My Vegan Valentine

One year ago today, a few nights before Valentine's Day my husband was in Sydney on business, and I was back in San Francisco lamenting a job I hated that was keeping me from joining him on the trip. After moping over a few glasses of Chardonnay I decided, you know what, screw that job. It wasn't worth being held back from experiencing life, so I booked a flight for the following night.

I ended up actually missing Valentine's Day in transit, but once I arrived in Sydney Tim and I had our own V-day dinner at Bodhi in Hyde Park. It was one of the more spontaneous things I've ever done and we'd likely not be living here now had I not taken the chance. And now I love living in a country that celebrates that sense of adventure.

We're not sure where we'll have Valentine's Day dinner this year, but I do know what we'll be doing during the day. We'll be attending the Sydney Vegan Bake-Off at Naked Espresso in Newtown! How rad is that?

I'm pretty bummed that I won't be able to bake for it, but the kitchen in the temporary apartment we're staying in is pretty pitiful. But I'm excited to attend and finally get to meet some of the awesome Aussie bloggers I've been getting to know over the last few months.

If you're in San Francisco you can get your own baked goods fix at the next SF Vegan Bake Sale on the 13th. And for everyone else, VegNews and VegWeb have an awesome list of recipes and resources to make your Valentine's Day delicious.

Sending lots of love to you all!

Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza

It's been quite an emotional couple of days for me and Tim. Over the weekend we had our going-away party, said goodbye to many friends and family, and started making peace with the fact that we're about to leave the city where we met, fell in love, and called home for nearly five years.

And then we found out our visas are delayed. So far it sounds like just a week, but it's hard to know for sure.

Major bummer, as we'd been hoping to arrive in Sydney in time for Australia Day, and we'd joined a Sydney Vegetarian group on Meetup.com who are having a party a few days later that we'll now have to miss. Not to mention, it would have been nice to have an extra week with Tony Danza.

Early this morning, through torrential downpours, we drove our little guy down to Pet Express, the company that has been helping us through our pet immigration process. I can't recommend their services more highly. Throughout, they were responsive, on top of the myriad of paperwork and vet appointments required of us, friendly, and reassuring.

We bid Tony a tearful goodbye and earlier this evening, his plane shipped off to Australia. He'll arrive tomorrow at his quarantine facility, where he'll spend the next ten or so weeks. It was so hard not being able to tell him that we'd be coming back for him. We're allowed to visit when we get there, though the facility is a bit far outside the city and not public transit accessible so it will be tough.

We were able to take our minds off of him today though, as it was quite the busy day of shipping off all our worldly possessions to Sydney, and handing off the rest to Goodwill, SCRAP, and various friends. The upside of our delay in travel is that I can take a bit of a breather tomorrow before repainting and cleaning the apartment. Whew!

And bonus: we'll have a chance to check out this weekend's emergency vegan bake sale to benefit Haiti. Bonus link for you: Food for Life, a great organization that is bringing vegan meals to Haiti. I highly recommend donating to them. I suppose in that context, saying goodbye to your cat and being delayed a week to Australia is not the biggest tragedy in the world.

Happy 2010!

Though I've got a full day until the countdown, my Sydney-sider friends will be rocking in the new year in just a few hours, so I thought I'd go ahead and post my look back at the year that was 2009.

This year Veg Table and Vegan@Large were born! I hope to have a bit more time to do some community building on Veg Table in 2010, but in the mean time I sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to the site, as well as all my readers here, followers on Twitter, and just the awesome vegan community in general.

In personal news, Tim and I witnessed some of our closest friends and family members get hitched! Lots of love to Amy and Stewart, Ali and Quinn, Brad and Becky, and Karen and Craig! And although I sadly lost a dear family member this year, there was still MUCH to be thankful for. Our travels for weddings and other events took us to Sydney, Long Island, Los Angeles, San Diego, Napa, New York, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Arizona. I've got the travel bug for sure and can't wait to explore a whole new part of the world next year.

I worked on three amazing bakesales, the first as part of the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale which led to the creation of the ongoing SF Vegan Bake Sale which continues to blow my mind in terms of funds raised, not to mention community building and some of the best vegan outreach there is.

Some other great strides were made this year in terms of mainstream vegan acceptance. Jonathan Safran Foer and Alicia Silverstone brought animal rights and veganism to new audiences through their books. Ellen Degeneres started doing easy vegan cooking demos on her talk show and Oprah welcomed chef Tal Ronnen (whose book The Conscious Cook I got as a Christmas gift and is food porn like WOAH) to show that vegan cooking can be gourmet and delicious.

Vegansaurus has an awesome wrap-up of the decade in veganism. I've only been vegan for half of the decade, but I'm so excited for the coming years for vegans. If you're itching for other year-end lists (because they're very hard to come by on the internet right now) I suggest really the only other essential list: The 30 Most Important Cats of 2009. Other than the glaring omission of Tony Danza, it's pretty much spot-on.

Lastly, I hope you all enjoy wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrations. I'm not doing anything of particular vegan note, but I may make some Texas Caviar. As a one-time Texan and lover of black-eyed peas, it's a New Year's tradition I can get behind. VegWeb has a great round-up of other black-eyed pea recipes to bring you all sorts of good luck.

Happy 2010, y'all!

December Warm Fuzziness!

Whew, it was a busy weekend full of awesomeness. We managed to cram in Tim's company holiday party, a trip up to Petaluma to see my brother- and sister-in-law's new house, and of course, the SF Vegan Bake Sale.










I'm still kind of in shock and disbelief that we raised $4200 this time out! Those are going to be some safe bunnies and empowered foodies. Vegansaurus has a great wrap-up as usual and I've got some photos up here. My favorite part of doing these bakesales (and this has happened at least once at all three sales I've worked) is when some random vegan who hadn't heard of us walks up to our table and asks sheepishly, "You guys don't have anything vegan, do you?" And then I get to respond, "Why yes, it's ALL VEGAN! Feast your eyes on our glorious splendor!" (My exact words.) And then their eyes light up and the clouds part and sunshine and rainbows beam down.

Between the joy of these events, the sappiness of the winter holidays, and the fact that I'm soon leaving the city I've loved for the last 4+ years, everything's been feeling rather bittersweet. My baking cohorts will most certainly be missed!

The other thing about this time of year is that you somehow wind up with social obligations every day of the week. So between my day job, baking, moving, travels, holiday events, and shopping, I've been feeling a little scattered. This is my lame way of saying that I'm postponing putting up any of my Veg Table tour guide submissions until after the new year.

Or, hey, let's spin this: I am extending the deadline to submit! I'll be in touch soon with those of you who were diligent enough to send me your submissions in a timely matter. I love reading these! More vegan warm fuzzies!

The Next SF Vegan Bake Sale!

The next SF Vegan Bake Sale is coming! Mark your calendar for Dec. 5th from 11-4. Same great location outside of Ike's Place, so while you're waiting a well-worth-it hour for your sandwich, you can fill up on vegan doughnuts. We've got not one, but two awesome non-profit organizations lined up as beneficiaries this time:

Food Empowerment Project, whose website is a little light on details, but from what I understand, works with youth and low-income populations to make healthier, more informed food choices. And Save a Bunny, who, well, they save bunnies! Like these guys:Since our super crazy successful event a few weeks ago raised $2600 in under three and a half hours, one thing was certain about our next sale: we need more bakers!

Friends, even you non-vegan ones, would you be willing to spend a little time baking for the bunnies? If you're intimidated by vegan baking I can point you towards recipes that are delicious, virtually impossible to screw up and don't require any "weird" ingredients. (Like these banana chocolate chip muffins from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's The Joy of Vegan Baking. You can borrow my book!)

And, though I've not yet bought it, you can check out VegNews' recent foray into digital cookbooks, appropriately enough a collection of holiday cookies! VegNews is also sponsoring our bake sale this time around because they are awesome like that.

Anyway, if you want to bake, please let me know and I'll getcha more details. And if you just want to stop by and eat some scones and save bunnies, that's cool too. We recommend getting there early! And it will be my LAST bake sale in San Francisco before I move. Sadface! So now you have to come.

P.S. Don't forget you can follow our updates on Twitter!

Vegan Bake Sale Wrap-Up

This Saturday was the first official SF Vegan Bake Sale and it was a rousing success! When we did our first bake sale as part of the World Wide event back in June, we raised $3,000 over two days. So imagine our delight when in this one-day event we raised over $2,600! And we helped two kitties get adopted!

One hundred percent of the money earned went to charity - in this case Give Me Shelter cat rescue. We plan to hold an event every other month or so, with the next one falling around holiday time. These bake sales are great on so many levels because not only does it give us a chance to help out struggling nonprofits, but we're getting some truly delicious vegan food out to people who might not try it otherwise, helping to break down the myth that vegan food is bland or gross. As I've said before, that's my favorite kind of activism.

And it helps bring the community together. I met all kinds of kickass bakers, chefs, and just regular folks like me, whipping up cookies for a cause. In some ways I regret taking so long to get involved with the local vegan community in the Bay Area. I lived here for four years and only in the last nine months or so have I started becoming active. It's something I definitely hope to correct when moving to Sydney.

More photos can be found here, and you should also check out the wrap-up on vegansaurus! Thanks to Laura, Karin, and Abby for being amazing co-organizers.

If you came, let me know your favorite goods you tried. What would you love to see being sold next time? I've got to start coming up with ideas of what to bake in December... More savory goods? The Daiya cheese biscuits were one of my favorites.

The San Francisco Vegan Bake Sale is Coming!

Those of you who are denizens of San Francisco like myself may recall that I participated in a vegan bake sale back in June -- the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale, for which the San Francisco proceeds went to benefit Animal Place and East Bay Animal Animal Advocates. Well thanks to some enterprising local vegans, we're turning it into a regular thing. Yay!

Do you want to help this time? Of course you can attend and buy lots of stuff but you can also bake for us! Although we'll have goods from Fat Bottom Bakery and other famed local bakers, you don't need to be a pro to participate.

Last time I baked Jelly Donut Muffins (from Veganomicon) and Black and White Cookies (from My Sweet Vegan, which is an awesome book!) and both sold out really quickly along with the tons and tons of other baked goods people wonderfully donated.

If you're not vegan but still like to bake and want to donate your wares let me know. I can recommend some easy, no fail recipes if you're nervous about vegan baking for the first time. Either way if you want to participate in any way, leave a comment and let me know or email me at sharon@veg-table.net. 

Some other info that would probably be helpful... The bakesale is Saturday, October. 17th and will take place in front of Ike's Place (3506 16th St at Sanchez) from 11 am to 4 pm. All proceeds to go to Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue. (UPDATE: You can follow SFVeganBakesale on Twitter!)

You might as well get on board now because you can expect to be harassed for the next month otherwise. It's for the kitties! Do it for Cleo: