Calling On All Vegan Crafters!

Dear Vegan Etsy
Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary’s mission is to provide life-long care for our rescued animals, and to educate the public about humane animal care and practices. We rehabilitate, both physically and psychologically, mistreated animals and, if possible, we find appropriate homes for them. In an effort to prevent further cruelty to these animals, we educate the public on caring for companion animals as well as on issues concerning farmed animals. Nestled in fertile farmland in California’s San Joaquin Valley, our two-acre rescue and rehabilitation sanctuary is home to 200+ animals representing thirteen animal species. Our non-profit tax ID# is 56-2515797.


Our fourth annual Toast to the Turkeys will feature:
*Special Guest Speaker: Jonathan Balcombe
*Self-guided tours of our sanctuary
*Seasonal vegan fare
*Toast to the Turkeys Ceremony
*Silent Auction
*Vegetarian food drive
*Turkey sponsorship opportunities

We would love to feature your donation, and we will be promoting the donors on our blog, on the online ticket-sales webpage, and our facebook page - we have 3,500+ animal-loving followers on facebook! Also, we will be printing program books which will contain advertising space, if you would be interested.

Please contact me if you have any questions regarding the event or Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary. I can be reached at roni@harvesthomeanimal.org


Roni Seabury
Volunteer Liaison
**************
Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary
Attn: Roni/TTTT
14741 Wing Levee Road
Stockton, CA 95206
 **************
Web: HarvestHomeSanctuary.org
Donate: SupportHarvestHome.org
Facebook: Facebook.com/HarvestHome
Twitter: @HarvestHome
Blog: harvesthomeblog.tumblr.com

New Member Bonanza!!!

In the past week, we have been lucky enough to induct five, count them FIVE, new Vegan Etsy Team members! This week we'll be introducing them to you, one on each day. Each shop is fun, unique, and of course completely VEGAN. Excited? We are! So stay tuned...

Dairy Management, Inc.? The New York Times investigates.

This week the New York Times published an article investigating the actions of a group called Dairy Management (ever wonder who was behind "Got Milk?), which looks like a private investor group but is in fact funded by the U.S. Government. The article is receiving a lot of attention in the food world because it pulls no punches about Dairy Management's intentions: to push foods (mainly cheese) that are known to be major contributors to disease and obesity. Here are some highlights (rearranged for clarity):

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales

By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: November 6, 2010

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies. Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.

In 1995, the government created Dairy Management Inc., a nonprofit corporation that has defined its mission as increasing dairy consumption by “offering the products consumers want, where and when they want them.”

And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.

Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work. It also includes the National Dairy Council, a 95-year-old group that acts as its research and communications arm.

Dairy Management runs the largest of 18 Agriculture Department programs that market beef, pork, potatoes and other commodities. Their budgets are largely paid by levies imposed on farmers, but Dairy Management, which reported expenditures of $136 million last year, also received $5.3 million that year from the Agriculture Department to promote dairy sales overseas.

By comparison, the department’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which promotes healthy diets, has a total budget of $6.5 million.

Every day, the nation’s cows produce an average of about 60 million gallons of raw milk, yet less than a third goes toward making milk that people drink. And the majority of that milk has fat removed to make the low-fat or nonfat milk that Americans prefer. A vast amount of leftover whole milk and extracted milk fat results.

Dairy Management, through the “Got Milk?” campaign, has been successful at slowing the decline in milk consumption, particularly focusing on schoolchildren. It has also relentlessly marketed cheese and pushed back against the Agriculture Department’s suggestion that people eat only low-fat or fat-free varieties.

In one instance, Dairy Management spent millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products, records and interviews show. The campaign went on for four years, ending in 2007, even though other researchers — one paid by Dairy Management itself — found no such weight-loss benefits.

“Great news for dieters,” Dairy Management said in an advertisement in People magazine in 2005. “Clinical studies show that people on a reduced-calorie diet who consume three servings of milk, cheese or yogurt each day can lose significantly more weight and more body fat than those who just cut calories.” It was based on research by Michael B. Zemel, a University of Tennessee nutritionist and author of “The Calcium Key: The Revolutionary Diet Discovery That Will Help You Lose Weight Faster.”

The campaign lasted until 2007, when the Federal Trade Commission acted on a two-year-old petition by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy group that challenged the campaign’s claims. “If you want to look at why people are fat today, it’s pretty hard to identify a contributor more significant than this meteoric rise in cheese consumption,” Dr. Neal D. Barnard, president of the physicians’ group, said in an interview.

Agriculture Department data show that cheese is a major reason the average American diet contains too much saturated fat. Research has found that the cardiovascular benefits in cutting saturated fat may depend on what replaces it. Refined starches and sugar might be just as bad or even worse, while switching to unsaturated fats has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease.

My biggest question in all of this may be, why is the U.S. Government bailing out Domino's!?

And finally, an oldie but goodie... marketing cheese to kids certainly isn't a new idea...

VET in the 2010 Veggie Awards!

The Vegan Etsy Team would like to send out a HUGE congratulations to Augusta Vegan Bakery, Sweet Fritsy, and Sweet V Confections - all nominated for Best Online Vegan Bakery in the 2010 Veg News Veggie Awards! We are so thrilled for all of you. Just to be mentioned is a major recognition of how amazing your products are and how hard you've worked to make your shops something special. If only all three of you could win!

We have several-to-many other bakery and sweets shops among our VET members, and we know your stuff is fantastic as well - here's to seeing you among the listings next year!

The NYC Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti - One amazing day.

Was it the bake sale to end all bake sales? Possibly. (Though from what I've been hearing, these Vegan Bake Sales for Haiti have just been one rocking event after another.) At the crack of 10:45 am, a team of dedicated vegans arrived at the doors of Moo Shoes, the beloved vegan shoe store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Immediately we sprung to action: cupcakes here! Raffle table there! You, grab that chalk and hit the sidewalk! And by 11:30 the store was a sight to behold - delights from wall to wall for sweet toothers and shoe lovers alike.

Throughout the day, more bakers and volunteers appeared; the number of people who showed up to help, eat, and party was pretty astonishing. For the first few hours, and then for several other stints during the day, it was a bit hard to walk through the store for the crowd! Any direction I looked, all I saw was happy people holding bakery boxes filled up with homemade vegan treats.

The day flew by, one giant blur of a cocktail-esque cookie dance party. I got to sample many extraordinary goodies, including homemade green tea red bean buns, pesto pinwheels, double dark chocolate truffles, buckeyes, donuts from Babycakes (thank you kind stranger!), mini tomato muffins, pizzelles, danishes!, twinkies!!, and probably a few other delicacies that I've forgotten in my post-bake-sale-sugar-crash delirium.

That list doesn't even compare, though, to what I missed out on: I don't even know how many kinds of gorgeous cupcakes including fauxstess!! and my own chocolate orange with princess frosting and maple with black walnut frosting - nope, never got to try my own cupcakes! - adorable heart-shaped peanut butter and jelly cookies, many other kinds of delectable truffles, oatmeal pies, pretzels, scones, fudge, rocky road brownies, chocolate dipped fresh and dried fruits, splendidly adorned sugar cookies, cheesecake... I think I have to stop thinking about it or I'll cry. Why, oh why, didn't I bring one hundred dollars and ten tupperware containers? Learn from my mistakes people. Let's just say this: if ever a bakery carried the array of vegan deliciousness that was displayed at the NYC bake sale, none of us would ever leave that bakery again. So when you go to the Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti in your area, stock up!

The whole day through, our tables of baked goods were a feast for the senses. We had a continual supply coming from the back with which we restocked the tables, and we just kept selling through! Not to mention the raffle table - at times we got so busy back there I could barely keep up; at one point there were three of us taking tickets, and it needed all three of us just to hold it down. And no wonder: local businesses and crafters were very generous in donating some truly awesome prizes.

And all of that leads to the really fabulous part - the point of the whole shebang. By the end of the day, we had raised nearly $46oo to donate to Doctors Without Borders, to support their current work in Haiti! And with the last few baked goods left over being sold at places of work the following Monday, plus a few other contributions that trickled in, we've actually now reached $5k. We'd love to find a sponsor to match us, so that we can send a full $10,000 - if you have any ideas for that please leave a comment. But either way, I'd say not too shabby for a lil' ol' bake sale, now is it.

Sadly, little can be done to alleviate the grief caused by the loss of so many lives. But work can and should be done to help heal the sick and wounded and begin to rebuild. Therefore those of us in a position to offer assistance must focus on these immediate and pressing needs. The organizers of the NYC bake sale feel that Doctors Without Borders is doing important work that is making a real impact in Haiti right now, literally at this moment, and we're excited to be able to send them a donation that will give tangible support to that work. There are of course other very worthwhile groups on the ground in Haiti doing work very much worth supporting, including Partners in Health, WSPA, and Mercy Corps.

I continue to be moved and inspired by the wave of vegan bake sales across the country and, in fact, throughout the world. At last count, we have collectively raised something in the neighborhood of $35,000 to support Haiti relief efforts through various organizations. There's a common misconception that vegans care more for animals than for people; anyone who believes that, please consider yourself corrected. The point of true compassion is that we don't draw a species line! I am so proud of the vegan community, but more importantly I am so thrilled that we've been able to come together to do something that will actually make a difference for the Haitian people.

And it doesn't end here! The coming weekend brings vegan bake sales in D.C., New Orleans, Little Rock, Falls Church, and likely others. If there aren't any set up in your area, well why not go ahead and organize one! Or if baking isn't your thing, get creative - teach a yoga class for Haiti. Sell ice cream sundaes for Haiti. Organize a five mile walk for Haiti where participants ask friends and family for sponsorship. Put out a donation jar at your office or place of business. Have a plant sale. Finally have that yard sale you've been thinking about and donate the proceeds - get the whole block in on it and place a small ad in the newspaper so that you draw a crowd. Throw a party with a $5 cover charge! There are so many things you can do to help people get involved, and generate a sizable contribution in the process. And if you don't have the time, of course there's nothing wrong with a plain old donation. :)

Disclaimer: The really awesome photos (top pic of cupcakes, pic of twinkies, pic of fauxstess, pic of cinnamon rolls) and the pic of me (immediately above) were *not* taken by me! The rest were. You can see a whole set of photos from the NYC Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti on our Flickr Pool.

The most amazing bake sale ever.

This will just be a brief post, to be followed by a much more substantial one later in the week (with pics!).

Yesterday was the NYC Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti. The main organizers were the VET's very own Lisa of Panda with Cookie and our good friend Dayna of the awesome blog Seitan Said Dance; I played a distant third fiddle and MANY others contributed very significant help, like the amazing Janice who designed our flier.

Well, to put it lightly the event was a raging success! A completely astounding number of wonderful people baked a ridiculously delightful array (and quantity) of baked goodies. People came out en masse to volunteer, buy, eat, purchase raffle tickets, donate, and generally support the cause.

Thanks to this outpouring of awesomeness, we were able to raise approximately $4600 in a single day, every penny of which will be sent directly to Doctors Without Borders to help fund their current work in Haiti.

To everyone who was involved in this and all of the other Vegan Bake Sales for Haiti that have been happening and continue to happen all over the world - collecting over TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR HAITI to date!! - thank you, thank you, thank you.

When vegans really come together to make some thing happen, is there anything we can't do?

How do you respond to a crisis? Vegans fundraise!(Part Two.)

So yesterday you learned all about the great vegan fundraising efforts happening for Haiti right on Etsy. What else are vegans doing? We're all having bake sales!

OK. Now, on its face that sounds a bit silly. But hear me out. When done right, a good bake sale can bring in some dough, (ha ha! - pun enjoyed but not intended) and I'm talking dough that can be counted in hundreds or even thousands. And believe me when I tell you we're doing it right. You get some vegans together who are really into baking, and the delicacies that come forth are out of this world.

And then there's the matter of quantity. There are bake sales happening all over the U.S. and in parts of Europe, and maybe elsewhere too. Several bake sales have already happened here in the states. I don't know about all of them, but those I do know about have taken in close to a collective $10k! Of course every penny is going straight to Haiti. Each bake sale team has chosen its own worthwhile organization to support - groups being donated to include Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health, World Society for the Protection of Animals, and Food for Life Global.

I'll be participating in the bake sale here in NYC - it's going on all day long at Moo Shoes on Sunday, January 31st. (Hey fellow NYC VET members - hope to see you there!) Yeah, I'm making cupcakes. You know it. We're donating proceeds to Doctors Without Borders - those docs are doing amazing work, and amazing doctors are a big part of what's needed there right now. This bake sale is gonna be HUGE - and with an insane raffle too. Srsly ppl, do not miss this event.

I'll also be stopping by this month's Vegan Drinks on Thursday the 28th, which will be featuring its own mini vegan bake sale for Haiti! (Like that event needed to get any awesomer.) They will be supporting Sodopreca, a group of veterinarians heading across the border from DR to help out.

[Geography Lesson] Hispaniola = the island on which are the countries of Dominican Republic and Haiti.[/Geography Lesson]

Also this coming weekend are the big vegan bake sales in Chicago and Portland - I know those will be major. I'm excited to see that my home town ot New Orleans will be getting in on the Vegan Bake Sale action on February 6! Isa of the Post Punk Kitchen is doing an amazing job of keeping a comprehensive Vegan Bake Sales for Haiti list. Readers - If you're involved in any sales please leave a comment and give us all the details!

But guess what? Bake sales aren't it! There's also the amazing Josh Hooten and his partner Michelle of Herbivore Clothing Company: they teamed up with Ink Brigade to create this fab t-shirt. Naturally proceeds are going straight to the epicenter. Shirts have just begun to ship - I've already ordered mine... you're waiting for what, exactly?

So that's the news flash folks. Vegans are compassionate about animals - we're also compassionate about people! When you care, you care. And it's important to realize here that everyone can help. So you're not a doctor or nurse who can go volunteer; so you don't have "disposable" cash to donate. No matter. Pick up that wooden spoon and whip up those chocolate chip cookies! Can't bake? Then just go volunteer your time during the bake sale - it takes a good staff to run one successfully. No bake sales in your area? Organize one! Or get creative and see what else you can come up with. We can all do something, and at times of such desperate need we all should.

So do it people - shop on Etsy, eat a cupcake, and buy a t-shirt for Haiti!

How do you respond to a crisis? Vegans fundraise!(Part One.)

As every reader undoubtedly knows, a few weeks ago the country of Haiti suffered severe damage in an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale. Just over a week later, it endured an aftershock of 6.1. This was a severe blow for a country already enduring hardships barely imaginable to most of us, and its ramifications will be far reaching and long lasting. Recognizing the gravity of the situation, pretty much the whole world has jumped to action.

Being a person who had my own city partially destroyed in a semi-natural very-disaster not so many years ago, I have to say that sitting here watching this happen is really, really anxiety provoking. I have absolutely zero connection to Haiti, other than the facts that it's also populated by humans and cool animals and is on the planet earth. Nevertheless, the mere thought of the magnitude of human suffering that is happening there right now makes me start to freak out and cry a little bit. The only consolation I have for it is in focusing on what I can do, and that is to get involved in (and tell you about) all of the fabulous fundraising that is happening in the vegan community.

I am, frankly, just amazed at the outpouring of charity that has come from vegan contingents all over the world, beginning just a few days after the first quake. What are we doing?

Well for starters, many Etsy sellers have started to donate a portion of their sales to various relief organizations currently working in Haiti. I, for one, will be donating 50% of the sale price of any item in my my shop bright. until further notice. I'll be rotating monthly among a few worthwhile orgs including Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health, and the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

Vegan Etsy Team member Panda With Cookie will be donating 100% of all profits from her clearance section to Doctors Without Borders, via a NYC bakesale that I'll be telling you about tomorrow. Vegancraftastic is donating 100% of sales of her knitting patterns to Doctors Without Borders through Ravelry knit and crochet community. And Sweet V Confections - yeah, that's right, think dessert - is donating 100% of chocolate fudge sales and 25% of all other sales to Doctors without borders! Mmmm, delicious compassion...

In addition, Vegancraftastic, Cards and Jewelry by Michele, and many (many many) other stellar Etsians have donated items to Hearts for Haiti, an Etsy shop which also donates 100% of all proceeds to Doctors Without Borders. At the time that I'm writing this, thanks to all the artisans who have donated items to sell, Hearts for Haiti has generated close to twenty thousand dollars!

As if that weren't enough, Michele and other VET members are also involved with another animal-friendly Etsy group, Etsy for Animals, which is having a Haiti Animal Relief Fundraiser. Various percentages of the sale price of Etsy items tagged with this moniker are donated to the World Society for the Protection of Animals,

So there you go. Want to help Haiti, but not sure what to do? Just do some shopping with the Vegan Etsy Team and you'll be on your way!

Is the FDA finally waking up to problems in packaged food labeling? Help them along!

It seems that someone over at the FDA has noticed that consumers might not realize what packages do and do not tell them about processed foods. The agency may have even caught on to the fact that some consumers are being mislead by health claims on packages of foodstuffs that are really better left on the shelf. While all packages are required to have the nutritional data chart somewhere on them, most consumers are much more likely to read the prominently placed, boldly colored logos on the fronts of packages rather than the boring chart in a tiny font on the side, back, or bottom with all of its numbers and percentages - aren't they?

Well, the gov'ment wants to find out. Badly enough that they're conducting an internet study of approximately 43,000 people, in fact! As per the FDA's statement, the goals of the study are as follows:

(1) identify attitudes and beliefs among consumers toward health, diet and label usage; (2) determine relationships between those attitudes and beliefs, as well as demographics, with food label use and non-use; and (3) evaluate the relative importance of these attitudes between consumers of various age groups to determine whether barriers to label use differ between younger consumers and older consumers. The information collected from the study is necessary to inform the agency's efforts to improve consumer understanding and use of the food label.

This sounds like a worthwhile venture to me, and I truly, truly hope that it leads to some kind of real change in what kinds of health claims food companies are allowed to make on their packages. If you care about these things (and you should), head on over to the internet listing for the study and leave a comment showing your support!

(For you more conventional types, you can also send snail mail to Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. Just don't forget to include the docket number: FDA-2009-N-0345. Happy writing!)

Become Our Fans!

In addition to our team Fan Page on facebook, several members also have fan pages for their shops. Please check them out and become a fan!

Aimee Dars Designs
Art by Susmitha
Aguavino
Cards and Jewelry by Michele
Daisy Wares
Dang Argyle
Gothcupcake Creations
Holistically Heather
It's A Vegan Dog's Life
Jak Random Art
KM Stitchery
Late July Photography
Monkey and Squirrel
Panda With Cookie
Sick On Sin
Silent Lotus Creations
Starrlight Jewelry
Tharn Photography
The Coma Girl Designs
The Doolang Doolang Boutique
This Is It! Creations
Uber Duper Creations
Vegan Craft Samples
Vegan Etsy Team
Veganosaurus

76 Pea Pods in the Big Parade...

On Sunday we went to a giant parade! But this was no ordinary parade. This, my veg curious friends, was none other than New York City's Veggie Pride Parade! As you might be able to guess, this parade featured no elephants or horses, no clowns, no tiny cars.

What it did have was a seven foot tall pea pod vixen, hundreds of dedicated vegetarians and vegans, and a guy on a unicycle... among other zany characters.

Sunday the 17th marked the 2nd Annual Veggie Pride Parade here in NYC - a chance for the young and old of every creed and color to hit the streets and sing the praises of the veg lifestyle. The parade started off in the West Village and wound its way over to Union Square, a place with a decades-long history as a site of subversive, radical, and otherwise dissenting and forward-thinking gatherings (Emma Goldman, anyone?).

I arrived in Union Square shortly after 12:30 pm to await the arrival of paraders and get a first glance of the tablers set up in the square. Represented were a relatively wide range of veg interest groups. The different information presented was as varied as are reasons for vegetarianism, and included angles such as religion, boycotting of factory farming, environmental concerns, cruelty to animals, and personal health. Among the groups represented were Farm Sanctuary, Vegetarian Resource Group - a group I'd not heard of previously and who had quite an impressive spread of educational materials, Mercy for Animals, and Veggie Brothers Caterers from here in the NYC area. And then there was this table - Raw Revolution - one of my favorites because they gave me awesome (free raw vegan gluten free) snacks!

The Square was fairly quiet before the parade landed, which gave us a chance to look at the various groups tabling. There was a really great range of vegetarian and vegan information available, and it was presented in many different ways. One of the most interesting displays, and definitely the most eye-catching, was this one from United Poultry Concerns. Sadly, this depiction of a battery cage is nowhere near as gruesome as the real thing - good thing for me, though, because if it was I wouldn't have been able to look at it, much less photograph it! One look at even a photo of the real thing is most definitely enough to put any sentient person off of his or her fried egg breakfast...

Yes, it was a slow affair on the Square before the parade made its entrance. But when it arrived - what a ruckus! I could barely get a snapshot in edgewise. Paraders ran the gamut, from middleaged folk in windbreakers walking their cute puppydogs, to those in elaborate costumes leading pro veg (or anti meat) chants. And of course there was room for everyone in between, many of whom carried sign posts and bearing images and slogans from simple to complex, from pleading to accusing.


















The most incendiary sign I saw was one showing images of farm animals, as kept in a CAFO, shown side-by-side with an image of a populated WWII concentration camp. While I understand that the metaphor is somewhat apt, I did not photograph it; it does not strike me as appropriate. It goes to show, however, how strongly people feel about what is happening in the food industry today - largely so that we can have chicken nuggets and hamburgers on a 99 cent menu.





















Once the parade had rolled into the Square and really filled out the joint, two main things happened. One, speakers took to the stage. Sadly the sound system was not the best and I couldn't really hear any of them. Two, the crowd got down to doing what vegetarians (probably) and vegans (definitely!) do best - eating! Various tabling groups provided pizza, sandwiches, and even cake, and all of the food to be gotten was vegan - total score! Yeah we had some pizza. Yeah it was covered in potatoes. Yeah it was freaking awesome! Vegan pizza is pretty much always a rockin' good time, and this was doubly plus so what with being surrounded by hordes of people all totally psyched about the world of veg.

I was super excited to see how many parents had brought their kids out to the event - start 'em young, raise 'em vegan! A few of them were even in costume, and all of them were totally digging on the excitement around them. Kids are so brilliant, and so observant of the world around them - how often is it that kids naturally make the association between animal foods and where they come from? They have to be forced to disassociate the two. And it's so great to see that unnatural forcing not happening! To instead see a whole group of people who want to teach their children the truth about where their food comes from! It does my heart good. All you veg mamas and daddys out there, give yourselves a pat on the back, your kids a big fat kiss, and then celebrate your beautiful veg family with a vegan bar-b-q!

All in all, despite what might have been considered sub-par weather, it was a gorgeous day for living green here in NYC. Vegetarians and vegans from all over the metro area came together to tell the city why we've got such a problem with animal consumption, what can be done about it, and why we think vegan food is so damn good anyway. Who knows, perhaps knowledge gained at the 2009 Veggie Pride Parade has already changed someone's life. Or at the very least, perhaps it has planted a seed.

Until next Monday,

hearts,
Melissa Bastian.

Post Script - Hey Vegan Etsy team! There are totally enough of us in the NYC area to get a table at this event next year. Who's in?

Giveaways, sales and more!

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Starrlight Jewelry is having a giveaway on her blog. There are several packs of really great prizes! For details, see her blog.
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Vegan Craft Samples is giving away a sampler bag on their blog. For details on how to enter, see their blog.
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Dirty Loves Clean is having a sale on several of her soaps. Check her shop for details.
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Vegancraftastic has a sanctuary scarf available for purchase. 100% of the sale price of the scarf will be donated to Farm Sanctuary. In May 2009, Josh Hooten of Herbivore will be on a 600 mile fundraising bike ride from Portland Oregan to Farm Sanctuary in Orland California with the goal of raising $10,000 for this great organization. The purchase price of this scarf will help him raise the much needed money.
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Thank you to Roni of Daisy Wares and Daisy's Destash for snagging this treasury!

Vegetarianism Comes To The Big Easy

The following was written by Melissa Bastian of Bright and Libellule.

New Orleans is a city with a rich and deep rooted culture, much of which revolves around food. About 95% of that food, though, is animals! Shrimp, crawfish, roast beef, sausage, whatever. It's meat all the live long day down south, right down to the ham hock in your green beans. They know not what they do.

Given this food environment, need I tell you that it's just a smidge difficult being vegetarian (or, heaven forbid, VEGAN) in the Crescent City? It can be done, but it certainly isn't easy. Which is why I'm thrilled to share two very exciting pieces of news!

Number one: I've just discovered that there is now an all vegetarian restaurant in New Orleans! As cruel cruel fate would have it, Cafe Bamboo opened its doors THE DAY I LEFT THE CITY from my last visit. Ironic, no? But I'll hold no grudges, given the caveat that it stays open long enough for me to go and try it out! I, of course, hope that it stays open forever and is ridiculously prosperous. I'm super excited that on the menu, they notate what isn't vegan - and it's only a few items! Plus, it all looks delish.

Number two: not only does this place exist and everything, which believe me is seriously a major feat, but it will also be playing host to the first annual NOLA Veggie Fest! Yes, that's right. You read correctly. Not only does The City that Care Forgot now have it's very own vegetarian restaurant, but now it's going to have a major event to promote the veg way. On Sunday, May 17, the good people of New Orleans will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a vegetarian education extravaganza! When I heard about this event, I was at first elated and then immediately brokenhearted - there's no way I'll be able to attend. But I'll be there in spirit! And I'll also be nagging all of you about it until then! Woo!

Features of the event include:
*free food samples
*cooking demonstrations
*speakers
*music
*raffle prizes (a few of which will be donated by yours truly, and hopefully by some of the other members of the Vegan Etsy team)
*a free subscription to VegNews Magazine for the first 50 attendees!

Admission is a mere $5, and proceeds go to the Humane Society of Louisiana. How great is that? I've asked Vegan Etsy team members to see what they can get together for donations as far as raffle prizes - anything goes! Details are on the team message board, or you can contact me at bastian613@gmail.com with questions. This is truly a step forward for the city of New Orleans, and I hope everyone who can will join me in helping to support this great event - up to and including attending it for those of you who live in the gulf south! I, sadly, will be here in NYC slaving away, but I'll be there in spirit. So tell them I say hello, keep up the awesome work, and Happy Veggie Fest!

Vegan Samples On Sale!

Get your Vegan Samples bag, starting tonight! They can be purchased on the Vegan Sample website or the etsy shop. 10% of sales will be going to For The Animals Sanctuary, so you'll be getting some great vegan goods as well as helping animals. Get yours before they're gone!

Congratulations to Monkeys Always Look!!

Allison of Monkeys Always Look is the current featured seller on Etsy! You can read her lovely interview here. Thanks for the shout out to Vegan Etsy, Allison, and congratulations!

Sale & Giveaway!

Panda With Cookie is having a sale on select items! Drop on in and check out the sale section for some great stuff!!

Also, Starrlight Jewelry is having another giveaway. For details, go here.

Thursday Night Temptation!

It's Thursday Night Temptation at Gothcupcake! Now through midnight, buy one item and get a second item for half off. But wait, there's more! You will also receive an exclusive never-before-seen promo badge with every order!

*(discount will be taken off of the item of equal or lesser value)

Two more giveaways!

Wow, are our members generous or what? There are two more giveaways to announce.

Art You Dream About is having a giveaway to celebrate their grand opening. You can win two lovely bookmarks! Details & pictures can be found here.

Also, Panda With Cookie is having their first ever wee monster giveaway. You can win a blue wee monster! Details can be found here.

Good luck, everyone!

Blog Giveaway!

Vegancraftastic is having a giveaway on her blog for a sticks & skulls knitting bag. The contest ends on March 28 and all you need to do is leave a comment here, letting her know what your favorite cookie is. Good luck!