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!

Tony Danza Update

Apparently I've had some concerned readers wondering where we are with our kitty immigration drama so I figured I'd post an update. We've spoken to some Aussie immigrants who dealt with similar issues to get some perspective and here's what we learned:

Australia quarantine, because it has the strictest standards is also known for being the nicest. Also there are designated days where you can visit your pets. Cost is a major downside. His monthly fee is more than I paid for rent on my one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn five years ago. However, it looks like Tim's company may put us up in a hotel for a month, thus saving us a month of rent and balancing it out.

So quarantine it is. Our vet recommended an agency to us called Pet Express that works specifically on pet travel and immigration. So far they've been super helpful in making sense of the mountain of paperwork and jargon we're dealing with, and they will take TD to the airport for his journey. Again, the services aren't cheap but you're paying for peace of mind, and not having to stress about last minute problems that arise.

My only remaining concern is getting him food he likes. Not that he's one of those snobby Fancy Feast cats... he just has, well, a rather sensitive tummy. When his current brand of cat food was recalled recently and we had to temporarily switch him, the results were not pleasant for anyone. I haven't been able to find any Nutro distributors in Sydney. Does anyone know of something that might be roughly equivalent? 

UPDATE: I found Nutro distributors here!

Kind of gross to be writing about the one non-vegan product we allow in our home, but unfortunately TD doesn't have much of a taste for tofu. However, there is ONE VEGAN PRODUCT that he goes absolutely, inexplicably crazy for: So Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt.

Yup, that's him with a container of it stuck on his face. The other day I had some with my lunch and seconds after I'd opened it, the delicious aroma awoke him from his slumbers. He spent the next three minutes wandering around the living room and subsequently crying because he couldn't tell where the smell was coming from. (Hint, kitty: it's always in my hands.) When he finally found it, he did his best to try to paw it out of my hands. He's lucky he's cute. This is what goes down every single time I eat this stuff. As usual he got to lick the cup afterwards and was in kitty heaven.

I wonder if they'll let me sneak his favorite treat to him in quarantine. Are there any vegan products your cat goes crazy for? Brighten my day with cute kitty stories in the comments.

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.

Adventures in Kitty Immigration

When we tell people we're moving to Australia, the first question Tim and I usually get is, "What about Tony Danza?" If you've never met us, you're probably scratching your head. That's because I've not yet formally introduced my blog readers to our pride and joy, Tony Danza:
Look at what a gentleman he is. If you're wondering, yes, he's odd-eyed and deaf. He also has cerebellar hypoplasia which is fancy science talk for "tiny brain." Well, at least the part of the brain that controls motor function. None of his paws really move in tandem together and as a result he can't really walk a straight line. Tim rescued him from some irresponsible care-takers (TD's mom and dad also happen to be brother and sister) 12 years ago, so now he's my step-kitty.

Bearing in mind his age, medical issues and generally awful disposition we've struggled with whether or not he'd even be able to survive the journey. We took him to our vet yesterday though, which shed a lot of light on the situation.

Australia requires that imported animals get microchipped, undergo a rabies vaccine and bloodwork, and then there's a 6 month waiting period before he's allowed in the country. He got the first two yesterday and will get his bloodwork on Oct. 15th. Six months from then is April 15th which conflicts a bit with our anticipated January 25 move date.

So we've got three choices:

1. Change our move date. Unfortunately I'm hoping to start school in March. It's unclear whether my visa will allow me to go over before Tim, but if it does, then that's a possibility.
2. Leave TD with a friend, to whom we'd be forever indebted. Unfortunately TD doesn't play well with other animals, and if you don't already have a cat, you probably don't want one. There are also some potential responsibilities that come with it. If you're interested we should have a talk.
   
3. Quarantine him in Australia. The thought of him stuck in a cage for several months is something I don't relish, but apparantly Australian quarantine is known for having the best treatment -- making it also rather expensive, however.
   

The last option of course was not taking him, but the vet seemed to think he's in good enough health to make it, so leaving him behind would be selfish. As much as I sort of liked the idea of moving into a home not filled with cat hair and never having to clean up hairballs and vomit... well, how can you say goodbye to this face?

More to come on the Tony Danza saga...

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: