Today I finished organizing my massive to-do list for our bakery grand opening. In 11 weeks, my life will change dramatically. I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to what it takes to be an entrepreneur lately.

All the decisions I’ve made, and the steps I’ve taken over the last 2 years, haven’t been easy. I’ve come to have a whole new respect and appreciation for people who pave their own paths and do their own thing. For those who decided to pursue their dreams and take risks. I’m very proud, and so lucky to have ALL the friends that I do, but this particular post  is to recognize those friends and acquaintances who have raised the bar, ventured out on their own, who are trying (and who have) made a name for themselves over the last few years. After recently realizing how hard it really is to get from A to B, I believe they deserve to be recognized for who they are and what they’re doing.

The majority of these people have also chosen a vegetarian or vegan diet which makes them extra cool in my book. Not only are they making an effort to improve their personal lives, they are making an effort to save animals and help better our world. YOUR world.

First and foremost, I am inspired by my mother. I have yet to convert her to vegetarianism, but I’m relentlessly working on it. Regardless, she’s the biggest bad-ass on earth for raising me as a single mom for most of my life. I’m glad she has someone to take care of her now. She deserves the break. Go veg mom!

My husband Flori. The “serial entrepreneur”. Between obtaining his BA while on tour with his band ZSK, running his own marketing and advertising company in Germany, managing his co-owned clothing company, doing contract work for PETA, managing Cinnaholic, and putting up with my moody ass, he is my hero.

Ben and Laurel Powers. The most incredible wedding photographers on the face of the earth. I met Ben at Disneyland when I was 16 years old and he was running his own vending machine company. Since then, he and his wife have created Powers Studios which received ‘Portland’s Best Wedding Photography Studio’ award in Oregon Bride Magazine 2009. We’re lucky enough to have them shooting our wedding!

Hendrik Thiele. Author and Editor of HRVST. HRVST features various people who have roots in the underground / punk / hardcore environment. Be it painters, graphic artists, writers, musicians, photographers, label-guys, or whatnot. Hendrik is one of my husbands good friends and also works for PETA.

Jack Norris and his wife Alex Bury. Jack is the President and co-founder of Vegan Outreach. Vegan Outreach produces informative vegan booklets, and has distributed over 11 million copies. In 2005, he was elected to the Animal Rights Hall of Fame. Alex, his wife, does an amazing job helping raise funds and organize things at the Oakland PETA office.

Jesse Miner. Vegan personal chef. Jesse received the Personal Chefs Network’s November 2008 Pacesetter award, was awarded “Best Vegan Magician” in The San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Best Of The Bay 2008, and is currently San Francisco’s #1 personal chef on yelp.com. This guy is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to food, ingredients and where to get the best coffee.

Karine Brighten. Karine Brighten Events is a full service event-planning firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in affordable eco-friendly events that are kind to animals and the planet. A ‘green’ event planner so to speak. We met Karine at the Farm Sanctuary ‘Walk for Farm Animals‘ event. We were so impressed with the way she organized everything that we hired her for our wedding!

Check out her upcoming ‘Women Entrepreneurs Showcase Event’ this Sunday HERE!

Laura Beck. Laura is the vice president of Rocket Dog Rescue, a community manager for the world’s largest vegetarian recipe website, VegWeb, founding editor of Vegansaurus.com, a columnist for VegNews Magazine, and can be found contributing “colorful” commentary and real talk to many online newspapers, journals, and blogs. Laura is one of the funniest people I know, not to mention a huge supporter of Cinnaholic.

Melliser Elliott. Vegan baker, blogger and author. Melisser runs a vegan bakery called Sugar Beat Sweets and manages a blog called The Urban Housewife. She’s in the process of releasing her new book titled ‘The Vegan Girl’s Guide to Life‘. When I went vegan and started Googling ‘SF vegan bakers’, I came across her blog. After reading up on who she was and what she was all about, I felt like I finally found someone I could relate to in the vegan scene. She has been a source of inspiration from the very beginning of my vegan baking career.

Mike Park. Although I am personally not connected to Mike Park just yet, my husband and many of his old band friends are. Mike Park is a well known musician, the founder of Asian Man Records, progressive activist, role model and… our wedding officiant! Through some mutual ties, we were connected with Mike a few months ago and he plans to marry us in our backyard this June. Read more about his awesomeness HERE.

Shani Campbell. President of East Bay Animal Advocates. Also, the most hardcore vegan I know. East Bay Animal Advocates is a non-profit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their mission is to examine and analyze the impact of the California agricultural industry on animals, humans and the environment. This lady never misses an opportunity to fight for an animals right whether it’s leafleting, playing the part for a protest, or simply attending vegan functions in the Bay Area. She is the most dedicated & compassionate person I’ve met in a long time.

Sarah Smart. Personal chef, ice cream maker & pastry artist at Millennium in SF. This girl can cook! For REAL. We met Sarah while we were interviewing caterers for our wedding. We’ve been swapping ideas and tips back and forth over the last few months and we’re stoked that she’s decided to open up her own vegan gourmet ice cream business! You can try some this Sunday at Karine Brighten’s ‘Women Entrepreneur Event‘!

These entrepreneurs inspire the hell out me. You should check out their stories and listen to what they have to say. Their knowledge is invaluable. I’m so thankful to be surrounded by such talented, driven, and compassionate people.

There is a saying that goes, “you’re only as good as the company you keep”.

I sure hope so.

Meet the Shannon’s

‘The Betty Crocker Project’ is a “veganizing” cooking project that was started by Annie and Dan Shannon. Inspired by the movie Julie and Julia, the Shannon’s cook their way through the Betty Crocker cookbook  and “veganize” each recipe.

If you haven’t come across this blog yet, I’m here to give you 5 reasons why it’s awesome.

1. The picture above. Duh.
2. Who doesn’t love Betty Crocker? Seriously. Even if you hate the recipes, the marketing team behind Betty Crocker is genius. Who would have thought that by making a pre-made mix and adding your own single ingredient, that it would make housewives all over the world feel like they are actually cooking from scratch?!
3. The Shannon’s are afreakindorable!
4. The movie Julie and Julia is like a mirror image of my life today. My next tattoo is going to be a giant portrait of Julia Child and Meryl Streep high-fiving each other across my stomach.  I LOVE this movie!
5. The Shannon’s have been getting tons of press regarding their blog which I think is important to shatter the myth of how difficult it is to adapt a vegan diet. Their blog demonstrates that you can take almost any recipe and substitute it with cruelty-free, and generally healthier products.

I highly recommend adding this blog to your list and bombarding your friends, family, and co-worker’s email boxes with daily recipes to try. I also recommend delivering the leftovers to my house directly.

We, as consumers, have sadly become completely detached from the source, process and production of our food today. The saying goes “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian“. Ok, maybe not everyone, but I’m willing to bet a huge majority of people would make the switch once they made the CONNECTION.

World Press Photo, an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1955, is known for organizing the world’s largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. Prize-winning photographs are assembled into a traveling exhibition that is visited by over 2 million people in some 45 countries worldwide. This year’s winners were announced yesterday in Amsterdam.

During the two-week judging, the jury viewed a record number of photographs with 101,960 images submitted by 5,847 photographers. The photographers represent 128 different nationalities.

The Italian Photographer Tommaso Ausili is one of the winners in the category “Contemporary Issues”. His series called “The Hidden Death” was awarded with the Iris d’Or Award and the title ‘Photographer of the Year’ as well as a prize of $25,000.

His photos capture what is very real in slaughterhouses in Umbria, Italy today. It shows us how neatly packaged meat in supermarkets is often completely detached in consumers’ minds from the process of it’s production.

My mom is a Food Network fanatic and one hell of a cook. When she makes something and raves about it, I know it’s good. We went out to lunch the other day and she told me about this orange coffee cake recipe she saw on the Paula Deen show. “Like crack” is how she and her friend described it.

She sent me the recipe, I veganized it, and gave it a go last night. Making a few subtle changes, of course. Pretty effing good I have to admit.

 Ingredients

nocoupons

• 2 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted, plus more for pan
• 9 biscuits (see note and recipe below)
• 1/4 cup minced walnuts
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons orange zest

Glaze

nocoupons

• 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 3 ounces vegan cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons orange juice, or more as necessary

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Make biscuit recipe. 

• Brush a 9-inch round cake pan with Earth Balance. 

•  Place 1 biscuit in the center of the pan. Cut the remaining biscuits in half, forming half-circles.

• Arrange the pieces around the center biscuit with cut sides facing in the same direction. Brush melted Earth Balance over the tops of the biscuits.

• In a small bowl, combine the walnuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, granulated sugar, and orange zest.

• Mix well and sprinkle over biscuits. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

• Meanwhile, in a small bowl combine confectioners’ sugar, cream cheese, and orange juice. Whisk until smooth adding more orange juice or cream cheese, if needed, to obtain desired taste and consistency. Mixture should be runny. 

• Drizzle glaze over the warm coffee cake and serve! 

Personally, I like a lot of glaze. I felt like the glaze recipe should have been almost doubled. To each their own though.

*Biscuit note*

The original recipe calls for Pillsbury Grands Flaky Layers which ARE NOT VEGAN. Instead, we made our own biscuits from scratch using Bisquick. Although the flavor was good, the texture was much drier and not flaky like the Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits would have been. I suggest finding a good light, flaky biscuit recipe for best results. Something more like this recipe, perhaps?

 Bisquick recipe

• Mix 2/3 soy milk with 2 1/4 cups Bisquick. Add an additional 1/4 cup of soy milk if they seem too dry. You want them soft, but not wet or sticky.
• Knead about 10 times
• Roll out and cut into round biscuits about 1/2″ thick

Happy eating!

Thanks mom and Paula Deen for making my butt that much bigger.

We’re famous!
Sorta. In a 5 second famous kinda way.

Peep this SF Weekly video and our 5 seconds of fame at the :32 second mark!

Last weekend my husband and I were invited over to a friends house for lunch. My friend Radhika is from Fiji and makes the most amazing Indian food I’ve ever tasted. As a grateful guest, I offered to bring dessert.

What to make? That was the question. I knew she liked tropical fruit so I tried to think of an “island-y” recipe to make. After spending an entire day being indecisive, I decided to get in touch with my blogger friend Taymer for advice. Being an islander, I was sure she’d have some recommendations. Granted Barbados, where Taymer is from, is nowhere near Fiji, I was pretty sure she had better island type recipes than anything I could find in any book. Luckily for me, she did!

She gave me a sneak peek at an amazing coconut bread recipe from her new cookbook coming out.

D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! I think I made myself sick by devouring over half a loaf in just one sitting! It took me about a week to recover and sure enough… the cravings came back. Sadly, after all the stores had closed for the day, and I discovered I was out of half the ingredients Taymer’s recipe called for.

My solution? MODIFY. I was going to have to work with what I had on hand.

I decided to use one of my favorite muffin recipes and cross my fingers it came out OK. An hour later, I was not disappointed!

• 2 “eggs” (we use Ener-G Egg Replacer)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 2/3 cups AP or bread flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup sliced strawberries
• 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut

HEAVEN.

That’s what you’re seeing above.

A few years ago (during my pre-vegan days), my cousin brought over a plate of strawberries and cream for Easter. After just one bite, I was hooked. Whatever magicalness was in that pile of white fluff, might as well have been crack.

When I asked what the recipe was, she said it was a block of cream cheese and a jar of marshmallow puff. That’s it.

Hella healthy.

I never actually got around to making it and over the years, it was eventually forgotten. Until this weekend.

I decided to try mixing Tofutti cream cheese with Dandies marshmallows in my food processor to see if I could achieve the same results.

It tastes exactly like the original version.

With summer just around the corner, this is a great little dish to bring over for a summer BBQ or get together. Especially if you hate to cook. And trust me, people will thank you for it.

Ingredients

• One 8oz container of Tofutti cream cheese
• A half bag of Dandies marshmallows (or a little more depending on how sweet you like it)
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)

Directions

• Combine the Tofutti, Dandies and vanilla (if using) in a food processor.
• Whip the hell out of it for 30 seconds to 1 minute. 
• Say goodbye to all willpower you thought you had.

A few weeks ago our friends at SF Weekly asked us to be one of the sponsors for the 2010 SF Weekly Web Awards. The event was being held at 111 Minna and celebrating the best of the Bay Area’s web and social media scene. We were told there would be art, music, free food, a couple hundred people, and most importantly, an OPEN BAR.

SOLD!

After spending all day in our rental kitchen slaving away over a hot oven, we finally came to an agreement on which new flavors to make. We finished just in the nick of time, packed it up and rushed to get out to the city. When we arrived at the event, we unloaded, shook a few hands and headed straight for the bar to congratulate ourselves on all our hard work. Ice cold, FREE Asahi, what?!

The event started at 5pm and was scheduled to run until 9pm. By 6:30, all 400 samples of our Pina Colada, Irish Cream, Lemon and Mocha Almond rolls were GONE!

We mingled a bit, checked out the artwork, and hung around just long enough to congratulate our friends at Vegansaurus on winning ‘SF’s Best Blog Post’ before packing it up.

It was a long day, but well worth seeing our friends and meeting some very cool new people. Thanks to Holly and the rest of the SF Weekly crew for having us!

On another note, if you’re looking for something to do this Sunday, Issues in Oakland (where the East Bay Vegan Bakesale is held) is holding an in-store vegan cooking demonstration from 6-9pm. The Post Punk Extravaganza West Coast Tour will feature traveling vegan chef and author Joshua Ploeg doing a cooking show demonstration from his book In Search of the Lost Taste, a screening of the Plan-It X Records Documentary by Joe Biel, and an “edible secrets” mobile museum by Mia Partlow and Michael Hoerger.

Sadly, we can’t make this one since we’ll be snapping pictures of hot chicks for our storefront photo shoot.

HOLLERRRRRR!

You should go though.

This year I celebrated my second vegan Easter. It pretty much ruled. We decided to throw together a potluck at our house and invite all of our friends, family and of course, all their 4 legged friends.

We were kinda concerned about the weather seeing that it rained the day before and the day after. Thankfully, we were spared and everyone was able to mingle outside. Our guests ranged from family, to old high school friends, new friends, friends of friends of friends, complete strangers and even a few local vegan celebs from VegNews and Vegansaurus!

We kicked things off with a candy guessing game. You know… you write your name on a piece of paper and guess how many pieces are in the jar sorta thing. We had an adult prize and a kids prize for the winner to be announced later on in the day.

Moving on to more important things… THE FOOD. Everyone brought a vegan dish to share and yes, everything was INCREDIBLE. I only managed to make it through round one which consisted of mango/black bean salad, roasted fingerlings with green beans and herbs, brown rice with asparagus and seasoning, some marinated pasta with zucchini and tofu, homemade focaccia bread, steamed edamame, pita bread and hummus, fresh fruit, chocolate-coconut macaroons, carob donut holes and chocolate chip cookie bars. I was pretty sure I was on the verge of death by the last bite. I did, however, mange to squeeze in a couple bites of the double layered mocha cheesecake I made. Needless to say, I spent all day Monday paying for it.

Once I began to regain feeling in my limbs and slowly slipped out of my food coma, I sent the hubs off to hide the plastic Easter eggs filled with little toy figurines and Swedish fish. Yeah, yeah, I know. “No money?” We is broke suckas. They’re lucky it wasn’t just sticks and rocks inside. Apparently these kids have super powers or something considering I went into the house to get my camera, came out and the hunt was over. Either that, or my husband is a terrible egg hider.

I’m going with the super powers.

After the hunt, we gathered everyone around to announce the winners of the contest. Ava, was the closest in kids guesses and walked away with a travel Etch A Sketch. I think somewhere in between making chalk drawings on the ground, blowing bubbles and painting ceramic Easter figurines, she forgot why she won which made it even more fun.

There was a tie for the adult prize. A $15 itunes gift card. Graciously forfeited by my stepfather Michael, Dana Portnoy ended up walking away with the prize.

After the candy had been counted, we had some super awesome friends volunteer to shove it all into a colorful ‘chick-in-an-egg’ pinata for the kids. The chicks face looked terrified as soon as I bought it.

After the poor chick was smashed to all hell, the kids scrambled to fill their Easter baskets with the contents while their mom’s stood behind them scooping out the candy just as quickly as the kids were shoveling it in.

I now have 2 giant jars of Jolly Ranchers and Dum Dums sitting in my living room and their are probably 4 very pissed off kids at home.

Things started to wind down, the dogs were all tuckered out from chasing each other around the yard and the sun was starting to set. We said our goodbyes and as far as I could see, everyone left with a full belly and a smile on their face.

The day couldn’t have gone any better. We got to hang out with some uber rad people, eat some delicious food and watch the little ones (kids and pups) play all day in the sun. A few dishes still need to be sorted (nothing a game of ‘tag your dish’ on Facebook can’t fix) and the rest is history!

Memorial Day is coming up soon…. round 2 perhaps?!

Hope you all had a Happy, Cruelty-Free Easter!!!!