free popcorn, and as you walk deeper into the place you notice the sign, “Vegan Drinks.” It is vegan drink night at Martuni’s bar in the SOMA. The back room is full of vegans, or friends of vegans, crowded around little tables holding pink cocktails. The room is filled with laughter and conversation, eyes darting from tables to look at the new faces. And after a few of those delicious pink martinis you find yourself immersed in conversation with your new vegan friends. This is San Francisco, one of the best places in the world to be a vegan.
The blog site Vegansaurus is the best city guide to a vegan lifestyle. They target college age readers and their articles are hilarious, clever and brutally honest. On their site find recipes, restaurant reviews, events, links to every vegan blog and business in the city, and personal rants worth a read. The writers are hardcore vegans not afraid to express it. “When people are not bleeding-heart animal-rights-activist types, like all our vegan writers on Vegansaurus, I approach the subject from a ‘what you’re eating could kill you, and not just because of the cholesterol’ aspect. The animals, and animal products people eat now are not what their grandparents and great-grandparents ate, and we don’t even know the long term effects of consuming all those antibiotics and hormones. Ugh,” says Gallagher.
Everyday there are new and exciting ways to improve ones vegan lifestyle. Vegan apps are popping up for smart phones and include some really cool features.
Going out to a bar or buying some alcohol and want to know if it is vegan? Check out barnivore.com or download the mobile app, Vegan.FM, to make sure your alcohol is vegan friendly, one would be surprised by the strange stuff that gets thrown into alcohol production. According to barnivore.com, “Brewmasters, winemakers, and distillers may include animal ingredients in their products directly, or they might use them in the processing and filtration.” Everything from fish bladder to an entire chicken can be ingredients in some alcoholic beverages.
Download VegOut to help you find local vegan restaurants. The app includes a GPS feature that helps find the locations and look up menus.
When going to popular restaurants vegans can use the veganXpress app to find vegan options on a mostly meat menu. The app includes over a hundred popular restaurants. It also has a list of vegan snack food, vegan beers, and vegan wine.
Shopping for vegan clothes and personal products is easy with SmarterVeg.com’s app. You can search for over five thousand foods, drugs, personal care items, leather alternatives and cleaning supplies. It specifies if a product is GMO (genetically modified organism), chances of cross contamination and if a product is certified organic. This app is worth every penny since it makes it easy for those who wish not to do all the detective work on questionable vegan products.
Environmental Working Group has a free app called Dirty Produce. Most vegans worry about pesticides on their food and this app takes data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration. With over fifty veggies listed it tells you about the twelve most sprayed foods and least sprayed.
Veggie Web has an app that acts like a pocket cookbook. It has a collection of more than thriteen thousand user submitted recipes. It makes breakfast, lunch, and dinner easy while including grocery lists.
Locavore’s app makes shopping for seasonal produce easy. It has over two hundred fruits and vegetables with links to Wikipedia pages and recipes. It has data from all over the United States and is updates from Twitter, keeping up to date on local food news.
Since it can be difficult to meet other vegans, come to Vegan Drinks. The last Thursday of the month Vegansaurus and VegNews hosts an event called Vegan Drinks at Martuni’s from 6 to 8 p.m.. Organized so vegans can meet up and socialize. “The vegan community is decent-sized. Definitely come to Vegan Drinks on the last Thursday of every month at Martuni’s, if you’re of age. It’s co-sponsored by Vegansaurus, I would recommend, if you’re feeling like you need new vegan friends,” says Gallagher.
Start cooking vegan at home by experimenting with seasonal veggies, oils, sauces and soy proteins. The Vegan Table, by Colleen Patrick-Guodreau, is a great cookbook for beginner and experienced cooks. Called the “Vegan Martha Stewart,” by VegNews, Patrick-Guodreau makes vegan cooking fun and delicious. Almost every simple recipe has a photo and takes less than an hour to make. The recipes range from breakfast to dessert and cocktails and include varieties of cultural cuisines. There sections on dinner parties and seasonal meals as well as Christmas, Thanksgiving and Passover. Try the recipe for savory polenta hearts, warm roasted asparagus and thyme soup, panini with lemon-basil pesto or pumpkin curry.
Being vegan is beneficial to ones health, mind and spirit. “If you ever need a reminder as to why you’re vegan, read the USDA/FDA recalls page Every week there are products recalled due to contamination with bacteria that only comes from animals. That’s kind of insane, but sometimes you need a slap in the face,” Meave says.
Learn more about the politics behind vegan lifestyles by watching Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, about leather, fur and meat production. Read Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, which investigates the fast food industry and how consumers are affected.
There is no obligation to be a vegan when sampling the cuisine or enjoying the culture, and it will not hurt to expand your horizons and try something new and different. You may even find you really like it. New vegan restaurants are popping up all over the city and the variety of vegan cultures are endless. San Francisco is great city to explore and discover new experiences, especially for vegans. Next time you walk into a vegan restaurant and delve into that savory and flavorful bite of pizza, soup, burger or ice cream, remember how good it is for your body and how by eating vegan you are not contributing to animal cruelty, pollution, the spread of toxic chemicals and a corrupt food industry. It is a lifestyle choice that has a big impact.