You Know How Pom Wonderful Tastes Excellent?

Yeah, well it's tested on animals.

I hope you're having a "what the fuck?" moment here, because there's no reason why something that's basically fruit and sugar should have to be tested on animals.
Well, to prove that pommegranate juice is super-excellent for you, Pom Wonderful has performed ridiculous tests on mice.
How fucking messed up is that?

OK, so, I think that you should go to this link and check out more about this.

And of course I'm not about to advocate not drinking pommegranate juice, since pommegranates are totally tasty.
What you can do is go on down to Trader Joe's and find their generic brand pom juice, and then drink that.
Or suck down Izze's pommegranate soda.
Or drink Plum-A-Granate Diet Snapple.
There are tons of options.
And hopefully Pom Wonderful will get it and stop testing on animals and we can drink their juice again.

Wow.

Today was Kensington day at school, which is just the big end-of-year picnic where we all party and hang out and grill and whatnot.
So, everyone loved the brownies I brought, but that didn't surprise me. (The made-in-the-pan chocolate cake I posted blow this.) And I wasn't shocked that they loved the cupcakes I made, either.
What amazed me was that my entire homeroom enjoyed the tofu I made.
It's the barbeque-pommegranate stuff from Vegan With A Vengance, only I made it the night before and then toasted it up on the grill.
Holy shazzang, it's good.
But my homeroom loved it. I was so proud of them.

Amazing Chocolate Cake

So, last night, I was absolutely craving chocolate cake, and I have a recipe that's foolproof for providing cruelty-free chocolatey goodness. However, I had no regular flour, only whole wheat pastry flour, which is absolutely not as good. So, to offset the lack of flavor in my cake, I pulled together a frosting based off the back of the one you find on the back of Hershey's cocoa powder. It's pretty excellent. But, definately, there is no rule saying that you have to put frosting on this. No rule at all. I put it in a square dish and serve it as brownies all the time. It's all a matter of opinion. For while you're screwing around with pans, remember that this cake doesn't rise much. Maybe a centimeter.

"Made-In-The-Pan" Chocolate Cake
from the book "Honest Pretzels" by Mollie Katzen


1 1/4 c. flour
1 c. sugar
3/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1 c. water
1/3 c. oil
1 t. vinegar
1 t. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325. In an 8x8 glass baking dish, mix together all the dry ingredients until they are a sort of cinnamon color. Add wet ingredients and mix thouroughly. Bake for 30 minutes.

If you'd like to mix the cake up in a seperate dish, you definately can. This is out of a kids' cookbook, so there's lots of emphasis on fun things you can do with your baking. || For the vinegar, I use balsamic vinegar because it gives this really interesting flavor to a rather plain (but good!) chocolate cake. However, any sort of vinegar will do. || If you're using frosting with this, you might want to try this with whole wheat pastry flour. If you're really into a chocolate OD, you can just follow the recipe, but if you're only kind of a chocolate fan, then I really do suggest the pastry flour. || If you're making a layer cake (which I totally support), use two 9-inch round metal dishes and heat the oven to 350. This makes a nice, low cake, which is much more managable than one of the giant monsters that you might find in a restraunt. Don't worry if you only have about a quarter-inch of batter in your pans; that's going to happen. I think that the baking time for that is 30 minutes, but check it after 15.

Frosting!


1/2 c. vegan butter (1 stick)
2/3 c. cocoa powder
3 c. powdered sugar
1/3 c. soy milk
1 t. vanilla extract

Melt the butter and remove from heat. Mix in the cocoa until blended. Add the powdered sugar and soy milk and beat until you have a spreadable consistancy. Add the vanilla extract and beat again.

This is an annoying pat-on-the-back post.

So, today, in homeroom, we had a pizza party, and there was all of this seriously amazing pizza just sitting in front of me. And this was not Domino's by any means, oh, no, this was the good stuff. The deep-ish dish, square, craploads of cheese Jet's kind. And I didn't eat any of it. None. At all. I just sat there, surrounded by pizza, cookies and ranch dressing and sipped lemonade.
Yay.
I have something resembling self-control.


Aaaand, just so that I won't totally feel like I wasted your time, here's a recipe for banana-cinnamon french toast.

Bread slices, enough to make about two servings of french toast
1 banana, ripened and starting to brown
½ cup rice/soy milk
Vanilla, to taste
Cinnamon, to taste
Maple syrup, cinnamon sugar, and/or banana slices, to top (optional)

Put a griddle over medium heat and wait for it to heat up. Puree the banana however you’d like (I use a hand-held food processor), but make sure that it’s pretty much liquidated. Put it in a medium size bowl and add the rice milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. Whisk this mixture and dunk the bread in it, then placing the bread on the griddle. Flip and toast the bread so that it’s browned up on both sides, and then slide it onto a plate. Garnish with maple syrup, cinnamon sugar, and/or banana slices.

*note* Because the banana is so sugary and thick, you should probably coat your pan with a bit of canola oil. Even if you’re using a nonstick pan, I would still suggest this, seeing as I kinda screwed up a batch of this on a nonstick pan.

Urban Decay

Basically, I like makeup. Maybe "like" is an understatement; maybe I love it. And Urban Decay is far and beyond my favorite brand in the world. So, I'd like to take this space to compile a list of all my favorite Urban Decay cosmetics. As I try more, I'll add more to the list, because they've got a huge range of products.

24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil

This is absolutely the best eyliner you will ever use in your life, I swear to God. It has the thickness and stay-put power of a liquid liner without the mess and fuss of one. I always wear this in black underneath eyeshadows, just rimming my eyes, because it's so thick and so creamy that it just pops. If you crave colored liners that are actually, well, colorful, then this is something that you have to invest in.
My one complaint would be that this is a difficult pencil to get a sharp. It also dulls rather fast since it is so creamy. Basically, only use this with a good eyeliner pencil sharpener. Revlon has a good track record for making good eyeliner sharpeners as does Sephora (the in-house brand).

Eye Shadow

OK, not only does this come in a plethora of shades and finishes, but it's an incredibly shadow. It absolutely stays fresh no matter what, and I have terrible luck with my eye makeup looking as good at 5:00 as it did at 7:30.

If you'd like to sample a bunch of different colors, Urban Decay sells little palates (#1 and #2) with their best shades in 'em. Once you find shades that you really like, you can splurge on the real pots of them.

Eyeshadow Primer Potion

Want your eyeshadow to really stay put? Then give this a shot! It makes eye shadows pretty much immobile, and your makeup stays looking fresh longer. There's pretty much nothing bad about it. Scratch that; there is nothing bad about it, at all.

Heavy Metal Glitter Liner

I normally don't like glitter liner and I normally don't like liquid liners at all, but I love this stuff. It's easy to control and gives a nice, even coat that dries nearly instantly. My favorite shade is Headbanger, and if you wanna do some mixing, put some Mullet on your lids as well.

Big Fatty Lip Plumper

OK, OK, if you're thinking that those lip plumpers are scary, inhuman, and just plain bizarre, look at it this way: at least there's no bee venom in this. Big Fatty dialates the blood vessels in your lips and you get what is a surprisingly natural plumped up lip. This also hurts less than regular lip plumpers, which make you kinda want to cry after awhile, although that isn't to say that there isn't some tingling sensations. This is also a great lip plumper to wear alone since it gives your lips a pinkinsh hue. Now, it gives it this pinkish hue because more blood is coming to your lips, but this is why most companies don't explain their science.

Flavored Powder Body Brush

Unlike most shimmery powders, this stuff doesn't give you a demented 12-year-old-girl-in-Sephora-esque sparkle. This is a shimmery kind of powder, and if you put it on just the right parts of your pectoral structure, it gives you a really amazing glow. Plus, it smells kickass and looks awesome. Yeah, nothing bad to say here.

Afterglow Blush

I hate blush. For anyone who knows me, you will notice that I always have a nice pinkish touch in my cheeks. However, the colors in these blushes are sheer enough and pretty enough that I actually will throw one on once in awhile. If you're not blessed with naturally red cheeks (my mother's maiden name is Ruff, after all, which means "ruddy" in German), well, you'll feel even more love toward these shades.

More to come ...

Stir-fry!

OK, I'm going to devote my entire first post to the art of the stir-fry. There is no vegan dish out there better than the stir-fry; in fact, even for carnivores, there is not better dish. Anything can go in one of these babies, so you could put all four (or is it six?) food groups in one wok and you come out with an actual meal. No side dish needed.

I found a really excellent recipe for a peanut sauce on PETA2 and thought I'd post it here. It's freakishly simple and you can put it in just about anything that you feel needs a little bit of nutty goodness.

1/4 cup peanut butter, chunky or smooth
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. vinegar
1 Tbsp. oil (you could use walnut oil, sesame oil, any sort of oil that you happen to have around)
Sugar, to taste

Throw all this stuff in a food processor and pulse it a few times until it gets completely liquidated.

Bam! How easy was that? The way PETA suggests preparing this is basically throwing it in a bowl with some ramen noodles, but I think that's sort of a waste of the sauce. Make a huge nutty stir-fry! Throw veggies (your choice), cooked ramen noodles (or be classy and use regular noodles), and peanuts in a wok with some walnut oil and you've got yourself an excellent stir-fry!

If you've never cooked a stir-fry before, here are just a few basics:
* Carrots and pak choi are the best things to put in any stir-fry. They go well with almost anything and you can pretty much always count on them to fry up nicely. Always slice them up lengthwise, so that they come out longer and skinnier; they'll cook more evenly that way.
* Tofu and tempeh are other great things to add to a stir-fry. You can either a) marinade them before, b) brown them up in a little oil in a skillet before, or c) just toss small chunks into the stir-fry and let them soak up whatever else you've got going on in there.
* Onions (which are, again, a must-have in any stir-fry) should always be cooked up before. Add them first to the wok and allow them to brown a little before adding anything else. When you brown them up, you're allowing them to carmalize, or develop the sugars naturally in the onions. Raw onions in your stir-fry are absolutely a deal-breaker; slightly carmalized ones, however, are the food of the gods.

Hella Vegan!

So, my name's Emi, and I recently decided to go vegan. I'm one of those people who's been thinking about veganism for ages, but never actually had the balls to do it ...

Until now!

So, I'm starting my own vegan blog. The point of this blog is to share my experiences, post my favorite recipes, and give whatever advice I have. Feel free to add your own thoughts if you feel the urge! This is not supposed to just be me ranting; maybe someday, this will be a whole community for veganism, somewhere confused vegans (or wannabe vegans) can turn to for advice.

Please, don't shy away if you're not vegan. I encourage you to look through the posts here, see if any recipes strike your fancy. Every now and then, I will post a "Here's why you should to vegan" post, and if you're not vegan, I think that you should read those. Open your eyes, mis amigos.