As the Crow Flies

News on the Quick

Åçtîøñ!

This is admittedly somewhat late notice, but, anyone in NYC today who wants to take an hour or two out of what they're doing to speak out for those poor carriage horses should come on down to City Hall. Arguments are being presented on two bills in front of the NYC Council, one that would ban horse-drawn carriages in the city and one that would protect the industry. So...yay one, boo the other, basically. 

PRESS CONFERENCE -12:00 noon for the Avella Press conference on the steps of City Hall
PUBLIC HEARING - 1:00 PM Council Hearing begins
WHERE - City Hall - 2nd floor Council Chambers. You may enter on either the Broadway or Park Row side.

So, if you're looking for some 2009-style political action, we've got your fix. Come on out, show your opposition to the industry, even testify (TESTIFY!) if you want. I'll be the one in ass-end of the sad horse costume.

Too Hot for TV

PETA's pro-veggie ad with the general message of 'vegetarians get it on better' got pulled from the Super Bowl line-up for being too risqué. You know. Because risqué ads are so offensive to the American public. But lucky you can see it here. The behind the scenes footage is pretty funny, actually. Funnier still: This CNN piece on it our friend Agatha sent us. It's true. They did exploitate one of the most beautiful creatures on this earth. 

Sell, Sell, Sell!

Two bad-ass sales at bad-ass stores going on this weekend. First, In God We Trust is holding a sample sale this Saturday and Sunday at their Lafayette Street location. Come and score a superbly-made shirt, dress, what have you, for a fraction of the price. Saturday, January 31 + Sunday "Holly Crap It's Already February", February 1, 11AM-6PM.

And the super Kubersky sisters are having a blow-out online sale of all things faux leather at MooShoes. They're revamping their site and trying to make room for new stock, so get it while you can. Type moosales5 and you will automatically get 5% off your next purchase. If you spend over $150, type moosales10 and you will get 10% off of your purchase.

Who the Hell is Miike Snow?

We don't know, but we dig his/their/it's sound. This mystery person/group/robotic entity has been getting high-profile remixes from every other über-DJ and not a soul seems to know a thing about them. It's like watching Lost or something. Check them out.

Fat Birds

We have fat birds in our back yard. See above.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Preen

A Shoe for All Seasons

Back in the day when we first went vegan (mid-nineties), pretty much the only place you could find non-leather shoes was Payless, and they were guaranteed to be poorly-made by some poor Cantonese kid half-way around the world. I want to give Payless some cred, as, without them, many of us would have been walking around shoeless and coming across as even bigger hippies than the locals assumed we were, but, that said, it's certainly glorious to live in a time when we've got some nice options to choose from finally.

Indeed, with the massive popularity of the 'green' movement in the past few years, and it's supposed survival of any backlash that came from companies like Clorox going...ahem...'green' ("Hey, if we add green dye to this cleaner and put some images of flowers and smiling kids in the ads, we can TOTALLY cash in on this eco thing"), sustainability and ethical consumerism are finally inching their way into the world of fashion. Yay. I'm not saying we're good, but we're better, at least.

To prove it, I give you a totally vegan pair of men's shoes for each of the seasons (two for summer, just because we're REALLY excited for summer).

Let's start with spring, as, despite what we're seeing here, I'm assured it's soon to come. Native New Englander Rachel Comey started out as a menswear designer, dressing quite a few of the rock elite, and has more recently gained attention for a really nice women's line. All that aside, she's got some awwwwwwesome-looking new canvas oxfords coming out at the top of next month. I'm told by her reps that the black canvas ones and the blue ones (pictured) will be totally vegan. Very nice. You should be able to get the black ones at gimmeshoes and the blues at asos, hopefully among other places.

So on to summer and two picks from us for the balmy months: The first is from TOMS Shoes. TOMS Shoes is a company that was started by Blake Mycoskie who was both inspired by the simplicity of traditional canvas alpargata shoes in Argentina and struck by the country's poverty. In 2006, he started TOMS, which produces shoes based on the alpargata and matches every shoe bought with a pair they donate to a child in need in places like Argentina and South Africa. So, pretty cool. Also cool, the company has finally made a vegan line (in addition to the fabric framework, other pairs included a leather insole, presumably to make the price tag more appealing to us Westerners). New Yorkers can pick them up at local eco-fashion haven Kaight (we've always loved their logo), or order them online from TOMS.

Our second summer shoe is something we saw (sorry for all the alliteration) at Oak recently, the Taylor, by Zuriick. It's basically a canvas lace-up low-top akin to those popularized by Converse, but, with it's clean design and pop of bright purple on the sole and one eyelet, these pop with a just enough subtle attitude. Also available in charcoal and black.

So, on to fall, tragically, the most prized, yet shortest-lived time of year in New York. Last fall I bought a pair of the Dennis, made by the superbly fair-trade Novacas,and have been wearing them way too much ever since. The construction is nice, with a more up-to-date rounding of the toe and a really great weight to them. The heels particularly are nice and heavy, making a solid thud with every step. That may sound off-putting to some, but I like it. Nothing says 'out of my way you slow-walkers' like a well-placed heel thud. To the sidewalk, not the people walking... On top of all that, the brown ones are made with a really great faux-suede that looks both luxurious and very convincing. Out cobbler was impressed with them just this week. "These are nice. They Hush Puppies?" Mmmm. Hush puppies. Available at MooShoes.

Lastly, on to the dreadful, withering winter, when all that's good in the world freezes the breath of ex-lovers in the air. As the poet George Herbert said, "Every mile is two in winter." As we say, "Winter totally sucks." But, having some nice all-weather boots certainly helps matters, especially in the New York City, where it can and usually does go from sunny to snowy to shitty in a matter of an hour. Again, the alliteration... Though you may want a pair of rain boots for the two by two kind of weather, the Kiowa from outdoor roughin' it experts Garmont can take care of everything else. And they don't look totally ridiculous, so that's a plus. We took these and they're sister shoe to visit an outdoorsy friend in Seattle and were really pleased with the result. Comfortable, dry...it was like we weren't ever outdoors. Also available at MooShoes.

So, thank you for all you did for me and others like me in the past, Payless, but I bid you ado. Unless, that is, you cash in on all this and start dying things green. It'd TOTALLY work.

The Find

Efterklang

One of my most prized finds of 2008 was the band Efterklang from Copenhagen. As with much of the great new music that I come across, I found this band via Other Music in Manhattan, which I continue to stand by as the best record shop in the states and purveyors of fine taste in all things audibly beautiful. The group started in Denmark in 2001 and is made up of five core members who draw on the talent of a number of other gifted Danes both live and in their recordings, including Anna Brønsted, who lends the them her airy vocals and keys, and a robust, tight horn section. 

More than anything else, Efterklang continues to impress me with their unique sound and musical arrangements. Imagine snuggling up on a frozen forest floor surrounded by sweeping sounds of the natural and supernatural and you'd be halfway to envisioning what they sound like. Rather than relying solely on frontman Casper Clausen, their vocals have much more of a choral, almost chanting quality which is then more wrapped around than sitting on top of their swirling, seemingly endless musical arrangements. Much of the actual instrumentation is structured around piano lines and more soft than brash horn arrangements, throwing in traditional acoustic instruments and peppered with glitchy, chaos-finds-pattern electronic blips and percussive ticks. The songs build and break down, more often than not settling back on their chorus of vocals and, more rarely, singular, breathy singing. Emotive would be a good descriptor for the music, especially for someone like me who takes a long time to focus on actual words and lyrics. For lack of better, less cheesy terminology, the songs bypass the mind and speak straight to the soul. 

In short, you've got to hear them. Their music is highly, highly recommended. I was lucky enough to catch them this past summer on their first state-side tour at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan. I was curious to see how such a unique, seemingly hard-to-capture sound would translate to a live performance and I was not in the least disappointed. Their live show is truly amazing, partly because they spare no expense in bringing as much of their recorded sound and the extra members and instruments that help them make it to their live show. I think there were at least nine people on stage at all times. And to bring the vivid, old-meets-new feel of the band together, they performed in what looked to be custom-tailored suspender and vest outfits that brought to mind early 1990s european-driven fashion. They really pull out all the stops.

On top of being phenomenal musical artists, they lean heavily on the impressive Copenhagen-based design studio Hvass + Hannibal for their visual representation. (They did the album cover above as well as all of their previous album art, shirts, etc.) And their music videos play well to their sound, evoking dreamy, beautifully bizarre scenes. (See below links for two fine examples—the somewhat creepy, clourophobic Caravan and the beautiful Cutting Ice to Snow, which is built from deleted scenes and alternate takes from Jeremiah Zagar's award-winning documentary 'In A Dream,' a film on Isaiah Zagar, who, over four decades, covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia in mosaics.)

Their music can be a bit hard to latch onto at first, especially with their most recent disk, Parades, but it's well worth the time it takes to acquire the taste. Their first full-length, Tripper, could be seen as more accessible, espeically to anyone into poppier glitch electronic artists, but both hold up as superb records. 

With a third full-length due later this year and another American tour right around the corner, I'm beyond psyched that such a fresh, talented band is staying busy and producing more work for me to blab on about endlessly for anyone who will listen to me. Like you! Enjoy.

Songs:

Cutting Ice to Snow from Parades

+

Swarming (Antenne version), originally from Tripper

Videos:

Caravan from Parades

+

Cutting Ice to Snow from Parades

2009 North American Tour:

05.03 - Seattle, WA / Nectar Lounge / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
06.03 - Vancouver, BC / Media Club / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
07.03 - Portland, OR / Doug Fir / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
08.03 - San Francisco, CA / Bottom Of The Hill / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
09.03 - Visalia, CA / Brewery / w. Peter Broderick
10.03 - Los Angeles, CA / Spaceland / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
11.03 - Tucson, AZ / Plush / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
13.03 - Salt Lake City, UT / Urban Lounge / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
14.03 - Denver, CO / Larimer Lounge / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
16.03 - Norman, OK / Opolis / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
17.03 - Denton, TX / Hailey’s / w. Peter Broderick & Human Highway / tickets
18.03 - Austin, TX / SXSW
19.03 - Austin, TX / SXSW
20.03 - Austin, TX / SXSW
21.03 - Austin, TX / SXSW
23.03 - Tallahassee, FL / The Engine Room / w. Canon Blue
24.03 - Atlanta, GA / Earl / w. Canon Blue / tickets
25.03 - Chapel Hill, NC / Local 506 / w. Canon Blue / tickets
26.03 - Washington, DC / DC 9 / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
27.03 - Philadelphia, PA / The First Unitarian Church / w. Peter Broderick
28.03 - New York, NY / Mercury Lounge / w. Peter Broderick
30.03 - Boston, MA / TT the Bears / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
31.03 - Montreal, PQ / TBA / w. Peter Broderick

01.04 - Toronto, ONT / El Mocambo / w. Peter Broderick
02.04 - Pittsburgh, PA / Garfield Artwork / w. Peter Broderick
03.04 - Cleveland, OH / Grog Shop / w. Peter Broderick / tickets
04.04 - Chicago, IL / Schubas / w. Peter Broderick / tickets

Monday Music

To your right, you'll find an awesome remix of a track from Tokyo Police Club's LP from last year, Elephant Shell. Ra Ra Riot and their pal/musician/engineer/fellow Syracusian, Andrew Maury, gave the track, "Juno", an etherial, bouncy feel that works surprisingly well with plucked strings. 

On another music-related night, below is our design for our friend Jaime's birthday bash that was held last night. It was an enviable party and a time enjoyed by all. We love you, Fear Surgeon. 

From the Nest

Bears in Love

Remember how your grandmother used to collect all those weird donkey statuettes and put them in display cases around her house and every time you went anywhere any time you had to be sure to bring her back a tiny donkey? No? Just me? 

Well, fine. But, if my grandmother had been a cool cat with fine taste...and born a lot later, she probably would have been a big fan of kg + ab, like we are now. We recently came across this Brooklyn duo and absolutely adore their snow white porcelain figurines of tiny owls, diminutive foxes, itsy pugs, and, yes, bears hugging. Totally awesome. Katherine Grandey (the kg in kg + ab) seems to be the main crafter, and she makes some really nice stuff. We love how clean all the pieces look, like they were swiped from a pristine ice fortress of high taste. And we're suckers for a woodland theme. She even has log-shaped vases. You can see more of the work on their blog and buy straight from etsy.

Put on Your Dancing Shoes

I realize I totally need some dancing shoes. That fact aside, we've added music to the blog. That's right, MUSIC! Over there, to the right. Below the picture of us. The plan: to bring you our favorite track every week. The reality: Jason Schwartzman might be up there for a while, man. Stay tuned.

From the Nest

Thin Crust Pizza Dough

Home-made pizza is fun, easy to make, and really, really good. One of the problems we've had in the past though is getting a good dough recipe. Over the years, we've attempted a number of them and, through trial and a good bit of error, we eventually created our own hybrid vegan recipe that results in a nice, thin, sweet crust that we adore. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

What you need:

- 4 cups flour (we like Kind Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose brand a lot)

- 1 package Dry Active Yeast

- 4 tsps Brown Sugar

- 1 cup Warm Water

- 1/4 cup Vegetable Shortening (we like Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening, because it's non-hydrogenated, like New York)

- 2 tsps Salt

- Olive Oil

If you're not into the sweet, thin crust, cut the sugar in half and leave out the shortening, adding about 2 tablespoons of olive oil instead. This will make for a much doughier, thicker crust. Otherwise, mix the dry yeast, sugar, and 1/4 cup of the water in a small bowl with a fork until the yeast and sugar are somewhat dissolved. Let this sit for about five minutes, allowing the mixture to foam up a bit. Meanwhile, sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. You can do this with a hand sifter or by slowly pouring the flour through a wire mesh. This makes for a lighter crust overall. Add the shortening to the yeast mixture and form a paste with a fork, mixing well. Once that's done, add the paste to the flour mixture along with the remaining warm water. Mix together with a fork at first, then, once it's formed a dough ball, kneed it with your hands for about three minutes. The shortening should allow you to do this without needing to flour your hands. Put a little oil, about a tablespoon, into a bowl and rotate it to allow it to coat most of the bottom. Place the dough in the bowl, cover it with a damp, thin towel and leave it in a warm place to rise for at least an hour. More is fine too. 

Once the dough has doubled, roughly, in size, take it out and place it on a lightly floured, clean surface. Divide the dough in half, or, if you want a thicker crust, take about 3/4. Flatten it out on the counter with your hands in a rough circle. At this point, depending on your level of comfort with this sort of thing, you can either use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough out to a nice circle or, if you like, thin the dough out by passing it back and forth between your hands and tossing it up into the air in a circular motion, movie-style. No really. This is seriously fun and totally works, allowing the motion to widen and thin out the dough. If it gets to the pint that it starts tearing before you've got it to the size you want, put it back on the counter and roll it out the rest of the way. Sprinkle a thin coating of corn meal on a baking sheet or, even better, a pizza stone. These work really nicely and give you an old-world style pizza oven crispness. Place the dough on the sheet or stone. With your hands, gently push the dough to the outer portions of the stone, or, if using a square sheet, just form a nice circle. With the stone, have the outer-most portion of the dough extend about an inch or two past the stone edge. Once it's about the size you want it, go around the edge and double the crust over to form a rim, the portion you'll not put toppings on. Put this in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees and allow it to cook for about 10 minutes, getting the crust to the point that it's browning, but not getting too too dark. Take the crust out once it's looking good, let it cool, put whatever you like on it—vegetables, sauce, fake meat, fake cheese—and then throw it back in for whatever amount of time looks right given your toppings, usually five or ten minutes. We like to broil it at the very end, but be careful not to totally burn it up if you go that route. We also tend to keep our toppings more sparse, which allows the crust to stay thin but still firm and crispy. 

We like to use the extra half or 1/4 dough that's left to make breadsticks too, dividing by two or four, depending on how much you have left, and then rolling them into stick shapes. Throw them on some foil or a sheet when your crust is cooking and you've got some badass, home-made breadsticks. If you want to get fancy, you can form troughs in the breadstick before baking them, chop up some garlic or shallots or Teese, and then seal them up. Mmm. Fancy breadsticks. 

Eat, repeat, lay on floor.

Reviewsday

Oh Cheese, How We Miss You

Last spring, we started hearing about this crazy-good vegan mozzarella substitute from the Chicago Soy Dairy, the very same talented people who brought us Temptation Vegan Ice Cream and Soft Serve (available at the always awesome Penny Licks in Williamsburg, Brooklyn).  For any of you reading this who haven't dealt with years of being vegan...or, for that matter, years of being around vegans who complain about this non-stop, you should know that cheese is the really hard part for us vegans. There are plenty of great vegan ice creams out there (Temptation among the best), soy milk's obviously broken into the mainstream (see the bizarro cow-head commercials for Silk), and, frankly, eggs were always gross, dudes. But cheese...cheese is a tough one and something that's never been replaced by an ethical, still-awesome-tasting food. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the entry for soy cheese on wikipedia. I'm not saying they're there, but Chicago Soy Dairy is getting close in many ways.

I don't know about you, but when I hear 'Chicago Soy Dairy' I totally picture some Gary-Larson-esque scene where a bunch of bi-pedal cows are getting humans to squeeze soybeans over metal pails. Seriously. That guy loved cows, man. But, it turns out, Chicago Soy Dairy was started out by a couple of guys, one with a passion for the culinary arts, one with an inherited machine shop, who didn't think it made any sense to buy soy milk from California when all the soybeans themselves came from the mid-west. Hi-five, guys. They started making really great soy ice cream and actually got creative with the flavors (Fair-Trade Coffee? Peach Cobbler? Cookie Dough?).  

Then, last March, we started hearing that they had gotten into the very un-competitive field of vegan cheese making. They started out very small, offering 1 lb. bags of the mozzarella through their site and gathering feedback from customers on how to improve the product. So we ordered a bag and were pretty amazed. One of the total crap-hat things about most vegan cheese is that it melts not at all. And I realize that's not the only requisite for a good cheese substitute, it is nice. At the time, the taste was a little overly buttery, but since, it's improved significantly. Now the soy dairy sells the cheese through a number of sites like Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe (Atlanta, GA), Pangea Vegan Store (Bethesda, MD), and Vegan Essentials (Waukesha, WI) and has even expanded their range of cheeses: in addition to the mozzarella, they've got a new cheddar cheese and a nacho cheese sauce. We recently ordered all three, strictly for research purposes, and were very pleased. Still a little on the buttery side and they all could use a little more of the savoriness and aged taste that real cheese has, but superb nonetheless. 

As always, the mozzarella was great, and we've made superb calzones, manicotti, and pizzas (one pictured above from just last night with cilantro, jalepeños, and sweet onions). And the cheddar worked really well in hot-pressed sandwiches and a vegan mac-n-cheese (with a little nutritional yeast sauce to supplement the sauciness). And, if you're vegan and there's a hole in your heart from the lack of Velveeta over the years, their nacho cheese is for you. We made nachos the other night and they kicked our collective ass. We're huge fans of the work that Dr. Cow is doing right here in Brooklyn, aging raw nut cheeses (don't laugh) in an effort to mirror real artisanal cheese-making, but, when us vegan have missed out on WAY too much in the field of not-so-great-for- you, cheesy, lay-on-the-floor-for-the-rest-of-the-night food, and we're proud to have it back again. Four and a half caws, Teese.

We'll post a recipe soon for our newly-refined homemade pizza crust (seen above), but in the meantime, if you're vegan or thinking about becoming vegan and worried about the lack of cheese substitutes on the market, we highly encourage you: get some Teese.

I'm going to go lay on the floor now.

As the Crow Flies

News on the Quick

Fashion Designers' Alert

- Brooklyn-based Fashion Indie to provide support for independent designers and Gotham Hall fashion show at this February's Fashion Week.

Details here.

- Born Free USA, the Animal Protection Institute, and E Magazine unite to a Fur Free Fashion Competition. Top prize is a professionally modeled and photographed ad in E Magazine, a feature profile of you and your design on the fffashion website and related media exposure, and 750 bucks. Deadline's April 1, so get designing, fools!

Speaking of Fur

- As reported by Girlie Girl Army, old coot Karl Lagerfeld defends his use of fur with the language of a third-grader.

- Even though PETA's campaign to end the use of fur finally got to designer Donna Karan (yay!),  despite the promise made just last year to stop designing with fur, Giorgio Armani's recent lines still use the stuff. Encourage him to stop here. 

Nice Stuff

- Saks Fifth Avenue hired political art high priest Shepard Fairey to design some AWESOME Soviet era bags and ads. Today's Times article here.

- Old school French fashion house Lanvin teams up with new school jeans kings Acne to make some pretty kick-ass pure denim stuff (pictured above). Got a spare grand laying around? Here you go. 

- Pretty superb remix of TV on the Radio's "Dancing Choose"

Thursday Preen

With the holiday gift-giving season behind us, I can now share with you a commerce-centric journey that, as it turned out, was destined to end in failure: my quest to find a wool-free sweater dress. Not for me. For Katie. She's mentioned before how much she's wanted one and how hard it is to find anything other than the most basic and, more often than not, somewhat crap looking acrylic numbers. Nonetheless, I made it my mission to find one that was up to snuff and searched both the vastness of the interweb and the legion stores of Brooklyn and Manhattan. But, I came away from the whole experience with little good to say about the fashion sense of those few who choose to make winter-ready, easy-on-the-eye sweater dresses out of anything but wool. It's a rough scene out there, man. And, as hinted at above, my search ended with me throwing up my hands and moving on to back-up, non-sweater-dressy gift ideas. Hope you liked the gift toothpaste set, by the way, Katie. That said, I did come away with a few finds for anyone in the market for warm winter dresses sans animal products and thought it might be worth sharing.

My first significant hit online came with the wares of a little-known boutique called "Victoria's Secret"...needless to say, I was skeptical, but they really seem to have cornered the mainstream market on affordable acrylic-cotton blend winter dresses. But, once I realized none of them were carried in-store, I realized that, just relying on the online images, I might end up with a Housewives of Orange County number. But who knows. They might be lovely in person. - Victoria's Secret Cowlneck Sweater Dress

Next up I checked out Bloomingdale's as I heard that they, along with every other major retailer in New York, were having crazy sales. I didn't find much, especially much that was affordable, but I did come across a few quasi-sweaterdresses from the, again, somewhat O.C. Nicole Miller. But I wasn't really wowed and, though the construction was nice on them all, the materials didn't seem worth the price.

Keeping on with the high-end theme for those of you who feel especially financially stable right now...I thought the Button Down Sweater Dress by See by Chloé was pretty great, as was this Jumper Dress by the ultra-cool London designer collective Beyond the Valley. Their site's definitely worth checking out. Very cool design.

But, in the end, and now after the journey that was Vegan Sweater Dress, it looks like etsy wins out. I know there's added danger of whatever you get there TOTALLY not fitting or looking much different in person, but it's such a great site for finding really unique, designer-made and -sold products, that we have to strongly endorse it. Our favorite, the Blue Houndstooth Sweater Dress by Replicca, seems to have sold out since we found it, but you can see it to the right there and the designer has posted a very cool brown version. Other etsy finds:

- a sweater dress with a shawl collar by Lirola in Israel

- a made-to-order knit cotton sweater dress by poshpau in Hawaii

- a fashiony hoodie from wearflock in portland

So it seems like the moral of the story is handmade = awesome-made. Or something more catchy. Hm.

We encourage you to find other great vegan options for the winter months and post them here.

Oh, right. And if you've gotten all the way through and are like, "Wait. Why is wool so bad?" check out Save the Sheep or PETA's Guide to Compassionate Clothing. Unfortunately, it's not exactly the days of animal-loving, small-scale farming lately.

From the Nest

Smokey Jo's Chili + Vegan Chili Cheese Sauce

February 1st is right around the corner, and you know what that means: the Oregon Truffle Festival is coming to an end. Wait. No. It means Super Bowl 43 is coming up. Or so we're told. And THAT means we've got to get our chili on, vegan-style. Also, I think the Oregon Truffle Festival is actually coming to an end that day. Mmmm. Truffles.

So, this is a favorite recipe of ours and one we've been making and trying to perfect for years now. And with the stupendously crappy overcast day we're having in Brooklyn, it seems to be a perfect feature for today. It's a fairly spicy, 'meaty' chili, relying on the chiptole pepper (a smoked jalapeño) for much of the taste. I'm totally getting hungry writing about it. The 'cheese' sauce is a more recent addition and, since the chili recipe yields a whole lot, is something nice to make a day or two after you cook up the chili for mixing into a really excellent chip dip.

So here's what you need:

Smokey Jo's Chili

- 2 Large Vidalia Onions (or some sweet, yellow onion), diced

- 2 Large Green Bell Peppers, diced

- 5 Cloves of Garlic, smashed, peeled, and chopped

- 4 tbsp Olive Oil

- 5-8 Chipotle Peppers, depending on how spicy you like things, chopped

(these can be found canned in a lot of stores now and dried in specialty shops)

- 15 oz Fake Ground Beef

(we usually use Morning Star Farms Crumbles because they provide a nice texture, unfortunately they now coem in 12 oz bags...)

- 40.5 oz Red Kidney Beans

- 1/2 cup Teriyaki or Sweet Soy Sauce

- 28 oz can Crushed Tomatoes 

(we like Sclafani...mainly because the can's so old school)

- 14.5 oz can Diced Tomatoes

- 4 tbsp Chili Powder

- 2 tsp Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor

- 1 tbsp Ground Black Pepper

- 2 tsp Salt

- 2 Bay Leaves

- pinch of Ground Ginger

- pinch of Cinnamon

Dice the onions into small, roughly 1/2-inch pieces or smaller, chop the garlic into tiny bits, and roast over medium heat in a cast iron skillet with olive oil until the onions are starting to become translucent and garlic browns a little. Add the faux beef and stir and brown for about five minutes. Add the hickory smoke, quickly stir and cover so the mixture absorbs the smoke taste. Cook covered for another two minutes or so. Add diced chipotle peppers and teriyaki/sweet soy sauce to give the meat mixture a spicy sweetness. Simmer for five minutes covered, adding a bit of water if the mixtures looks to dried out or starts to stick too much. Add diced green peppers, again about 1/2-inch pieces or smaller, cook covered for five minutes or until the peppers begin to get a deep green, but still firm, not too dark or soft. 

In a separate large pot (8 quart or so), toss in the drained kidney beans (not rinsed though) and all the tomatoes. Back at the skillet, add 1 tsp of salt, 1 tbsp chili powder, and cook off most of the liquid for 2 minutes or so, leaving the mixture a little saucy. Once that's done, give it a taste. It should taste pretty god at this point, but very concentrated in it's sweetness and spiciness. Carefully toss the mixture in the large pot with beans and tomatoes, mix it all together and put it on medium-low heat. Bring it to a low simmer and add the bay leaves, the rest of the salt, rest of the chili powder, ginger, and cinnamon. If you like things more on the sweet side, add a little more cinnamon. Spicy? Add a bit more chili powder and black pepper. Simmer all that covered on low for one hour, stirring every so often to make sure it's circulating and the bottom is burning at all. This'll make, I don't know, 74 servings? So feel free to freeze some after your initial meal. It keeps. And then, if you want to use it for vegan chili cheese dip:

Vegan Chili Cheese Dip

- 1 1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast

- 1 cup Canola Oil

- 1/2 cup Soy Milk

- 2 tsp Salt

- 2 tsp Dijon Mustard

- 2 tsp Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor

Mix all that in a measuring cup or other microwave-safe container with a fork or whisk, then microwave it for 30 seconds. This heats up the oil and helps dissolve the nutritional yeast flakes to make a better consistency. That's about it. So now you have a pretty good vegan 'cheese' sauce for nachos or, if you want to add less liquid or more yeast to make it thicker, quesadillas. And for the chili cheese dip, just add a cup of chili and then up to a cup or more, depending on how you like your chili to cheese ratio. The cheese sauce recipe doubles pretty well too, so feel free to employ basic multiplication to the measurements. Mmm. Math.

Now get to a super bowl party, grab a beer, ignore the TV, and eat some chili, man.

The Find

Right before the holidays, I made it down to the two-day craft fair that was held at the Brooklyn Lyceum, a great spot, by the way, for sporadic music, theatre, trapeze acts, coffee, etcetera. So anyway, among a number of other very talented people, I came across Kristiana Parn, a Brooklyn-based painter/illustrator/awesome artist who was originally born in Estonia. She creates most of her pieces by applying pigment to various types of damp wood blocks, making the background a soft, translucent wash that keeps the grain of the wood visible. Then she goes back and draws these irresistibly cute and quirky animals (sometimes building, ships, little people) over the wash and paints them in bold, opaque acrylics. The effect is warm and deep, and we've really just fallen in love with her work. 

You  can find her work at the Urban Alchemist in Park Slope, Pink Olive in the slope and the East Village, the kind of bizarrely named Capucinemaman in the East Village, and at her Etsy site. She's also signed the Buy Handmade Pledge, a very cool idea launched by the Handmade Consortium last year that's since gained over 34,000 pledges. On a related note, check out Poppytalk's 101 Reasons to Buy Handmade.

You can take a look at a bunch more of her stuff on her site, but here are some of our favorite pieces by Kristiana. 

Check it out.