meet some new people though. It was nice to see how many people out there really do care about the well-being of another species.

Hopefully by spreading the word about Farm Sanctuary’s work, next years walk will be even more successful. If you’d like more info or you’d like to contribute, you can do so here.

Congrats to all the participants and a big “You’re Awesome!” to Farm Sanctuary. Keep up the good work!

Information provided by Farm Sanctuary
Photos by Sherisa Cooper

 
Within 2 hours we were sold out and estimated to have brought in about $275 for the kitties at Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue! That was just a small portion of the $2,600 (in 1 day!) raised by the other 50 amazing vegan bakers including  VegNews magazine, À Côté Restaurant, Sugar Beat Sweets, Violet Sweet Shoppe, Idle Hands Baking Company, Fat Bottom Bakery, Pure Life Chef, Mood for Food/Philip Gelb, Avi’s Vegan Treats, Laura Lemon, Brassica Supper Club, Ike’s Place, Love All Beings, Say It’s Not Soy & It’s Faturday.

On top of raising funds for the cause, 2 adorable kitties were able to find new homes as a result. How freakin’ awesome is that?!

Sunday… oh man. Where do I even start? OK, about a month ago we signed up to compete in a mini-cupcake contest held by SF Food Wars at the Stable Cafe. I thought it would be a good experience to enter a food competition and see what it was like even if the competition WAS NOT vegan.

Finally. The acceptance email! I was uber stoked to find out we’d been accepted considering our submission was vegan. Time to get our mother effin’ bake on!

 About a week before the competition we tried to get fancy with a recipe that totally ended up blowing. This was our one attempt at putting in any kind of effort to win. We tossed it and figured “Screw it, let’s just stick with what we know and have fun instead”. As a result of this decision, the 3 of us decided that going out the night before the competition and getting hammered off whiskey and tequila was a great idea. We’d get up early, throw some stuff together, mingle at the competition, pack it up, and go home. Riiiiiight.

6am, 2 hangovers and a fever later, we crawled out of bed and groaned throughout the entire baking process. We just barely wrapped things up on time and headed out with our “Vegan Blueberry Dragon Fruit Chocolate Ganache Cakes”. Fancy shmancy, eh?

Jeannie, the totally radical organizer, showed us to our table where we began setting up. We were stoked to be seated next to our veg friends at Fat Bottom Bakery (who’s creamsicle cupcakes were amazing by the way)!

What an amazing experience for our first food competition!

It probably would have been even better if I actually liked cupcakes.

It’s the first rain storm of the season!

My neighbors are probably ready to shoot me and my obnoxious wind chimes that I’ve been too lazy to take down. I did manage to make time to bust out my big comfy blankets and start suffocating everyone in my house with chemically soaked Duraflame logs though. It’s a winter tradition in my family.

Thanks to all the fantastic CA drivers and their confidence in rainy weather driving, I opted to stay home where I was safe and mix up a batch of banana bread last night. That kinda turned into banana muffins…which then turned into mini banana cream-filled cupcakes!

They came out AMAZING! If I had to describe them it would be something like perfectly sweet, super soft, creamy little pillows of deliciousness dancing in my mouth. Otherwise known as totally effin’ awesome banana cupcakes.

If you like banana, you have to try these. They were the perfect ending to a cold night by the fire and even better the next morning for breakfast.

Strap on those uber sexy ear muffs and rain boots! It’s time to get that Fall baking started!

Message me for the recipe.

It’s about to get festive up in this bitch!

Not only am I super stoked about going to the pumpkin patch and demolishing a pumpkin this weekend, I’m also stoked about sneaking pumpkin into every possible recipe I can this month. Pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream and of course…pumpkin cinnamon rolls!

Besides looking totally awesome, they taste incredible! Chewy dough with a hint of pumpkin and spice filled with sweet brown sugar filling then topped with a creamy, gooey, cream ‘cheese’ vanilla frosting. Mmmm…
We even snuck a sweet little surprise in the middle. *Shhhh!*

Want to get your hands on this recipe? Well, too bad. This one is my little secret! haha. I highly recommend Googling a similar recipe though.

Trust me, after a batch of these babies come out of the oven, you’ll be bursting with more festiveness than Martha Stewart.

Yay for October!

Giving up cheese was one of the hardest things I had to do when I decided to go vegan. I’m sure that holds true for most vegans. Vegan cheese sucks. I’ll admit it. Not ONE vegan cheese company out there comes close to tasting like real cheese. To give you an idea, vegan cheese usually tastes like a combination of rubber and cardboard and takes nothing less than a blow torch to get a shred of it to melt properly.

Until Daiya.

Thank you Jesus (or “Cheesus” as my German says with his adorable accent) for this magnificent company who created this fantastic product! If you haven’t had a chance to get your hands on this stuff, I HIGHLY recommend it. It smells like real cheese, it melts like real cheese, it bakes, stores and freezes like real cheese, and most importantly, it TASTES like real cheese. It is truly amazing and I have no doubts that I’ll be packing on an extra 10 pounds because of it. The best part?
 
It’s completely free of:

• Animal products (parve)
• Cholesterol-free 
• Trans fat-free
• Dairy free
• Free of Artificial Ingredients
• Free of  Hormones & Antibiotics
• Free of Preservatives
• Free of common allergies including: Casein, Lactose, Whey, Soy, Wheat, Barley, Corn, Rice, Gluten and Nuts!

With 33% less fat than dairy-based cheese, it’s also an excellent source of a naturally occurring vegan vitamin B-12 as well as an excellent source of B vitamins in general.

So what is Daiya made from?

Daiya is made entirely from plant-based ingredients including cassava, a tuberous root. The process is a large part of what makes Daiya possible.

The full list of ingredients are as follows:
 

I was so excited when I found out about this. I made it my mission to find out where I could get my hands on some immediately. Rumor has it, it’s sold at Rainbow Grocery in SF but I have yet to stop in there. According to Daiya’s website, it’s only available in So Cal and a few other states for now. Thankfully, there are some online ordering options such as:

• Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe 
• Pangea  
• Vegan Essentials 
• and Karmavore 

Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria is also using Daiya (by request) on their pizzas! Coincidentally, we happened to be near one last night. This is where the magic happened.

• Cupertino
• Danville
• Dublin
• Menlo Park
• Mountain View
• Redwood Shores
• San Francisco (Mission Bay)
• San Francisco (Lombard St)
• San Jose
• San Mateo
• San Rafael
• Vacaville 

One large order of Amici’s Asante pizza with thin, crispy, chewy crust topped with tomato sauce, vegan soy mozzarella, baby spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, and fresh basil… I was in Daiya heaven. Vegans, bitch  no longer. The answer to your cheese prayers is here.

….Officially about to skool 21 other competitors at SF Food Wars on Oct 18th that is! 

More info here.

BRING IT San Francisco!

With only a week and a half til’ the Mini Cupcake Clash, we hope our 22 competitors have what it takes to make you all drool. Prepare your palate! Check out this event’s team names, dish names, and official entrant numbers:

1. Zaftig Sweets / “So What Spiced Mocha”
2. Team Mustache / “Guinness Gasm”
3. Baby Bites / “Bacon & Chive Poppers”
4. Chomp / “Viva Churrito”
5. Double the Yum! / “It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time!”
6. Team Pound / “Fromage et Trois”
7. Team TimeCube / “Autumn Apple”
8. Mission Minis / “Cinnamon Horchata”
9. Little Miss Muffin / “Tiny Treasures”
10. Yahtzee, Bitchcakes! / “Tossed Salad (Dressing)”
11. Hella Fat / “My Grandma’s Bananas”
12. Small But Mighty / “Strawberry Extra-Shortcake”
13. FTW / “Vampire Bites”
14. The City Natives / “Lemon Zinger”
15. The Dynotologists / “Green Tea Cupcakes of Glory”
16. Sweetiecups / “La Vie en Brie”
17. HunnyBunny / “Piggycakes”
18. The Muffin Tops / “Mocha Mania”
19. Nali Cupcakes / “Bombay Elvis”
20. Full Windsor / “Sparkling Fruit Cupcakes”
21. Cinnaholic Sweets / “Blueberry Dragon Fruit Chocolate Ganache Cakes”
22. Corpulent Confections / “Whatever: A Vegan Creamsicle Experience”

“Hi, my name is Shannon and I’m an addict.”

I am convinced that peanut butter is the devil. I refuse to keep it in the house and find myself royally screwed every time someone places an order for peanut butter brownies.

The last week or so I’ve been busting my ass at “boot camp”. Because I’ve been working so hard, I somehow found a way to justify dunking a half of a bag of Dandies marshmallows into the peanut butter jar and then into a bag of chocolate chips before dinner. After a few days of this, I’d had enough. I was determined to overthrow the powerful death grip of the peanut butter jar. How? By devising the brilliant plan to make cookies for my co-workers. Having not thought the plan through very well, these cookies are now sitting on my desk. Taunting me.

I’ve decided that I’m not falling victim to this alone dammit. You are all coming with me!

Here’s the amazingly yummy recipe that has my thighs so pissed off at me right now.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/2 cup Earth Balance Margarine
• 1/2 cup Evaporated Cane Sugar
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 1/4 cup Peanut Butter
• Ener G Egg Replacer substitute for 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon of Soy or Rice Milk
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 3/4 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1/2 cup Peanut Butter
• Evaporated Cane sugar for sprinkling
•  

Directions

I will continue my quest for Peanut Butter Anonymous meetings in my area. Until then, this is one of the many peanut butter recipes I will continuously have to battle and pray that my thighs are forgiving.

Good luck to you all!