[Friday Link Round-Up] Budget Fashion, Vegan Stoners, Breast Milk Ice Cream, Oh my!

1. SHOP at us.asos.com. I am so obsessed right now. Tons of cute stuff for affordable prices. This sweater is on sale for $50.

2. READ about this LDN ice cream shop that just started selling breast milk ice cream. Lovely. And it's already sold out. 

Photo via Sheknows.com

3. MAKE delicious, simple vegan recipes from The Vegan Stoner, one of my fave vegan food blogs of the moment. I just love how easy and pretty the recipes are. Tres unique. 

4. BROWSE the goodness of this amazing budget fashion blog, The CheapChica's Guide to Style. That's my kind of blog right there. 

[Green Thursdays] Eating Animals

I was a vegetarian for a couple of years before two cute boys took me to Betty's Burgers and I had a juicy, juicy burger. And then later than day, one of them made me a steak. So now I'm a carnivore. Just kidding. I don't eat meat every day or even every other day. I usually have meat once or twice a week. I'm trying to get back to vegetarianism but dealing with the guilt whenever I reach for bacon has continually worn on me. However, I attended a lecture by Jonathan Safran Foer on his new book, "Eating Animals," and it made me much more comfortable with my choices. The fact is that, yes ideally, for the world, we would all be vegans. And the truth is that you can be happy, healthy and make easy choices when being vegan, despite the propaganda against such a life choice. But you can also help on a daily basis when you do eat meat. Cutting down meat consumption and being aware of where your meat comes from is an important first step and an easy one at that. And I shouldn't feel that if I have bacon for breakfast, that the rest of my day is shot and I can eat meat like a starving lion. Every choice is an individual one and keeping this in mind has made me an "ethical omnivore."

Check out Foer's book here.

"Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.

This book is what he found. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits—folklore and pop culture, family traditions and national myth, apparent facts and inherent fictions—and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.
Marked by Foer’s moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the humor and style that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Foer’s latest tour de force informs and delights, challenging us to explore what is too often conveniently brushed aside. A celebration and a reckoning, Eating Animals is a story about the stories we’ve told—and the stories we now need to tell."

[Girl Crush] Olivia Wilde

1. Um, she's gorgeous beyond belief


2. She is vegan, which is my goal in life.

3. She eloped with a prince who is also a filmmaker


4. She is an activist: She supports ACLU, Artists for Peace and Justice, and has worked with MoveOn.Org and Obama's campaign.

"You can be egocentric in this business - it'll rot you," she says in the latest issue of Women's Health magazine. "I feel like we're past the bullshit phase, like cooch shots of Paris Hilton getting out of a limo. The cool thing is to be doing something to thelp the world. Keeping at least 50 percent of your energy turned outward keeps you sane."

5. She takes her stage name from Oscar Wilde. I just think that's cool.



6. She has amazing fashion sense. I kind of just want to be her.

[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Mostly Vegan, Mostly Perfect Birthday Carrot Cake

Never Compromise with Cream Cheese Frosting

I had three cakes at my birthday party this year. Some might call that extravagant. Others might call it just about the proper number. I am of the latter persuasion.

I used to be vegan, and butter freaks me out. It's just so... so... buttery. I think it's a holdover from when I used to cringe buying kilos of butter at a time in New Zealand. And eggs freak me out too, unless they're fresh from my friend's backyard. Then at least I know the chickens and they're cool with me and we've reached an understanding about the exchange we're making: me = eggs, chickens = my undying love and affection + possibly giving them some of my food scraps.

Though all three cakes were delicious (one had vodka and wine in it), the carrot cake was near and dear to my heart. This is because it was a no-egg, no-butter, and no-dairy cake (except for the organic, locally-made cream cheese frosting, because I would never skimp on cream cheese).

I altered my recipe from this one. This way is perfectly most and delicious and doesn't alienate your non-vegan friends (that would be 100% of mine):

2 1/3 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp salt

6 tbsp flax seed meal (I found a lifetime supply at Costco)
3/4 c warm water
1½ c sugar
1 c oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 c shredded carrots
1 c raisins (HAD to add raisins to this recipe. It was SO much better with raisins)

Cream Cheese Frosting
4 oz organic cream cheese
1/8c Smart Balance, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350º. Spray one deep cake pan with cooking oil and then sprinkle with flour. In a small bowl, sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt). In a large bowl, whisk together flax seed meal and water. Beat in sugar and oil. Add vanilla and carrots and mix until combined. Add dry mix and stir until moistened. Fold in raisins. Pour into pan. Bake for 40 min, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pan 10 minutes.

For the frosting, beat together cream cheese and Smart Balance. Add vanilla and powdered sugar; whip until smooth and creamy and looks like clouds of cream cheese joy.

Frost the cake and put it in the fridge. It should be served nice and cold. Stop feeling guilty. Eat.

Happy (belated) birthday to me!