Amanda Eats: Free Vegan Cooking Classes!

Amanda Eats: Free Vegan Cooking Classes!: "Check out these free vegan classes from Sunflower Market in Murray, Utah. Here's the link for more information. August 11, 2010 Earth..."

Something of interest for sure - How do you beat FREE? You don't!
Sunflower Market in Murray is offering free vegan cooking classes: Vegan Italian on the 11th and vegan raw on the 29th.

JD

Kudos to eBay Giving Works & Congrats to Sea Shepherd

Congratulations to Sea Shepherd for winning a $15,000 grant from eBay Giving Works. You can see the captain's message here:  http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/news-100706-1.html

Huge kudos goes to eBay Giving Works for making this possible. It is awesome to see one of my favorite companies giving to one of my favorite conservation groups. 


Cheers,
JD

An Epic Launch

This past Friday night I was fortunate to be invited to the official Epic Brewing grand opening party at the Stateroom. Epic is the first brewery in Utah since the prohibition to produce only "full-strength" beer and it is only available for purchase out of the brewery itself, at a small amount of local bars and soon at state liquor stores. I knew it would be something pretty damn cool, but I didn't realize what a big deal it truly would be, with the likes of politicians and SLC business leaders filling the venue. Good thing I had the sense to at least wear a collared shirt.

The party was great - 9 different stations at which to sample each Epic beer and also have some great food from Cuisine Unlimited.  Epic produces their beers in 3 different series' - Classic, Elevated and Exponential, but none of the Exponential series are available just yet; however, when they are, they will be some of the most creative beers to ever come out of Utah. The one I look forward to most is the oak whiskey barrel-aged Brainless Belgian. The Belgian is by far my favorite beer which they currently produce. 

Also as part of the event, they had a bus running back and forth between the venue and the brewery so that everyone could go over and get a tour, see the process of making the beers and see (and sample) all of the ingredients going into the beers. I have to say that the brewmaster (Kevin Crompton), formerly of Bohemian Brewery, who conducted a portion of our tour was one hell of a tour guide and an all around really nice guy. You can tell that he brews beer for the love of it and for nothing else. Our other tour guide, David Cole, was extremely passionate as well. To listen to these two guys talk about beer and the brewing process, it was easy to tell that they only want to produce the absolute best beer that Utah has ever tasted, and I think they are going to do just that. 

So you might be asking....JD, what is the point of posting this on your Salt Lake City vegetarian blog? Well, as it often comes up, especially among vegans, and is evident by websites like Barnivore, which dedicate themselves to maintaining an extensive list of vegan beers, wines and liquors, a lot of animal products are used in the process of creating different alcoholic beverages. So before heading up front to buy beer after the tour, I posed the all important question to David Cole - "Which of the beers are vegan?" His answer, "Every single one of them"!!!  They refuse to use anything to speed up the brewing process, filter the beer, etc - as he stated, in most non-vegan beers, they are non-vegan most often because animal products are used to speed up or ease the brewing process. They pride themselves on taking their time and making the highest quality product possible. They use nothing to speed up the process or make it easier so that they can get more beer out the door as quickly as possible.  This is evident as found in this article - they are already down to just a few beers in their store after being open for only a week. 

Way to go Epic! Congratulations on a more than successful grand opening and huge kudos for choosing not to use animal products in your beers. Swing by and check out Epic folks, you will not regret it. Great beers, brewed by great people.

Cheers,

JD

SLC Dining Diversity - May 8th to 23rd

Dining Diversity kicked off on Friday, May 8th and runs through May 23rd. This is the first year of the event and the goal is to bring multiple independent neighborhood restaurants who offer fresh, local food in Salt Lake together as a sort of smaller dine-o-round type event it would seem.  Problem is....the event itself seems extremely poorly organized, or something in which the participating restaurants could care less about being involved. Let me explain.....


Head over to their website and you see lots of great sponsors and some amazing participating restaurants (3 of which are my personal faves in the city). You read about special menu options for $20 or $30, but see nothing else actually listed on the website about these options. There is literally one sentence to explain the event. Click on the links to the restaurants web pages and the only ones who have done a good job of showing anything about participation is Fresco and Trio, both owned by the same group. Each of these two has a DD banner at the top of their homepage, like they are proud to be involved. One other restaurant mentions it in their "upcoming events" page, but you find nothing else about the event anywhere. They even have the URL wrong on one restaurant, sending you to citrusgrill.com (a dead link) instead of citrisgrill.com.  


In order to find out about menu choices for the event, are you just supposed to show up and be surprised by what your $20 or $30 option is for dinner?  Here's an idea event organizer....put it on YOUR website, don't rely on the participating restaurants to maintain their websites. And honestly.....what could Vertical be offering in the $20 to $30 range? I can usually feed my family of 3 there for $15 or so, with drinks and dessert. I love that they are part of this event, but them trying to offer something in the $20-$30 range means they'd have to charge more than they normally do. I'm lost....


Essentially the way this event is set up right now, you either have to call the restaurant or actually go in to find out more about the event menu, fine if you are already heading down there, but for someone new who has not eaten at any of these places, that info had better be online. The organizers don't even have contact info on their own site. Honestly, who organized this thing?  If it was you, please explain. If the goal was to get people to go and enjoy these great local restaurants, great idea, but I really don't think the goal will be met. 


Enough ranting....I really do think this sounds like a great concept and something that this strip mall, chain restaurant loving city really needs, but i'm a bit disappointed in the execution. 


JD

Airport + Hunger = Hunger :(

I ventured east last week and had the displeasure of trying to find something decent to eat at the Philadelphia airport. I define "decent" loosely because I still dabble in food that includes meat (!) but draw the line at over-processed junk.

Being the frugal state employee that I am, I try to bring food with me to the airport to save some cash, but I realize now that the more important reason I need to bring food with me is because there are few clear options for anyone that is vigilant of what enters their body. I can't help but stare at the food thinking about how low on the totem pole airport food is as far as quality. The disgust actually helps decrease my hunger.

I challenge you to pick one day every week to eat only things you made yourself, from scratch. Let us know how you're doing, and allow us to help you. If you have trouble with this commitment, repeat to yourself, "I deserve to be happy. I want to be healthy. I earn my body."

Sitting in the airport eating a piece of pizza, I realized how much being healthy is a commitment to myself and the world around me. Planning ahead is important so that I don't begrudgingly succumb to buying something that I don't want. The grease dripping down my hand from the crappy pizza renewed my commitment to myself, this blog and to choosing health.

-Deb

Your own "free" personal vegan assistant

Thought about going vegan, but it seems like it is just way too much work or you think you can't afford to do all your shopping at Whole Foods, because that is where you have to shop when you are vegan, right? Well head on over to VeganSalt, she has an offer you cannot refuse. She will be your personal vegan assistant for free and help you do everything you need to do to ease yourself into a vegan way of life.  The only catch? You have to be in SLC. 

Random Veg thought #1

One of many reasons why vegetarians are awesome.....
We are cheap dates. 


No matter where you go, the vegetarian items on the menu are going to be the least expensive. Meaning it is much easier to take a date who is veg out to the newest, hottest and most expensive restaurant in town. The price of your dinner will be pretty much dependent on what you eat. No need to worry what they order, because the one or two veg choices on the menu will be the least expensive hands down. If they're vegan, even better!! It is doubtful they will be able to have dessert at many places around town. 


I'm definitely not saying that we like going to restaurants without good veg options, so don't go looking for veg dates solely because you are a cheapskate. If you want to date a veg you better consider that to get into our hearts, you need to do some research ahead of time. Ruby River or Ruth's Chris is not going to impress anyone and could be both the first and the last date on which you take us. If I was on the single scene and a date took me somewhere with either veal, foi grois, or worse yet, both on the menu, and my veg option was a salad......yeah....NO!  You don't need to take us to a vegan restaurant on our first date, but for god's sake, do some research. We wouldn't scare the shit out of you and take you to Rawtopia our first night out, it's a slow gradual process. 


You'd be surprised how many great local restaurants have some amazing veg options in this city...but that's for an entirely different post all together. This is merely a random thought.....


Cheers,
JD