it’s rough coming home from a gig late at night, half drunk and too lazy to cook. luckily, tofutti has it all taken care of for us.

in 25 minutes max (that is, if you follow the “for the best results” instructions) you can have a crispy mouth-watering pizza, with MELTING vegan cheese ready to suit any occasion.

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louis xiv live at the avalon

it takes A LOT of work to see a band in LA these days. you have to order your tickets in advance online, pay exorbitant processing fees, spend ages looking for a parking spot that winds up being miles from the venue, and wait through numerous supporting acts in hopes that the band you paid to go see hits the stage sometime before midnight. it’s a nightmare.

what you don’t need on a hellacious night like this is for a snobby bartender to charge you $8 to pour a warm bottled beer into a plastic cup, without giving you eye-contact. and that’s exactly what you’ll get at the avalon.

the service is crappy, the selection is poor, and the prices are unreasonable. it’s one of the worst venues i’ve been to in LA, as far as beer goes. if a band you love happens to be at the avalon, i recommend you go see them…just be sure to hit up a bar in advance.

on a side note, if you ever have the chance, i definitely suggest you see louis xiv. i’ve seen them 4 times and each show has been an absolute treat. not only are they great performers and incredible musicians, but as an added bonus you get to play the game, “what will jason hill be drinking on stage tonight?”! last night he was swigging straight from a bottle of hennessy, the time before that it was a bottle of chianti (basket and all), and before that it was a martini in a proper glass. i don’t know where he can possibly go from here. absinthe maybe?

here’s an mp3 from their latest album. enjoy. it sounded just as good in person.

01-theres-a-traitor-in-this-room

i try to avoid hollywood boulevard at all costs. the stench of vagrants and the irritating tourists who stop every few steps to goggle at stars on the walk of fame are enough to drive any LA native crazy. unfortunately, i find myself there quite often, usually attending a concert at either the music box or the avalon.

and as all experienced concert-goers know, when attending a gig, the band usually doesn’t start until hours after the doors open. so rather than standing in front of an empty stage surrounded by assholes and drinking 8 dollar beers, i usually spend those hours wandering around hollywood boulevard looking for a bar.

luckily, a couple months ago, i happened upon this place:

the frolic room is a great little dive bar, located at hollywood and vine, right next to the pantages theatre.
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There are a few chain restaurants, found in most US towns and cities that can serve vegans very well.

Sometimes we like the predictability of a known dining experience, and “the PF” certainly provides that. What you’ll find in every restaurant is a waiting line (although shorter than they used to be, and reservations can now be phoned ahead) and a nice table in a dark room usually with a spotlight in your face from a mile above your head. Although seating can be efficient, a 10 minute wait for your server to initially materialize is commonplace on busy nights – especially weekends.

Vegan appetizers include Lettuce Wraps and Steamed Dumplings (both very good).

My favorite vegan entree (in fact the only one I’ve ever had in the hundreds of times I’ve been to P.F. Chang’s – see picture above) is Ma Po Tofu, an amazing well flavored and presented interpretation of the classic Chinese dish (which usually contains pork).

Note that the kitchen is VERY efficient at preparing food (banks of microwaves?) and is usually way faster at getting it to your table than you are at eating it, or than your server is to bring your drinks. On more than one occasion I’ve ordered drinks, appetizer and entree at the same time to have the appetizer arrive first, followed shortly after by the entree and then the wine as I’m half done with the entree. I recommend ordering serially, wait for something to arrive before you order the next thing.

Also, note that the wine is horrendously marked up. A bottle of Night Harvest Cabernet that I can get for $4.75 with my Ralph’s club discount card costs a whopping $26.50. For the mathematicians out there that’s a five zillion percent mark-up.

No vegan deserts, so fill up by adding some side dishes – the Spinach Stir Fried With Garlic and Asparagus are very good, as are Buddha’s Vegetables.

I have a busy office life. There’s always some lunch meeting to sit through, usually with the requisite pizza, Quiznos, Chinese food or (horrors upon horrors) KFC being delivered to tide ‘us’ over. Compounding that, I rarely get the time to go out and pick up a healthy snack for lunch so I’m often left to my own devices. I’ve learned over the years that desk drawers can be put to much better uses than holding files and the usual crap (cell ‘phone chargers, staplers without staples, boxes of staples that don’t fit in the aforementioned stapler etc.).

MY desk drawer (real picture):

…contains a life support system for the busy office vegan. The things that meat-eaters dread (carbs and sodium) don’t really matter to us vegans as much since we tend to be less fat and have lower blood pressure through a lack of meat intake.

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It constantly amazes me how the evidence around the health benefits of a vegan lifestyle are pushed aside, and the facts about meat consumption are at best ignored and at worst hushed up.

At the very least, most reasonable people understand that a diet of burgers, steaks and fried chicken is extremely unhealthy, but surely, the occasional banger wouldn’t be a problem? Not so fast, Batman…

Consider this article from today’s Daily Mail newspaper in the UK: “Why eating just one sausage a day raises your cancer risk by 20 per cent”… it goes on to say:

Eating 1.8oz (50g) of processed meat a day – the equivalent of one sausage or three rashers of bacon – raises the likelihood of the cancer by a fifth, research shows.

The sobering statistic adds to growing evidence that too much meat in the diet can be deadly.

I very much doubt this applies to Tofu Dogs, or I’d be a goner, the amount of those I eat!

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