hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of veganreview. a podcast where we review all sorts of vegan goodies.
we’re a group of philadelphia-area vegans and vegetarians who had formed friendships via the post punk kitchen forums (if you have vegan with a vengeance or veganomicon or vegan cupcakes take over the world, it’s the forum run by the authors of those books.) so because of our location, most of the episodes will focus on only american goods. (however for the cheez episodes, i am going to make it my first priority to try to get the overseas brands as well as the american brands.) we might some day bring a non-vegetarian or two on board just to get their point of view, since their perceptions of what is tasty are likely different from the vegans’ perception. especially for the momentous cheese episodes.
so, this episode is different than the following episodes because i won’t be reviewing anything today. this episode is to explain that what you’ll be hearing in the first few episodes is not what the podcast is going to sound like over time. (actually, maybe i am reviewing something today. i’m reviewing the first few episodes! w00t!) also, we have no idea how the technical side of podcasting works, so this episode is to help us n00bs in figuring out where to upload on our website and how to submit it to itunes yadda yadda. basically this episode is the poor bunny that’s thrown to the wolves. sorry bunny. i’ll miss you! so if you’re listening to this, SUCCESS! hooray!!! if you’re just reading it on the blog, and can’t download it anywhere, then boo! we haven’t been successful. yet.
ok. so without further ado! on to the episode review!!!
the first day of recording was soymilk, heirloom tomatoes and oreo-type sandwich cookies. we didn’t have a table to sit around and the space was wide open with a cathedral ceiling and most of the reviewers were pretty far away from the microphone. in addition, the cookies and soymilk were done as blind taste tests. i don’t know if that’s something i would want to do in the future. the amount of post production that needed to be done on those episodes was atrocious. the content of the soymilk episode is terribly awful, but i don’t want to toss it, because that soymilk was expeeeeensive! and there IS some good info there, it’s just all over the place and not structured at all. the tomato episode… i might throw that into the compost heap. i don’t know. we’ll see. it’s pretty bad.) i just want to alert the future listeners that the first few episodes was us getting into the groove and failing miserably, and that the episodes after that should be better, so please don’t unsubscribe! we love you! we want to make you happy!
the 2nd day of recording was quite a bit better. we had a table, we were much more organized, we were able to savor the flavors and make notes before adding our 2 cents. and i think i wouldn’t even need to edit it very much at all! (especially not episode 4. that one’s pretty much perfect as-is)
but the best part of the 2nd day of recording, was that most of the samples were donated by the companies. that was so much better than the first 3 episodes. i don’t want to admit to the amount of money we all dished out. it was nutty. episode 4 is coconut based ice creams, and we re-recorded the cookie episode, which is tenatively episode 3, because not only were there tons of cookies left from the first day of recording, but we had found a few more companies that we hadn’t known about before. one of which sent us 6 packages of cookies! for free! i’m hoping to soon taste-test alternative oreo flavors since the company was so nice to send
(oh, also. this is a reminder to myself to not organize an ice cream taste test in the heat of summer. one of the packages must have been held up in transit and was almost completely mush by the time it got to us. all of the dry ice was long gone. i don’t think it was completely salvaged. i would really like to try that brand again. especially since it appears to get great reviews from folks who can get it in their local grocery stores.) also, this is related to the cookie conundrum. i really like recording the episodes of brand pitted up against brand, but it seems like it might be better set up as tasting a bunch of flavors of different things from one or a few companies per episode. if only to make it easier on the companies so they can send one large package instead of small packages. maybe that’s what this podcast will evolve into. but for now it’ll be comparing a specific item that’s produced by a bunch of different companies. it just makes more sense, and is more true to the spirit of veganreview. don’t you think?
so visit our blog at veganreview.info (at first i wasn’t happy with .info, because it’s not widely known but .com and .net were already registered by stinky jerks who didn’t even bother to put them to good use.) however, as of this recording, .net is available. so if you love us and have unlimited domain registration, it’d be lovely if you could forward .net to our site. pretty please with a block of tofu sculpted out of marzipan on top? heh. thanks!
oh, also. before i part. from time to time we’ll be sending out “calls for brands” on our blog. so if you see a post with a list of a specific item, and you know a brand exists but isn’t on our list, please comment and let us know. and then we’ll try with all our might to get it in time for the recording date. also, we have a page called “ideas” that has a huge list of ideas to taste test. go and check it out. if there’s a vegan food that you’d want us to taste test but isn’t on the list, shoot us a comment! help us help you!
stay tuned for episodes 1-4 (however i guess technically this is episode 1 now. ok. stay tuned for episodes 2-5!)
