Halloween Movie Marathon Massacre

vanilla cupcakes with orange frosting

Live blogging from the 2nd Annual Halloween Movie Marathon Massacre. This event has gotten a little out of control. As of this moment we’ve watched 12 movies straight, starting at around 8 pm last night. It’s now past 6 pm. We’re getting close to 24 hours of Halloween movie madness. So I’m not going to write much because, well, I’m rather sleep deprived and whatever I write will probably sound ridiculous (disclaimer: I have actually slept through part of at least a few movies). Instead I’m just going to show you a few of the treats I made for the event. Above you can see some vanilla cupcakes with orange frosting.

I also made cookies and cream cupcakes and decorated them with crumbled Newman’s O’s. I had intended to put little graham cracker headstones on each but I totally burnt them. They looked even more awesome burnt but were not at all edible.

My favorite treat that I got to make was caramel corn. I used the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. It’s amazing. I can really only make this stuff for special events because I will eat the entire batch.

We also had a veggie hot dog station inspired by The Franken Stand. Sometimes if you can’t get the real thing you just have to make your own. Luckily, they have been at some great events this month, so we get to enjoy them somewhat frequently.

We’re down to five movie watchers, including myself. It’s amazing. The plan is to head to the Cinefamily and catch the double feature of Victims and Don’t Go In the House to finish the extravaganza. I’ll keep you posted.

Movies so far:
Labyrinth
The Brood
I Spit on Your Grave
Poltergeist
Friday the 13th part 4
Sleepaway Camp
Dawn of the Dead (original)
Shaun of the Dead
Lost Boys
Ringu
Necromantic
Suspiria

UPDATE

I finished with:

Victims
Don’t Go in the House

I think that the remaining three watched Close Encounters after that.

So many hours of horror!

vegan bake sale at handmade nation craft fair

Hey everyone! Just wanted to let you all know Vegan Bake Sale will be selling cupcakes at the Handmade Nation premiere craft fair this Saturday. So come get a cupcake (or two) and check out the other crafts and demos. The craft fair is from 2 – 6 pm and is free to the public. Handmade Nation looks like a great documentary too, so I would recommend seeing one of the showings as well. Get advance tickets and info at the Cinefamily site. Hope to see you there!

Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater

611 N Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036

Saturday August 15th 2009

2 – 6pm

Bicycle photos and Cinefamily nostalgia

Just a quick update to let all you vegans know about some cool upcoming events that you won’t want to miss.

Pics or it didn't happen

First of all, if you’ve been missing the tasty decadence that was Doomie’s Home Cookin’ you have a chance this Saturday to bask in the glory days. Team Midnight Ridazz is hosting a photo show to raise money for Aids Life Cycle. The show will feature photos from Los Angeles artists (including my favorite Studiodrome) documenting local bike culture. I don’t know the entire roster but I know a few of the associated artists have really amazing photographs and they’ll be selling for dirt cheap. Not to mention, it’s all for a good cause. Besides that though, DOOMIE’S will be catering the event, so you can come and get a taste of their food if you never had the chance or just miss it like crazy.

Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater

Also, this Sunday, The Silent Movie Theater is having a rummage and bake sale. From their website:

Sunday, May 10th, from noon-5pm, is our First Annual Cinefamily Rummage and Bake Sale, a wonderful opportunity for all of you to come by and sift through (and purchase!) the various relics and oddities that have been cluttering the theater’s hallways, stockrooms, and storage spaces since we opened. Items range from the typical (audio and film equipment) to the quaint (vintage books and posters) to the NSFW (seriously, I can’t even print it here). Come for the delicious treats, stay to pick out something special from our magical stockpile of weirdness. You might even find something for your mom (she mentioned you don’t call enough).

Besides the fact that this is a really cool place and I’m sure they’re going to have amazing things for sale, there will be cupcakes from Vegan Bake Sale for you to enjoy while you browse. The Silent Movie Theater is one of my favorite theaters in Los Angeles and has some really fantastic screenings. This theater is one of the few places you can see rare films in amazing condition and obscurities that will blow your mind. Despite the name, not all the movies are silent, but they do have a handful of those as well. They’re also a non-profit so all the proceeds go to obtaining even more awesome films to share. If you can’t make it to this sale, you should still check out the theater if you have a chance.

The Silent Movie Theater is located at 611 N Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036

Anyway, I’ll be there! You should be there! We should all be there! See you this weekend.

vegan bake sale

Well, the time has finally come to let you all in on a little secret…my vegan baking endeavors are going public. Vegan Bake Sale has been launched. It’s still in it’s beginning stages, but now you can order vegan desserts till your heart’s content (or I suppose your belly’s content, whichever). Right now I’ll be focusing on cupcakes and cakes, but some great cheesecake options are on the way, and cookies too. So if you’re in the Los Angeles are and you need something special for a birthday or event, Vegan Bake Sale is here to help! These aren’t the healthy, crunchy, cardboard vegan desserts you find at health food stores, they’re the decadent, delicious treats that could fool any non-vegan.

In fact, I’ll be at 3:28 The Death of FUN this Saturday with a ton of cupcakes. So come out and enjoy the wonderful Los Angeles spring time and nosh on some cupcake goodness. The bike ride will be going all day and all over the city (you can see more details in the facebook event) but I’ll be at Pan Pacific Park between 5 and 6 pm. I highly suggest if you have a bike and are in the area, you should not miss this. If you don’t have a bike, borrow one! There are so many great rides incorporated into this day and a lot of cool events planned along the way. Besides, it is the death of fun, so if you’re not there, you may never have fun again.

Vegan Blogger Potluck

This past Saturday Shawn and I were invited to a Los Angeles vegan blogger potluck organized by Your Vegan Mom and Hugger Food. Although I’d been to a number of the blogs present, I hadn’t met any of the bloggers in real life. It made me quite nervous to make food for a bunch of strangers, let alone a group of vegans who write about food on the internet!I decided to make mini-paninis filled with portobellos, spinach and white bean spread. I sauteed the portobellos in wine and olive oil with a sprig of fresh rosemary for about half an hour till they were soft.
The white bean spread was a bit of an experiment. I looked over some recipes but didn’t really bother to follow any of them. I also didn’t bother to write down what I actually did but here’s the basic idea.

1 can white beans, drained
4 large cloves of roasted garlic
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until fairly smooth.

To assemble the paninis:

Cut a baguette style loaf of french bread into 1/2 inch slices. Spread one half of each panini with vegenaise and the other with the white bean spread. Put the sauteed mushrooms and spinach on one half of the bread and then the other half on top. Drizzle with a tiny bit of olive oil and follow the directions for your panini maker. You could also toast these and I’m sure they would come out quite well.

The potluck was really quite fun. Everyone was super nice and it was great to hear the scoop about different vegan places around town. More importantly, the food was great. It’s not often that you get to go to a party and just enjoy all the food.

Before I ate anything, I got to enjoy some lovely pear and ginger cocktails crafted by Your Vegan Mom. They were a touch sweet but definitely not sugary, which I believe is ideal for a fruit based cocktail. Yum!

Foodeater of To Live and Eat in LA brought some Thai appetizers made fresh. Some of the descriptions of these were quite comical, but everyone seemed to love them. I had some of one of the rice rolls filled with banana and beans which was delicious.

I made a small sampling plate of some of the dippable fare. Here you can see the potato-parsnip latkes with applesauce from Hugger Food, pate with toast from Liz at Yo Soy, vegan Doritos with spinach dip from Quarrygirl and baked ravioli with marinara from Lex at Vegan-LA.

Jenn from Veganize It, Don’t Criticize It made a brisket that was really rather good as well. She of course also brought some of her notorious twinkies filled with jelly.

Kevin from the The Vegan Collection brought cinnamon rolls. I’ve been dying to make some for a couple of weeks now, but haven’t had the time so I was quite pleased to have these. There were even more delicious desserts, such as Quarrygirl’s chocolate chip cheesecake and Hugger Food’s twice spiced ginger cookies.
I really had such a great time going this event and cannot wait till there is another. It was so nice to meet everyone and munch on all the treats.
It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks with the holidays coming up so this may be the last post for awhile (hopefully not the last of the year). I have a number of projects in the works but they’ll have to wait to be revealed as they will ruin some gift surprises. Till then…