Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Hezbollah Tofu!

This site came to my attention thanks to a post at the "veganpeople" LiveJournal community.

The famed Anthony Bourdain has a hate-on for vegetarians and vegans. I've never seen his show Without Reservations, but he's shown up as a judge on Top Chef, which I do watch. This quote of hate comes from his book Kitchen Confidential:
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.
The "Hezbollah Tofu" blog quotes this nastiness in its first entry and offers the following message to Bourdain:

So we aren't just going to "enjoy" food, we're going to enjoy vastly improved, veganized versions of your masturbatory, blood-oozing recipes. And then we're going to compile them, sell them in zine form, and donate the proceeds to vegan outreach organizations and farm sanctuaries--in your name. Anthony, I have to say, I'm really looking forward to the great work we're going to do together for veganism.

This is an open call to vegan cooks of all stripes: professional chefs and bakers, cookbook authors, food bloggers, amateur cooks, and--perhaps most importantly--ordinary, everyday people who just want to live their lives and eat their dinners without unnecessary heckling from the heroin-addled peanut gallery.

I have to say I adore this idea. I've come across Bourdain's quote o' nastiness before and found it equal parts baffling and irritating. I can hardly wait to see what people come up with.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Isa and Terry's Books Will Take Over the World!

My mom came up yesterday to celebrate my son's birthday. He's five! Because of his egg allergy, I got a vegan chocolate-cake recipe from the Post-Punk Kitchen site. Would you believe this was my son's first-ever taste of cake? In any event, he enjoyed its chocolaty goodness. Dinner was a vegan pizza of Dkat's invention, which Boykat happens to love.

My mom is a lacto-veg, so she was also happy to have a chance to eat cake without worrying about egg. I showed her Vegan With a Vengeance, and almost immediately she decided she'll have to buy a copy of her own. When I raved about the ease and goodness of the seitan recipe, she looked it over and immediately made a trip out to the coop to buy vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast so she can make some of her own. She also perused Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The Moskowitz/Hope domination is imminent!

In related news, I forgot to report here that I had success a couple of weeks ago with the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, which (almost tearfully) I had to return to the library after a scant two weeks, because it was requested. See, these books are taking over the world!