Urban Critters

Compassion in World Farming is holding a Bake with Compassion Week July 6th-12th. 

If you’d like to take part, you can send away for their kit — the idea is to bake with cage-free eggs (or better still, no eggs at all! Check out my recent post with an awesome egg and dairy free chocolate cake recipe!), raise awareness for inhumane animal farming, and educate consumers on their choices.  They suggest baking cakes and selling them at your work, or having a tea party, or a coffee morning, hosting a baking class, or a dinner party – there’s no end to things you can do! And they even have invitations! ( 89.57KB). 

To take part, fill out this registration form, and be sure to send Compassion in World Farming some photos of your event to supporters@ciwf.org.uk.

As with cheese (often contains animal rennet, a coagulating agent made from baby animal stomach lining), wine and beer is often not as vegetarian or vegan friendly as people tend to think. Often, animal products are used in the creation of wines and beers - either as ingredients, or in the filtration (or “fining”) process. 

Wine and beer can contain any of the following animal-derived ingredients/products.

• Milk
• Honey
• Isinglass (a very refined fish gelatin-like product)
• Gelatin
• Egg Whites
• Caseins
• Blood (EW! But very seldom used anymore whew)

Many hard liquors (things like Baileys obviously are an exception because of the cream), on the other hand, are ‘safe’ for a vegan or vegetarian.

ANYWAY - the point of this post (apart from educating anyone who didn’t know about this) is to point you to a couple of online resources I’ve used to help steer me in the right direction when buying beer/wine. I’ve also found that emailing a winemaker who isn’t currently listed on either of the sites can help - for example, I was just advised by Edge Wines (www.edgewines.com) that they use a mechanical filtration process and don’t use any animal products in their wine. Yay!  Now I’ll be drinking that Cab Sav I was given recently, instead of re-gifting it to some omnivore friends ;-)

So - the resources:

• www.barnivore.com - nice vegan beer and wine directory. They’re on twitter too (@barnivore) and very responsive to questions!
• http://vegans.frommars.org/wine/ (weighted to UK/Ireland retail locations but also covers some international wines/winemakers)
• http://tinyurl.com/ausnzvegnwine (Australian focused - lists by distributor or drink)

Hope this is useful and helps any vegans or vegetarians out there avoid inadvertently compromising your veg*n principles when enjoying a nice glass of red or a cold one!

Our team had a morale event today, to say thanks for the last month’s worth of insanity – that’s one of the great things I’ve found about working at Microsoft: we do work hard but it’s usually followed up with something fun like today’s cooking class at the Blue Ribbon Cooking School. We’re a small team (9 of us) so this sort of thing works really well. The venue did their best to accommodate my “no critters” rule (although I laughed when they proudly presented my alternative to everyone else’s (chicken) main course: EGGPLANT (EURGH!!!! my most hated vegetable!). And it had what looked like melted cheese on it – which, unless it was rice cheese or something similar, doesn’t quite count as vegan. Still, points for trying!

ANYWAY, the whole reason for posting about a team morale event on my Critter-focused blog is to share the recipe for the most awesome and easy to make vegan chocolate cake EVERRRRR. OMG it was YUM!

So – the recipe forthwith (makes 8 cup-cake sized servings):

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup cold water or coffee (we had granulated instant coffee, so we just dissolved it in this cup of water)
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar

Chocolate Glaze (although we had it without glaze and instead had a brandy apricot sauce – 1 cup apricot preserve, 1/4 cup water, 3 tablespoons brandy – or orange juice. Bring apricot and water to boil, cook 1 minute, add brandy and mix – serve warm over chocolate cake. YUMMO)

• 1/2 pound semi sweet chocolate (good quality)
• 3/4 cup hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and liberally spray the cake tin/cupcake tin with Pam, or another vegan non-stick spray (or you can go the high-maintenance route and line the bottom of the cake pan with parchment paper, generously oil the sides of the pan and dust with flour) – otherwise it’s hard to get out of the pan.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, (dry)coffee, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and sugar. Measure and mix together the oil, cold water (or coffee if you’ve dissolved your coffee in the water) and vanilla. Pour the liquid ingredients into dry ones and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls in the batter as the baking soda and the vinegar react (this is what makes the cake rise). Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Bake for 25-30 mins and set aside to cool.

To make the optional glaze (which we didn’t because we had the brandy apricot sauce, and gorgeously sliced strawberries), melt the chocolate in a double boiler, microwave or melt it in a 300 degree (F) oven for about 15 mins. Stir the hot water and vanilla into the melted chocolate until smooth. Spoon the glaze over the cooled cake. Refrigerate the glazed cake for about 30 mins before serving.

et VOILA! easy, light, TOTALLY AWESOME vegan chocolate cake – cue applause!

Dallas Animal Services is hosting an Open House today in honor of Adopt A Shelter Cat month.  They'll showcase cats available for adoption, discuss the benefits of adopting from a shelter, and provide specific information about cat ownership responsibilities.

This Open House is TODAY, June 20th from 11a-3p at Dallas Animal Services' new adoption center, 1818 N. Westmoreland, – just a few minutes west of downtown Dallas off I-30.

Adoption fees for cats/kittens are just $55.  Dogs/puppies are $85.  All fees include current vaccinations, spay/neuter, microchip.  In addition, a bag of Hill’s Science Diet pet food and a coupon for a free pet physical will be sent home with any animal adopted.

For more info: Visit Dallas Animal Services website.

An upcoming nation-wide ad campaign promoting shelter pets is a joint venture between The Humane Society of the United States, Maddie’s Fund and The Ad Council.  The project now has a name - "The Shelter Pet Project" and is today debuting their website. 

It's not much more than an intro page right now, but if the graphics and the video up there are any indication, there are great things to come.  Check it out here and sign up to be notified when the campaign launches!