Happy Heart Day

Even though Valentine's Day is pretty cliche, it does at least give us an excuse to bake things with all of those heart-shaped tins, cookie cutters, and muffin pans that we keep in storage for most of the year. (I'll post another heart shaped dessert tonight) Here's a valentine I got last week at our potluck from a full-of-energy vegan 3 year old!On the left are the self frosted peanut butter cupcakes from My Sweet Vegan that I made last night for my coworkers (as if they deserve it, but always need to spread vegan love). A hint about these.... if you have leftover frosting, save it and put more on after they bake!! And on the right are the cupcakes I made for the potluck this past weekend. I used the VCTOTW recipe, but used Hannah's MSV technique of cutting out the heart shape and filling with more frosting (as she did with her lemon poppyseed cupcakes).
And here's a fun thing I found on flickr toys....
There have been quite a few vegan related stories in the news for this Valentine's Day. One on the search for vegan valentine candy and NPR's story on vegan baking . I spotted urban vegan and her omniman in the NYTimes article "I Love You, But You Love Meat". This must be a common theme for food colums around Valentine's Day, because our local paper also did a piece on food issues in relationships. John and I were interviewed for the article, and we got a little blurb included in the paper, ironically enough right next to some instructions for making ham wrapped asparagus (what a way to ruin a perfectly good vegetable!). The quotes aren't the ones I would have chosen from our 30+ minutes interview, but I guess they wanted to make it sound "challenging", even though it usually isn't (not to say we don't have our moments). Here is the link, but to save you from reading the whole article, here's our few minutes of fame:

How about a vegan and an ominvore? Does love conquer all? Vegans, like vegetarians, avoid meat, fish and chicken. They also steer clear of dairy products, eggs, honey — in short, any food produced by ananimal.

Newlyweds John and Amanda Mariano were dating when "she tricked me,"John jokes, by turning vegan. She cooks for the pair and, because she's terrific at it, he misses meat less than he imagined.

Still, he conceded, "It's not easy. It's not like we argue all the time, but when we do argue, it usually has something to do with this."

Amanda, meanwhile, is working on being more flexible. "I wouldn't change John for the world," she said. "He's on his own journey and if he never goes vegan, I would never love him any less." (Peggy Grodinsky, Houston Chronicle)

Also just found out that I got a letter to the editor published in The Houston Press (independent paper) about a food editorial. I love how they call me a "mad vegan" (in the headline) to get reader's attention.

Vegan bashing: Well, it seems as if Robb Walsh is at it again. In his review of Dry Creek Café, he describes asking two waitresses — one "drop-dead gorgeous" and the other "cute" (I won't even begin to address his misogynistic undertones) — to choose between rotting animal flesh No. 1 or rotting animal flesh No. 2, only to discover that one waitress is vegan and the other a vegetarian. He then goes on to reminisce about the good ole days when he filed a police report against a vegan group for a death threat while living in Austin. Does he not realize, or care, that there are plenty of vegans living here Houston? Some of them, like me, even read his column every once in a while. But I don't think he'll have to worry about death threats in this case, since I'm sure eating all of those cholesterol-laden "triple bypass burgers" will send him to his grave long before any vegan could lay a hand on him. Veganism promotes nonviolence and compassion toward all sentient beings, even Robb Walsh. For the animals,
<3

I'll be updating this post with the winner of the door prize tonight. There's still time to get your guess in! Hope everyone has a Happy Valentine's Day!