We’ve been meaning to dedicate a week’s worth of posts to our old collection of Polaroids for a while now and this week seems as good a time as any.

In our college days, we would tote our old accordion-style 240 Land Camera around most everywhere we went. We’d bought it second-…maybe third- or fourth-hand at a thrift store years back, likely ’97 or so—obviously long before the prevalence of digital cameras.

The Polaroid still works to this day—older things like this with so few moving parts last ages, it seems—but the film that remains for these cameras is made in the traditional manner, meaning it uses gelatin, an animal byproduct that’s far from vegan. So our days of peeling back photo paper to reveal our oft-blurry, light bleed-filled, randomly and inadvertently arty photographs are behind us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy the images we made way back when.

Apologies in advance for the lower resolution of some of these Polaroids—I scanned most of them in 2001, when the world thought that 1500 pixel width was the height of high resolution.

Above, daisies in a field near Harrisonburg, Virginia. Below, the 240—a magical number for cars and cameras, it seems—retired to a quiet life living room beautification.

Far-off galactic spacescape or clean plate from a beyond-brown Thanksgiving meal, we at raven + crow wish you a jolly and festive holiday weekend.

As we feast + fest with friends this year, we turn away from food for a brief moment to make room in the margins for seasonal libations; in this case, a new autumnal favorite of ours, Apple Vermouth.

The recipe for this easy infusion comes from Audrey Saunders of Manhattan’s excellent Pegu Club on Houston and was featured in the recent cookbook from New York City’s Greenmarket, The New Greenmarket Cookbook: Recipes and Tips from Today’s Finest Chefs—and the Stories behind the Farms That Inspire Them. While not the most succinct title, the book’s full of farmers’ market-centric tips for shopping and home-cooking and features myriad vegetable-forward recipes (though it’s not at all 100% plant-based).

While we won’t reprint the recipe word-for-word on these pages, out of respect for the author + publisher, you essentially slice up 6 or so Macintosh apples (as their flavor is high and skins are thin) and throw them in a jar full of high quality dry vermouth (Saunders suggests Noilly Prat, which worked very well for us). As of writing, you can see the entire recipe + write-up via Google Books.

After 5 or so days of infusing and daily shaking, you can enjoy the vermouth over ice, which is smooth and deadly in its subtly intoxicating nature (Saunders is dead-on with her quote to the right), or add it in to autumn up your favorite cocktail that usually calls for standard dry vermouth.

We’d suggest making a Dry Manhattan for starters, subbing in the Apple Vermouth for the dry vermouth and an apple slice for the lemon peel garnish.

We’ve brought up homemade vegetable broth a number of times in the past on these pages, but we realize we’ve never really explained our process or the inspiration behind it.

The initial incentive for us to make broth at home has its origins in a more general move we slowly started to make years back—as we got older and more experienced in the kitchen—toward cooking at home. In those days, when we wanted to work up a nice sauce or roux or soup, we realized most of the store-bought broths had a ton of salt in them, even the low-sodium broths, making them unpalatable some times and not so healthy most times. What’s more, after we started making broth at home, we realized the taste of a store-bought broth leans heavily toward the flat, boring side of the taste spectrum, relying on salt for most of its ‘taste’.

The thing that eventually pushed us to action was listening to a segment on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, back when we were still in Brooklyn. He had a guest on talking about food, as he often does, and they were going over homemade broth and how much of a difference it made in their cooking. You can certainly take a more acute, deliberate approach to making vegetable broth, following a specific recipe, like the one from the Splendid Table, but we were caught by the approach Lopate and company took, collecting and then freezing vegetable scraps as a part of your daily cooking + eating. The idea of having this kind of culinary chronological map of our plant-based food habits over the past, say, month, and then having that become a delectably unique staple that you can pull in at any point was magical to us and, once we started doing it, key to much of our cooking.

Essentially, all you need to do is decide on a dedicated container of some sort (we use the glass container pictured above and then supplement, when needed, with large reusable plastic bags) and then start using that to collect scraps of vegetables, throwing them in as you chop and then storing in your freezer until you’re ready to make the broth. Pretty much any vegetable can be used, but we tend to avoid too much of anything too starchy (potato, corn) and don’t add too many tomatoes…but you should feel free to experiment. Tops of carrots; ends and outer, non-papery skins of onion; garlic ends; kale stems; herbs that are on their way out; all of it.

The other thing to keep an eye on are you hot pepper scraps—the tops you cut off of them and the inner pith and seeds. These are great if you like your broth to have a kick, but they add up quickly as far as total spiciness goes. If you’re averse to spicy flavors, we’d say leave them out altogether.

Then, once you’ve got a container full of scraps—enough to nearly fill your stockpot but not to the brim—plan anywhere from 2-6 hours of boiling + reducing, adding a tablespoon of olive oil and cooking the frozen scraps in the covered pot for ten minutes or so, thawing and browning them before adding enough water to cover them. Then bring it to a boil and partially cover, keeping an eye on the pot to make sure you’re not boiling over. If you do, just reduce the heat for a while as the water cooks off a bit. Continue to check the broth, adding more water as it cooks off. The longer you cook the broth, the more concentrated and rich it’ll be in the end. Once you’re done, you just need to drain and discard (ideally compost) the scraps, storing the cooled broth in containers in the fridge or, for longer term use, the freezer. We usually make the broth at night, turning the stovetop off to allow the broth + scraps to cool overnight for easier draining and storing.

So if you’re looking to turn your cooking up a notch, give this a try. And then, next time you’re working on a recipe that calls for vegetable broth, use this instead. We’re betting you’ll notice an impressive difference in the end product.

Oh, take note though: your place will kinda smell like an old person’s home for 12-24 hours after you make this. Though it does make for a warm, cozy night in, so it’s a wash, right?

Looking to knock it outta the park this Thanksgiving? Looking to impress some family + friends with your culinary prowess? Just looking to mix up the menu a bit this year? Well, I employe you, try this recipe out.

We dreamt up Butternut Squash Hand Pies back in 2011 and they’ve been a mainstay at holiday feasts ever since. Isa Chandra Moskowitz wrote the recipe up again back at the beginning of 2012 with her PPK100 and we thought we’d dredge it up again in case anyone’s looking for an exciting last-minute addition to the menu.

The crust on these is rich + flaky, the filling savory + sweet, and—though it’s not mentioned in the original recipe—if you pair it with a chipotle-mayo dipping sauce, the combination of flavors is pretty unbeatable. Just grab a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from the ‘international’ aisle at your local supermarket and mix a couple tablespoons of the sauce with your favorite vegan mayo. We like to pulverize a pepper or two to mix in too, but we like it hot.

Give it a go—we promise you’ll be glad you did.

In my college days, when I first went vegan, things were pretty tough for a lot of us. This was the mid-ninties in small town Virginia—not exactly the golden era for those looking for alternatives to animal products and not exactly a vegetarian oasis. Veggie burger varieties numbered in the twos, the vegan cheese realm was dominated by the bright orange, plasticy Tofutti slices, and many a falafel was made with Fantastic Foods box mixes.

Fast forward nearly twenty years, and we actually may be in an culinarily animal-friendly golden era now. With such advances in food technology and the recognized prevalence of very vocal vegetarians and vegans in the commercial market, we’ve reached a point where most food needs + wants have been met for the meat- and dairy-free and then some. In cities like Los Angeles, we’re even stepping beyond that point of attempting to match animal products with faux versions to enjoy this new era of ‘plant-based foods’, a new trend often hesitant to label itself vegan that pushes the inherent excellent taste and impact on health of foods free of meat, dairy, and overly processed ingredients.

This new domain may well be the perfect setting for the longtime vegan holy grail—dairy-free cheese. While most every other animal-based food has been pretty well matched for a while with a healthier, more environmentally friendly, often tastier vegan counterpart, dairy-free cheese has been a tricky, tricky beast.

But, in the past five or so years, a small movement has turned away from overly-processed vegan cheeses to look towards more simplified nut-based cheeses, many of the best of them cultured + aged like traditional dairy cheeses. We’ve tried just about all of them—many of which are relatively interchangeable in taste, texture, presentation—but newcomer Miyoko’s Creamery has got us really excited.

Started by Miyoko Schinner—author of 2012’s Artisan Vegan Cheese—and her co-founder, Lisa Shanower, the company strives to “recreate the range of flavors and textures (Miyoko) had once enjoyed from dairy cheeses before becoming vegan.”

More from the site: “Indeed – the lure of cheese is strong, and many of us have fallen to its siren call. We hope to be able to answer that call with the most delectable whole-foods, plant-based cheeses in the world!”

For us, the main two things that put this company and its products out ahead of the rest of the pack are the generously large sizes of the cheese wheels and the great variety of cheeses—or ‘cultured nut products’ as the state of California requires them to call it since it doesn’t contain dairy. Miyoko + company are really pushing the envelope, not settling for a dairy-free version of jack + cheddar and calling it a day, but striving for higher end cheeses, sourcing high end, organic ingredients and getting really creative with both the tastes and presentation of the cheeses. They’re beautiful works of art that I want to devour.

What’s more, Miyoko’s offerings seem to be ever-evolving, with limited editions cheeses like the Mt. Vesuvius Black Ash and the just added Double Cream Garlic Herb.

Miyoko’s plans to open a storefront at their production facility in northern California, but, for now, the best way for most of us to get their cheeses is to order them online. We’ve done it twice now and our order arrived just a couple of days after ordering, though we’re just down the road, relatively speaking. Thanksgiving preppers—Miyoko’s recommends ordering before noon PST today to receive in time for the holiday feasting. Northern Californians—Miyoko’s is also now carried at a number of retailers, which we can only assume will steadily expand.

Regardless of how you get them, though, get them. We really think Miyoko’s is a game-changer in the vegan cheese world and a welcome one at that.

Pictured above, Fresh Loire Valley soft cheese in a fig leaf. Below, Miyoko’s very well-designed packaging; the visually impressive Country Style Herbes de Provence soft cheese; the High Sierra Rustic Alpine semi-hard cheese; Classic Double Cream Chive soft cheese (Katie’s favorite); Aged English Smoked Farmhouse semi-hard (my favorite); French Style Winter Truffle soft; Aged English Sharp Farmhouse hard cheese; and some more lovely packaging.

Another attempt at making our table a little more diverse and out of the ordinary this Thanksgiving—switching our usual fresh cranberry sauce recipe for this tomato + pomegranate salad from Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook Plenty More. His earlier book, Plenty, was the inaugural cookbook in our Cookbook Club and, while it wasn’t even close to 100% vegan, the book was wildly innovative and very vegetable-forward.

KCRW’s Good Food featured the recipe on their blog a few weeks back, quoting Ottolenghi as saying that it was inspired by a salad he tried in Istanbul and calling it “the definition of freshness with its sweet-and-sour late-summer flavors.” Perfect for autumn in Los Angeles!

We’ve taken the liberty of reposting the recipe below, for the truly lazy surfer of the Web.

Tomato and Pomegranate Salad
Serves four

1 1/3 cups/200 g red cherry tomatoes, cut into ¼-inch/5-mm dice

1 1/3 cups/200 g yellow cherry tomatoes, cut into ¼-inch/5-mmdice

1 1/3 cups/200 g tiger or plum tomatoes, cut into ¼-inch/5-mm dice

18 oz/500 g medium slicing tomatoes (about 5), cut into¼-inch/5-mm dice

1 red pepper, cut into ¼-inch/5-mm dice (1 cup/120g)

1 small red onion, finely diced (rounded ¾ cup/120g)

2 cloves garlic, crushed

½ tsp ground allspice

2 tsp white wine vinegar

1½ tbsp pomegranate molasses

¼ cup/60 ml olive oil,plus extra to finish

1 large pomegranate, seeds removed (1 cup/170 g seeds)

1 tbsp small oregano leaves salt

Mix together all the tomatoes, the red pepper, and the onion in a large bowl and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the garlic, allspice, vinegar, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, and a scant 1/2 teaspoon salt until well combined. Pour this over the tomato mixture and gently mix.

Arrange the tomato mixture and its juices on a large, flat plate. Sprinkle the pomegranate seeds and oregano over the top. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil and serve.

Photo by Jonathan Lovekin.

Today we start in on a week’s worth of food-related pieces leading up to Thanksgiving. First up—a Thanksgiving recipe guide Katie created for longtime client, Farm Sanctuary.

It’s got something for everyone, from those just dipping their toe in the waters of cruelty-free living to old-timer vegans, with handy general tips + substitutions and exciting recipes that go beyond your average dairy-free mashed potatoes + gravy. …not that we’re knocking mashed potatoes + gravy. We’re just trying to mix it up a little bit this year. You know. Keep things exciting, new; make this holiday pop, man!

One recipe from the guide that we’re hoping will help us do that—Potato Fennel Gratin, contributed by Native Foods Café. Though that Carmel Apple Cheesecake doesn’t sound like it’s anything to sneeze at either.

Where the hell did that expression come from, by the way? In what culture did people sneeze on things they thought not up-worthy?

Anyway, whether you’re looking to go totally animal product free this Thanksgiving or just cut down on your animal consumption, give this guide a look. It’ll be worth your while.

Above, the Wellington from Native Food—a puff pastry full of seitan, kale, yams, and stuffing, available for order online.

Nearly two years ago, social media totally paid off for us in a tangible, direct way that we could see plainly, drawing an unbroken line from action to reaction. That instance involved a salad.

Not any salad, mind you. It was a really, really good salad from a vegan café around the corner from our old design studio in Brooklyn, Sun in Bloom, a place we miss dearly in our work days now. It’s a massaged kale salad and it’s topped with this great raw, vegan, house-made burger, which, to some of you sounds great, I imagine, and sounds disgusting to others. But I swear, naysayers, it is a great salad and a great café.

But I digress! As I’m wont to do, I posted a photograph of our lunch to Instagram that cold day in January which, as you guessed, was that salad. Aimee, the owner of Sun in Bloom, shared the photo on Facebook and thanks our studio for the shot. A couple of days later, we were contacted by the owners of the boutique real estate firm, Garfield Realty, who frequent Aimee’s restaurant and saw the photo on Facebook. They got in touch to see if we could help them take their newly acquired company in a new direction with their branding, design materials, and overall messaging.

Thus started our work with Garfield Realty, focusing in on an ad campaign at first and then evolving that work into other projects, the most recent and largest of which—Garfield’s site redesign—was recently completed.

You can see more images from the site and read through our breakdown of the work in our portfolio; visit the site itself to see it in full. When you do, be sure you do some searches for homes that’ll result in zero hits—you’ll get some relatively witty, rotating text that we wrote.

But we just wanted to use this space to let everyone out there know that, yes, indeed, every now and then all that time and work that goes into a social media presence that sometimes…most times feels 100% futile…sometimes it’s 100% worth it.

Actually, not only did that photograph that Sun in Bloom shared result in a new client, it also resulted in us meeting Paul Singh, a friend of Elizabeth’s and, now, one of our best Web developers, with whom we’ve worked on Web sites for the United Nations and many other clients, Garfield included, and through whom we started working with A Better LA.

For anyone interested, here’s that salad.

I’ll be the first to admit—most days, I’m much more a coffee person than a matcha tea person. But, like being a cat person or a dog person, preferring one doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the other. I look to coffee most mornings to help those synapses along in the whole firing + functioning thing, but there’s nothing like a soothing, gentle cup of warm tea when you’re looking for that cozy unwind on a chilly evening or sitting out on your porch taking in the slow, early morning awakening of the rest of the world and not quite looking for the shock-to-life coffee often gives.

So, tea, for me, is more of a luxury; something I don’t have often but, when I do, something that I truly appreciate in a way I don’t think I would if it were everyday for me.

One interesting tea company we discovered early this year and revived some excitement in tea for us is Adventure Tea, who pairs a uniquely captivating product with an organically storied backdrop and wonderful hand-done packaging artwork. As they put it:

“We spent most of our lives seeking awesome experiences to offset the awful experience of our 8-6 jobs (whatever happened to 9-5, anyway?)…. Finally, it hit us: the glowing computer screens, tightly clenched steering wheels and rampant aspirin abuse were the polar opposite of what we wanted our lives to be. We wanted to explore, to create, to seek what the modern world insists is a child’s fantasy.

Just as adventure is created through exploration, memories are built at the dinner table. Our best experiences centered on the joy of sharing food and drink with other people, whether they hail from next door or across the planet. We wanted to create something that could unite people from around the globe in their innate desire to experience the exotic, and tea was the obvious choice. For millennia tea has been the favorite drink of emperors and explorers, poets and farmers; it is the culinary common denominator that all of humanity has always agreed upon. Tea has started revolutions, catalyzed the exploration of the deepest corners of the globe, made and lost massive fortunes, and inspired some of the world’s greatest minds. Perhaps we love tea because when we drink it we can sense the thousands of years of cultural, geographic, and historical identity condensed into each leaf. Or maybe it just tastes good. Fueled by a few dozen cups of Guayusa, we ditched our dead-end jobs and launched Adventure Tea out of a 700 square-foot bungalow in West Los Angeles. Our mission: to bring the exotic to your tea cup, spark a little adventure in your life, and resurrect the identity of a beverage dominated for too long by passionless mega-corporations.”

Again, I’m no expert on tea—at all, really—but the teas we’ve had from Adventure Tea really do seem to tell a story all on their own when you take the time to step away from the hectic nature of your daily life and listen. Along with tasting notes, each tea comes with a backstory as to how the company founders discovered the tea and what makes it special for them.

They also come packed in these lovely little wooden boxes with sliding lids and really well-done handmade artwork specific to each locale (done by the wife of the the husband-and-wife founders we’re told).

Plus you can hide your weed in the used up boxes. Obviously.

So, next time life’s giving you the run-around, as it does us all, and you’re ready to scream, step away, assure yourself that this seemingly insurmountable problem will be there when you get back, and take some time to brew up + enjoy some tea, says this coffee-drinker. My bet is that things will look a little more surmountable when you take a second look.