Fashion can be so cruel.

My dissertation has a knack for causing unintentional hiatuses in many aspects of my life, including this recent one from blogging. I am back, though. For now.

I have a few announcements!

1. This month's Bitchcraft Trading Post event was a huge success! It was held in Atwater Village in an outdoor courtyard, and there were approximately 20 artists/crafters vending, including foodchain. If you're local, come check out the next event in May! I'll post details soon.

2. West Hollywood may become the first US city to ban the use of animal fur for fashion, and hopefully it will not be the last. On Sunday, 2/20 from 2pm-7pm, foodchain will be working with Compassion Over Killing to raise money for the Fur Free Weho Campaign by selling vegan jewelry and accessories at a fundraising event in Glendale, CA. A portion of my proceeds will be donated to the Fur Free Weho campaign. Fashion should never be cruel. More details about the event here.

3. Be sure to vote on March 8th for candidates who support outlawing fur.

Like, why?

TODAY! foodchain selling @ Holiday Sale in Hollywood

Last-Minute Shopping | Local Artists | Vintage Sellers | Vegan Pizza

TODAY, Sunday, 12/19/10!!!

Holiday Craft & Vintage Sale 

To be held INDOORS at 1445 N. Gardner St. in Hollywood (Just south of Sunset, next to the firestation)

Come check out foodchain, my vegan brand of handmade jewelry & accessories!

Cash or Paypal only, please.

Vegan MoFo! Post #10: Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Carob Walnut Cookies

Hey folks, I'm catching up on my MoFo posts! I'm not going to enter the contest for posting every day, but I want to live up to my promise of posting at least 22 posts this month.

Without further ado, I will share with you this delicious recipe. It's the one that I was talking about in the previous post. As I said before, I must give credit to one of my former roommates, Muckford, for finding the majority of this recipe.

B a n a n a  O a t m e a l  C h o c o l a t e  C a r o b  W a l n u t  C o o k i e s

Ingredients:

1 cup margarine, cold
1 1/2 cups tightly packed brown sugar 
1 cup non-refined sugar
1 large (or 2 small), ripe, mashed banana
4 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons water or soy/almond/rice milk
2 cups all-purpose or whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups vegan chocolate chips
1 cup carob chips
3/4 cup chopped walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Beat together the margarine and sugars. Electric mixers are unnecessary - you can just use a fork or some other utensil! Add the well-mashed banana and mix well, then add the vanilla, then the water. The water will try to separate; keep mixing with a figure-eight motion and add the dry ingredients, in the order above, bit by bit.

The final batter should be almost too dry to hold the chocolate chips. If the batter is too wet, add a little more flour + oats or else the cookies will turn out hard and flat. Put big gobs of batter onto an uncreased cookie sheet. You want these cookies to be kind of gigantic, trust me.

Bake them for 10 or 12 minutes. Cook them longer if you prefer a hard cookie, but be aware that bananas only approximate the action of an egg in the mix, and you can get cookies as hard as the cookie sheet if you aren't careful.

Let them congeal on the sheet for a moment after removing them from the oven, then cool on a plate or a wire rack. Store in an air-tight container. They taste even better after they sit overnight or in the fridge.

I have taken these cookies so many places and I can say, both vegans and omnivores alike have raved about them! They appeal to those without much of a sweet tooth, and also seemed to be the most popular cookie at Bitchcraft last week.

Sadly, I do not have a photo of these...They just get eaten that quickly. ;) Here's a cute photo of my boyfriend's dog instead. Enjoy!

Nico Puppins at her favorite dog park, waiting oh-so-patiently for my boyfriend to throw her ball.

Vegan MoFo! Day 9: A review of last wkend's Bitchcraft Trading Post!

As I mentioned in this recent post, last weekend I sold my hand-made vegan accessories at the first ever "Bitchcraft Trading Post" event!

Basically, Bitchcraft Trading Post is a collection of Los Angeles-based artists (some professional, some not; some starving, some not) who live in the LA area and know each other. We wanted to have a FREE event where we could sell our stuff without having to pay the huge fee that we would've paid in order to sell at the typical local art fair (ya'll know how I love DIY stuff).

As many of you already know, chooseyourownfoodchain also has a small vegan 'biz called "foodchain." The business consists of...me...and I make and sell jewelry, re-usable lunchbags, totes, clothing, and more. I make my stuff with only VEGAN materials, so NO fur, feathers, ivory, shell, wool, leather, etc. I also try to use recycled materials as much as possible.

A close-up of one of the reusable lunchbags I sold. Designed and hand-stitched by yours truly. The felt is made of recycled materials, and some of the brown you see is actually from an old skirt I cut up.

I didn't just sell my vegan goods last weekend - I also did something I've been wanting to do for ages: I gave out FREE vegan baked goods. I whipped up about eight dozen vegan cookies and a dozen or so vegan cupcakes, and arranged them next to the stuff I was selling with a sign saying "FREE vegan cookies & cupcakes!"

Why did I do this? Well, it wasn't just a marketing gimmick - I really wanted to show people that vegan food can be AMAAAAZINGLY tasty. I knew that if I charged money for these treats, I wouldn't reach as many people, so I gave them away fo' free. Most people were sort of shy about taking free food, given that pretty much nothing is free these days... One very kind woman even insisted on paying me $1 for a cookie. 

By the end of that day's Bitchcraft event, most of my baked goods had been eaten. Of course, I told *everyone* who ate one that they were vegan, and explained that "vegan" meant that I'd made them without milk, butter, eggs, cream, or any other animal-derived ingredient. Some people who ate these had never tried a vegan baked good before. I like to believe that I accomplished my goal of turning some people on to the idea that "vegan" does not have to equal bland. Happy sigh. True to the Vegan MoFo spirit.

My foodchain table.

Let's talk about the food. Here's a list of the treats I made:

1. Lemon Icebox Cookies
I found this online recipe for raw lemon cookies and decided to give it a go. Loved these! They're basically lemon zest, raw cashews, and agave nectar, so you can eat them for breakfast OR as a treat. My only problem was that I couldn't get them to keep well unless I kept them in the freezer at all times.

2. Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Carob Walnut Cookies
Thank you, Muckford, for providing the basis of this recipe. I've only tweaked it a little bit. 

3. CYoFC-Approved Chocolate Chip Cookies
As I've said, I'm not a huge chocolate chip cookie lover, so I invented a kind that I *do* love.

4. Pumpkin Cookies
These are an all-time favorite of mine. I make them every fall, at least once.

5. Coconut Cupcakes (recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance)
This was my first time making these. Oh my god. They're delectable. Very creamy, and not overly coconut-y. I topped mine with store-bought coconut shavings. Vegan Cupcakes 4 LFE!

The coconut cupcakes, in all their delicious, vegan glory.

The event overall was a HUGE success, too. There were art-makers, there were pizza-makers, there were sangria-makers, there were merry-makers. There were also quite a few people who brought their cute puppies along.

Let's talk about the other vendors.

There were about 20 of them. People were selling potted plants, hair accessories, paintings, vintage items, silk-screened posters, candles, jewelry, mulled cider, pizza, ties, etc. Allison Davidson was selling her photography, Oh Boy Cat Toy was selling buttons, beer kozies, vegan cat toys, "fake messes," and postcards, Lori Jackson was selling potted plants, Rachel Pitler was selling her paintings, Monica Katzenell was selling her silk-screened posters...

...Mignonne was selling hand-stitched baby onesies, Ryn Rina was there selling felt hair accessories, Molly Sullivan was selling vintage purses. Mystic Pizza was selling vegan and other pizza (Mystic Pizza is a covert, one-man operation, making and selling pizzas from his home near Silver Lake/Los Feliz...you can find him @mysticpizzala on Twitter ).  This is just a sampling - let me know if you'd like to be listed or linked to! 

For more info about my tiny, one-woman vegan business, aka "foodchain," click on the "Merch" page at the top, or go directly to my etsy site.

peace & carrots,
CYoFC

Vegan MoFo! Day 7: FREE CYoFC-Approved Cookies!

I'm not sure exactly what day of MoFo it is, but I do know that this is my 7th post! I am determined to catch up, however, and catch up I WILL!

Anyway, here I'm going to share with you my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I think it merits saying that I don't actually even like chocolate chip cookies that much, but I like these. They're that good.

Here it is:

C Y o F C - A p p r o v e d  C h o c o l a t e  C h i p  C o o k i e s

Ingredients:

2 cups flour (white)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp cinnamon <--the crucial ingredient, in my opinion!!!
1 cup sugar (either the "evaporated cane juice" or "raw turbinado" kind)
2/3 cup olive oil, yes I said olive oil

1/4 cup orange juice or soy milk
2 tsp vanilla extract1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips, but add more if you like!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add the chocolate chips. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar and oil. Add the vanilla and orange juice/soy milk. Form small patties (for larger, flatter cookies) or balls (for smaller, rounder cookies) with your hands and put on a baking sheet. Bake for 5 minutes, then rotate the baking sheet 180 degrees and switch it to the other oven rack. Bake another 4 minutes and then check every 2 minutes. Be careful not to overbake - take the cookies out while they are still soft! They will harden once they cool.

I made one sheet of bite-sized cookies, which started out as balls of dough.

Then I made one sheet of bigger cookies, which began as plump patties of dough.

A warm plateful of cookies on blue China makes me feel all domestic.

Oh and by the way, I made these for the Bitchcraft Trading Post that I'll be participating in this Sunday. How much will they cost, you ask? Oh, they'll be going for FREE.

That's right. Free. I am going to be baking like a mad woman and bringing the vegan goodies with me to hand out to anyone who stops by my table. My "shop" is called "foodchain," and I make and sell jewelry, re-usable lunchbags, totes, clothing, and more. I make my stuff with only VEGAN materials, so NO fur, feathers, ivory, shell, wool, leather, etc. I also try to use recycled materials as much as possible.

By the way, Bitchcraft Trading Post consists of me and a bunch of other Los Angeles-based artists, artisans, craftsmen/women, and vintage collectors.

Tell your friends and family who live in LA, Glendale, Pasadena, Long Beach, etc. That would be awesome. :)

Once more for good luck: FREE VEGAN BAKED GOODS FOR EVERYONE*!

:)

Peace,
CYoFC

*While supplies last. So come and get 'em while you can!