Eating and not much else.

I have barely had time to keep up with the blogosphere lately, let alone write anything. But I have done a few things that deserve a mention.

Yong Green Foods
My mate brought me takeaways from Yong Green on Monday night and damn it was good! If I was a decent blogger I would tell you exactly what he ordered but instead you will just have to get the gist of it cos I don't even know what it was. My favourite was the chickpea curry, but then I am quite partial to chickpeas so probably biased. The lentil dish was also divine and coming in third was a Japanese faux beef curry. Three of us at $11 a head, I'm happy. World's most basic review I know. PS They are also great for serving brown rice with their meals. White rice, I'm so over you.
Yong Green Foods, 
Brunswick St, Fitzroy

Bowl of Soul
Do they even serve anything with a soul? Or anything in a bowl? Pedantics on the most oxymoronic name aside, you are guaranteed a great burger here. I was strong and managed to order something new, fearful I might regret it and wish it was the Stake Out Deluxe. Stake Out still wins but I had nothing to fear, the Creole Chickn Roll was delish and runs a close second. I'm starting to trust Carla's opinion that all their meals rule.


Bowl of Soul
Bridge St, Port Melbourne



Random things I love at the moment:

The Old Paper Shop Deli on Clarendon St - I have been addicted to their takeaway salads for months now. Their salads change daily, there are always at least 3 vegan options, and $8.90 for 3 is not so nasty on the wallet unlike so many other joints around my office ($12 for veg sushi???).  They also have a heap of cakes which look great (but probably not vegan) and plenty of non-veg options so easy for everyone.

Coconut Oil - I don't cook with this much but it makes great body moisturiser. And if you have long, thick locks like mine, rubbing a bit of this into it a couple of hours before washing is GREAT.

Loving Earth - I'm currently hooked on these guys. They are a bit pricey but they are luxurious. A spoon of their Raw Cacao powder stirred into my muesli before adding milk makes for a healthy cocopops. Or add it to a banana and spinach smoothie, along with their Purple Corn Extract for extra antioxidants. I have also bought their Coconut Cashew Butter (swoon) and their Coconut Chocolate Butter which are great but I'm a bit lost for what to do with them. Not really into chocolatey spreads on bread.

A bunch of unrelated things.

I haven't written in a while - been busy and stressed. My brother's latest cancer treatment is absolutely horrific, worse than all the chemos, surgerys, radiations, and drugs he has tried in the last 2.5 years to beat it. If you thought you had a bad Valentine's day - try his on for size.

In other news I have spent the rest of my spare time moving to Easey St and living on pizza and wine. Nothing worth blogging about but fingers crossed life can get back to mostly normal next week and I can go back to bitching and moaning about Big Ag.

Tonight, I break the monotony and will be attending that fine piece of indie-delight that is The Cribs. Hooray!!

When bad chat-ups go badder

Saturday night I allowed myself a break from the boredom of moving and went to The Labor in Vain for a few. It was amazingly busy for the Labor, despite the fucking attrocious country music the Jessica Simpson wannabe lookalike DJ forced us to endure for the night. Still, was better than gangster rap and bling and bitches shakin their booties.

I was chatted up on the way back from the loo, which is always very romantic. Within minutes he told me he was vegetarian but was only doing it for a month because he was dared to do it. When questioned he said "Well, vegetarian is pretty wimpy, not very manly. And it's unhealthy." Swoon. I heart ignorant neanderthals.

I told him I was veg and "do I look unhealthy?" Christ, I looked a hell of a lot better than him AND he was stupid to boot. I excused myself from his failed chat-up and on the way back to my gang his mates grabbed me and intro'd me to some birthday boy whose hand I shook. Apparently, this isn't how you meet people these days. Someone grabbed my bum and someone else said "He doesn't want a handshake, he wants a handjob."

So anyone looking for a nice bloke, head to The Labor, there's plenty.

Yong Green Food and bugger all else

Last week was extremely non-eventful. In fact, I didn't go out at all from Monday to Friday and just packed my stuff (I'm moving to Easey St this weekend, woo!)

But I did make it to Yong Green Food on Saturday for lunch after moving a few boxes. I lived in Sth Korea for a while so I was hanging out for some Korean food that I can actually eat. Seeing as a lot of it isn't vegan, it's hard to reminisce. I love kimchi, but, it's true, it's offensive on the nostrils so I only eat it when no one else is home. So offensive in fact, that when I would get to school in Korea I couldn't tell if the smell was lunch or someone had just let one drop.

And with that you will be pleased to know my mate and I shared the kimchi pancake, which was huge and great.  And filled me up completely so that I barely had room for my Korean BBQ (faux beef) main which I ended up having to takeaway. The girls who run it are cute, atmos is relaxed and it's easy to sit and chat for much longer than necessary.

And apparently it was open til 11pm on Friday night cos people just wouldn't clear out. This wouldn't sound quite so impressive, if it wasn't for the fact it's also a non-boozer amidst the plethora of Brunswick St Friday night watering holes. Hooray for new vegan and raw joints.

Another 'if you can't do everything, you should do nothing' argument.

Aside from the same old rehashing of incomplete arguments, and the generally irritating decision that eating meat is ok because you can't fix the whole world so don't even try doing anything good, here's a great comment on this article from someone whose intelligence and prejudiced stereotyping is something we should all aspire to. Don't think about why people go veg, just give them shit, it's easier.

HEAR HEAR,at last,a voice of reason, there is nothing more annoying than some inner city never employed ustart in fashionably torn desiner second hand jeans sporting a hemp over the shoulder bag full of socialist propaganda who during lunch accosts every productive and working member of society demonising everything from shampoo to non hemp over shoulder bags and torn desiner second hand jeans, i know a person who is a professional protester, they also moonlight as a nurse,believe me, if we were to follow their mantra, we would all be living in mud huts,smoking dope and eating lentils whilst watching the younglings roll around in mud amidst dope smoke waiting to eat their lentils
robert | sydney - February 04, 2010, 8:19AM

Slice of Life

Today's is a non foody post. But it's about a vegan person who is very important to me - my brother, Paul.  I have written about him before, how he is fighting cancer with a vegan diet (amongst a million other conventional treatments) and has recently tried going raw also.

He has documented his journey with cancer for over 2 years on his blog. But where the posts aren't uncomfortably confronting (and sometimes funny) stories about what happens when you have cancer, or how his beautiful wife and 3 yr old daughter keep him going, the posts are about NASTY SHIT. To clarify, Paul Haines is also an award winning, speculative fiction writer.

If you like nasty, dark, disturbing, shocking, with a dash of twisted humour he's your man. Think American Psycho with more grit and no chapters on Genesis. I'm not a reviewer so I won't attempt to review his latest book, but I will let you know what others have said:

"Slice of Life contains seventeen original stories by Paul Haines that travel the dark back roads of horror. We're not talking mainstream horror here, we're talking confrontational in your face stories from the perspective of every day people. If you don't trust that weird old dude over your back fence then Paul Haines' collection could just give you the reason why.
...
Paul Haines has compiled a collection that is a highlight on the 2009 short story calendar. It's not for the faint of heart, there's some deeply disturbing visions going down, but is well worth reading if you appreciated decent horror of the short story form. I was pleased I finally got around to reading Mr Haines excellent collection and am left wanting more." Scary Minds

Slice of Life is not for those who like pretty stories of love and derring-do. Look elsewhere for that. What it does contain is original storytelling with a strong and compelling voice that you sometimes may not want to listen to and yet you’re powerless to resist. You have been warned. - Aurealis

Slice of Life is brilliantly nasty and engrossing. Haines may very well be the best writer of dark fiction in Australia today, and genre readers cannot afford not to pick up a copy of this collection. - HorrorScope

You can check out more reviews here, and if you care to pick up a copy, you can get your mitts on it there too.

PS. Yes this is a shameless plug, but from the looks of what some of you read, I thought it would be a welcome one worth sneaking in.

Eats and beats

Last week's ins and outs.

Shakahari
My mate Una's birthday dinner. Despite us being overwhelmingly famished I sensibly insisted we only get 4 entrees between us and then there will be room for dessert. I was wrong. We couldn't even finish the entrees. What a pair of soft bastards. We got the avocado tempura, lentil dumplings, balsamic gnocchi and the green papaya salad (I just made all these names up but you get the gist). Strangely, it wasn't as great as last time but I have no idea why. The champagne was great though. As was meeting Kristy and Toby sitting across from us; me umming and ahhing over whether it was more polite to yell across the restaurant or walk up and ask if she was Kristy then slink away embarrassed if it wasn't. But then Toby got out the camera and took a bunch of foody shots so it became pretty obvious it was them and I opted for the yelling. On a small negative note, this was the second time I have been there for a 6pm booking and they haven't been open 'til about 15 past. In this case, they still hadn't put the sign to open by then, but we got cold and bored and sober so charged on in anyway.

Camera Obscura
From Shakahari to gorgeous, gorgeous music at The Corner in Richmond. Very fucking packed though and could barely see anything except shoulders. But I was also a bit extremely tipsy by then so maybe I wouldn't have been able to see anything regardless. Luckily my ears loved it. Second small world moment of the evening: Carla and Toby were there, driven home by Kristy afterwards. Didn't know this 'til I read all your posts!

Passion Foods
Random stop in the other day in the hunt for Purely Decadent soy icecream, or their freshly made coconut black sticky rice pudding. They had neither which would have made it a completely soul-destroying mission if it hadn't been for the magical discovery that is their fresh Coconut and Lime Sago Pudding with berries. I didn't know I liked sago, but this shit was divine! Get it!

Bright Young Things - Full Moon Dinner
Review to come, dependent on their response to the email I sent them.

Bowl of Soul
Yumbo! Just had lunch there today with two of my workmates as it's become one of Jane's faves since our first visit. Stake-Out Sandwiches all round and it was great. My boss, who thinks I'm a bit weird being vegan but is cool with it, commented to the waitress "That was delicious. And um, if that sounded like I was surprised, well, I was!"  And then the ignoramus I unfortunately work with asked what we had for lunch and I told him burgers, to which he asked "With what? Meat?" (he knows I'm vegan). I said it was vego to which he responded in his caveman fashion "Ugh".

Actually, I was gonna end that review there. But I can't. Ignoramus Caveman then asked if I get a lot of wind from eating vegetables. If I wasn't such a sweet soul I would have asked him if he got a lot of fat from eating shit.

The near future
I'm off on a miniscule roadtrip down Great Ocean Road for the weekend. WOoooo!

The dark side of dairy

I promised myself that my next post would be something happy and positive so I'm sorry to say that this one isn't!

If my previous post on quitting cheese didn't highlight the really horrific side of dairy, Mercy For Animals (MFA) have released an undercover investigation of standard practices on a dairy farm.

I couldn't watch the video for long, maybe 10 seconds, up to the part where the worker puts his fingers in the calves eye sockets to hold his thrashing head still while he burns his horns off. I doubt you want to watch it either but just in case, here it is.

For the less confronting version (quoted from MFA):

Evidence gathered at the dairy facility reveals:

Cows with bloody open wounds, prolapsed uteruses, pus-filled infections and swollen joints, apparently left to suffer without veterinary care

"Downed" cows - those too sick or injured to even stand - left to suffer for weeks before dying or being killed

Workers hitting, kicking, punching, and electric-shocking cows and calves

Calves having their horns burned off without painkillers, as a worker shoved his fingers into the calves' eyes to restrain them

Calves having their tails cut off - a painful practice opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association

Newborn calves forcibly dragged away from their mothers by their legs, causing emotional distress to both mother and calf

Cows living in overcrowded sheds on manure-coated concrete flooring

Workers injecting cows with a controversial bovine growth hormone, used to increase milk production


MFA do great stuff educating the public on what horrors Big Ag tries to ensure consumers never know about. Of course they don't want us to know - if their bottles of milk and clingwrapped packets of meat had photos of where they really came from no-one would buy them. Most people don't even know that a cow has to have a baby, like any other mammal, to produce milk. Let alone what happens to that baby.

Bacon and chemical castration.

You know, in the short time I have been veg*n I thought I had learnt a lot about health, farming, environment, and animals. This one was a complete surprise though.

Pfizer, a huge pharmaceutical company, are now selling drugs (Improvac) to farmers in the UK so that they can castrate their pigs by injection rather than manually doing it. And this information is not required on the label of pork products. Consumers don't need to know this shit, obviously. It's more important for farmers to get that extra £1 a pig. And amidst this swine flu induced recession desperation, for many pig farmers it couldn't come at a better time.

Pigs are castrated so that the pork tastes better. The physical castration of slicing out a piglet's balls with a razor without anaesthetic sounds horrific so who knows which would appear to be less cruel, I'm not even going to go into that.

But the chemical castration is temporary, and 'shrinks their balls' so that the effect on meat flavour is the same. The only thing is, it's temporary so the pigs are slaughtered BEFORE it wears off. That is fucked. People are eating that shit.

I'm quite used to this sort of stuff now, so the biggest shock was actually that these drugs have been injected into pigs in Australia for a decade! Who knew? Would you feel safe feeding these drugs to your kids?

Oh, and just in case you prefer animal welfare approved products - they seem safe and imply some sort of natural and/or organic life - RSPCA Freedom Foods are likely to endorse using these drugs on their 'freedom' farms. Don't they paint such a beautiful picture of freedom?

HSUS invests in fast food chains.

Money wins, right? Well, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) have purchased shares in various cruel fast food companies in an effort to change procedures or purchasing decisions related to animal welfare.

I can't quite decide exactly how good this is. I mean, it's surely better than letting these mobs continue with their horrendous practices of purchasing factory farmed crate pigs, or chickens that are cut and boiled while conscious. Surely this is a step in the right direction?

But, how much money have they spent to get enough shares to have sufficient influence in these 38 food-related companies? Money spent on how to kill animals as opposed to not killing animals? Are they really going to fix anything here? Is McDonalds going to become cruelty free? Or just end up polishing up their tarnished name to look like a much shinier, "humane" version of cruelty?

I can almost picture it now - McDonalds ads showing happy animals running free through the fields, and declaring all their products as certified humane. Allowing those who were previously unsure about eating from McDonalds to now feel good about their decision.

Never mind that slaughterhouse practices, and this means in practice, not in theory, have not improved despite decades of animal welfare campaigning.