whoa, i can’t believe this crazy day and age in which we live! the folks behind two of the best vegan restaurants in the country, candle cafe and candle 79 (both located in manhattan), have now created a frozen brand that’s available at whole foods right here in los angeles.

as of last week, two of candle’s new dinners were available at whole foods in beverly hills: seitan piccata with lemon caper sauce and ginger miso stir fry. we have professed our love for both candle cafe’s and candle 79’s seitan in the past…so i was anxious to try it in convenient, microwaved form.

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if you don’t have your tickets yet for the LA vegan beer fest (which is TOMORROW!), i don’t know what you’re waiting for! unlimited beer, vegan food trucks, and local bands…drinkers and nondrinkers welcome!

yesterday we woke up super early to film a news segment for ktla with our partners nic adler from the roxy and tony and paige from tony’s darts away...along with vendors doomies, the frankenstand and mandoline grill….and bands the mowgli’s and the silent comedy. it was awesome. check out the pictures and 3 videos from the shoot below. huge thanks to allie mackay and the ktla crew for featuring us!

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well this sure is great news for vegans in southern california (like me!) who dine out often. the new green menu dining card offers automatic savings to members at vegan-friendly restaurants all over town.

10% off food at rahel ethiopian? yes, please!

the list of 132 participating california restaurants features some of our favorite haunts, including cruzer pizza, cinnamon, doomie’s, rahel, samosa house, streets of india, vinh loi tofu, and many MANY more!

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with the rapture looming over our heads, what better way to spend the last day on earth than with a solid IPA?

doomsday party at my place!

bear republic’s racer 5 has been a forbidden fruit to us vegans (let’s keep with the biblical theme, har har!) due to the use of gelatin in the filtration process for quite some time…but as of early 2011, the brewery has changed their ways.

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i know i’m like a decade late to this craze, but lately i have been totally obsessed with nutritional yeast based cheese sauces. they’re healthier than processed vegan cheese, and pack a ton of flavor without any kind of weird texture or chemical aftertaste. where has this stuff been all my life? i can’t get ’nuff of the nooch!

my most recent nut-yeast addiction comes in the form of mozzarella chreese by road’s end organics…

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if you live in los angeles, breaded vegan teese mozzarella sticks by chicago soydairy are now within driving distance! viva la vegan in rancho cucmonga announced on facebook that they’re now carrying the amazing sticks, so get on over there.

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there’s a new seitan in town, and we are completely smitten. upton’s naturals is a healthy vegan wheat meat that comes to us all the way from chicago in four amazing flavors. i honestly can’t get enough of it…and it’s so healthy that i can eat as much as i want. score!

i met up with the upton’s folks when they were in town a few weeks ago at vegan drinks, and they gave me some samples of their seitan to try. in addition to the stuff that’s already available in stores, they let me sample their food service products, which were absolutely unbelievable.

vegan pastrami and gyro sandwich made with upton's!

the first thing we did was make sandwiches using the food service pastrami-style and gyro deli meats…

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now here’s a vegan magazine i can get behind! T.O.F.U. is a small diy operation, and all of their issues are available as pay-what-you-can digital downloads. they’ve released a teaser of their upcoming 5th issue which you can download here, and it’s chock full of tempting recipes, activism and diy tips, reviews, and personal spotlights. oh, and all the pictures are gorgeous and totally vegan!

here’s a brief bit of history on the magazine from ryan, the dude who started it…

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and who said no good would come of all this? in the wake of vegan photogate, a new website called veganstockphoto.com has risen from the ashes. the official launch is tomorrow, and it’s gonna host pretty much exactly what you’d expect: vegan stock photos.

here's a picture of genuinely vegan waffles by "meet the wikos"

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continuing in our hot sauce series, here’s a little ditty by organicville.

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you probably already know that i’m obsessed with hot sauce. no seriously, i suffer from capsicum addiction. i put it on everything. EVERYTHING! so i figured, why not start sharing my favorite sauces with you guys?

…starting with one that most people assume isn’t vegan: frank’s red hot buffalo wing sauce.

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just a quick bit of good news this morning: the dandies tweets (a vegan version of peeps) that we tried out at expo west are now available to the masses via vegan essentials!

i’m so glad these are on the market just in time for zombie jesus day. they come in both orange and lemon flavors, and i speak from experience when i say the orange ones are out of this world.

i used to love peeps when i was a kid, and these are even better. get on it.

hey everyone! natural products expo west, the world’s largest natural products tradeshow, is going down this weekend in anaheim and we were there all day yesterday.

we got a pretty good feel for the new vegan products that are about to hit the market, so sit back and enjoy this post full of our favorite finds. we’ll start off with stuff from brands that we already know and love—established quarrygirl favoriteses that should be familiar to you guys.

first up: chicago soydairy!

these folks didn’t have a booth at the expo in 2010…but daaaaaaaamn, they made up for it this year with all kinds of craziness! where do i start? their booth was like a vegan party. they had an endless supply of deep-fried vegan mozzarella sticks using teese (pictured above), which were INCREDIBLE.

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dear friends and readers, i have recently become completely enamored with the vegan queso by food for lovers. i’m not kidding when i say that this is something you all need to try immediately, and share with your omnivore friends.

being a vegan blogger, i get sent free products from time to time, yet none has ever captured my fancy like this one. when food for lovers offered to mail me a complimentary jar of their vegan queso, i accepted with moderate expectations. perhaps i mentally lumped their product in with the other vegan quesos i’ve tried in the past—all decent, but nothing game-changing in the world of vegan cheeses. perhaps it’s because their product is fat-free and very low in calories, i was expecting it to taste “healthy,” and therefore not insanely delicious. boy, was i wrong.

one bite of this vegan queso and i was hooked…

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…i get emailed this question AT LEAST 3 times per week. i thought it may be easiest to just write a post about it and point everybody here from now on.

before you read any further, please check out our 2010 lists of top vegan restaurants, top vegetarian restaurants, top omnivorous restaurants, and top ten things to eat in los angeles.

alright, now for the out of town list. i’ll try to break this up in a way that makes sense: fancy dining, casual dining, and pizza. that’s all that matters, right? and i’ll also let you in on a few of my favorite dishes from each restaurant. this is not a list of every vegan-friendly place in LA—that’s what the sidebar of this blog is for. these are just my top picks of places you should visit if you are only in town for a couple days. if you disagree, prove it in the comments section. here we go!

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