UpStairs at the Square

Earlier this week Jo and I went to one of the Harvest Vegan Dinners at UpStairs on the Square. They’ve been doing a four course, gourmet vegan tasting menu (with optional wine pairings) monthly.

The next is scheduled for Tuesday, November 25th, and if you haven’t been you should absolutely check it out whether you’re vegan or just interested in gourmet food - call 617-864-1933 for reservations.

Here’s the menu from last week:

Chopped Salad of Endives, Pears & Spiced Walnuts
Soup of Locally-Foraged Wild Mushrooms, with Crispy Frybread
Baked Siena Farm Delecata Squash, Stuffed with Dried Fall Fruits with Grains & Herbs
Chocolate Glazed Pumpkin Cake
Sweet Cranberry Coulis

We also had delicious (vegan) wines from Marc Kreydenweiss - a Pinot Blanc, a Chardonnay, and (I believe) a Syrah.

Thanks to Eric and the Boston Vegan Association for encouraging / promoting dinners like this one.

I’ve spent a couple of weeks in London over the last month for work. It’s frankly a great city to be a vegan in, with lots of ethnic cuisine which is easily veganized (Thai, Indian, Ethiopian) as well as a number of health all-vegetarian or all-vegan spots.

Perhaps the best central resource is the aptly-named Vegan London, which provides among things a Google Map of restaurants. (On the basis of this map I guess I need to try to stay closer to Tottenham Court Road next time).

Three specific tips I’ll share from my most recent two trips:

1. Don’t forget to request the airline meal.
2. Go out of your way for better food.
3. Don’t overlook smaller or lesser known spots

Don’t forget to request the airline meal.

Virgin Atlantic, which I’ve been flying recently as they go direct from Boston Logan to Heathrow on a schedule that is good for work, has what they call a “Vegan Vegetarian” meal if you request it when you book. The plain old “Vegetarian” option is generally full of cheese, but I’ve found the vegan meals quite good. They often do not have a vegan option for the “snack” that comes in the morning (if you’re headed towards the UK overnight) or just before landing (coming the other way during the afternoon horus) so packing a light snack is a good idea as well. (Continental Airlines also has a “Vegetarian, Non-Dairy” option which is fairly reliable.).

Go out of your way for better food.

Based on the recommendation by the Vegan London list of restaurants, I ventured out a bit beyond my immediate hotel->work->hotel routine and got a wonderful dinner at 222 Veggie Vegan, in West Kensington. (I’ve been staying near Kengsington Olympia station, so in reality it was not so far an excursion - but it reminded me of the general principal that when I make the effort to go 3-4 tube stops away from the direct route, and aim for specific restuarants rather than making do, the food quality goes up several hundred percent).

At 222 VV, they have a 100% vegan menu, including beers and wines. (Apparently you can request dairy-based milk in some of the hot drinks; but everthing is clearly labelled). I had the Tofu Medallion Piccata with Spaghetti, which is described as “Marinated organic tofu slices, baked in oat crumbs, and served on a nest of our own tomato wholemeal spaghetti. It was very well prepared and excellent, but was overshadowed by dessert, the 222 Pancake:

Best dessert I’ve had in my last two London trips - “Vanilla ice cream wrapped in a wholemeal pancake, topped with warm vanilla and chocolate sauce.” Not sure if they’re using rice-milk or soy-based ice “cream” but it was really good.

Serves me right for being too lazy most nights to go the extra mile that I only had dinner here one night.

Don’t overlook smaller or lesser known spots

Even when I wasn’t willing to deviate from a more or less straight line from work to hotel, excellent food was to be had. Between High Street Kensington station and Kensington Olympia there’s a Thai place called Papaya Tree. It’s a rather unassuming place from the outside - since it is in the basement, there’s no view out onto the High Street, and you’ll miss the fashion parade.

But the ambiance inside is actually not bad (a bit too well lit for my tastes) and the food is fantastic. Not a specifically vegetarian-focused place, but like most Thai restaurants they have a decent vegetarian section: 4 starters (including an excellent TomYum soup, as below) and 13 entrees, most of which are vegan or can be made vegan. (Skip the egg noodles, obviously, but also watch out for fish-based sauces).

The menu wasn’t particularly well annotated, but the staff seemed quite knowledgeable about what’s in and not in the various options.

Looking forward to the next trip - there are plenty more places I haven’t yet tried.

With the Democratic National Convention rapidly approaching, a series of Denver-area artists have come together for an exhibition called Dialog: Denver, which is described as “politically-themed exhibition addressing issues of both American and global import” and will run during the convention.

Hadley Hooper posted this image, which she created for the exhibition (click through for her blog post and full size image):

Free Range by Hadley Hooper

She describes the inspiration for the piece:

I consulted Jo Tyler to get her thoughts on what what might be interesting to cover; she is very active in the world of animal rights issues and I knew that she’d have some great advice. Jo came up with some topics and the one I chose was about the misnomer ‘Free Range’ used in relation to chicken and egg production.  Michael Pollan in the Omnivore’s Dilemma wrote of hens laying eggs in large metal storage buildings, dimly lit but uncaged - thus the phrase ‘free-range’- with a small door on one end that leads outside. The door opens so infrequently the chickens close to the exit are the only to take advantage, that is if they realize what it is. Typically chickens get about a square foot  to ‘range’ in with up to 2,000 other individuals and are debeaked so that they don’t hurt each other.  I believe that people who are making these shopping choices are trying to do the right thing, it’s disappointing that these impulses are taken advantage of still at the detriment to millions of animals daily.

Very powerful work - also check out FactoryFarm.org, whose url is actually in the image, if you scan it closely.

Thanks for posting Hadley - always great to see your work even if we can’t be there to see it in person.

Site Specific Browsers, or SSBs, are  a relatively new concept in which you basically create an application which is designed just to browse to a particular website. It gets its own icon, memory space, set of cookies, and the like, so you can treat it just like an application.

The best SSB creator, at the moment, is Fluid for Mac OS X - though Mozilla Prism is coming along nicely as well.

Here’s my latest two SSBs: Instant Rimshot and Sad Trombone

Instant Rimshot, Sad Trombone

Now, whenever I like I can alternate between the joyous humour of an instant rimshot or the whah whah whah of the sad trombone. I find it useful to have these open while on conference calls. Just remember to keep the phone on mute.

Thanks to Alex Payne for putting the two urls together in a tweet.

I don’t normally push online petitions, the theory being that the ease with which a petition is generated, circulated, and signed is inversely proportional to the influence it has on those addressed (online petitions are too easy to do and therefore less meaningful).

But this one I think has a chance:

If Sen. Barack Obama becomes president, he’ll instantly be faced with decisions that will affect millions of Americans. Obama will also soon be making a decision that could affect millions of American dogs. It has been reported that once the election is over, the Obamas will be looking for a new four-legged family member (much to his daughters’ delight).

The American Kennel Club (AKC) has suggested five types of purebred dogs that would fit the Obamas’ lifestyle. While we don’t disagree that it’s important to choose a dog that matches well with the family, mixed breeds should certainly be considered along with pure breeds. Also, whether purebred or mutt, we believe the Obamas should make a winning choice and adopt a family dog, not buy one.

Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, left-wing, right-wing or any other wing, please sign our petition urging the Obama Family to adopt, and encourage all your friends and family to sign it, too.

Go here to sign the petition.

I don’t think I could ever get another dog that wasn’t from either a rescue organization or a shelter - there are just too many dogs (and cats, and others) put to death each year to subsidize the breeding of yet another.