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. 

Altering dessert recipes to make them vegan can be tricky and oftentimes you can end up with an end product that tastes and looks almost like the real thing. While it’s fun to experiment with recipes, it’s also nice to come across a sure thing. Over the holidays, my mom and I decided to veganize an Apple Betty recipe from her Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. It was really easy to put together and the end result was fantastic. 

The Boss Visits Mexico

Since we’re feeling warm and homey this holiday season, we’re going to focus on another party-centric recipe for this week’s From the Nest: the easy-to-make, always a hit walnut lentil dip.
Here’s what you need:
• 1 can 15.5 oz. lentils
• 1 cup walnuts
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp natural hickory smoke flavor (you can usually find this in most grocery stores, often near the BBQ sauces)
• 1 tsp nutritional yeast (totally optional, gives it more of a cheesy taste)
• 1 tsp salt
• half a sweet onion
Basically, get all that together, blend on high, pausing from time to time to stir and make sure everything’s getting blend finely, and you’re good to go. It goes well with rice crackers and sliced up daikon (Japanese radish). Happy cooking and happy holidays.

In the December 2008 issue of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, a writer asked Glen O’Brien, the magazine’s ‘Style Guy’, who answers questions from readers on fashion, style, etc., what options were out there for someone who wanted to replace a beloved, yet aging leather jacket with a more humane choice. Sadly, rather than take this opportunity to let readers know about the wealth of animal- and eco-friendly products available today, Mr. O’Brien responded by writing that, were it not for leather and the beef industry, cows would likely be extinct and that “…in a way, leather jackets are giving them work.” He ended with a brief statement about how all animal products should be used with respect for the creature, which, as anyone familiar at all with factory farming and slaughterhouses already knows, is not how it works at all. Not to mention that it doesn’t seem all that respectful to kill the animal in the first place, regardless of how nice you are to it up until that point.

I could go on and on about how buying leather directly supports factory farming and slaughterhouses, not only providing millions of animals with lives full of pain and suffering, but also doing a pretty great job of totally screwing the environment, but that information’s readily-available, accurate, and well-documented. I’d love to see you all do a piece in a coming issue on an animal-friendly wardrobe. Face it: the material’s rife with opportunity for a witty enough writer. And it’d be great to, at the very least, let readers know that there are many stylish, chic options for someone who doesn’t want leather or wool in their life any more. We’re not relegated to Payless shoes and polyester suits anymore.

If you do anything of the like, I’ll obviously volunteer more information and fashionable vegans or vegetarians you could talk to. I’ll even go the extra mile and volunteer myself for a style makeover where you could buy me tons of lovely, hip, animal-friendly clothes and accessories. Not a problem at all.

So, please do take these words to heart. I think it’d make for a great piece. At the very least, maybe a brief return from Mr. O’Brien, to whom I still tip my hemp fedora. Really. Don’t laugh.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

Troy Farmer

Two of our favorite NYC stores are holding events tonight.

First, shop, at 94 Orchard Street in the lower east side is continuing their massive, store-wide sale with all clothing 60-75% off and jewelry 25% off. On top of that, they’re having a holiday party tonight complete with sales up to 80% off, free tote bags, a jewelry raffle, and champagne. 

We’d like to dub Wednesdays From the Nest days, where we focus on homey (not homely) things like cooking in and making your home lovely. We’ll post some recipes, highlight some home wares we love, and get all cozy-like. So, this Wednesday, we’ve got a recipe for you. This one’s Roasted Red Pepper Sauce and it’s pretty versatile. You can use it as a dip for toasted bread or pita, vegan meatballs (recipe to come), or top off a vegan meatloaf with it. So here we go:

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
– 1 tomato, cut into 1/8’s
– 3 medium red bell peppers, cut into 2″ squares
– 5 cloves of garlic, smashed and peeled
– 10 leaves of fresh sage (Totally optional. Gives it more of a robust taste.)
– 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (Again, optional. Makes it a little more creamy/cheesy.)
– 2 tbsp canola oil
– 1 tsp salt, more to taste

Best Records of the Year

TV on the Radio—Dear Science

This is no buck to the system or anything, but this album truly is great. It totally lives up to the massive amounts of hype. We’ve always thought TV on the Radio was good, but this album made us love them. “Family Tree” is one of our favorites. A beautiful song that builds on echoey pianos, ghostly strings, and Tunde Adebimpe’s soft to growling vocals. The whole album is pretty varied and, even after who knows how many plays in a row for us, we haven’t gotten sick of it in the least.

Hear highlights from the album here.

Windmill—Puddle City Racing Lights 

Ra Ra Riot—The Rhumb Line

Lykke Li—Youth Novels

Cut Off Your Hands—Happy as Can Be EP

Foals—Antidotes

Forward Russia—Life Processes

Crystal Castles—S/T

Tokyo Police Club—Elephant Shell

Santogold—S/T

Hello, internet. So, this is it. The inaugural post on our inaugural blog. Yay, we finally caught on. What’s that? Who the hell are we? Very good question, internet. We’re Katie + Troy, aka, raven + crow studio, a small graphic design studio based in Brooklyn, NY that specializes in branding/logo work, print design, and illustration. In addition to trying to make the world a prettier place, we try our best to make it a better place in which to live. Most of the time, that means working for organizations and companies who share many of our values and totally kick ass. Environmental groups, animal rights groups, farm sanctuaries, sustainable businesses… the more clients we get like that, the happier we are about our work. It’s easier to justify killing yourself over a logo if you know it’s going to help a worthwhile group of people do work in which you really, really believe.

So we want this to be a space where we can talk more about the work some groups we like are doing and, in addition, talk about the things that interest us but don’t necessarily fit within the boundaries of our more client-, work-driven site. Things like animal-friendly, sustainable fashion, design and aesthetics of all sorts, music and art, and, of course, massive quantities of vegan food. We intend to keep it interesting—just in case anyone else is looking at this out there—with some regular features, products we like, recipes, et cetera. But our main goal is to have fun with this. I mean, the thing is called a blog. We can’t be too serious, can we?

So wish us luck in the wilds of the blogosphere (so shocked, by the way, that that word didn’t trigger the spell check). And stay tuned.