A decade ago, we announced a groundbreaking ballot campaign in California, later called Prop 2, to create the strongest farm animal protection law in the nation. In the wake of that precedent-setting victory, we enacted a wave of new corporate policies…
Attention New Yorkers! The moment you’ve been waiting for is finally here! ORCHARD GROCER IS OPENING TOMORROW! If you haven’t heard, Orchard Grocer is an all-vegan market and deli from the wonderful people behind Mooshoes. Read it and cheer:
Nestled in Manhattan’s lovely Lower East Side, Orchard Grocer is an all-vegan deli and food market inspired by the delicatessens of New York’s past.
We specialize in hearty sandwiches, homemade soft-serve, hard-to-find pantry items, and hard-to-resist snacks. We’re also entirely palm oil free (yay orangutans!) and our deli kitchen is gluten-free friendly (welcome, celiac friends!). Brought to you by the founders of MooShoes, consider it a one-stop-shop for cruelty-free cravings. A haven for compassionate convenience. A deli for a better world.
Vegan soft-serve? Palm oil free? COME AT ME BRO!
So stop on by tomorrow, from 8am to 8pm, for the official first day! Address is 78 Orchard Street in Manhattan. See you there!
Peter Tarantelli has been a vegan chef for 25 years and is the author of Simple To Gourmet Vegan cookbook. Want to get your hands on his book? WELL THEN YOU GOTTA HELP! Peter has set up a gofundme to raise money for publishing:
I have been self publishing several pressings of my vegan cookbook, Simple To Gourmet Vegan, and selling them out each time. Since I am only able to order a few books at a time due to the high cost of self publishing book production, color photos and book quality, I can not meet the demand of books requested for sale. The more books I order at one time, the more the production cost drops per book, significantly, which is why I am starting this go fund me. In turn, I will be able to sell the book at a lower cost. This will also allow me to get more healthy, easy recipes to the masses.
So donate if you can, it’s a very reasonable goal of $2000. And he’s given us a free recipe to preview! I made it this weekend and it’s v yummy! As the queen of chickpea frittatas, you know I appreciate the chickpea flour batter. And why can’t we just batter and fry all the veggies amirite? So here you go, the Simple To Gourmet Vegan cookbook’s Broccoli Chickpea Pakoras:
Indian Broccoli Chickpea Pakoras The chickpea flour gives these a delicious taste and texture.
1 cup chickpea flour (available at health food stores and Indian markets) 1 cup freshly opened plain club soda/seltzer water ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon garlic powder 2 cups medium cut broccoli florets with about an inch of the stem intact Enough canola or vegetable oil to fill a non-stick fry pan ½ inch
Whisk together in a large bowl the chickpea flour, salt, garlic powder and club soda. Set aside.
Heat the non-stick pan with the oil in it over medium high heat for about 3 minutes. Test to see if it is ready to fry by flicking some of the batter into it. If it sizzles, it is ready.
Dip the florets into the chickpea batter and then immediately into the oil. Cook for 2 minutes, then flip broccoli and cook another 2 minutes until golden. Drain on a cookie cooling rack on top of a foil lined cookie sheet.
These can be reheated and re-crisped on the rack as well thrown into the oven for a few minutes. You can also use cauliflower for this recipe, it works wonderfully as well.
There’s a lot of talk about slashing regulations in DC right now, and that could mean animal protections on the chopping block. Wayne Pacelle weighed in today on this anti-reg mania descending on Washington in a piece well-worth reading.
Two big undercover investigations broke this week, with Compassion Over Killing’s new lamb slaughter exposé in today’s New York Times, and Mercy For Animals’ new pig factory exposé leading Hormel to drop its supplier. Not everyone’s so pleased to see this cruelty exposed, of course. The Animal Ag Alliance for one isn’t having it!
Finally, if you want to read a remarkable story of courage and self-sacrifice for animals, this feature on the former leader of the Tennessee walking horse industry who blew the whistle is really moving.
Paul Shapiro Vice President of Policy Engagement The Humane Society of the United States Follow at twitter.com/pshapiro
P.S. Video of the week: This chicken playing America the Beautiful on her piano is what you need right now.
P.P.S. Cartoon of the week: Oddly and amusingly, the New York Times Sunday magazine made a cartoon of me (based on a tweet of mine about human persecution of Neanderthals, of all things).
Punk Rawk Labs, one of our very favorite vegan cheese companies, had an interesting week. They got a huge order from Switzerland, like 40 gift packs of cheese (and there’s 4 cheeses in each pack…). So they made all the cheese, but then the buyer was being super shady. I’ll let Alissa from PRL explain:
They wanted this courier to come pick it up and deliver it to Switzerland. And we were like we have a UPS account, we can ship it UPS for cheaper. And they were like, “no. We want this courier.” And then they were insisting on paying right away with a credit card, but didn’t want to pay through Paypal.
At that point, PRL was like um wtf is going on. So Alissa called her friend in Switzerland who’s related to a cop over there (what? you don’t have swiss cop friends?). “It turns out the courier was a front for this drug smuggling operation. And they were using us as a cover because who would suspect vegan cheese.”
YOU GUYS I CAN’T. You see why I had to share this story. Like…what? But wait, there’s more: “I’m taking it as a compliment that we even got on these people’s radar as innocent do-gooders or whatever. But now we have a bunch of extra cheese, so we’re doing a huge sale.”
Yes, the drug ring’s loss is our gain! Now you can get any of these gift packs for 25{ae720e0b436026f867bfa0c31185c2252a138f27e85f5f152ec5acc1c10a8cc9} off on their site! Just enter code DRUGSMUGGLING. Yes for real.
