First, check out the exclusive interview Chloe Jo and I did with Elizabeth Olsen on set of her photo shoot!
Olsen Haus genius, Elizabeth Olsen is finally doing mens’ shoes! She asked me to model them for her new Fall/Holiday 09 lookbook! Showing the ladies shoes are Chloe Jo Berman of Girlie Girl Army, Marisa Miller of Kind Green Planet, Princess Supertar, Samantha Ragsdale of Farm Sanctuary and Ashley Lou Smith of Bloodless Bling! The very talented, vegan, awesome friend of DB, Ryan Pfluger took the photos. Check out the rest by scrolling below:
Food gets me in a tizzy! If you live in NYC and haven’t gotten bone-shaken yet, Boneshakers is a yummy little sandwich n’ pastry café in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s totally vegetarian, mostly vegan, and is as cute as a button on a messenger-biker’s fanny-pack. It’s a beacon of glimmering light on an otherwise desolate street just near the BQE. Their hand-drawn menu is clever, and the selection does not disappoint. I asked one of their hip employees which ‘knuckle’ sandwich I should get if it were my last day on earth. She recommended the big, bad Magnus which is a veggie patty, tempeh bacon, spicy aioli, lettuce tomato, and sprouts on toasted rosemary focaccia. For dessert I had to try each of the amazing chocolate chip cookie, moist cupcake, and the banana choc-chip muffin. The muffin was your typical muffin, but the cupcake and cookie were outstanding!
Tattoos and bicycles are not on the menu, but there are plenty of them to be seen! So, if you’re into that sort of nonsense, definitely check out this spot. It was fun, yum, and I’ll certainly be back.
1. What’s simple, classic, and not allowed to be worn with baggy pants? Check out this 100% synthetic Chelsea Boot from TOPMAN. Hot, and only $100! Next, if your metal-head babysitter from 1985′s wardrobe got turned into an amazing, urban, hi-top – these gold ‘n black faux-snakeskin foot-prizes would be it. Dang! Only $70 at TOPMAN.
2. Dr Cow Cashew-Bazil Nut & Macadamia vegan cheeses now available online! They are not cheap, but they are insanely yummy.
3. Speaking of cheese – I got to try the very-talked-about, soy-free, melty-as-hell Daiya cheese while mingling at a star-studded PCRM event last week. Yum! Not sure when it’ll hit stores, but it was stretchy and delicious when heated.
4. Has anyone tried the So Delicious Coconut Milk Beverage? I saw it on the shelves in Whole Foods, but I haven’t tried it yet and want to know: how does it taste? Can you steam it or foam it? Does it curdle in tea? Tell me!
5. Once again, the Canadian Seal Hunt is leaving a trail of blood. Please watch the video and click HERE to help.
6. A new study has found that crabs feel and remember pain. So that’s what a brain and nervous system do? It seems silly to even have to point this out, but unless scientists shock living things, the public thinks that brains and nervous systems are just for fun. As if you neeed one more reason to boycott Red Lobster? Duh, what’s trawling?
Are you a size 9? The Discerning Brute has teamed up with NOHARM to give away a pair of snazzy vegan ankle boots in US size 9! You can easily win these handsome leather-free shoes worth $300! Wowee! So, why don’t we dig leather here at DB? Find out.
This is another recipe inspired by my momma! Growing up, one of my favorite treats was her whipped-cream cookie cake. It’s like having a big, moist chocolate cookie dipped in sweet cream – and the best thing is that it’s so easy to make! All you need is organic, vegan chocolate wafers, and soy whip! I used Newman’s Alphabet Cookies and Soy Whip, both of which can be found at most health food stores and Whole Foods.
WHAT YOU”LL NEED:
Medium size bowl
Organic, vegan chocolate wafer cookies (any brand)
Vegan whipped cream
DIRECTIONS:
Layer each cookie with whipped cream and begin stacking horizontially in the bottom of the bowl.
Once you’ve covered the bottom, put a layer of whipped cream over the first layer.
Repeat until the bowl is full, and top with a thick layer of whipped cream.
Leave in the fridge for at least 5 hours, or overnight. The cookies will absorb the moisture and become cake-like.
Serve with a spoon, and top with a dollop of soy whip and a wafer!
TOPMAN has some very handsome perforated white canvas plimsoles, and grey mesh plimsoles that will give your feet some air time. Spring is just around the corner, and perforation is a big trend in footwear this spring – and the vegans shall not be left out!
TOPMAN has also started a line of organic jeans, called MONKEE GENES that are all ‘supa-skinny’ and made with 97% organic cotton, and 3% Elastane. They come in four colors, at $100 a pop. Black, Burgandy Cord, Slate, and Purple.
I’m a huge fan of dill and am always trying to find new ways to incorporate it into foods. I feel like it’s totally the kid on the ball field who gets chosen last. Meanwhile, basil and cilantro and sage are all running around, showing off, sliding into home base…those jerks. Anyway, I’ve been hankerin’ to find a new use for dill lately and think this recipe fits the bill pretty well. It’s an accumulation of some familiar ingredients in a little less conventional packaging. “Pesto without basil!” you say? “Pesto without basil,” I say.
The musical group we’re pairing with the food is much the same: an unconventional packaging of a somewhat familiar and wholly delightful sound. Mica Levi, who tours and records with two other musicians (Raisa Khan + Marc Pell) as Micachu and the Shapes, is one of those talented souls who has the ability to create beautiful, catchy, easily accessible songs that somehow sound completely fresh and original. Her songs are unpredictable, bouncing along from verse to chorus to maybe another verse to some strange sound that may have been someone dropping a tray of dishes and back to the chorus. Really, one of the best things about the songs is that they’re never, ever boring. And, despite how odd and unlistenable that may make the music sound, it’s really not.
Levi, who was raised by musicians and started playing music at age 4, performed in the 90s as a DJ in London’s UK Garage scene, which seems to have found a place in the roots of Micachu’s glitchy, electronic beats and blips. On top of all that and interspersed throughout are myriad unique sounds that make it seem like the band is giving impromptu performances from a junk yard: vacuum cleaners, glass bottles, a homemade hammer action guitar, and a bowed instrument made from a CD rack. But grounding all of that potentially off-putting weirdness is the fact that strong, catchy songs are at the base of the music and, to top it all off, Mica and the rest of the band seem friendly and down-to-earth.
5 Cloves of Garlic, pressed, chopped into large chunks
2 Shallots, chopped into large chunks
4 Walnut Halves
6 Yukon Gold Potatoes, small to medium, quartered with skin
1 Cup of Fresh Dill, packed to measure
1 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
1/2 Lemon, squeezed
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sea Salt
I like to lightly cook the garlic in pestos to give them a more rounded, savory taste that’s a little less biting and much easier on the breath over the following 24 hours. So, first:
Roast the garlic, shallots, and walnuts in 1 teaspoon of quality olive oil on medium-low in a skillet, preferably cast iron, for about 5 minutes, stirring often.
Lightly salt the contents to draw out some of the flavor and moisture. Allow the garlic to brown a little, but not too much and definitely don’t let it crisp up. Once that’s done, transfer the contents to a small bowl and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.
In the meantime, quarter your potatoes and roast them covered in a skillet in about 1 teaspoon of olive oil, turning them every now and then so they brown evenly. Do this for about 2-3 minutes, again, not letting them get too brown or crisp up too much, and then add about 1/2 cup of water to the pan. From here on out, you basically just need to keep checking the potatoes to see how tender they are. If they’ve absorbed all the water and are still too firm, add a little more water, cover, and check them again in a few minutes. It should take about 5-10 minutes though, all told. If you like things smokey, like I do, you can also feel free to add a touch of Hickory Smoke Flavoring while cooking the potatoes. Though I tend to add that to just about everything. It’s a problem.
While the potatoes are cooking, still keeping an eye on them to make sure they don’t overcook, get the garlic mixture out of the fridge and add it to a blender or food processor along with the dill, 1/2 cup of olive oil, lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of salt, and the nutritional yeast. Bend well, stirring from the bottom when necessary to make sure the mixture blends evenly. It should start looking like a bright green paste, similar to, say, pesto.
Once that’s good and evenly blended, you’re ready to transfer the potatoes to a bowl along with the dill pesto, where you’ll mix and coat the potatoes just before serving, so as to keep that bright, spring-like green. And that’s about it.
From all of us at the Discerning Brute, we hope you enjoy a pleasantly mixed up week.
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Whistle While You Work is written by featured contributor Troy Farmer. Click here for his full bio.
Troy Farmer
With ‘Whistle While You Work,’ we hope to bring you innovations in both vegan cooking and music, posting a new recipe and complimentary music review once every two weeks. Sometimes the music will inspire the food, sometimes the food will inspire the music, but, with every entry, we’ll give you new finds for your ears and your taste buds.
Strawberry Shortcake can make you feel like you’re home no matter where you are. The dense, moist cake, the light, sweet fluff and the crisp, tart strawberries all compliment each other so nicely. For my roommate’s birthday we made these mini strawberry shortcakes to remind her of home.
SIMPLE STRAWBERRY SHORTIE
What you’ll need:
1 large bundt pan or mini bundt pan (you can also use more boring shapes like a loaf)
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening, room temp (spectrum is great)
1. An Op-Ed published by the New York Times last week has linked killer MRSA, also known as the antibiotic-resistant “Flesh Eating Bacteria” to more than 18,000 deaths per year in the US. That’s more than AIDS. And what is the source of this superbug? You guessed it: cheap pig products. “Probably from the routine use — make that the insane overuse — of antibiotics in livestock feed. This is a system that may help breed virulent “superbugs” that pose a public health threat to us all.“
A small Dutch study found pig farmers there were 760 times more likely than the general population to carry MRSA (without necessarily showing symptoms), and Scientific American reports that this strain of MRSA has turned up in 12 percent of Dutch retail pork samples.
Now this same strain of MRSA has also been found in the United States. A new study by Tara Smith, a University of Iowa epidemiologist, found that 45 percent of pig farmers she sampled carried MRSA, as did 49 percent of the hogs tested.
And now with the NYT review of the Documentary “Death on Factory Farm” which is taking HBO viewers by
storm, I can only wonder how these animals that are smarter than dogs (yet some dogs chew delightfully on their dried ears & limbs) will fare int he coming months? And au contraire Mike Hale and the Wiles’s community, we can all eat veggies and thrive.
2. Bid on me! Help Farm Sanctuary raise some funds, and get a private brunch for two prepared by yours truly! Also bid on items from Bill Mahr, Amy Smart, Joan Jett, Chloe Jo, Daniela Sea, Heather Mills, Matt & Nat, Wendy Kidd, Dan Piraro, Gloria Steinem, Joelle Katcher, Rachael Sage, 30 Seconds to Mars, Maureen Burke, Gabrielle Brick, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Nigel Barker, and more!
3. Is recycling really all that it claims to be? Have you ever been confronted by someone who is a total recycling skeptic and didn’t know what to say?
Recycling is a tricky issue because it’s really a problem of over-production and over-consumption. But one thing is certain. We do not have infinite resources on this planet, and people who are in the industries that use up these resources, and are in positions to do something about it have a responsibility to figure out how to not leave devastated ecosystems for future generations. Just because the recycling systems aren’t perfect does not justify throwing caution to the wind and continuing ‘business as usual’.
The real issue is that recycling is not enough. Reuse is better, and ‘green’ products with toxic by-products need to be more thoroughly sourced, because there are products that come from closed loop systems, also known as EIN Eco Industrial Networking or EIP- Environmental Industrial Parks. But again, the root problem is still there.
One major problem is that recycling systems are often based on dollars as opposed to ecological and personal well-being. Dollars are abstract and when you work towards achieving such an abstraction (as opposed to working towards sustainability, good health, community, friendship, etc) the consequences to the physical world become secondary, when in fact ecosystems are primary and without functioning, healthy ones, we’d all be gone. The reason recycling appears to be useless to some people is not because re-rendering products into new products is impossible – it’s because they are seeing the effects of basing a recycling system upon a system that in itself is not sustainable.
Does that mean we shouldn’t recycle? Of course not! It means we should do that, and much much more! It also means the problems haven’t been solved and we need to get some serious critical thinking done.
Zuriick is a pretty rad shoe line out of Salt Lake City, UT. They have many animal-free, vegan-friendly shoes, and I was assured by the lead designer that they are sweatshop-free. There’s tons of style/color combos to choose from, so check them outhere. Zuriick does make some leather styles – click here to find out why we’re not so stoked on leather – so make sure to double-check your item description before purchasing.
if you are in NYC, our pals at ALTER have styles for men and women!
