In which Jayne comes face-to-face with her great white whale, known to the humans as “Lemmy.”

Actually, some days they spend hours this way, scoping out one another from their respective sides of the dog/cat boundary line. Lemmy knows enough to stay away from Jayne when there’s not an insurmountable obstacle preventing her from mauling him – but from his side of the glass, he becomes quite the provocateur: taking swipes at her, rolling around playfully (and occasionally right off the desk he uses for a perch), yawning and showing off his kitten belly and general lack of fear. And all she can do is quiver! High comedy, I tell you what. The two should star in a buddy film together.

Shane: Hey, come look at this! See Lemmy’s new favorite spot? [In the closet, sandwiched into my old monitor stand.]
Me: OMG, that’s ADORABLE! Did you get a picture? You have to take a picture!
Shane: [pause] I’m not gonna be one of those people who shares cat pictures online.
Me: What! I’m one of those people!
Shane: ….
Me: Well, I’m taking a picture then.

I bet he’ll share this post on Facebook.

When I went poking through the archives I was surprised to see that I’ve only written about mac & cheese but once! Just once! Shocking when you consider how often we eat the stuff. Which in itself is shocking, given that I’d never even had mac & cheese until I was in my mid-20s! (Milk allergy, how I’ve learned to love you.) This oversight must be remedied!

Anyhow, in the original Teese vs. Follow Your Heart showdown, Follow Your Heart emerged victorious. (My latest pizza nomz roundup? Full of spoilers. And no Teese!) I found Teese a little salty, possibly with a weird aftertaste; I don’t wholly remember. (Of course, this was the old formula; and while things may have since changed, between Follow Your Heart and Daiya my contentment is so complete that I’ve no desire to revisit the issue. But I digress.) Thus, the mac & cheese recipe I offered up as our “perfect” formulation was a strictly Follow Your Heart-based dish.

Once Daiya finally hit the market, however, we did revisit our previously “perfect” mac & cheese formula and came up with a dish that’s even creamier, worlds yummier and more decadent than the original. This one involves a 50/50 mix of cheddar Follow Your Heart and Daiya cheeses. We found that Daiya alone made for a good enough cheese sauce, but the two combined? Heavenly!

After years of tinkering, I think this is it! THE PERFECT CREAMY VEGAN MAC & CHEESE RECIPE! (Previous disclaimer re: personal tastes still applies.)

Although, there’s no telling what will happen when Pepperjack Daiya reaches Kansas City…

Creamy Mac & Cheese with Daiya and Follow Your Heart vegan cheeses

Ingredients

2 cups Follow Your Heart cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups Daiya cheddar cheese, shredded
4 cups uncooked macaroni (mini shells are my personal fave!)
8 tablespoons margarine
24 oz plain soy milk

Directions

Make the cheese sauce!

1. In a medium-sized saucepan, bring the soy milk to a boil.

2. Reduce the heat to medium and mix in the margarine, stirring until melted.

3. Add the cheese shreds, stirring gently until they combine with the liquid to form a creamy cheese sauce.

Optional: season to taste with salt, pepper, onion or garlic. If a thicker sauce is your desire, stir in a pinch of corn starch.

4. Reduce the heat to low, stirring even few minutes.

Make the pasta!

5. In a deep skillet or wide, shallow sauce pan, cook the pasta according to the directions provided on the package. Stop when about 90% done and drain, leaving a little hot water with the pasta. (This will mostly cook down as you continue to heat the pasta.)

Combine the two to make mac and cheese!

6. Mix the cheese sauce into the pasta, stirring well. On medium low heat, let the pasta continue to cook, until it’s the desired consistency. Stir constantly during this last step so that none of the pasta or cheese sticks to the pan.

Serve warm and melty!

Or … maybe on a pizza? (You heard me right!)

Fuck yeah hot carb on carb action! (You’ll find the recipe at the PPP blog: Creamy Vegan Mac & Cheese Pizza! And you will go looking for it; resistance is futile. Muahaha!)

Extra-special bonus nomz!

Vegan Baked Macaroni & Cheese with Daiya! (Recipe via To Live and Eat in L.A.) Not bad, though not nearly as creamy and cheesy as I like it. Shane is a big fan; he’s partial to the breadcrumbs!

Make pizza, photograph pizza, eat pizza, blog pizza, repeat.
THE ONLY TO DO LIST THAT MATTERS. LIVE BY IT!
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Lately I’ve been all about food and furkids. More specifically, pizza & ice cream and cats & dogs. It’s my own form of escapism, yo. (Burnout, who me?) So, while it might seem like I haven’t been up to much lately – particularly to those of you who just follow me here – the truth is that I’m still blogging, just in other spaces, including a few new places.

For instance: fuck yeah vegan pizza and fuck yeah vegan ice cream. I started these sister blogs on tumblr after realizing that my food self can basically be boiled down to these two foodstuffs. (And further realizing that posting mouth-watering photos of gooey, oozy, melty, cheesy pizza slices and delightfully decadent frozen desserts is worlds more fun than beating my head against the twin walls of speciesism and misogyny that encircle the feminist and animal advocacy communities. End: rant.) If you’re on tumblr, please follow and submit! (Photos, not yourself!) If not, sign up. I need you!

Also, I’ve been cooking up a storm in my real-world kitchen too, experimenting with new pizza and ice cream recipes, some of them developed by my own bad self. (Which would explain why I’ve gained ten lbs. since x-mas, but I digress.) Possibly you might be wondering where in the worlds I’ve been hoarding these delicious new dishes? Though I’ll save the ice cream not-porn for another day – this post is called “vegan nomz roundup!: pizza ed.” for a reason, peoples! – today I’d like to talk about some of the many pizzas I’ve made so far this year. All of the recipes are available on the PPP blog. (ETA: I also post uber-adorable photos of adoptable animals every Friday! You’ve been warned!)

(Certainly you remember the Perfect Pizza Press, yes? It’s a pizza cutter-esque kitchen utensil that Shane invented in ’09. He hired a welder to make a prototype based on his design and, when it proved a success, we decided to sell it online. While the website has been functional for months now, the presses are not yet available for purchase. Obtaining samples from local manufacturers has proven slow-going, and my recent health issues haven’t exactly sped things along. During the limbo we’ve been feasting on vegan pizza – for the blog/business, of course – so it’s a wash I guess!)

Possibly you’ll find that some of these pies are a repeat; if so, this is only because they rocked so hard the first time that they could not be denied an encore!

Listed in reverse chronological order; if you do nothing else, you simply must scroll through for the awesomness that is the Garbage Plate Pizza! Look for it in the middle.

And yes, I realize that these are all terribly unhealthy, over-processed, fat-laden dishes; again, see: my recent unexpected weight gain. (Unexpected? What did I think would happen when I bought Daiya in bulk? Play with fire much?) The good news? Now that I’m overhauling my diet to include pizzas with less or no cheese; thinner crusts topped with more fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds; and dough involving a greater variety of flours, future dishes will (mostly) be on the healthy side. Consider this the junk food pizza roundup.

Personal Pita Pizzas!

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is dejected: “Popcorn, y u b so unreachable?”

Ditto: mom, who’s similarly flailing at a new DSLR camera, which will vastly improve the quality of her food and furkid photos. Yeah, ’cause clearly it’s the camera – and only the camera – that’s to blame!

Epilogue: Don’t worry, mom to the rescue! Rennie’s frustrated nomz syndrome is no more.

I may not be straight edge, but I’M THE MUTHAFUCKIN’ VEGAN BIRTHDAY GIRL!*

These straight edge vegan music videos are strangely hypnotic, I tell you what. The first few minutes my mind called out for a bong hit – somewhat antithetical to the straight edge part, but never you mind – but once I let go….yeah. The funk, bring it ON!

Dude also made versions for vegan lesbians and heterosexual men. I think that last one is my favorite; the sexual gestures representing fellatio come off more humorous and less creepy than those for cunnilingus, if you know what I mean. Around :45, I’m overcome with the same icky feeling as when elderly customers (men, natch) hit on a 19-year-old me, working her way through college at the natural foods store. No like!

Not too in love with the fur hag vid, though. Seriously, people, can we lay of the gendered insults already? I get one birthday wish, no takebacksies!

* Yeah okay so I know it’s kind of tacky and/or sad to wish yourself a happy birthday, but I DON’T CARE! ’cause I just HAD TO SHARE THIS VIDEO! For serious.

A vegan vanilla cupcake topped with vanilla buttercream and
shredded coconut. Staked in the middle is a cute, pink and yellow sign
wishing the nom-er a Happy Mother’s Day!
CC image via flickr user mishl982.
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In honor of Mother’s Day, I spent much of yesterday tweeting about veganism, motherhood, and the exploitation of female bodies in animal industries (with an obvious emphasis on agriculture). In fact, those of you who follow me on twitter probably saw your feeds flooded by my steady stream of tweets! (Sorry for that, y’all!) In comparison to last year, I planned ahead this time: the day prior, I queued up a bunch of tweets using Hoot Suite, so that they’d begin posting while I was still snuggled up, all warm and cozy in bed (under a dog pile several layers deep, no doubt). Once I awoke and was reassured that it was working correctly, I scheduled the rest of the day, with a tweet going out every five or ten minutes until nearly 11PM. Way easier and more consistent than doing it by hand throughout the day! (Also, possibly less obnoxious, though only slightly so.)

After the jump you’ll find a digest of all of yesterday’s tweets (minus the ones for which I used twitter’s built-in RT feature. For some silly reason, those don’t make it into the list. Sigh.) If you compare this to last year’s round-up – which I totally don’t expect anyone to do! – you’ll find that I recycled many of 2010′s tweets, but also added quite a few new ones as well. This is partially due to laziness on my end, I admit. But also, when I went over last year’s list, I had a hard time trimming it down: so many of the posts, articles, photos, pamphlets, etc. were that compelling. I hope you agree!

I’m already working on a list of resources for Father’s Day (June 19) so if you have a blog, post, idea or theme you’d like to suggest, I’m all eyes!

“Smooch!: Both Tommy (left) and Freedom (right) were rescued from slaughter. Tommy is an Angus, raised for meat consumption. Freedom is a male Jersey, a dairy breed. Male dairy calves are unwanted and sent to auction and raised for veal or backyard slaughter. Now both live at Animal Place and obviously Freedom loves Tommy!”
CC image via Marji Beach on flickr.
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This morning, I woke to vomit in the bed. Kaylee vomit, to be exact, which makes the situation slightly less bad than it might otherwise have been. (Also, it helps that it wasn’t on my pillow. Yes, that has happened. To Shane! Muahahaha….)

“What’s the diff?” you’re probably wondering; “Puke is puke, is it not?” Actually, there’s a 50-50 chance that I can match a pile of vomit to a dog – or at least one of my dog-kids – based on its content: Peedee likes to steal and nom on my earplugs, Ralphie is a grass and dirt eater, and during the spring and summer months Kaylee turns into a decidedly non-vegan bug hunter – but that’s beside the point. Kaylee vomit – and mishaps involving bodily fluids – is different ’cause it comes from Kaylee. Sweet, sweet Kaylee, who’s suffered so much in her short life – yet harbors not one resentful cell in her entire being – and with whom it’s impossible to become angry. At least, not for more than a split second at a time.

It’s difficult to celebrate Mother’s Day without also mourning for the billions of nonhuman animals whose reproductive systems and maternal instincts we exploit for our own gain: “laying” hens, “dairy” cows, “breeding” sows, and so on. For many vegans, it’s those females farmed for food who have come to symbolize motherhood hijacked and corrupted on Mother’s Day. But for me – a vegan who’s only visited a handful of farmed animal sanctuaries, and has yet to befriend and know a cow, hen or sow on a personal level – Kaylee is the representation of motherhood subverted.

Today I’d like to republish a piece I wrote for her last Mother’s Day. Every word rings as true now as it did then. More so, even: during the last two years, I’ve been struggling with some minor but chronic health issues. Whereas the other dogs – as much as I love and adore them – oftentimes add to the stress with their constant demands for attention and occasional doggy outbursts (bark! bark! bark!), to the point that I sometimes have to hand them off to Shane … not Kaylee.

While I long to comfort, coddle, pamper her – as a down payment on the debt humanity owes her for the pain she and so many like her have endured at our hands – so often, too often, it’s she who takes care of me. Rarely does she ask; never does she take. Most times, she is content to lay beside me, graciously accepting strokes and kisses; laments whispered. She is unflappable in her devotion and, despite all that she’s been through, manages to exude a sense of calmness. Of peace and pleasure, long delayed.

Always soft but steady in her presence … my rock, made from marshmallows. She keeps me sane.

Happy mother’s day to all the moms in the world: human and non, biological and adoptive, same and cross-species, of all genders, ages and orientations. I hope you have a compassionate and peaceful day! And to those who are separated or estranged from your mother(s), my heart is with you.

P.S. My birthday is tomorrow, but my wish remains the same: live vegan, or at least as vegan as your life circumstances will allow.

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Scenes of compassion, consideration and love from my own life.
Counterclockwise, from top-left: the family of geese who shared “my” pond last year,
and who have returned again this season (no goslings yet though!);
my sister Michelle and brother Mike cuddle and comfort our canine sibling Shadow
shortly after surgery to repair her shattered back leg;
Ralphie and I share a moment during a sentimental visit to
our old neighborhood in Fairport, NY; and
a mother cow licks her baby clean.
Sadly, both were the property of our former landlords, and are most likely ground beef by now. It was a privilege to live next to such lovely creatures – but one constantly clouded by sadness and despair, given their near-certain fate. The knowing can be painful; but the not knowing is far, far worse. Go vegan, for you and for them.
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One does not need to be human to feel the deep-seated instinct to protect her babies, to seek the warmth of one’s mother. When animal advocates point out the obvious – that mothers and their babies suffer profoundly when they are separated, that harming one’s baby causes emotional trauma to the mother – we are accused of anthropomorphizing. We are portrayed as having centers as squishy as marshmallows, as having naive, sentimental, childish minds. In fact, it is a cold biological imperative, not just an emotional one, that drives a mother to want to nurture and protect her young: entire species would be wiped out if not for a mother’s instinct to defend her babies. I think, though, that it’s highly arrogant and self-serving to presume that humans alone have an emotional stake in their babies’ livelihoods. [...]

One also doesn’t need to be a mother to be deeply driven to protect another. Long before I ever had a baby, I felt the same kind of adrenaline surge when someone intentionally whipped a hard rubber ball at my dog as I would have if he had done that same thing years later to my son. I chased that guy down the beach, screaming at him, and he ran away as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did. I’m a non-violent person, but you don’t mess with the ones I love.

For Mother’s Day, I propose that we honor this natural drive within all of us to protect the ones we love, the ones who depend on our consideration, by not consuming the products of exploitation and cruelty. This common thread of wanting our babies to thrive is natural and noble, a key part of our essential being. Whether we are men or women, children or adults, human or hen, that universal mother is in all of us. Let’s celebrate without exploiting another innocent mother who had not only the autonomy of her body but also her babies stolen from her for our appetites. Let’s connect to that profound mothering spirit that links us together. She wants her babies to be well and protected from harm. I think we can understand.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone.

….with extra special hugs and kisses (and a few odd few bitter tears) to Miss Kaylee, of course.*

* Usually I stick with the status-neutral “Ms.,” but Kaylee prefers “Miss.” It makes her feel young, yo!

** The quote is excerpted from The Universal Mother… by Marla Rose, the one and only Vegan Feminist Agitator. Read and share, please and thanks.