Must-Own Cookbooks: Vegan Soul Kitchen

We have a confession. With all of our pork talk, we are simultaneously reading and testing recipes from a vegan cookbook. Gasp! We’re not afraid to go beyond the pig, the cow, the chicken and get back our herbivorous roots. And we could not have asked for a better guide than Bryant Terry and his masterful cookbook Vegan Soul Kitchen, which holds 150 creative, and oh-so-healthy interpretations of African and Caribbean cuisine. Not only can you find mouthwatering recipes for double mustard greens, roasted yam soup and sweet cornmeal-coconut butter drop biscuits, Terry has orchestrated the entire experience for each recipe, with suggested books, poems, films and tunes.

Bryant Terry is an Oakland based eco-chef and food justice activist, meaning he has “used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity,” as stated by his website. Projects like the Southern Organic Project, Black and Green Food Justice Fund, and his collaboration with Oakland’s People’s Grocery to form People’s Grub Parties, position Terry as a positive, powerful voice of change. He shows just how important it is to erase boundaries in the culinary world by connecting real, fresh organic food to real people. He thanks his grandparents back in Memphis for inspiring his appreciation and passion for cooking, farming, and community health. If being a vegan is this good, we have got some serious decisions to make!

Postcrossing: Making your Mail Fun Again!

Anyone who's ever experienced the heartwarming highs and aching lows of the Summer Camp Mail Call knows the feeling. Waiting eagerly as one name after another is called out, breath held in the hopes that the next missive might be meant for your eyes only. Even when you knew precisely what to expect, a weekly postcard from a parent or a letter promised by a friend, the thrill of its arrival was still singular. There were no bills or coupon booklets, no appeals for donations and no false promises of million-dollar windfalls. Just lovingly handwritten correspondence, the stamp licked and placed carefully so, ferried in safety of the mailman's satchel through sleet, snow, and dark of night, only to arrive at last in your hands. Pretty special stuff.

Nowadays, most correspondence is handled instantly and effortlessly, and the few parcels of note that do arrive in the post are invariably embossed with the seals of internet stalwarts like Netflix or Amazon. It's a bittersweet compromise. Our ability to connect online becomes exponentially easier, but the actual act of connecting becomes ever less meaningful. By creating an online hub to facilitate the thoughtful exchange of ink-and-paper objects, the online postcard sharing community Postcrossing has struck an elegant balance between the convenience and efficacy of the World Wide Web with the tactile satisfaction and trip-to-the-mailbox exertion of the World Wide World: a place of texture and odor and heft and refrigerator magnets.

It's pretty simple, really. When you first sign up as a member, you're given an address to which you send a postcard. Once it arrives, your address is then given to another one of the 170,000+ members in 209 countries who sends you a postcard from their particular far-off locale. And that's it. You keep sending them off into the world, and they keep showing up in the mail. It's armchair traveling, but with souvenirs to show for it. It's a tiny way to brighten your day, from a stranger a world away.

Fresh, Homemade Ricotta in 15 Minutes

I've long suspected that the dream of homemade cheese is not so lofty as it sounds. About 15 effortless minutes in the kitchen has confirmed this suspicion. It turns out making fresh ricotta is about as difficult as cooking pasta. In fact the process is much the same: combine the ingredients, heat, and strain the liquid.

You'll need:

• Milk
• Lemon juice or white vinegar (1 tbsp/cup of milk)
• Salt (1 large pinch/cup milk)
• Cheesecloth or papertowels

Here's the rundown:

• Line a colander with 1-2 sheets of papertowels or 3-4 sheets cheesecloth and place in a bowl. 
•  Combine the ingredients in a microwave safe bowl.
• Microwave a few minutes (~1 minute more than the number of cups of milk, ie 3 minutes for 2 cups). 
• Stir. If no curds form, heat another 30 seconds, and stir again. Repeat until you've got curd/whey separation. You'll know.
• Scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon and plop them into the awaiting cloth-lined colander.

That's cheese! The longer you let it drain, the firmer it will be (anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours), but if you're looking for a softer, spreadier cheese, it's ready to go. That beautiful creamy-white collection of curds can be used for all kinds of amazing dishes. Head over to our Facebook Fan page to let us know your favorite uses for ricotta!

Here are a couple more in-depth explanations: Microwave Style, and Classic Stovetop Style.

The Grand Spirit of Small Adventures

With all our talk of Discoveries, explorations, and epic adventures, it's really quite difficult to find the time to get out there in the thick of it, fearlessly setting adrift on daring expeditions to far off lands, charting unknown water, and all the rest. Most of the time, we're stuck with fantasies of swinging vine to vine across the dense canopy of the vineyards just outside, or embarking on camel back, traversing the vast expanse of parking lot in search of our destiny. Somethings tells us François Delfosse has a similar take on the adventure potential of ordinary stuff. That something happens to be "Antarctica in a Bag," his photo series documenting the inner worlds of plastic grocery bags, which captures the grand spirit of small adventures pretty nicely. Don't you think?

Travel Site: The Cranky Flier

Travel much? Gallivanting across the world to exotic locales like Machu Picchu (we’re going to get there eventually), and trekking across the Tuscan countryside (right around the corner) are amazing adventures. However, there are the pesky details of getting there. We like to stay on top of the airline industry for this very reason. One of our favorite resources on all things flying and air-related travel is The Cranky Flier. Written by self-professed airline dork, Brett, this blog will regale you with best practices of airport survival, insider tips and ticket deals, and the very latest in airline news. On his blog or via his travel assistance service, The Cranky Concierge, you can find everything from the cheapest hubs for round-the-world airfare to investigating where one can purchase duct tape in the Newark airport. The site also tackles topics like, how long pilots rest between flights, which airports are expanding or contracting, or exactly how much leg room to expect. In an industry that seems to lack the golden customer service of yesteryear, The Cranky Flier is a refreshing example of customer advocacy. Kudos!

Overseas & Overwhelmed

We've all experienced something similar to this tweet (from @ChrisTackett posted on @Pictory): "Arrived in Florence, boarded bus in wrong direction, ticketed by Polizia for non-validated ticket & homeless for first night." Really, you don't even have to leave the country to experience culture shock. Sometimes all you have to do is travel across the country, or in extreme cases, a bordering city. Regardless of the innocent passion for adventure and sincere curiosity that drives us to travel, sometimes the journey can be hellish. Overseas and Overwhelmed sought out to capture those moments - those times that, in retrospect, teach us a great deal about ourselves and our own perseverance, but in that very moment almost break us. It's the stuff that the greatest travel stories are made of, right? In celebration of those travel horror stories that make us stronger, more in-tune and creative human beings, Pictory Magazine's "Overseas and Overwhelmed" captures 25 stories of culture shock shown through amazing, vibrant photos. We can all relate and learn a thing or two from this site. What some of your culture shock moments?

Curious Pages: Recommended Inappropriate Boooks for Kids

Ah, blogs. Those tireless chroniclers of the esoteric. Whatever your fancy, you can rest assured it's being thoroughly documented on a web log of some sort. And sure, you have your politic blogs and your headline news. You've got celeb gossip and tech tips coverage. But at the end of the day, most of us just want to kick our legs up and read a slightly inappropriate children's book. Right? Of course we do. Which is we love Curious Pages, archivers of "the offbeat, the abstract, the unusual, the surreal, the macabre, the inappropriate, the subversive and the funky." In books for kids. A blog in which:

• We find Shel Silverstein none-too-subtly encouraging youngsters to smash open their parents' television sets to reveal the magical elves that live inside, to pee their pants rather than risk falling into the toilet, and to forget about ever going to the Land of Oz or meeting Santa Claus (neither are real, apparently). He does, however, suggest a trip to Detroit.

• We discover a book detailing various cocktails easy enough for a toddler to make, without all the hassle of sending your baby to after-school mixology classes.

• We acquire some rather effective nightmare fodder in the form of a marionette named Captain Jeff.

• We learn that Dr. Seuss wrote a series of books entitled Boners, More Boners, and Still More Boners.

In conclusion:
Is this blog a must read? Of course not.

Is this blog as wonderful, hilarious, and endlessly amusing as anything else on the internet? Are ponies awesome? Absolutely.      

Shel Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book

(click to view larger. Be prepared to R O the F L'ing)

 

Captain Jeff and the Squeeze Box

Plastiki Expedition

Step One: build a boat made of plastic bottles. After all, there are 2.5 million bottles trashed every hour in the United States. Step Two: set sail on the Pacific to bring attention to the power of recycling, massive waste currently in our oceans, and the juxtaposition of modern adventure and ecology. This sounds like just the kind of expedition we're into. Brainchild of British eco-adventurer David de Rothschild, the Plastiki Expedition is a journey from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, stopping off along the way to visit some of the most horrific examples of oceanic trash in the world, damaged coral reefs and soon to be flooded islands. They're now ready to let all of us in on the adventure. Team up with scientists, naturalists, adventurers and creatives via their website. We're all invited to follow along through videos and a host of social network updates as they kick off their open sea trials. Now that's a powerful adventure!

The Transcend GPS Goggle: If Google Made Goggles

It's about time the goggle stepped into the new millennium. For too long now, ski and snowboard goggles have been content with such mundanities as keeping the blinding glare of the snow from our delicate eyes, protecting our cheekbones from windburn, and preserving our neatly coiffed eyebrows. But now, at long last, the goggle has found it's true calling, with the introduction of GPS functionality, real-time statistics, and state-of-the-art sensors. The new high-tech Transcend Goggles are like an iPhone for your eyes. Without the phone. (An eyePod Touch? Google Goggles, perhaps?) Frankly, we're not really sure what to make of these beauties! Is this overkill for a so humble a piece of head-ware, or the future of snow sports; a must-have cranial accessory? What do you think?

Seems to me they would have been right at home here:

Pathfinder Tools: Wooden Laptop Case

It's brilliant. There's really not much more to say about this wooden laptop case, designed by Rainer Spehl. The design speaks for itself: Esquire meets Backpacker, archaeologist meets creative director, 007 meets Indiana Jones. It may just be the newest addition to our Pathfinder toolkit. Purpose: trekking meets blogging (in style). We can dream can't we?

Slightly Risky Paradise: Thrilling or Silly?

There's a lot of plainly beautiful places in the world. White sands and crystal blue waters. Palm trees, grass huts, the whole nine. If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all, and at this point we can all agree that plain old pristine is a little played out. Which is why we can totally sympathize with Outside Magazine's Editors' Choice of the island of Kiwayu, just off the coast of Kenya, as a must visit vacation destination, if only for the measured risk inherent in the location. Most resorts don't list Security between Location and Weather on their website's navigation bar, for instance. And don't be surprised at the occasional Somolian warship quietly passing by on the horizon. Just keep snorkeling.

Incidentally, here's an interesting short documentary about the island's practice of flip-flop recycling.

The Music Video Alive and Kicking: Hold Your Horses' 70 Million

There's been a minor kerfuffle of late over MTV's removal of the word music from their logo, as if the minor graphics update was anything but a mere formality, the final nail in a coffin that's long since six deep. Between grainy videos of mustachioed felines and grammatically challenged toddlers, we lament the loss of the music video as a cultural force (at least those inclined to lament such things), while would-be classics of the genre quietly amass modest yet respectable viewership in the tens of thousands. And while "Charlie Bit Me" may have replaced the Thrillers and Smells Like Teen Spirits as the shared short-video touchstone of our times, it's pretty comforting to know that not only are iconic and memorable videos like this one still being made, but that you don't have to wait through an episode of MTV Sports just to see it.


70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Capsule Hotels: Ready for Export?

The capsule hotel concept has been around for some thirty years in Japan, mostly taken advantage of by business travelers in transit. The purpose is simple: to provide a place to sleep and shower, nothing more. Of course, there is the obvious caveat is that those beds are found in individual stacked capsules, which has makes Westerners, well, a little uncomfortable. Up to this point, the focus of capsule hotels has been purely functional. Enter The 9 Hours Hotel, which recently opened its doors in Kyoto, Japan. Its purpose-driven architecture blends function and style for the modern savvy traveler. Designed in an open, minimal aesthetic, the hotel has absolutely no clutter and only four colors found in the entire hotel. Each capsule, tucked with same linens as luxury hotels, includes Panasonic's advanced system for good sleeping by computerized control lighting. It still may take a while for Westerners to warm up to this idea, but can you imagine the collective sigh of relief if this concept were launched in airports...during the holidays? Oh and why 9 hours? It is based on a simple calculation: 1 hour to shower, 7 hours to sleep, 1 hour to rest. Check out this video report from Monocle Magazine.