The sixth annual Vegan Beer Fest hit Los Angeles this past weekend and it did not disappoint.

Presented by Tony Yanow (Golden Road Brewing, Mohawk Bend, Tony’s Darts Away); vegan blogger, quarrygirl; and event-planning expert, Nic Adler (The Roxy, Goldenvoice), the festival made an ambitious move from a parking lot in West Hollywood—where it was held last year—to Pasadena’s famous Rose Bowl Stadium and it was a perfect fit for this celebration of all things vegan.

For anyone who does’t already know, most beer is vegan. Some, like Guiness + Red Stripe, use something in the filtering process called isinglass—a substance obtained from the dried swim bladders of fish—and others, like milk stouts or the like, include animal-derived ingredients, but most other beers are in the clear. Vegan Beer Fest brings many area and far-off, vegan-friednly craft beer producers together along with vegan and non-vegan restaurants and food vendors alike, encouraging them to show off specialty vegan menus for the day.

The result is a day full of beer samples and extravagant, increasingly impressively complex food offerings, from blowtorched vegan sushi to vegan fried chicken and bacon sandwiched between two donuts.

Really.

Below, some of what we captured/ate/drank, starting with a Neapolitan-style Lasagna Pizza from 800º Pizza + Crossroads Kitchen/Kite Hill; the Chicken + Waffle Melt from The Grilled Cheese Truck; their vegan menu for the day; our favorite food of the day, the Walnut Chorizo Tostada from Mud Hen Tavern; cuties, Chef Kajsa + Stacy Michelson from Mud Hen; the Mac + Cheese Waffle (featuring Follow Your Heart cheese) from Clara’s Cakes; Katie with said waffle; Clara + her mom showing off their MooShoes; the Ghostface Killah, an amazing ghost pepper-infused IPA from Boulder’s Twisted Pine Brewery; a Wolf Among Weeds IPA-infused cashew cheese from LA’s Nary Dairy; our friend Nic’s final slider from Native Foods; our very cute pals from Kombucha Dog; Brian L Patton, vegan chef and author of The Sexy Vegan Cookbook, showing off his bizarrely awesome shirt from Puppies Make Me Happy; the S’morrissey + Strawberry Lab donuts from Donut Friend; and musical headliners, Jamestown Revival.

You can see a ton more shots from the day of festivities via Vegan Beer Fest’s Instagram account—a great appetite stimulant and proof positive that you should mark your calendars for next year’s fest now.

We’ve written…literally, for years in these pages on the topic of vegan cheese. From Kite Hill’s brie-like, aged nut-based cheese, to the more recent, exciting development of Miyoko’s Creamery up the coast, and way back to a 2009 side-by-side comparison of Teese + Daiya, the two big vegan cheese contenders in that day.

To outsider non-vegans, it might appear as slightly obsessive, but, for those of us who are vegan but weren’t raised eschewing dairy products, a viable, dairy-free cheese alternative has long been a vegan holy grail. The taste of certain vegan cheeses can get close to comparable to their dairy equivalents, but, it turns out, the chemistry of dairy is pretty unique in its ability to create that texture and stretchiness some cheeses have when melted and, for the most part, until recently, replication’s fallen pretty short. In the past few years though, we vegan consumers have enjoyed a sort of vegan cheese revolution. Of late, it seems like you can’t throw a rock without hitting some aged nut-based cheese start-up. Los Angeles even has its own vegan cheese shop now.

Last year, Katie + kept hearing from our east coast friends how great these new vegan cheese slices were from Field Roast, a Seattle-based company that usually specializes in grain-based vegan meat alternatives (they make great vegan sausages). We kept checking area Whole Foods for the cheese to no avail.

Then, a few months back, we stumbled across a similar product from Follow Your Heart, a company just north of Los Angeles created in 1970 and known largely for their delectable mayonnaise alternative, Vegenaise. Similar to the praise given by our east coast friends of Chao, the Field Roast cheese, these FYH slices tasted wonderful and melted superbly, making for great grilled cheese sandwiches reminiscent of our pre-vegan days.

Eventually, we did happen across Chao in our local Gelson’s, of all places, and it too held up remarkably well to our remembered reverence for dairy sliced cheese.

Remarkably similarly well, actually. Side-by-side comparisons of the cheeses left us wanting for favorites—though Chao claims to incorporate a Thai-based fermented soy product in the cheese and the two companies have slightly different variation on the slices, they’re nearly indistinguishable from one another. To be clear—that’s not at all a criticism. Both brands of cheeses are excellent. We just thought it slightly odd that two vegan companies not really known for cheese products would suddenly both debut such similar products at similar times. Like when Hollywood puts out two really similar disaster movies at almost the same time.

Another similarity we noticed—both cheeses, produced by a Seattle company and an LA-area one, were produced in Greece. Which seemed like an odd coincidence. Turns out, as you may have guessed, it’s not a coincidence at all.

I reached out to Follow Your Heart, asking if there was any significance to the fact that both cheeses were produced in Greece, “wondering if they’re produced in the same factory or if vegan cheese is now a big thing in Greece or what the reason is.” Their very prompt and kind response, via Director of Sales, Adrienne duBois:

“Glad to hear you love the new cheese, we love it too, which is why it’s the first product we have ever sold which isn’t manufactured here, by us, in Los Angeles. You are absolutely correct about the Greek connection—it isn’t a coincidence. Field Roast’s Chao Slices and our new slices, blocks, and snack cheeses are all produced by the same Greek company. I don’t think its accurate to say that vegan cheese is now a big thing in Greece, as they sell very little of their products there. However, they do sell to the rest of Europe—and now the U.S. as well!”

Evidently, a company called Viotros are the Greek vegan cheese masterminds. They even have a page on private label vegan cheese development.

Cool! Mystery, solved. Now we can go about enjoying all of our vegan cheese slices in every form and format.

Los Angeles—look for Follow Your Heart at tomorrow’s Vegan Beer Fest, where I’m guessing they’ll be doing something awesome with their cheese. We’ve at least heard that LA cupcake maven, Clara Cakes, is making (get ready for it) mac + cheese waffles using FYH cheeses. FYH also owns and operates a café + market that’s open to the public, which is how they first got their start so many years back.

Viva la revolución de queso vegano!

Yesterday was our annual field trip with the sixth grade class from the school at the bottom of our canyon, Cheremoya Avenue Elementary School.

The organization we’re part of (and on which Katie’s now a board member), the Hollywood Orchard, has hosted the soon-to-graduate classes for a fruit- and nature-centric tour up Beachwood Avenue—their backyard—for the past four years now.

We wrote a bit about it last year when we participated for the first time, but, in short, it’s a wonderful, exhausting experience entertaining and interacting with these kids for an entire day. We love it and, with any luck, they did too.

You can learn more about the Hollywood Orchard on the Orchard Web site and see a ton of photos from the trip on the Facebook page we have for the group.

Above, the craziness that is a passion fruit flower, just up from Franklin on Beachwood growing on an unassuming fence in front of someone’s house; below, a shot of Katie + me by Bridie Macdonald.

In it’s most ideal form, Cinco de Mayo is less a specific celebration of the Mexican army’s 1862 underdog victory over the much more massive and heavily equipped French army and more a general, symbolic point of pride for Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

But, in fact, most of just use it as an excuse to eat Mexican food, hang out with friends, and drink Margaritas.

Which, honestly, I’m pretty okay with. As long as we know it’s origins, I’m generally of the mind that life’s short, so why not take any excuse to celebrate a thing?

And Margaritas are great and everything, but, every since living in Brooklyn and frequenting a relatively new Gowanus establishment called Lavender Lake, we’ve been in love with one of their mainstay cocktails, the Night Heat.

The bar’s in a beautiful space right on the Gowanus Canal and they offer some of the best house made pickled vegetables, bar snacks, and original drinks around.

We’ve never acquired the exact recipe for the Night Heat, but we know it’s primary ingredient is Pechuga organic mescal from celebrated handcrafted mezcal producer, Del Maguey. Pechuga has a smokey, almost scotch-like taste that, honestly, reminds you a little of old bandages…in the best of ways, if that’s possible. It’s difficult to describe, but we love it.

For the rest of the simple recipe, we essentially followed the blueprint of a Margarita recipe, substituting fresh lemon juice for lime and a homemade rosemary syrup instead of Cointreau or Triple Sec, both of which have lost favor in our home in the past few years anyway in favor of simple syrups.

Those seem to be the only ingredients of the original Night Heat and, from our home experimentation, this recipe seems to really nail it on the head.

How do you make simple syrups?

We wrote up homemade syrups in detail way back in 2010, but, basically, you take two or so cups of purified water, bring to boil, add a cup or so of granulated raw sugar, lower to a simmer, and allow to reduce until the sugar’s dissolved, stirring occasionally.

In the case of rosemary syrup,  just add five or so sprigs of rosemary as you’re simmering and then store with a fresh on when transferred to your storage container and chilled. Just be sure you don’t reduce the syrup too much so that you keep it relatively watery and mixes will with you lemon + mezcal.

Click on the recipe to the right or right-click to download the PDF, and enjoy.

What happens when you’re a successful commercial photographer and the digital photography revolution hits? For many, at worst, it meant an end to a long and prosperous career; to others, at the very least, it meant a sea change, with a massive devaluing of the industry as a whole and a dramatic decrease in income for many who relied on the industry as their financial bread + butter.

For Los Angeles-based photographer, Michael Faye, it meant turning his lens toward two of his passions—dogs + kombucha. In 2007, the longtime dog-lover sold his commercial studio with the intent of rebooting as a pet portraiture business. Then, as he eloquently put it:

“That’s when Lindsey Lohan changed my life. Stay with me.

I come from a family deeply rooted in holistic tradition. I was raised vegetarian. Father is a chiropractor and Mother made her own yogurt! Sugar was not on the menu. No soda. No chocolate cereal. To some that may seem like hell for a kid, but I stilI hold those core values. I started drinking kombucha around 2005. I was then, as I am now, a strong believer in the raw food movement, with a regular yoga practice. I felt healthy, in shape, even so I felt kombucha’s health effects from the start. The sense of well being that comes with drinking kombucha became part of my every day.

But just as my interest in kombucha was deepening, it disappeared. Literally. The story goes like this: Lindsey Lohan’s lawyers attempted to explain away a failed alcohol test by claiming it was a false positive brought about by a lot of kombucha drinking. The practical (and hysterical) result of which was that kombucha was summarily pulled from the shelves. Such is the power of the Lohan. After a few weeks without, it was time to take action. I started learning how to brew and found that friends and family were really liking my early efforts and requesting more… I also discovered I loved the art of brewing.”

Three years and a lot of work later, Faye turned his new passion for brewing into a business, tying his now commercially available kombucha to his love of dogs + photography by taking shots of currently homeless dogs in the Los Angeles area and putting them on the labels to help them find homes.

We’ve been fans of Kombucha Dog since we first came to LA. They make great kombucha and who could deny such an adorably awesome business model.

A little while back, Michael reached out to us to inquire about doing something together as our roles of running MooShoes Los Angeles. The result is this Saturday’s coming Dog Daze 2015, a celebration of local shopping, local music, local food + drink, and, of course, local four-legged friends (many of whom’ll be on-site and available for adoption).

Admission’s free and you can purchase beer, wine, and kombucha on-site along with some products from our store and the Los Angeles-based Made in America Project. Local vegan restaurant Sun Cafe‘ll also be on hand to cater a dinner for any interested (just RSVP for it on the Eventbrite page).

Details + RSVPing for both dinner and general attendance here—hope to see you there!

Below, more KD labels + dogs; the indoor event space at Kombucha Dog; Katie with the new pup at the brewery, Jax; the KD credo; large scale dog love on the brewery walls; and more kombucha.

It’s Burger Week, I’m told, so what better time to discuss the marvel of Beyond Meat‘s new Beastly Sliders.

We’d opined on the Bill Gates-backed Los Angeles company’s original product, the Chicken-Free Strips, a couple years back, essentially stating that we thought they were pretty convincing and a great alternative to have on the market, but not something that we really saw ourselves seeking out much. These sliders, though—they are right up our alley.

As Shape magazine put it recently in an article titled “Beyond Meat’s High-Protein Veggie Burger Is the Best Thing to Ever Happen to Vegans”: “A burger that packs more protein and iron than beef, more omegas than salmon, more antioxidants than blueberries, plus tons of calcium and a whole slew of vitamins—oh, and did we mention the burger is completely vegan and soy-free? It sounds too good to be true!”

We’re here to tell you they taste too good to be true too. We prepared a bunch of them for this year’s Oscar party (the less controversial than its namesake American Slider), populated by mostly non-vegan friends, and they were the culinary hit of the party, with more than a few people remarking on their convincingly realistic meatiness.

Beyond Meat first debuted the sliders’ big brother, the Beat Burger, at a New York Mets pre-game event, touting the burgers’ whopping 23 grams of protein and other nutrients needed by athletes but sometimes hard-to-find in other plant-based foods. Which is great, obviously. But the main thing that keeps us coming back to these is how fucking good they are. Hands-down the best off-the-shelf vegan burger we’ve ever tasted.

We usually cook these stovetop with a little sesame oil, which adds to the smokiness of the flavor, but we’re excited to hit proper grilling season with these too. Discerning health foods stores and Whole Foods are your best bet for carrying these, but check the product filter on Beyond Meat’s store locator—as of writing, the Beast Burgers are nation-wide, but the sliders are select areas only. Whole Foods also offers a bagged vegan split wheat roll that has on the packaging “Great for sliders!” or something along those lines. Add your favorite vegan mayo and vegan American-style cheese slices (a la Chao or Follow Your Heart) and you’ve got zero reasons to eat red meat ever again.

Edit: A note from Beyond Meat after publication: 

“Hi Troy. Thank you for reaching out to us and for the positive review! After a super successful launch, we are making some minor labeling and supply-chain changes during which the Beast is on a brief hiatus. We are currently in full Beast mode preparing for a much larger national launch as grilling season approaches, with the Beast returning to shelves by the end of April. Thank you for your patience!”

Beast mode, returning soon!

Heads up to Los Angeles vegans and visiting vegans: We can report with sound hearts + minds that the menu at Commissary—Roy Choi‘s much buzzed about recent venture in Korea Town’s Line Hotel—is indeed navigable for those seeking cruelty-free dining.

Katie + I lunched there recently with an old friend in from out of town and were met with both affable, knowledgable advice from our server and a bevy of vegan and vegan-izable options, all of which were delectable. Call it over-hyped if you like, but the food we had was both creative and extremely good.

Despite the restaurant being billed as “a greenhouse with a focus on fruits and vegetables”, past reports of Commissary just after opening struck us as slightly intimidating—icon-dependant menus with less-than-cooperative servers unwilling to break down exactly what a dish represented by a drawing of a piece of broccoli entailed, for instance.

We experienced nothing along those lines, though, with a seemingly expanded, more visitor-friendly menu and a server more than happy to tell us what was vegan or able to be made vegan. Lucky for us, that covered most of the vegetables and many sides, which is more than it sounds like given the restaurant’s very LA focus on small plates.

As the restaurant themselves put it:
“It’s not necessarily a vegetarian restaurant, just good food and drink based around plants as the foundation. It’s also an homage to all the people and families here in So Cal that work on farms to bring food to our tables. Set beside a shimmering pool, it’s got all the amenities of a private club but created for the public. Come sunbathe in carrot juice, mack on a salad, or grab some eggs and toast. Commissary is your own little oasis where you can feel right at home and chill.”

On our visit, we opted for the wood fire-roasted carrots, the dried fruit quinoa salad, a vegan green curry coconut dish, and tempura multi-colored cauliflower, all complimented by fresh juices that were paired with a sweet vinegar base (and are recommended to be further paired with gin for those looking to Snoop it up).

Though that more than filled us up, we’re excited to get back soon and try the rest of the dishes open to us. We’d encourage you to do the same.

We picked up this bunch of kale at the Hollywood Farmers Market yesterday and I knew immediately that I had to pull a color palette from it. The range of reds, purples, spring greens, and deep, dark greens was so appealing to the eye that I just couldn’t let it go.

Adobe released their mobile app Color—based on the desktop version of the same name (though it was originally called Adobe Kuler, for some reason)—earlier last year, but we had yet to use it very often, relying more on pulling palettes from higher res SLR photos with our computer-based design software. Now that we’ve upgraded to new phones with more powerful, higher resolution lenses though, the app’s suddenly become much more appealing. And fun to use.

So, clients, if you get us working on branding for you on Mondays going forward, expect some potentially produce-inspired looks.

Heads up, Los Angeles—this exists.

Golden Road Brewery‘s vegan mac + cheese in a pretzel bread bowl—new-comer in the world of animal-friendly pub fare, irresistible bomb of a comfort food mash-up, and talisman against all things Paleo.

They’ve got vegan onion rings these days too which are equally irresistible. Ah, Golden Road.

We’ve written these dudes up before, but really—who can beat Mast Brothers when it comes to crafty bean-to-bar chocolate and wonderful packaging. And beardiness.

A sweetly spicy weekend to you all.