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Isa Chandra Moskowitz in the New York Times!


michaelhobson
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Isa in the New York Times! Is it just me, or is she about the hottest vegan on the planet?

 

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/23/dining/24punk600.1b.jpg

 

ISA CHANDRA MOSKOWITZ, a vegan chef, does not particularly like to talk about tofu. Ditto seitan, tempeh and nutritional yeast.

 

FORGET THE TOFU Rice paper rolls are filled with squash and have a spicy dipping sauce.

 

“I think vegan cooks need to learn to cook vegetables first,” she said last week during a cupcake-baking marathon. “Then maybe they can be allowed to move on to meat substitutes.”

 

Ms. Moskowitz, 34, was born in Coney Island Hospital, lives in Brooklyn, and is a typically impatient and opinionated New Yorker. She can’t stand how slowly most cooks peel garlic, makes relentless fun of Rachael Ray and rolls her eyes at the mention of California hippies.

 

But as a vegan and a follower of punk music since age 14, she is also part of a culinary movement that helped turn the chaotic energy of punk culture of the 1970s and 1980s into a progressive political force.

 

“Punk taught me to question everything,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “Of course, in my case that means questioning how to make a Hostess cupcake without eggs, butter or cream.”

 

The charm of Ms. Moskowitz — in person, in her cookbooks and on her public-access television cooking show, the Post-Punk Kitchen (theppk.com/shows/) — is that she makes even the deprivations of veganism and the rage of punk seem like fun. Like feminism that embraces makeup and miniskirts — the frivolous bits — Ms. Moskowitz’s veganism embraces chocolate, white flour, confectioners’ sugar, and food coloring.

 

Wearing a black “Made Out of Babies” T-shirt (it’s a friend’s band) above a red-and-white checked apron, she bent maternally over a batch of strawberry cupcakes. “Don’t you just want to pinch their little cupcake cheeks,” she said.

 

But can a cupcake be cute and punk at the same time? In the early days of punk, bands like the Sex Pistols were notorious for nihilism, anarchism and epic consumption of drugs and alcohol — none of which would seem to lead to tofu and chamomile tea. But as punk became more political (and as bands self-destructed) in the 1990s, many punks adopted a more profoundly rebellious stance: against drugs, against alcohol and against the whole habit of mindless consumption.

 

“It was about purifying the movement, about being poison-free,” said Ted Leo, of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, who led the band Chisel in the 1990s. He became vegetarian in 1988 and has been vegan since 1998. Many punks became vegetarian to protest corporate and government control of the food supply. Veganism takes vegetarianism farther into cruelty-free territory by avoiding anything produced by animals: milk, cheese, eggs, honey, etc.

 

“I would love to live in a world where I knew the eggs came from happy chickens,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “But in Brooklyn? That’s not going to happen.

 

“Besides, eggs are the big lie in baking. All the books say they provide structure, but that’s kind of crap.”

 

At 16, Ms. Moskowitz dropped out of the High School of Music and Art in New York to follow bands, live in squats in the East Village and cook for social justice.

 

“I learned knife skills by cooking for Food not Bombs,” she said, referring to the activist group that protests corporate and government food policy. “But I also learned to love Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Vegan food can and must be pretty,” she said, pounding a fist on the butcher-block counter.

 

Ms. Moskowitz’s kitchen, like punk music itself, has a strong do-it-yourself aesthetic. Her husband, a carpenter, builds more shelves when the ingredients threaten to take over, the oven needs frequent coaxing to get up to temperature, and if Fizzle the cat wants to sit on top of the refrigerator, the cupcakes must move over and make room.

 

“Here is the hideous curdled face of vegan baking,” Ms. Moskowitz said, gesturing to a bowl of soy milk mixed with vegetable oil and cider vinegar. Baking, she said, has long been the final frontier for vegan cooks.

 

Her second cookbook, “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World,” was published by Marlowe and Company last fall. Her first, “Vegan With a Vengeance” (Marlowe, 2005), has sold more than 50,000 copies.

 

“Omnivores” — that’s meat-and-dairy eaters — “can’t imagine baking without eggs and butter,” she said. “But we use cider vinegar instead of buttermilk for tenderizing, and really good shortening for the fat, and the rest just happens.” Nonhydrogenated shortening and margarine produced by Earthbalance and full-fat soy milk from Silk are her baking staples.

 

From them, instead of lumpy, penitential scones and muffins (the usual vegan baked goods) Ms. Moskowitz and her co-author Terry Hope Romero produce insanely fetching cupcakes with mousse fillings, butter cream frostings, chocolate ganache icings and sprinkles galore.

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New York Times!! Too cool! The more people that learn that we don't eat twigs and bark, the better.

 

“Don’t you just want to pinch their little cupcake cheeks,”

 

This part made me giggle.

 

Um, did I mention that Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the sexiest vegan alive? Okay, so I did. Yes, I'd love to pinch her "little cupcake cheeks".

Edited by michaelhobson
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I think xdarthveganx is the sexiest vegan alive wazzup buddy! It is amazing how people become so much more attractive when I hear they are vegan as well. We talked about this many months ago. When I learn that someone is vegan, I appreciate what they do so much that I can't help but find all kinds of wonderful things about them attractive.

 

There are hot vegan men and women all over, including all over this forum! And in this thread!

 

Thanks for posting the article, that is cool stuff to be in the New York Times.

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I think xdarthveganx is the sexiest vegan alive wazzup buddy! It is amazing how people become so much more attractive when I hear they are vegan as well. We talked about this many months ago. When I learn that someone is vegan, I appreciate what they do so much that I can't help but find all kinds of wonderful things about them attractive.

 

There are hot vegan men and women all over, including all over this forum! And in this thread!

 

Thanks for posting the article, that is cool stuff to be in the New York Times.

 

 

I am finally getting the credit I deserve!! LOL

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At first when I read this thread I was like "Whoa! What? I'm not the sexiest vegan??!! What the..." but then I realized Michael was right - he is talking about Isa, afterall, and she is a major geek, wears dorky glasses, and cooks like a goddess. Mmmm. heheh. That's the funniest emoticon ever! I had to use it!

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