April 30th 2008
Rumor has it that the Bean Counter may be adding a new line of vegan pastries and cakes soon. Sweet!
Drop in to one of their two locations: 113 Highland Street in Worcester or 288 Boston Turnpike in Shrewsbury.
April 28th 2008
Erik from Vegan.com just published his Top 10 Recipes of 2008. Check it out! Impress your friends with some fancy Chickpea Curry from The Asian Vegan Kitchen or with some tasty Root Beer Float Cupcakes from Hannah Kaminsky’s My Sweet Vegan.
Here we go:
Entrees:
1) Plantain Omelet - From Mark Reinfeld and Bo Rinaldi’s Vegan Fusion World Cuisine.
2) Thai Coconut Corn Soup - From Nava Atlas’ Vegan Express.
3) Indonesian Coconut Rice - From Robin Robertson’s Vegan Fire & Spice.
4) Baked Ziti - From Beverly Lynn Bennett’s Vegan Bites.
5) Moroccan Phyllo Rolls - From Dreena Burton’s Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan.
6) Italian Stuffed Crepes - From Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Nonna’s Italian Kitchen.
7) Chickpea Curry - From Hema Parekh’s The Asian Vegan Kitchen.
Desserts:
8) Banana Chocolate Bread Pudding - From Isa Chandra Moskowtiz and Terry Hope Romano’s Veganomicon.
9) Root Beer Float Cupcakes - From Hannah Kaminsky’s My Sweet Vegan.
10) Fresh Mango Cobler - From Ani Phyo’s Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen.
April 25th 2008
Rumor has it that some Starbucks offer vegan scones. I wonder if this an anomaly or if it is spreading throughout their corporate-coffee-empire. In any case, it’s pretty awesome!
But if you’re in Worcester and want some really stellar vegan baked goods, why not swing by the Bean Counter at 113 Highland Street? Or you can get some vegan baked tastiness from Worcester’s underground vegan bakery: Barely Legal Baked Goods. Barely Legal provides cupcakes and other small sweet things to The Q Cafe at 362 Chandler Street.
April 21st 2008
Ingrid Newkirk, the president and a co-founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is a big fan of lab-grown meat. She is such a big of a fan of it that she has convinced her organization to pledge one million dollars to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”
From the New York Times:
The idea of getting the next Chicken McNugget out of a test tube is not new. For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat. An international symposium on the topic was held this month in Norway. The tissue, once grown, could be shaped and given texture with the kinds of additives and structural agents that are now used to give products like soy burgers a more meaty texture.
Definitely read the whole New York Times article.
April 20th 2008
Still haven’t entered the VegWorcester poster design competition? If you’re in need of inspiration, check out this poster Paul K just sent in:
Download a PDF of his entry.
It is, of course, a take-off on the “Worcester is the Paris of the 80s” shirt sold at HBML.
Sweet entry! Thanks, Paul.
For the rest of you, there are still a week and a half left to enter the competition. There is a free t-shirt in the mix.
April 19th 2008
Jeff D. just left me a voice mail about my pipe-dream of having a vegan diner in Worcester. He’s psyched about the idea and knows just what we should call it.
You’ll have to listen to his voice mail to hear what it is.
April 18th 2008
Yesterday we sent out copies of the Spring 2008 Veg Dining Guide to the 20 or so businesses that were listed in the guide. Just making sure they know that people are noticing all their great veg options!
Thanks for all the help, Cody.
Comment below if you want to order copies of the guide to distribute.
April 17th 2008
VegWorcester was mentioned in the recent issue of Worcester Magazine. They republished “Super 88 Asian Market a No-Go“. Sweet!
Thanks, Scott!
April 17th 2008
Wired Magazine published an article on the possibility of growing meat in a lab. I’m skeptical that technology is going to solve all the social problems created by meat production. But lab-meat is an interesting idea.
Here’s an excerpt from Wired’s story:
In five to 10 years, supermarkets might have some new products in the meat counter: packs of vat-grown meat that are cheaper to produce than livestock and have less impact on the environment.
….
“To produce the meat we eat now, 75 to 95 percent of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue,” Jason Matheny, a researcher at Johns Hopkins and co-founder of New Harvest, a nonprofit that promotes research on in vitro meat, told Wired.com. “With cultured meat, there’s no body to support; you’re only building the meat that eventually gets eaten.”
While lab-meat addresses some of the ethical and environmental issues related to meat production, it does not address the health issues. The US has obesity epidemic, a problem that affects young people more than anyone else. Eating meat is terrible for you and growing it in a lab won’t fix that.
We’ll just have to see where this story goes. Maybe by 2030 we’ll have a new kind of faux meat.
April 15th 2008
Have you seen the SoyWallets link in the sidebar? If you have haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, do so right now! SoyWallets are recycled, handmade wallets made right here in Worcester. They’re really neat!
You can buy one for $7 including shipping or if you’re the crafty-type, you can follow the do-it-yourself guide and make your own. Proceeds even go towards animal protection organizations and veg advocacy groups.
