How to Stop Internet Douchebaggery: The Passive-Aggressive Status Update

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

There are myriad ways to be a douchebag on the internet. I’m sure you can think of at least a dozen off the top of your head, and everyone has a sub-species of internet douchebaggery which sets her blood boiling.

Mine is the passive-aggressive status update. We have all been guilty of this one from time to time. However, I belong to a community of people who are notorious for the passive-aggressive status update. Sometimes it gets so bad that I start to suspect that they are secretly trying to out-obnoxious one other.

That’s right, vegans: I’m talking to you.

My personal favorite vegan passive-aggressive status update1 is: “I don’t understand how someone who eats animals can call himself an animal lover.” (If it’s Facebook, this is sometimes accompanied by a link to an article about factory farming or animal cruelty.) I see that one in my feed at least a dozen times a year. Another one which gets a lot of use during fundraising campaigns is: “How is it that people have no problem spending ___ on ____, but they won’t donate money to save the animals?” My feelings about this can best be summed up by Dawson:

The biggest problem with the passive-aggressive status update is that if you are a frequent offender, your “target audience” will unfollow you so as not to be offended or annoyed by you on a daily basis, which will just leave all of the people who agree with you, or who are too nice to unfollow you. You will be preaching to the choir. And as a member of the choir, allow me to be the first to say: I’m good! No need! Save your breath! 2

There seems to be a pervasive belief in the vegan community that guilt and shame are the best ways to motivate someone to listen to you, donate money to your cause, or go vegan. I don’t know why so many people cling to this belief, but I do know that it is false.

Someone might be motivated to take an initial action as a response to guilt or shame—this is the foundation of all New Year’s resolutions, after all—but unless there is real conviction behind those actions, he will go back to whatever is easiest for him. That doesn’t make him a bad person—just like how you’re not a bad person when you occasionally buy clothes from Target or Old Navy even though you know that they use sweatshop labor.

We are all just doing our best.

Let’s move on to the positive action! This is the easy part!

  • When you are angry or irritated, resist the urge to vent those feelings over social media.
  • Ask yourself: Would I be comfortable saying this to this person’s face? If the answer is truly yes, then maybe you should! If you care that much and you really want him to hear what you have to say, then I would say definitely you should, because speaking directly to someone is the only way to actually get his attention.
  • If you wouldn’t be comfortable saying it to her face, then I would suggest an alternate form of venting: write about in a journal, post about it on a private forum of like-minded individuals, send an email to a friend, talk about it with your roommate or significant other.

Ta-da!

1 One that makes me want to punch walls

2 Actually, I will unfollow you, too. I don’t want to read that shit, either.

Posted in life | 8 Comments

Happy Halloween, Hallowieners!

Posted on October 31, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

Happy Halloween, pals! It’s the last day of Vegan MoFo 2011. MoFoers, are you exhausted? I know that I am, and I didn’t even post half as many posts as I was hoping to.

Today is a perfect example of where my good MoFo intentions and I have parted ways: I woke up intending to take pictures of my food all day for Daily Eats Wednesday. Halfway through eating my breakfast—which was really Milo’s leftover breakfast—I remembered: “Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be taking a photo of this.” Daily eats, scrapped.

I wanted to post a picture of Milo in his Halloween costume—the Halloween costume I worked on for weeks—but when I asked him if I could take a picture of him in it, he had a full-on tantrum, and I flashed to all the times that my mother asked if she could take a picture of me and I responded by whining, grimacing, or just escaping. I made a mental note to call and apologize to my mom. For probably the 12th time today.

So here is a picture of him that his best friend Jack’s mom took of him on Saturday when he and Jack went trick-or-treating in St. John’s:

Milo as a mummy

I was hoping that the challenges I set for myself for MoFo would be stimulating and thought-provoking, but all I felt was under pressure.1

I won’t be keeping up Recipe Monday, Daily Eats Wednesday, or Food for Thought Friday after MoFo, but I will still be posting at least once a week. There are really exciting things happening in my life right now, and while I’m not quite ready to talk about them yet, I look forward to sharing them with you soon. And getting your feedback, because I will need it!

Someone I follow on Pinterest pinned this the other day, and I have looked at it twice a day ever since:

Julia Child quote

That, right there, is a damned good quote.

Have a wonderful Halloween. I wish for you that every piece of candy that comes your way is vegan and that all the cute kids in your neighborhood break your heart tonight. Talk to you soon!

1 Dun dun dun dundalundun. Dun dun dun dun dundalundun.

Posted in vegan mofo | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Vegan Ikea, Fermentation, and Food for Thought Friday

Posted on October 28, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

When you go to Ikea, do you swing by the food section? I confess that I used to stop only long enough to grab a bag of Swedish Fish for Milo, but last year, I started to poke around and read ingredients list, and I’m so glad that I did.

A surprisingly large percentage of Ikea food products are vegan! I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I’m grateful for it.

These are our current favorites:

The product is called “Pepparkakor,” although Milo calls them “flower cookies.” They’re a thin ginger wafer cookie, a knockoff of the brand Anna’s Swedish Thins (which Ikea also carries), and they’re awesome. According to Wikipedia, pepparkakor is the Scandinavian take on the traditional Christmas gingerbread. Scandinavia, you and I are so sympatico. As much as I love fat, tender pieces of gingerbread, I prefer to roll my gingerbread cut-out cookies super-thin so that they get really crispy.

I happened to notice on my way out that Ikea’s gingerbread houses are also vegan! Hooray! I can’t wait to pick some up in a month and decorate some killer gingerbread houses with Milo.

Yesterday, I tried my hand at fermentation. I made a batch of fennel and apple sauerkraut!

Before:

During:

As for the after: I’m going to let it ferment for a full 21 days before trying it, so check back in a few weeks!

Posted in food for thought friday, life, vegan mofo | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Daily Eats Wednesday: Fakesgiving

Posted on October 26, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

Last Friday started out with pumpkin spice coffee and a pumpkin-cider waffle. Pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin!

More coffee:

For lunch, I had a quesadilla.

Have I mentioned yet that I eat nearly all of my meals on salad plates? I feel like some of these photos, because of their extreme close-upness and how much of the plate is covered, look like so much more food than is really there.

I made blackened tofu cubes for a boost of protein mid-afternoon.

When Katie and Kati showed up for Fakesgiving, I made myself a mug of hot apple cider spiked with bourbon:

Fakesgiving feast: seitan with golden gravy, brussels sprouts, and those delicious pumpkin potatoes.

Seconds of seitan and gravy:

Katie brought So Delicious’s new Mint Chocolate coconut milk:

Yum! I can’t wait to try their new nog flavor. Do you think it will be good enough for me to stop making my own nog recipe?

Finally, the perfect end to a Fakesgiving dinner: Katie’s apple pie.

Posted in daily eats wednesday, vegan mofo | Tagged | 3 Comments

Recipe Monday: Bee’s Knees Pumpkin Potatoes

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

This is my pal Kati B (with her beautiful new pink hair, no less):

kati bee's knees

Kati B works at Sweetpea with our Katie Jane (and with Matt, for that matter, but that is not relevant here, let’s look at a picture of pretty Katie):

Thus the last initial to distinguish which Kati(e) you’re talking about/to. But I’m not really down with first names & first initial of last name combos. They’re so impersonal. It feels like I’m back in grade school.

So I call her Kati Bee’s Knees.

Last week, I had a mad hankering for Thanksgiving food, and I didn’t want to wait six weeks, dammit! So I emailed Katie and suggested that we collaborate on a mini-Thanksgiving dinner. Fakesgiving, if you will.

Friday night, Katie and Kati came over and together we made a feast: seitan roast, gravy, brussels sprouts, pumpkin potatoes, and apple pie.1

“Pumpkin potatoes?” you’re asking, I can tell. I know, I was skeptical myself! I tend to relegate pumpkin to sweet treats and baked goods. But I trust in Kati Bee’s Knees, and I’m glad that I do, because these were incredible.

Here is my take on her amazing pumpkin potatoes. Vegenaise stands in here for the traditional sour cream in mashed potatoes recipes. Kati used a full cup of Vegenaise for only 1 1/2 times as many potatoes, and they were truly decadent. If you want your potatoes to be the star of the show, bump up the Vegenaise. Vegenaise is magic, you know? It makes everything better.

Bee’s Knees Pumpkin Potatoes
makes 6-8 servings

3 lbs russet potatoes, roughly peeled, cut into 1-2″ chunks
3/4 cup pureed cooked or canned pumpkin
1/4 cup Vegenaise
2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine
3 cloves garlic, smashed and pressed, minced, or Microplaned
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika or 1/8 teaspoon paprika and 1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/4 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Add potato chunks to a large stockpot and add just enough cold water to cover the potatoes. Salt the water liberally, at least one teaspoon. Cover and bring the water to a boil. Boil the potatoes until tender, usually 10-15 minutes.

Drain the potatoes then transfer them back to the pot they were cooked in or a large mixing bowl. Mash them with a potato masher while they’re still steaming hot. Add pumpkin, Vegenaise, margarine, and garlic, and mash again. Add seasoning and incorporate the seasoning thoroughly using either the masher or a spoon. Serve immediately.

1 Want more details? You won’t have to wait long. This Wednesday’s Daily Eats will include pictures of all the delicious food we ate Friday night.

Posted in recipe monday, recipes, vegan mofo | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Food for Thought Friday

Posted on October 21, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

Hocus Pocus

  • If you haven’t been reading Katie’s reviews of horror movies (like Hocus Pocus, pictured above) on Don’t Eat off the Sidewalk, you’re missing out. They are golden. I have read every word of every post. My favorite so far is the Chucky one, but I just noticed that she reviewed Poltergeist, which is my all-time favorite—When the bodies float up to the top of the swimming pool? I screamed for 5 minutes the first time I saw that! Also, I was 11—so I can’t wait to read that one! Oh, right, this is Food for Thought Friday: there are links to recipes related to the movie at the end of every post.
  • Amanda‘s Kale Salad with Buffalo Tempeh looks so good, I can’t wait to try it.
  • Something I love about following the blogs of vegan Portlanders is that I discover places I never knew existed. Like when Kittee posted about Bui Natural Tofu! How did I never know about this place? My son’s favorite food in the entire world is spring rolls!
  • I am down for any spin on the Old Fashioned.
  • Finally, two recent favorite posts of Stop Chasing Skinny: If You Want to Quit Barfing and Fat Acceptance Saved My Life
Posted in food for thought friday, links | 3 Comments

Recipe Monday: Fluffy Pancakes

Posted on October 17, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

write about love lyrics

For the past week, I have been compiling the recipes for my upcoming Best Of cookbook, and I can’t help but think of these Belle & Sebastian lyrics while I’m doing it, because they really are true! Writing about love does make me feel better, and this cookbook is nothing if not a labor of love. It’s also a little bit like reading an old diary, because each recipe transports me to the time and place when I was writing and testing it.

I wrote this recipe when Matt, Milo, and I were living with my parents in Texas, and I don’t think I would have been quite as pancake-obsessed were it not for my dad. My dad makes pancakes regularly, but they are definitely not vegan. Waking up to the smell of pancakes on the griddle and knowing that I couldn’t eat any of them lit a fire under my ass to develop a buttermilk pancake recipe of my own.

I apologize for the quality of the photo below: when you’re making pancakes at 6 in the morning for your hungry preschooler and yourself, there is a serious shortage of both natural sunlight and time to stage photos.

Fluffy Pancakes

Fluffy Pancakes
makes 4 servings

1 1/2 cups soymilk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil

optional:
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1/2 cup of mix-in (blueberries, bananas, nuts, chocolate chips…)

Heat a griddle or a skillet with low sides to medium-high heat. If you won’t be serving the pancakes as you make them, preheat an oven to 200 degrees and set aside a baking sheet.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the soymilk and apple cider vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and then give the dry ingredients another good stir for good measure. Add the water and vegetable oil to the soymilk and vinegar mixture, which by now should have curdled, and stir together.

Before combining the wet and dry ingredients, turn the heat on the griddle down to medium. Add a tiny bit of oil to the surface (it should skid across the surface, not hiss or pop), then use a generous wad of paper towels to rub the oil into the hot surface of the griddle while still protecting your hands. There should be no oil visible on the surface.

Now, make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients and the flaxseed meal, if you’re using it. With a spatula or whisk, stir together the batter for ten seconds, or until all very big lumps are gone. The batter will still be lumpy. That’s okay.

Ladle 1/4-1/3 cup of pancake batter directly onto the skillet. If you want to mix in an ingredient, this is where you would do so, not during the mixing process but directly onto the ladled pancake. You want to add just a few to the center of the cake. You can choose to ladle as many pancakes as will fit on your griddle or you can do them one at a time, whatever is most comfortable for you. Just leave enough room between the pancakes to easily flip them.

When bubbles have formed in the middle of the pancakes and the edges are dry, use your spatula to lift the corner of the cake and check the color. It’s ready to flip when it’s golden brown. Do not, under any circumstances, press down on the pancake with your spatula. Let it do its thing. The less that you mess with pancakes, the better. After you flip, the second side will cook faster than the first side.

The first round of pancakes is usually … I don’t want to say bad, but they’re not as tasty as the rest of them will be. This is just part of the process. The first round is how you find the right temperature, so you need to sample one of them. Tear it open: if it’s cooked on the outside but too raw on the inside, turn the temperature down. If you make pancakes regularly, you’ll find your “sweet spot” on your stove and may eventually be able to do away with the tester round altogether.

Before each round of pancakes, give your batter another good whisk to re-activate the baking powder.

If you can serve them immediately, that’s best, but if you want to serve them all at once, put the pancakes onto a baking sheet in a single layer and then into a warm oven until you serve. Don’t stack them or they’ll get soggy.

Serve warm with syrup and margarine.

Posted in recipe monday, recipes | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Vegan MoFo Hump Day and Food for Thought Friday

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

When you have a pal like Kittee and she asks if you want to participate in something fun, you answer: “Yes!” immediately. You don’t ask questions! No need to ask questions!

So when she sent me an email about Vegan MoFo Hump Day, I got as far in the email as “Leslie Hall,” and I was onboard. Leslie Hall is amazing! On any given day, you can find me bopping around my house humming her song “Blame the Booty.” I was almost her for Halloween last year, but I could not find enough shiny material, and if you’re going to be Leslie, you better be Leslie all the way. There is no half-assery involved.

Did you know that Leslie recently went vegan? She is sharing this song with us to help us celebrate Vegan MoFo Hump Day. Click to image to listen and download.

Now that you have your soundtrack, let me give you some things to read!

Have a fantastic Hump Day and weekend!

Posted in food for thought friday, vegan mofo | Tagged | Leave a comment

New Project! Daily Eats! Dinner with MoFoers!

Posted on October 13, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

I’m excited to announce today that I’m working on a new project.

I get multiple emails a week asking about Yellow Rose Recipes. People read about the book on blogs or vegan forums or have it recommended to them by friends, and then they go searching for a copy to purchase and are surprised to see that none are available. Then they email me and ask: “Is it going to be republished anytime soon? Do you have any more copies left?”

Obviously, I love getting these emails—who wouldn’t?—but I hate them, too, because I dread having to write back and say, “No, sorry, there are no plans for republishing, and I’m saving the few copies I have left to give to charities and to friends and family.”

In about six weeks, I will have a better answer for them!

I am self-publishing a Best Of cookbook, and it will be available in late November/early December.

It will be about 100 recipes from Yellow Rose Recipes, the Potluck Mania zines, and this website.

You know how you always make the same 5-10 recipes out of every cookbook you own, even if the cookbook has over 300 recipes in it? This Best Of book is just those recipes: fan and tester favorites only! I’m also updating the vast majority of them so that there are more options and variations. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin your favorites, just give you more choices of how to personalize them to your taste so that they’re even better.

If you have a favorite recipe and you want to make sure that it makes the cut, please comment below and let me know. I’m still picking and choosing and nothing is set in stone yet.

Enough blabber, onto Daily Eats:

This past Tuesday started with coffee and a Banana Breakfast Bar from Vegan Diner:

coffee and breakfast bar

More coffee:

coffee

I am down to 1/3 caff and 2/3 decaf. That is doing the trick for me: I’m still getting a little bit of caffeine when I first wake up and then another tiny burst a few hours later. I’m not interested at this point in cutting caffeine entirely out of my life.

Look at this lunch: nachos (tortilla chips topped with veggie chili and a dollop of cilantro sour cream), carrot sticks, and a BBQ seitan sandwich.

nachos, carrots, bbq seitan sandwich

This is Milo’s lunch, actually, and when I put it down in front of him, he said: “Uh, I don’t want this,” and got up and walk away. Dudes, I’m just telling you this so that you know that my child is insane. Look at how good that lunch is!

Do you want to see my lunch?

nuggets and chili

Nuggets with agave-mustard sauce and veggie chili with cilantro sour cream. Not even half as exciting.

Milo did eventually wander back and eat about 1/3 of his lunch—which is a reasonable amount, because I always give him way too much, since he picks at everything. Matt ate Milo’s leftovers.

At around 4, I got really hungry, but I was expecting friends at 6 and didn’t want to spoil dinner, so I grabbed a handful of Trader Joe’s 12 grain mini snack crackers.

handful of mini crackers

When I invited some pals over for crafting and soup-eating, I forgot all about the fact that there were MoFoers in the mix.

I served the kitchen sink stew I posted about yesterday:

kitchen sink stew

I drank a small glass of white wine (can you spy a Kittee through the wine glass?):

white wine

And another:

another glass of white wine

I like to pour only about a half-glass at a time so that I don’t accidentally overdo it.

And then it was dessert time! Kittee made an incredible four-layer rice krispie brownie peanut butter kitteekake and Amanda made delightful almond halva:

kitteekake and halva

With this plate of sugary deliciousness, I drank some warm apple cider provided by Katie Jane:

apple cider

And then finally, last but not least, Sayward arrived and brought with her a raw pumpkin pie:

raw pumpkin pie

I feel blessed to know so many talented vegan cooks, but next time I might ask someone to bring a salad? Isn’t that what vegans eat? Salads?

Posted in daily eats wednesday, vegan mofo | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Recipe Mon, Er, Wednesday: Kitchen Sink Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings

Posted on October 12, 2011 by

vegan month of food 2011

I am embarrassed that it has happened so soon, but I’ve missed a Recipe Monday. To make it up to you, here is a recipe on Wednesday.

What do you do when you’re low on cash and have a half dozen friends coming over for crafts and noshing? You make a big pot of kitchen sink stew, that’s what you do!

I make this soup once a week in the fall, sometimes with white beans instead of chickpeas, or without the seitan, or with just corn instead of peas and corn, or… really whatever is in the house at the time dictates the ingredients.

Don’t be intimidated by the length of ingredients here; it all comes together easily and most of the time is spent waiting and stirring rather than doing actual work. If you make it the first time without the seitan or dumplings, you could always try it with one or both at a later date.

Kitchen Sink Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings

Kitchen Sink Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings
makes 8-12 servings

2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked at least 8 hours
2 T olive oil
2 cups chopped yellow onion (about 1 large onion)
1 cup chopped celery (about 2 large stalks)
1 1/2 cups chopped carrots (about 2 medium carrots)
2 T vegetarian chicken-flavored broth powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
10 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 lb yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1/2 pieces
1 recipe Seitan Chunks (see below)
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 recipe Sweet Potato Dumplings (see below)

Seitan Chunks

1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 t salt
1/2 t rubbed sage
pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 cup water
1 t Bragg’s Liquid Amino Acids or soy sauce
1 1/2 t olive oil

Sweet Potato Dumplings

1/2 lb cooked sweet potato (about 1/2 large sweet potato)
1 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t rubbed sage
freshly ground black pepper
2 T olive oil
6 T soymilk

If you haven’t already done so, soak your chickpeas for 8-24 hours before starting the soup, changing the water every 4-8 hours. Rinse well.

Heat olive oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions, celery, carrots, and a large pinch of salt, stir, and cover. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook until carrots are tender and onions are translucent, stirring every few minutes, about 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, assemble your seitan chunks. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients. Stir to combine. Set aside.

Add broth powder, nutritional yeast, water, soaked and rinsed chickpeas, and bay leaves and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, give it a good stir, cover, then set your timer for 30 minutes.

Assemble your dumplings. Mash the cooked sweet potato in a medium bowl, then add the dry ingredients one by one, then use a fork to mix the dry ingredients with the potato until it’s small crumbs. Then add the wet ingredients and mix just until wet ingredients are fully incorporated. Set aside.

Come back when the timer comes off, reduce the heat to a low simmer if it’s not already there. Add the potatoes. Drop chickpea-sized seitan chunks into the soup. I do this by hand but you could do it with a spoon, I guess. Cover again, set the timer for 30 minutes. Check every 5 minutes to make sure temperature is staying at a low simmer, adjusting heat as necessary.

After the seitan and potatoes have cooked with the stew for 30 minutes, add the frozen corn and peas, season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and then drop the dumplings into the stew with a teaspoon. Try to keep them from touching each other; I like to work in concentric circles from the inside of the pot out. Cover again and simmer for 10 more minutes.

When the 10 minutes are up and the dumplings have risen to the top, you’re done! Serve warm.

Posted in recipe monday, recipes, vegan mofo | Tagged | 2 Comments