The Discerning Brute: fashion, food & etiquette for the ethically handsome man » woodstock farm animal sanctuary

Destination Woodstock, NY

joshuakatcher — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:17:49 +0000

I was fortunate enough to spend the day in Woodstock at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. It's only 2 hours north of the city, and is well worth the visit. If you haven't met a sheep or a turkey, a cow or a goat - make sure to take a day and head up to visit and meet some of the animals who have been rescued from some harrowing situations. It's thrilling and surprising how complex, intelligent, and affectionate these critters are (especially considering their previous experiences around humans). Sanctuary founders Doug and Jenny are incredible hosts and give daily tours of the farm. After a day of relaxing, exploring and socializing on the farm - Garden Cafe on the Green was the scene for our dinner. We sat outdoors in the garden, and Master Chef Pam created a delectable menu: Curried Panko Crusted Fresh Green Pea Fritter lightly pan fried with toasted coconut sauce. Spring Vegetable Risotto Cake with Balsamic Caramelized Onion tempeh with red pepper basil artichoke sauce, sauteed greens. Vegan Caesar tossed with red onions, homemade croutons and toasted almonds. Polenta with Peas and Mushrooms with Basil Leek Tomato Sauce roasted asparagus and marinated artichoke salad with black olive mustard dressing, pan fried tempeh round with caramelized onion and roasted pepper relish sauteed greens.

Fluevog Spring Feet & Comedy for Karma

joshuakatcher — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:29:46 +0000

John Fluevog has released a few other spring shoes. He made these loud spring boots with all vegan materials. They make quite a statement, so if you 're a risk-taker, try pairing these with just a plain white tee and some khaki chinos or chino shorts and let the boots do most of the talking. They are available at MooShoes for $219. Next, these "Headliner" shoes have a gray-blue textile upper and extra-long laces that wrap under the arch for a really strong line. These shoes are all about the details from the blue sole to the upturned toe. I'm seeing a preppy rocker pulling these off - J.Crew with a motorcycle jacket. • Comedy for Karma IV is nearly upon us! This unique annual fundraiser for the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary is arguably the most fun you’ll ever have without a lot to clean up afterwards (don’t argue). Anyway, you’ll be helping a really great cause — especially if you opt for the hot-shot VIP Tickets. It’s nearly sold out every year so book ‘em now! SEE A VIDEO FROM LAST YEAR: Tuesday, April 5th, Doors 7:30, Show 8:00pm sharp Gotham Comedy Club, 208 West 23rd St, between 7th & 8th Aves in Manhattan

Hot Belts, Bartlett’s Rescue & The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger

joshuakatcher — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:22:32 +0000

• The Elvis & Kreese collection of recycled fire-hose tube accessories is now on sale at Bourgeois Boheme! • John Bartlett, renowned designer and animal activist, will be hosting an animal adoption event at his 7th Ave Store. The North Shore Animal League is bringing their mobile unit full of adoptable mutt-igrees as well as a couple of puppy mill rescues. I snapped the image above of Bartlett's rescue pup Tiny Tim the last time I swung by his studio. Look at that face! Saturday July 31st Noon - 5pm 143 7th Avenue South New York, NY 10014 • Get your tickets now, and get up to the gorgeous Woodstock, NY! The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (GOASTT) is the new project by Sean Lennon and his musical partner and girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Their first album “Acoustic Sessions” is due Oct. 26 and being released by Chimera Music. Listen to samples here. Opening for GOASTT will be an acoustic set from Undersea Poem, followed by Woodstock locals Jonathan Donahue (Mercury Rev) and Amy Helm (Levon Helm’s band and Ollabelle) performing as a duo called Love Is For The Birds. The concert will be held on an open lawn at the Sanctuary in Willow, NY, directions here.

Under the Water, At the Farm, On Their Backs

joshuakatcher — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:24:27 +0000

• In the New York Area for Memorial Day without any plans? Consider going to Woodstock and watching Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders) & Welsh songwriter JP Jones while supporting the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. The show is on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, May 29th, and gates open at 5pm, show at 6pm. General admission tickets are $30 advance / $35 door (if tix are still available). In the event of rain the show will be moved to the largest barn. CLICK HERE for details.

• ABC News went underwater in the Gulf with Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he described what he saw as "one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen underwater." Meanwhile, BP continues to stonewall the American people about the growing Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, even while the company is reaping millions of dollars in profits a day from its other federal leases. The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to bar BP from receiving U.S. government contracts. Suspension of BP contracts would mean the loss of billions of dollars and effectively stop the company from drilling in federally controlled oil fields both on and offshore. Prior to the current Gulf spill, EPA had linked BP to at least four instances of criminal misconduct, and BP has paid tens of millions in fines for environmental crimes. According to the public interest investigative journalists at Pro Publica, the EPA is considering re-evaluating BP and determining whether the company's actions leading up to and following the Deep Horizon spill are evidence of an institutional problem inside BP that would qualify for debarment action. Sign the Petition • Skin Trade, a documentary that I had the honor of being in, will premiere in Los Angeles, CA on June 10th. The evening is also going to be a benefit for ARME.

Get tickets: http://www.skintradethemovie.com/screenings.php

No Thanks, Turkey Day.

joshuakatcher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:08:26 +0000

For many of us, Thanksgiving is about indulgence. Around this time of year, I'm usually flying down to visit my parents in Florida, where we prepare a feast and eat much more than we typically would. Thanksgiving, not unlike the other major holidays, has become more about buying certain things assigned to that holiday and subscribing to a ritual that makes us feel good (indulging in the company of friends and family) under the guise of goodwill. And maybe that goodwill isn't just a guise, but as we all try to act out that famous Norman Rockwell painting, accurate history just doesn't seem to matter. Consider what historians have recently discovered - that Spanish-speaking, Catholic settlers dined on bean soup with the Timucua Indians almost a half-century prior to the famed 1621 Plymouth celebration (which incidentally did not have a single factory farmed Turkey at the table - and no cranberry or potatoes). So how is it that 500 years later, this holiday has become a showcase of nothing but Turkey? It is know as "Turkey Day". Last Thanksgiving I warned, "It's Me or the Turkey," vowing to never again sit at a table where the body of an individual whose existence was thankless is set out on display. A bird whose morbidly engineered body: painfully detoed and debeaked without anesthesia, forced to live in one sq-foot of space, pumped full of drugs and hormones - is somehow turned into the centerpiece of gratitude. An individual whose life is not considered valid. How is it that this abstinence I have asserted is seen as "radical", yet the processes by which this dead body arrived is not? How is it that talking about the truth of turkey farming is avoided like the plague, yet putting the product of that truth in our mouths is so enthusiastically embraced? Every year almost 300 million turkeys are slaughtered in the US. Of that, 46 million are specifically killed for Thanksgiving. Having been bred to grow at alarming rates (twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors, often causing heart attacks), commercial turkeys are slaughtered after only 14-18 weeks. Many of them die of exposure during transport to the slaughterhouse, and when they arrive, many are not properly stunned prior to slaughter. Turkeys and other poultry are specifically excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be stunned prior to slaughter. Finally, as the birds who have not been stunned avoid the automated blades slitting their throats, they are often boiled alive in scalding tanks. Even "free-range" turkeys are no better off. In an industry where maximum output and profit are king, it is no surprise that suffering by individuals who fall between the cracks is so easily overlooked. As much as we'd like them to be true, our delusions of these birds having come from peaceful, Utopian farms must be shattered. Please take a look at these undercover investigations in turkey facilities from our friends at Compassion Over Killing and Peta. As Johnathan Safran Foer says in his new book, "We can not plead ignorance, only indifference". Given what we now know about food production and factory farms, where 99% of animal products come from, it's difficult to rationalize eating turkeys in a symbolic gesture of thankfulness. The scientific community recently re-wrote the book on bird-brains, revealing how incredibly intelligent turkeys and chickens actually are, shaming the community that capitalized on their perceived stupidity. We also know that the environmental consequences of raising animals for food is greater than the entire transportation sector. We know that we don't need to eat a Turkey any more than a Twinkie, yet the sentimentality of tradition persists, and so many of us purchase the anonymous, plastic-wrapped, frozen body of a creature and gather with our families around it like some sort of shrine that we are entitled to, never giving a second thought to who he or she was, and what his or her perception and experience of this world was like. Please take a moment to watch the short video I produced for Farm Sanctuary featuring actress Ginnifer Goodwin as she considers this "tradition based on cruelty" while hanging out with some rescued Turkeys at the sanctuary in Orlan, California. So what's the alternative? Can Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving without turkey? Here are some tips on a conscientious celebration and ideas for a truly thankful holiday: • Sponsor a Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary Turkey, or a Farm Sanctuary Turkey (or both!) • Check out my recipe for Pumpkin Pockets with Smoky Seitan, Mushroom Mousse, & Braised Apple, or check out my recipe page for other ideas! • Try Celebration Roast, Tofurky, or Unturkey as the new centerpiece! • More compassionate and delicious Thanksgiving recipes from VegCooking.com:

My Farming Jacket, Shredding Lessons, Secret Jails & Pop Shops

TheDiscerningBrute — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:51:51 +0000

ONLY 1 DAY LEFT TO ENTER TO WIN THESE BOURGEOIS BOHEME BROGUES! It's so easy, don't kick yourself later for not even trying!

Turk + Taylor, creator of handsome, organic garments, has opened a pop-up store in San Francisco! If you're on the west coast, you must check out their tailored goods for both men and women. And of course they're offering up a batch of striking tees! The Turk+Taylor Pop-Up Shop is located at 1529 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Their phone number is 415-336-5364. They're open Thursday through Sunday, Noon - 7pm through the end of August. Animal Rights Activist Jailed at Secretive Prison Gives First Account of Life Inside a “CMU” In a Democracy Now exclusive interview, Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist who was jailed at a secretive prison known as a Communication Management Unit, or CMU, speaks to Democracy Now. Watch the FULL VIDEO. Jim James of the lionized My Morning Jacket has announced that a portion of the proceeds of an upcoming, limited-edition EP will go to some of our favorite peeps at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary! LEARN TO SHRED! Raw chef Judita (who also happens to star as "Judy Nails" in Guitar Hero) is teaching some raw un-cooking classes in NYC. If you want to learn Raw Foods 101 from a rockstar chef, you must take the class! The Cruelest Show On Earth! Ringling Bros has fastened itself onto Coney Island like a parasite for the summer. Find out what happens during typical behind-the-scenes training for circus elephants: Instead of supporting horrible activities like this, go to Cirque Du Soleil or Fuerza Bruta!

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It's Me or the Turkey!

TheDiscerningBrute — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:33:55 +0000

Thanksgiving is already a holiday that's wrong on so many levels. I don't need to go into the details of the nature of our ancestors interactions with the Native North Americas - or the clinging to the fantastically ridiculous and false fairy tale of our chummy dinner together one night a few hundred years ago. But the last thing we should allow Thanksgiving to continue being is yet another massacre concealed under the guise of tradition, goodwill, and entitlement. This holiday season, I am refusing to sit at any table with a big, dead, tortured, cooked bird on it!

Why? For one, I had no idea how similar turkey's are to cats until I met one. Like most people, I subscribed to the convenient belief that they were dumb and void of personality. This is such a pervasive stereotype because A) Most of us do not get to actually meet a turkey who is not dead, frozen, sliced, de-footed and beheaded. B) The turkeys can't speak in any language that we validate; their clucks and gobbles are written off as nonsense in that same fashion that racist and xenophobic Americans make fun of any language they don't understand, and C) It's the only way to rationalize what we do to Turkeys - because if they're dumb, they must have a dull ability to feel pain and fear, right?

When I finally met a turkey who approached me and rubbed his head against my leg like a cat and purred as I scratched his warm belly, I realized just how silly our rationalizations are for calling some animals 'pets' and others 'Thanksgiving dinner'. Just because something is popularly participated in, and offered up on a platter doesn't make it right. Our third-grade history books could tell us that much. This thanksgiving, I am telling my friends and family, "It's me or the Turkey!". I will not sit at the table if there is a Turkey's body on it. I never thought I'd say this, but I have friends that are turkeys! It doesn't sound silly to say we have friends that are dogs and cats, but when we take an animal that is typically stripped of individuality, and whose sole purpose is supposed to be getting it's throat slit, cooked, and eaten - it comes out sounding strange. Thankfully we don't need to have dead turkeys at our tables, and we can certainly insist that our families and friends give the turkeys something to be thankful for this year. At Farm Sanctuary, Animal Acres, The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and other sanctuaries, Thanksgiving is for the birds. Literally. If you have no plans, or don't know what to cook, check out the THANKSGIVING SURVIVAL GUIDE: EVENTS:

SuperVegan's NYC Thanksgiving Dinner Events Page! DELICIOUS TURKEY ALTERNATIVES: OTHER THANKSGIVING RECIPES: VEGWEB Thanksgiving Recipes