Amy’s vegan wedding cake!

This past weekend, my good friend and coworker Amy, who writes the Veg Cooking Blog, got married in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.

The early evening ceremony was beautiful—illuminated by countless white candles and the fading end-of-day sunlight that was fleeting from the large vintage windows above. When Amy appeared, locked arm-in-arm with her dad, looking all stunning in her gown and birdcage veil, I was happy to have the small pack of tissues emblazoned with my hotel’s logo in my bag.

For all you Veg Cooking Blog fans, it will come as no surprise that the food was also stunning. I will post the menu and more food photos soon, but in the meantime I wanted to talk about the cake.

The cake was a luscious three-tier vegan chocolate cake with amaretto frosting made by Southern Sweets Bakery of Decatur, Georgia. The cake was so intensely decedent that it essentially melted in your mouth.

I really hope Amy won’t be too disappointed on her one-year anniversary when she goes to get the cake top out of her freezer and instead finds a box weighted with about 10,000 “I Am Not a Nugget” stickers that Joel and I left as a decoy while we stole the top of the cake to eat on the way home…

Congratulations Amy!

The following post was originally published by Amy Cook on The Veg Cooking Blog. Click here to view the original post.

One of the best things about going vegan—aside from the whole “being healthy, feeling great, saving animals” thing—is that if done right, it can be a very cheap way to eat. Yes, you can spend an arm and a leg if you’re only buying prepackaged items or hard-to-find soy cheeses, but if you go the more natural route, you can really save.

The best money-saving trick is to stick to staples like dried beans, rice, and pasta. All three of these can be purchased for less than a dollar, can last a long time, and are healthy.

Loading up on veggies is a necessity for any healthy diet, and you can save a little cash by buying frozen veggies. They usually contain more vitamins and nutrients than the canned options and last longer than the fresh stuff—meaning that you never have to throw out that broccoli you never used and waste money.

Creative, ethnic dishes are a great way for vegetarians to add flavor to their meals while still cutting costs, and you can make easy at-home versions. Pick up a soy-based sauce (around $2 at many stores), add it to those veggies I told you about, tofu (four servings can be purchased for $1–$3), and rice or noodles, and you could have an easy stir-fry for four that comes in under 10 bucks.

Or if stir-fries aren’t for you, try simple sandwiches. Peanut butter can be purchased for, well, mere peanuts at most stores. Spreads like hummus, mock-tuna salad, and mock-egg salad might be expensive if you buy them already prepared, but making them on your own is cheap and easy.

And for those of you who are totally against all things green or natural—processed vegan items, like soy cheese and faux meats, are now readily available at just about any grocery store, and they’ve become much more affordable. If you ate only these items, you might not see any savings, but adding them to your menu sometimes definitely won’t break the bank.

These are just a few pointers, and there are many other ways to save while eating vegan. To find out more about specific budget-friendly meal ideas, check out our guide to going vegetarian.

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I remember becoming a vegetarian at the age of 14 and how on the days that I didn’t bring a packed lunch I would wonder what I would find to eat at school that day. Sometimes that meant that I would get a juice, a bag of pretzels, and an apple from the cafeteria. Other days it would mean asking the assembly-line–style cafeteria workers to please leave the heaping mound of ground beef off my taco salad and just load it with veggies and beans instead—which, fortunately, they were willing to do!

I always wished I could have had more veggie options, though. Fortunately, in the new year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will be reviewing the Child Nutrition Act, which, among other things, covers the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. The USDA is accepting comments on how to revise the program until October 15, so please write soon to ask for more vegetarian options for your child’s school!

To send a message, either use this form, or send an e-mail to CNDProposal@fns.usda.gov.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing your e-mail:

• Be polite. Being negative about the lack of vegetarian options at your child’s school won’t help.

• Explain that you care about your child’s health, the environment, and animals, and vegetarian food supports all those things. Not to mention that everyone deserves to be accommodated regarding their ethical, religious, and dietary preferences.

• List some options of what you’d like to see added. Bean-and-rice burritos, veggie burgers, veggie dogs, veggie chili, and pasta with marinara sauce and veggies are all a good start.

• Ask for soy milk as an alternative to dairy milk. It’s great for vegans, for those who are lactose-intolerant, and for soy enthusiasts!

• Be sure to say thanks for taking your thoughts into consideration.

It is so important to write to USDA officials and ask them to include vegetarian and vegan meals in the National School Lunch Program. Change happens when people speak up (or, in this case, write in)—the Child Nutrition Act is only reviewed every four years, so let’s do something now!

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Many of us spend the majority of our workday at a desk in front of our computer—only getting up for meetings, to heat up our lunch, or to refill a mug of coffee. This is certainly the case for me, so I have tried to make my workspace as comforting and accommodating as possible, as it is my home-away-from-home, of sorts.

The following are my top 10 picks for things to have on or in your desk to help you through your busy day:

1. Aromatherapy. Spending all day under fluorescent lights, responding to high-importance e-mails, tackling big projects, and prepping for important meetings can all take a toll on your emotional well-being. To help ease stress throughout the day, try small amounts of aromatherapy. You can find great essential oils from Aura Cacia, and you might also look at these Instant Aromatherapy roll-ons from Bath & Body Works.

2. Lip balm. No matter what the season, external elements can take a toll on your lips, but so can the continuous exposure to air conditioning and heating in your office. I always keep some vegan lip balm handy in my desk drawer. A personal favorite of mine is the Viva Las Vegans lip balm from the PETA Catalog.

3. Dental-hygiene gear. Spinach salad covered in garlicky vinaigrette for lunch, anyone? Stashing a travel toothbrush, some toothpaste, and floss in your desk can get your chompers and breath back under control after a potent lunch, and it’s just a really nice thing to do for your teeth anyway! Try easy-to-find and cruelty-free dental care products from Tom’s of Maine.

4. Lotion. If you sometimes glance down at your hands when hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete on your keyboard and notice that they have begun to look a little reptilian, consider keeping some lotion at your desk. I have a pretty pump-bottle of lotion at mine, and I offer it freely to coworkers. Check out The Body Shop’s lovely fragranced Japanese Cherry Blossom pump lotion.

5. Emergency nail kit. It’s always great when you get a hang nail at work and then you forget about it, scratch your leg, and tear a nice run in your nylons, isn’t it? Well, with a little preparedness, you can prevent both. Keep a nail file on hand and some clear polish in case you get a run in your hose. Check out Revlon’s beauty tools and nail care products.

6. Shine-erasing paper from e.l.f. I have combination skin and get a bit shiny as the day goes on, but these wonderful shine-erasing papers from e.l.f. work their mattifying magic every time. At $1 a pack, you can have one at home, one in your bag, and one at your desk!

7. Girl-power kit. For the ladies, it’s good to be prepared for the unexpected—and also for when your female coworkers are unprepared. I like to keep some extra feminine-hygiene products (try Seventh Generation or Natracare) on hand as well as some herbal tea bags from Yogi Tea to help with PMS symptoms.

8. Fun pens and office supplies. I find taking notes in pink and purple more fun, so I am sure to stock up on awesome products from cruelty-free office-supply company Pilot.

9. Nonperishable single-serving condiments. Fight Club and Choke author Chuck Palahniuk would be impressed with my collection of single-serving items. In my desk, I keep a small stash of single-serving packs of salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and often some nutritional yeast to jazz up my lunch.

10. A copy of the “Vegetarian Starter Kit.” Because I work at PETA, people typically don’t come up to my desk while I am eating lunch to discuss going vegetarian, but if you do work at an office where people seem to want more info on what vegetarians eat, it’s helpful to have a quick reference guide with recipes to pass on to them.

Tell us about the items you love to keep in your desk!

The following post was originally published by Ingrid E. Newkirk on The PETA Files. Click here to view the original post.

Some people ask me if it is true that my latest book, One Can Make a Difference, contains essays by people who have done things like make documentary films or compose songs, collect shoes for South American village children, clean up the base camp at Mount Everest, or make people laugh—instead of being all about animals? Well, yes, but I’ll reveal my secret. Every single one of the more than 50 people in the book—from the famous people such as Sir Paul McCartney (the world’s most famous “veggie”), Stella McCartney (who is adamantly opposed to fur and leather), Petra Nemcova (the supermodel who stopped eating fish after she saw them on the beach in Thailand after a tsunami), Dr. Henry Heimlich (a staunch anti-vivisectionist), and Willie Nelson (who fought to ban horse slaughter) to the little-known seal-hunt protesters, soup-kitchen operators, performance artists, and sanctuary founders—are kind souls. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have made the cut.

As the author John Galsworthy said (and those of you who’ve heard me speak know that I often repeat this), the three most important things in life are to be kind, to be kind, and … yup, to be kind. His Holiness The Dalai Lama is in my book, and he says pretty much the same thing in his lovely little essay about how a person’s religion should be based on compassion—nothing else matters. Now, some essays, including those by Brigitte Bardot, Rachel Rosenthal, Carol Buckley, and Peter Hammarstadt, are all about animals: elephants and cats and mice and whales specifically, but you will find animals—such as Doris Richard’s dogs—peeking out of other essays too. And in the essays that do not mention animals, the spirit of the writer leaves you no doubt that he or she would no more ignore a bird fallen out of a nest than he or she would step over a destitute human being.

I hope that my book will open hearts to the diversity of life and open eyes fully to the stunning number of ways in which one—anyone—can make a difference. Writing it was a great experience. I hope that reading it will be just as much fun!

P.S. Tell us why you make a difference! Comment below to win an autographed copy of One Can Make a Difference! You can also go here to nominate someone who makes a difference.

You can post comments until October 6 to win the book. We will contact the winner on October 7. Be sure to read the contest terms and conditions and PETA’s privacy policy before you comment. By leaving a comment, you’re acknowledging that you have read and agree to both.

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I am fascinated by them all and gaze endlessly from my fire escape at the bats who swoop ’round and ’round each night in search of mosquitoes in my neighborhood. For most of my life, I have been like them—not eating mosquitoes, of course, but pretty much nocturnal. Seriously, for as long as I can remember, I have stayed up all night working on projects, playing video games, studying, and inventing recipes—it’s just when my creative energies are at their fullest. Being nocturnal in a non-nocturnal world, however—that is the challenge. Most of us need to keep office hours that are from the land of the living, so the balance can be tricky. I continually try to achieve this balance. While some coworkers get excited for the end of the workday, I tend to get more productive as the hours go by and have a hard time turning my computer off at 5:30; I start scheming of the projects I can accomplish while burning the midnight oil.

I do want to gain an appreciation for the day, and fortunately, I recently stumbled upon a great blog post titled “Seize the Day—How I Became an Early Riser, and You Can Too!”. The title seemed like it was meant for me, so I checked it out, embraced some of their suggestions, and made them my own. I’m happy to report that this method is working, and this week, I have been able to get up about half an hour earlier than usual, and I have not dreaded it. The tricks that have worked for me?

· Looking forward to a nice vegan breakfast. For years, I have wanted to try getting up to an interesting breakfast, and I am trying to incorporate international styles. Like, for example, a traditional Japanese-style breakfast of miso soup, nori, and rice. Or treating myself to an awesome soy latté.

· Increased appreciation for the non-nocturnal animals. I have now realized that when you get up early, you can spend a few groggy, eye-opening, waiting-for-the-tea-kettle moments gazing at the feisty squirrels and birds foraging on your lawn. Their business makes me super-motivated to start the day. Since I work for PETA, my day involves helping animals, so it’s a completely symbiotic relationship.

· Getting to the office early means an awesome parking space.

If you also are working on being more of an ‘early bird’, please share your tips!

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Does your child dread going back to school? After months of playing with the dog or cat, swimming, and tabling at fairs and festivals, sitting in math class probably doesn’t sound like much fun. Perhaps you can help “ease the pain” by encouraging him or her to look at it as an opportunity to teach other kids about animal rights issues. That will make any blossoming activist eager to get back to class.

Here are six easy ways that students can help animals. Show them to your child or tween and urge him or her to come up with other ideas—after math class, of course!

1. Decorate your locker and folders with free animal rights stickers from PETA—that way you’re spreading the message every time you’re at school or in class. You can even order PETAKids stencils to design a T-shirt or backpack.

2. Homework isn’t all bad. If you have to write an essay or give an oral report, why not incorporate animal rights issues, such as animal testing, spaying and neutering, or vegetarianism, into the assignment? Your classmates—and your teacher—can learn a lot from you.

3. Set up a donation jar in class (with the teacher’s permission) and encourage other students to put their change from lunch in the jar. When it’s full, give the money to a local animal shelter with a nice note signed by all the students.

4. Ask your teacher if your class can do one of the activities in the Share the World humane education program.

5. If your school carnival or fair has contests that give away goldfish as prizes, get a group of caring students together and politely complain to the principal. Explain that a frightened, lonely goldfish is no prize, and suggest stuffed animals as prizes instead.

6. Say “No!” to mystery meat. For lunch, pack a sandwich made with vegetarian deli slices from Yves or Tofurky slices. Fake meats are sold in most grocery stores now. When friends ask what you have for lunch, tell them proudly.

For “extra credit,” ask the school lunch server to offer more vegetarian meals. Circulate a petition to show that other students want healthy, humane fare. PETA’s youth division, peta2, has a pack of resources to help you out. You may want to ask your mom or dad to help out too.

For more ideas, activities, success stories, quizzes, facts, and jokes, check out 50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals.

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The first book I bought when the pregnancy test revealed two lines instead of one wasn’t What to Expect When You’re Expecting (aka “What they never told you about pregnancy that you wish you’d known before you got yourself into this state”). It was a small tome called Happy Kids, Happy Dogs.

Giehl and I share our home and lives with two wonderful dogs and two very cat-like cats (who are far too busy and important to be photographed today). Clyde and Emma are both around 3 years old, and they’re full of enthusiasm for life (and food). While kids and dogs are often a great combination (I loved the dog we had growing up more than I loved most of my friends and family, I think), too often, the dogs in the house get the short end of the stick after the baby arrives—and bad things can happen as a result (e.g., neglected dog starts acting out, neglected dog then becomes neglected and yelled-at-a-lot dog, then neglected and yelled-at dog gets dumped at the local animal shelter). Happy Kids, Happy Dogs talks about how to ensure that your human baby and your canine child grow up to love and respect each other, starting in pregnancy and all the way through adolescence.

So just as you’d prepare an older sibling for the arrival of a baby brother or sister, Giehl and I started to prepare our dogs early on for the arrival of a baby boy. We bought a doll and started carrying it around in our Ergo carrier, sitting on the couch with it pretending to feed, putting it in the swing … things that will become part of our routine when the real baby arrives. The trick is to make sure that the experiences the dogs have with the fake baby are positive (e.g., while I’m sitting on the couch feeding the fake baby, I’m also giving Clyde and Emma little bits of treats while they sit or lie quietly next to me). We also spent a lot of time working with them on some basic training. As Karen P., PETA’s resident dog expert, will tell you, dogs like to have a job! Our dogs’ only job is to sit nicely before they ask for something, but it makes a big difference in their overall mental health (and, therefore, in our sanity).

There’s just too much good stuff in Happy Kids, Happy Dogs to put in one post, so look for more later. And once B-Day (that’s Birth-Day) comes and goes, I’ll be sure to let you know how it all plays out in real life!

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My boyfriend’s nonvegan brother and sister-in-law came over for his birthday last week, although Jay (the bf) wouldn’t let me acknowledge that it was for his birthday. “They’re just coming over for lunch, and we happen to be having cake for dessert,” he said. OK, whatever. I cried a little inside about not having birthday candles and moved on.

We both revel in treating nonvegans to delicious vegan food. So when Jay’s normally laid-back brother started looking a little breathless and said, “So, there really aren’t any eggs in this cake? It’s so moist,” we both smiled. I said, “No, of course not. You don’t need eggs to make a good cake,” and I grabbed my copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking to show them some recipes (everything in that cookbook is absolutely amazing).

Whenever Jay and I serve vegan food to nonvegans, he always repeats the same line like a mantra: “Nothing you’ve eaten today had any cholesterol!” It’s like we’re on an infomercial, and I try to stifle my laughter. The thing is that for Jay, it’s not really a laughing matter. His father passed away suddenly from a heart attack in his 50s, and Jay’s brother’s cholesterol and triglycerides are dangerously high. He’s not even 40 yet, and he’s on cholesterol-lowering drugs. Jay’s cholesterol, on the other hand, is 123. To put that in perspective, the average meat-eating American’s cholesterol is 210, while the average vegan’s cholesterol is 133.

When my stepfather had a serious heart attack last December, his doctor told him two things: 1) You’re very lucky to be alive (the type of heart attack he had is referred to as a “widow maker”), and 2) A vegan diet is the healthiest. While he hasn’t gone fully vegan, he’s significantly reduced his consumption of animal products and increased the amount of vegetarian foods he eats. When you consider that vegetarians live longer, have a significantly reduced risk of many chronic diseases (including heart disease), and don’t smell when they’re old, going vegan seems like a no-brainer to me—especially if you can still eat delicious cake.

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As someone who has an unhealthy love of food, I was really looking forward to being able to “eat for two” in pregnancy. Imagine my sorrow when I learned that pregnant women really only need an additional 300 calories or so—and only in the second half of pregnancy. WTF? So uncool.

My sorrow didn’t last long, as I was wracked for several long months with “all-day sickness” (another lie: morning sickness—it’s not just for mornings!) and couldn’t keep down much more than oatmeal and, on a really adventurous day, apple sauce (sprinkled with ginger instead of cinnamon, in a desperate and ill-fated attempt to fight the nausea naturally).

Skip ahead to months five through nine, when I could finally eat like a real person. I tend to gravitate toward foods in the starch and fat family (potato chips are the perfect food), but I knew that I’d be setting my kid up for a lifetime of obesity if I snacked on nothing but garbage all day. I’ve already been down the fat path and don’t really want to go back. Before I went vegan six years ago, my cholesterol was 250 (which, incidentally, was also about how much I weighed—fine, perhaps, if I were 8 feet tall, but at 5′6″, not so good), and I definitely wanted to give my kid the best start I could.

Since I don’t eat artery-clogging, disease-causing animal flesh, I felt like I had a pretty strong head-start on the whole “eating well” thing, but here are a few tips and tricks I eventually settled on:

1) Hummus and baby carrots are my friends. Hummus is packed with protein and healthy fats, and carrots have all that great vitamin A (they’re the best source of it, actually, unless you’re super keen on eating liverwurst, animal livers, or cod liver oil. Mmmmm, tasty!).

2) Soy milk is easy, fast protein. Starbucks will sell me a lovely bucket of steamed soy milk for a few bucks when I forget to go to the grocery store and buy my own.

3) Woman cannot live on pasta alone, but she can add a few Nate’s frozen “meat”-balls and make a nice balanced dinner.

4) Go back to the basics. Peanut butter and jelly on whole-wheat bread with a little apple sauce cup and a handful of raw vegetables is a good lunch, not to mention easy and cheap. On a fancy day, I’ll do Tofurky with Vegenaise, pickles, and tomato.

5) You can make a nutritious and protein-packed smoothie (if you’re veg, people will hound you even more about the protein than they did before you got pregnant—brace yourself) in about five seconds. Here’s my friend Dawn’s recipe (makes two):

2-4 bananas
4-7 leaves of fresh kale, stripped from the stalk
A big spoonful of peanut or almond butter
Soy milk

If you really want to make something with more than four ingredients (might as well relish it now, because I hear that after the baby is born, there’s no time for that kind of nonsense), you can add any of the following:

A few big spoonfuls of soy yogurt
Crushed red pepper, to taste
A dash of vanilla extract
4 tablespoons of flaxseeds (grind them first, if you can)
Small spoonful of maple butter or syrup
Half an avocado
4 dates or figs (soaked first)
Walnuts
Frozen strawberries