make sure to leave your name/username and town.

You can call in to leave feedback about past podcasts and also to provide your own experience with the products that will be featured in the upcoming episodes. When you call in, if you don’t want the voicemail to be shared/put on the podcast, indicate so. Otherwise, I will assume you want to share with the world.

upcoming episodes to talk about (try to keep each call to only one topic.):

• yogurts
• raw chocolate bars
• cheez (probably only block cheez right now.  dips and sauces will probably be a different episode)
• marshmallows
• chickens

have fun with it!  :-)

I was hoping to put this episode out 5 months ago in late April before I went away to an internship, but timing just wasn’t on my side.  So here you go.  Better late than never.  I will try to process and upload the other two episodes that had been recorded 5 months ago this month, in honor of VeganMoFo (Vegan Month of Food)

Episode 05 – Blenders.m4a

I would like to mention that there is a point where the blenders are switched on to compare the noises, and I had to reduce the overall volume of that part of the track just to not kill your eardrums.  However, I feel the need to assure you that both featured blenders were reduced in volume to the same degree.  Also, if you would like a visual representation of the comparison, you may view it below.

All I can contribute to this episode is that I’ve had a vitamix for over 10 years, and I love it to bits.  Not once have I had to replace a part or anything.  Of course, the website says it replaces a bunch of appliances, but I still have a food processor, because the blender doesn’t do everything a food processor can. Such as shredding and slicing.
This episode’s outro music is Affirmation by Green Beings from their Electric Green album.

Vance is the vegan of the band.  His most notable vegan side project is the awesome long-lived informational Vegcast podcast.  Recorded right here in lovely Philadelphia.  He is also an avid dumpster diver and cartoonist.  You can find his projects on the web at:    greenbeingsmusic.com and vegcast.com

our next episode is yogurts.  rest assured, it won’t take another 5 months for that to be edited and uploaded.  cross my heart.

04 – Coconut Based Ice Creams.M4a

Before we start, I would like to take a moment to extend our thanks to So Delicious (otherwise known as Soy Delicious.  They’ll never lose that moniker.  It’s like calling Whole Foods Market “Fresh Fields” or for example, around Philly, you’ll hear tons of people calling the ATMs “MAC Machines,” even though they’re all now owned by STAR. It just sounds better, and it’s what we basically grew up knowing you by.)  They gave us 2 coupons for free pints to buy at any of our local stores.

We would also like to thank Luna and Larry’s for donating 3 pints of Coconut Bliss, and finally, Maggie Mudd who had gone above and beyond, and sent us 5 pints.  Goodness gracious!  Thank you from the bottom of our bellies.

not all of these were for the podcast, of course.

In addition to those generous contributors above, we had tasted KOV (which stands for Kosher Organic and Vegan), a local Philly company just starting out. And last but not least, Sharon’s sorbet. (We wanted to include their chocolate sorbet in the tasting, but unfortunately, none of the stores we visited, had it in stock, so we only had the coconut to taste.  But I can tell you, the chocolate sorbet is very lovely.  Nice and chocolatey, and light in texture, if ever too slightly sweet.)

Unfortunately, it appeared that the luna and larry’s package may have been quarantined in MD on it’s way to my porch.  there was a sticker about a brown apple moth on the front of the package, and all the dry ice had already evaporated by the time I had opened the package.  I popped the pints in the freezer ASAP, but they were pretty soft. (not melty though)  But the texture was unfortunately affected for the recording.  Recently, I had seen some pints in my local health food store, so I was able to buy one and compare what I remembered tasting with what the new pint tasted like.   I’ll shove a tiny review in at the end of the group tasting.

Up next is a field report of high-end blenders.  It’s quite a bit different from our current set-up, but i figured it’d break up the monotony.  We currently have yogurts and raw chocolates on the itinerary.  Please check the earlier posts for the list of brands we’ve discovered and if we’re missing any, please let us know.

We’re hoping to have a marshmallow episode now that Chicago Soydairy has come out with Dandies, but we’re going to wait until they have their set-up finalized and the production up and running so that we’re tasting what the final product is.  We also know about Sweet and Sara and AngelFood marshmallows.  Are we missing any others?

We should also do the alternative flavored sandwich cookies since we have all those packages of Country Choice in storage.  But other than that, we have no concrete plans.  If you’d like to request another class of foodstuffs to be tasted after those are recorded, either click on the ideas tab on our blog at veganreview.wordpress.com and leave a comment there, or if you’d rather e-mail your suggestion, go ahead and send it to feedback @veganreview.info.

We also have plans on how we’re going to deal with the website.  We’re hoping to possibly create a database where you guys can provide your input for each product with star values and comments and lots of fun stuff.  Scott has only built very simple websites before, but he’s up for the challenge.  So don’t expect to see the finalized website too soon.  It’ll probably happen really slowly, but it’ll happen.  In the meantime, we might create a forum there.  Why not, right?  Who knows, maybe the forum would work better than an official database.  We’ll see.  What happens happens.

This episode’s outro music is Tropical Dreamgirl performed by Karsten Soltauer, Published by Honey Bowtie Music.

Karsten’s wife, Kate (co-owner of Honey Bowtie Music) sent in the following blurb: He and I are both vegan, and we’ve been vegetarian for a combined 40-plus years. We do a lot of cooking at home, and our favorite foods are the ubiquitously popular dishes like pizza, burritos, or spicy pasta. We modify the standard recipes to be healthier than usual, but we still strive to achieve the peak of flavor. And we’re both confessed hot sauce freaks.

Podcasters for this episode:
Carrie, Scott, Beka, Dynah, Charlotte, Amanda, Jon, Rebecca and Jen

The Results:

Maggie Mudd was the clear winner here.  (Part of me wonders if they’d be so popular had they had simple flavors to test.  But many participants liked the texture, and texture trancends flavors.)  Other pints with multiple fans were Sharon’s Sorbet’s coconut flavor and Luna and Larry’s dark chocolate, and both flavors of So Delicious had its’ fans.

KOV had the least amount of fans with it’s crystally texture and overwhelming flavors.

Overall, they were all enjoyable.  (but some people said they’d push away certain flavors such as Maggie Mudd’s lemon poppyseed (but that flavor had fans, so it was just a personal issue) and KOV.

Here is a list of ingredients of the pints tasted for this episode.  Naturally, if your pint has a different ingredient list, that means it has been reformulated, and the review here no-longer stands.

Companies which are generously donating their products to our cause:

• Pacari (70% and 100% whoah)
• Earth Source Organics’ Righteously Raw bars
• Fine and Raw
• The One bar (producer’s website)

European companies that won’t be able to make it to the podcast:

• Raw Living
• Shazzie’s Naked Chocolate
• The Raw Chocolate Company

we may be recording on the 13th, so this is super short notice.

if you know of other brands not listed, please shout out.

• Silk
• Trader Joe’s (do they still have this in their stores?  I know they rotate products in and out all the time)
• NuLait nut milk yogurt  (won’t have product available for the podcast. they’re relocating their facility)
• Ricera rice milk yogurt (they’re reformulating their recipe, but we’re still going to taste test the existing recipe anyway)

Companies that are generously donating to the episode:

• WildWood
• Wholesoy & co.
• Nancy’s
• So Delicious soy and coconut milk yogurt

Canadian/European Brands (not feasible for this episode):

• Sol Cuisine

• So Nice, Kingland, Alpro, Provamel, Sojasun

Episode 03 – Sandwich Cookies (traditional).m4a

cookies from the 1st recording session

This episode is different from the other episodes because it has elements from the first day of recording (the same day as the soymilk and tomatoes)  interspersed among the second day’s recording.  the sound quality is completely different, but the data was too valuable to toss.  I promise this will never happen again.  It’s just that I wasn’t happy with the way the first day of recording went, and we had found a few other varieties of cookie that we weren’t aware of during the first round, and wanted to make sure they got their chance to shine.

Before we start, I would like to take a moment to extend our thanks to Country Choice Organics, who had sent a box of 6 varieties of their sandwich cookies to us completely free.  That was amazing of you.  We still have the other flavors in storage, so we will definitely be having a flavored sandwich cookie tasting in the near future.  We’re still in the middle of compiling our list.  The only other vegan flavored sandwich cookies that we know of are Newman’s, Back to Nature, Health Valley, Kinnitoos, Nutter Butters, possibly OREO? and Trader Joes’, as well as Late July.  If you know of another brand, be it national or generic, please drop by and leave a comment on the call for brands page.   You could also send an e-mail to supercarrot @ veganreview.info  or, we also have a brand-spankin’ new twitter account, so go ahead and tweet to @veganreview.  whichever method you prefer, it’ll get to us.  We’re grateful for your collective knowledge.

The cookies from the 2nd recording session

OK, i’ve decided that interspersing the initial tasting session throughout the results of the 2nd tasting session would be too jarring, so it’ll be used as an outro.  the only cookie that was available during the first session that we decided against getting again for the 2nd session was Kinni-TOOS, a gluten-free cookie which was over $5 per package.   Brands that are not featured in the first session are Country Choice Organics, Back to Nature and Health Valley.  Not featured at all is Whole Foods’ 365 cookie.  (I was told over the phone by a store employee that it contained dairy, so I didn’t bother checking the ingredients myself.  After the recording date, I checked, and there were no obvious dairy ingredients, it just had a kosher dairy symbol on the package, which doesn’t really mean much in the vegan world.  That’ll teach me to rely on telephone conversations with store employees instead of contacting the headquarters.)  Aah well.

Reviews:

(a link to the ingredients/nutrition info of each cookie)

Famous Amos: cookie is too dry/solid. really bland. not enough filling. cookie was nice and crisp/crunchy. inoffensive, but not particularly bad. nice vanilla   had a barley/bitter flavor.  2

Back to Nature (partially organic):  weird molasses taste (brown rice syrup) the texture is too grainy/gritty. (too salty, too sugary) weird aftertaste.  bitter. cookie isn’t crisp enough. too healthy tasting.  Filling=very strange, foul.  it’s awful. tastes like thickened soymilk.  tied for last place.  -14

Late July (organic):  “that should not be called a cookie, that should be called punishment”  too sugary, incredibly oily. cookie looks anemic.  god. that is afwul!  cookie doesn’t taste like chocolate.  wrong/horrible/godawful/vile.  not very chocolatey  -23

Newman’s Own – Newman O’s (organic): tastes like a bad oreo.  bad aftertaste.  “not lovin’ the newman o’s”  weird tasting filling.  latex. “cinnamon gum flavor” “slightly odd flavor”  cookie tasted burnt. too much cookie, not enough cream.  hard cookie.  bland.  0

Country Choice Organic:  cookie= very crunchy, filling vanilla flavor is very nice.  filling is one big lump. texture’s all wrong. very solid/chalky.  cookie broke apart.  crunchy cookie.  middle of the road cookie.  “side thumb”  favorite of the organics.  7

Health Valley (same design as TJ’s): cinnamon? weird aftertaste/soyish. tastes like it has molasses in it.  weird aftertaste in cookie.  mystery flavor.  gooey.  5

Wegman’s O’s: crisp cookie is softer/melt in your mouth.  maybe too much baking soda?  i like the wegmans better than the oreo. no bad aftertaste.  really good filling.  not that chocolatey. slightly waxy filling. not a bad substitute for an oreo.  15

Wild Harvest Organic:  “not a fan”  waxy filling. tastes fake. interesting texture, flavor is awful.  gross.  filling tasted like chemicals.  greasy.  tastes stale.  cookie is too sugary.  not that chocolately, filling is very soft.  -9

Trader Joes – Joe-Joe’s:  a little too oily. not much of a taste at all. it’s a waste of vanilla beans. flavorless, but with a weird bitter aftertaste. bakingsoda-y taste.  stale cookie.  1

Oreo: golden standard.  filling is a little grainy.  they held up.  crunchy.  taste is good.  16

Kinni-TOOS: very soft taste.  horrible taste.  overly sweet.  gummy, turns into paste in your mouth.  chemical/chlorine aftertaste.

done.

The crew taste-testing

This episode’s outro music is On Another’s Sorrow by Her Blackened Rose.
Written by:
Clare Webster – myspace.com/herblackenedrose and www.claredelune.tk
Ekkehart Fromme – myspace.com/ekkiendorphin

Clare’s blurb: I have been vegetarian for around ten years now. Growing up as a child I spent a lot of time at the farm with my aunt and uncle, so I guess I have been exposed to the rural life since I was small, including the goings on in abbatoirs and the food industry. What I learnt really did affect me when I was younger and as the years have progressed, so has my passion and drive to help those animals involved.

Well that’s it for this episode.  Stay tuned for when coconut-based ice creams go head to head.

• Country Choice Organics 5 varieties. Including chocolate creme, vanilla, mint creme, and ginger-lemon.
• Newman’s Own chocolate creme, ginger, peanut butter, mint creme (as well as wheat-free)
• Back to Nature chocolate mint,
• Health Valley has a vanilla flavor
• KinniToos has a vanilla flavor
• Nutter Butters (obvious)
• OREO Duo – monoglycerides/flavors (are vegan according to Kraft.)
• OREO golden, golden+chocolate filling/uh-oh, double delight mint, chocolate/chocolate filling, Fudgees – natural/artificial flavors (are vegan according to Kraft.)
• Back to Nature peanut butter – natural flavor (are vegan according to Kraft.)

Not vegan: (at the time of recording. remember companies are reformulating all the time. so keep checking those packages)

• OREO fudge mint has whey (and partially hydrogenated oils)
• Back to Nature covered mint has whey :-(
• Nature’s Promise (going by memory, but i think it was whey)
• Snackwell’s (contains milk, whey, glycerides, DATEM and a host of other potentially non-vegan ingredients)
• E.L. Fudge (egg, whey, undisclosed flavors, palm kernel oil)
• Cameo (whey)
• Famous Amos: vanilla, peanut butter, oatmeal macaroon (natural/artificial flavors – confirmed non-vegan by Kelloggs)
• Vienna Fingers (natural/artificial flavor) (They said their Vitamin D is a mix of D2 and D3.  Parent company is Kashi.)
• New Morning Graham-wiches chocolate/peanut butter, honey graham/vanilla  (honey)

Needs Investigation:

• Trader Joe’s Joe-Joe’s – dark chocolate covered? vanilla cookie and creme? none of the joe-joes are listed on their vegan PDF, but that might be an oversight. they are on the vegetarian PDF (html version here) Also available seasonally are the candy-cane joe-joes. and I think we might have a benefactor that had hoarded us a box from this past winter. *fingers crossed that the waiting wasn’t too unbareable for her* haha!
• Wild Harvest Organics vanilla sandwich. (ingredients aren’t on the web) (contacted)
• Supervalu’s Shopper’s Value
• Giant’s brand Twisto’s (their website only indicates traditional flavors, but you’d never know)
• Wegman’s mint, chocolate with chocolate creme (artificial flavors)

gosh. my stomach is yelling at me just looking at the list.

shout out if you know of a brand that isn’t here. (you can also send a tweet @veganreview)

Episode 02 – Heirloom Tomatoes.m4a

All Tomatoes with Labels

oops! the bowl labeled black krim all the way in the back is the chocolate cherry.

In my research for this podcast, I came across a bunch of websites on tomato tasting parties.  I never knew how popular this concept was.  The most remarkable of these websites is at http://mariseeds.com/seedcatalog/party.html it’s quite impressive, and puts our wimpy 13 variety taste test to shame.

The following lists are the order in which we tasted them.  The winners were chocolate cherry with wapsipinicon peach following closely behind.  (the varieties that I had grown in my own garden are italicized, if you are curious.)

1: Green Zebra – excellent, not acidic, firm, solid, “meaty in a tomato way”, sour, tart
2: Illinois Beauty – not a strong flavor, fresh, watery, mild, bland
3: Riesentraube cherry tomato – tough skin, bitter, sour, a lot of seeds
4: Sweet Chelsea, don’t like it, too vegetable-y
5: Tigerella – mealy, not a lot of flavor, would be good with a little salt
6:  Chocolate Cherry Tomato  – good flavor, tough skin, but not too thick, exquisite, sweet, like candy, best tomato i’ve ever had
7: Black Nyagous – almost as good as the chocolate cherry, not quite as sweet, watery, light flavor
8: Japanese Black Trifele – doesn’t taste tomatoey, tough skin, tastes like a bell pepper, indifferent
9: Dr. Wyche’s Yellow – subtle flavor, nice aftertaste, firmness was good
10: Georgia Streak – “i would eat a salad with THAT tomato”  slight corn flavor, watery,
11:  Kellogg’s Breakfast – very crunchy, like eating water, not much flavor  (gigantic)
12: Cream Sausage - terrible.  mealy, too firm, tart, really bad taste, musty, astringent. (the worst)
13:  Wapsipinicon Peach – really good, the best, lots of flavor, mild, a lot going on, sweet to sour.

this episode’s outro music is Red Ripe Tomatoes by Jack Kelly & his south Memphis jug band recorded in 1933.  It’s totally not a vegan song, just substitute T-bone with seitan and fishing with swimming if you wish.   On that note, if you are a musician and would like to have some of your songs featured on the podcast, please send an e-mail to music @ veganreview.info.  let us know how long you’ve been a vegetarian and maybe include what your favorite foods are while you’re at it.  until then, we’re going to stick with music that’s in the public domain to keep it legal and such.

Stay tuned for the next episode where we will be pitting generic and natural/organic brands of OREO-esque sandwich cookies against the classic.  You MAY be surprised by the outcome.  I know I was.

At the moment, we wouldn’t be able to accept music with share-alike creative commons attributions. We’re still deciding whether we’re going to allow our voices to be sampled for other peoples’ projects, but with so many different participants, there’s bound to be one that’s uncomfortable with the idea.

Also, if you would like to write our introductory music or embellish what we already have, feel free to download it and have at it. THANKS! <3 m4a or mp3

if you would prefer to post a comment instead of e-mailing, feel free to leave a comment here or at the PPK. Or you could also leave us a voicemail at 1-707-YUM-TOFU

here is a link to the ingredient lists of each soymilk at the time of recording.  (we’re missing 2, so we’ll try our hardest to get that list up ASAP)

and here is a link to the call for brands for the eventual 2nd episode of soymilk.  if you know of a brand that hasn’t been mentioned, please leave a comment and let us know.

Pile o' Soymilks (and this isn't even all of them.)

Episode 01 – Soymilks (plain and vanilla).m4a (let me know if you’ll need this in MP3 format, and i’ll upload a few of those at a time.)

here’s a selected portion of the transcript and some extra information.

hello, and welcome to the OFFICIAL episode 1 of vegan review. in this episode, we are going to be reviewing plain and vanilla soymilks. we have 2 boxes of unsweetened plain, 11 boxes of sweetened plain, and 8 boxes of vanilla. (so 21 different boxes of soymilk in all.) we have decided to leave chocolate and other flavored soymilks for a future episode. i’m sure it would have been overkill if we had tried to fit it all in here. we definitely didn’t catch nearly all of the available brands nationwide. since we had to stick to only the brands that we could get in our local stores, we couldn’t go overboard with the variety. even with these limitations, i’m happy with the variety we had for this episode. we got most of the major brands, and even a few of the generics. I’m sad that we only acquired 2 brands of unsweetened, and that we didn’t have any zensoy or wild harvest organics [oops, i meant organic valley we DID taste wild harvest this episode] …as i’m a fan of those, but because it was our first day of recording, we weren’t very organized, and soymilk is expensive these days. aah well. what’s done is done. we were just getting into our groove and we’ve learned a few things from this first day of recording. maybe someday we’ll have a round 2 with the winners of this episode and the additional brands that we didn’t taste test this time.

this episode was recorded as a blind taste test, so my apologies in advance for the disembodied head interjecting the names of the products. If you’re listening on an MP3 player with a screen, or if you’re listening through iTunes, all of the episodes will have the product lists or images of the product embedded if you wish to follow along that way. but it’s not necessary. the images and lists are just a little bonus feature. (mp3s don’t have that capability, so that is why the episodes will be m4a)

unfortunately, when we were associating the names of the plain soymilks with the corresponding numbers, we made a mistake and shifted them all 2 spaces. (this is because the unsweetened plains were bullies and took spaces # 1 and 2, and then we inadvertently misnumbered the rest. but as i was listening to the reviews, it wasn’t making sense until i shifted them, and then it made ALL the sense in the world.)

that’s it for episode 1. Be sure to check veganreview.info (or veganreview.wordpress.com) for upcoming episodes and to leave feedback or to suggest products for future episodes. we try our hardest to find a wide selection of brands to taste test, but we need your help in being as thorough as possible. the more brands we compare, the more effective these podcasts will be. Thanks for listening, and be sure to tune in next time for 11 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

the following lists are the order in which they tasted the best with some commentary. the + and – signs are how many people liked or disliked that particular brand.

Unsweetened plain

1. Vitasoy Unsweetened Organic: very creamy, a little salty, more flavor the preferred of the two.
2. Westsoy Organic Unsweetened Plain: very watery, beany, very little flavor, quite a few “yucks”

Sweetened Plain

1. 365 Original: nice, creamy, good, “good body” ++++
2. Wild Harvest Organic: creamy, mild, good, chalky aftertaste ++++ -
3. Vitasoy Lite Plus Plain: nutty, tastes like oatmilk, natural, fruity ++
4. Wegmans Plain (refrigerated): “meh”, “not bad, but not fantastic”, very little flavor, watery. +
5. Silk Plain (aseptic packaging): Slightly beany, not bad though.
6. Trader Joe’s Original: Tastes like Vanilla, watery, Kaopectate-tasting -
7. EdenBlend Original Rice & Soy Beverage: not bad, chalky aftertaste -
8. Soy Dream Original: too much sweetness, tastes like raisins, tastes like rice krispies, very rice-y texture. -
9. 8th Continent Original (refrigerated): watery, too sweet – -
10. Westsoy Plus Plain: BAD!!!, bland, watery, “opaque water” “not bad, but not good.” – - -
11. Edensoy Original: Off-taste, disgusting, tastes like chemicals, yuck! – - – - -

Vanilla Flavors

1. Silk Very Vanilla (refrigerated): super sweet, strongest vanilla flavor, too sweet, not for dunking ++++ -
2. Wegman’s Vanilla (refrigerated): not bad, beany, sweet, marshmallow-y ++
3. Kirkland Organic Vanilla: not bad, marshmallow-y, chalky aftertaste -
4. Pathmark Vanilla (refrigerated): ok, watery, pretty beany, not bad. – -
5. Vitasoy Lite Vanilla: much better, tastes like soda aftertaste, cough medicine weird. – - -
6. Trader Joe’s Vanilla: not sweet! tastes like regular soymilk, chalky. (smells like vanilla) – - -
7. Edensoy Vanilla: really dark, eww, burnt flavor, you can taste the brown rice syrup. i don’t like that at all. (wheat and barley extracts) – - – - -
8. Westsoy Unsweetened Organic Vanilla: bad, very wrong, watery, bad almond-y, “check the expiration date” (wasn’t expired) mouth feels dry. – - – - – -

This episode was recorded by Carrie, Dynah, Beka, Scott, Rob and Sarah and with additional commentary from Cherie.

Winners which will go on to the next round:

vitasoy unsweetened organic
365 original (WholeFoods)
Wild Harvest (Supervalu: Acme, Albertson’s, Shaws, etc.)
(and possibly vitasoy lite plus plain depending on the overall quantity of the other brands acquired, since that one had gotten some positive feedback.)
silk refrigerated very vanilla
wegmans vanilla

New brands which will be tasted:

ZenSoy, Organic Valley, Pacific, Pearl, Wildwood, Brighton Falls, Mogami

International brands?  (it’s a possibility)

Natura (CA), So Good (NZ),

Generics/store brands (we might split these taste-tests up, since there are so many grocery stores.):

Shoprite’s brand, Nature’s Promise (Giant/Stop n Shop) Archer Farms (Target) Nature’s Place (Hannaford, Sweetbay, Kash & Karry)  O Organics (Safeway stores) Great Value (Walmart) Nature’s Basket (Giant Eagle) …etc.

(please suggest brands if you know of any that aren’t listed here.  Particularly the national brands.)

Losers which will not go on:

Unsweetened

westsoy unsweetened plain

Plain

8th continent original
TJ’s original
silk aseptic plain
edensoy original
edensoy rice+soy blend (EdenBlend Original Rice & Soy Beverage)
soy dream original (i’m pretty sure we used enriched)
Wegmans Plain
westsoy plus plain

Vanilla

Pathmark Vanilla
kirkland vanilla
westsoy unsweetened vanilla
edensoy vanilla
vitasoy lite vanilla (enriched)
Trader Joe’s Vanilla

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!)

if you don’t have iTunes, here is a link to the feed page. http://veganreview.info/podcast.xml

apologies. this page has been moved here:  http://veganreview.wordpress.com/ideas/

I am a blog that will accompany a podcast that will have a few Philadelphia-area friends getting together to taste test vegan products.

What we have on the horizon at the moment is soymilk, oreo/hydrox type cookies and homegrown organic heirloom tomatoes from my own garden (and possibly with a few supplementary varieties from the farmers’ market.)

Each podcast will only be about one item category.  So yes, although milk and cookies do go together well,  tomatoes go with neither.  Not to fret!  They will be 3 completely separate podcasts.  YAY!!!  (however you still can’t keep us from dunking. we’re gonna do it no matter what)

This idea spawned from the post punk kitchen forums visit that link to see how it all went down.

*If you own/work for a company that offers vegan products, and would like to donate products for testing, please send an e-mail to donations @ veganreview.info and we can set up the details.  (I envision this testing to become relatively expensive.  Although at least it’s food, we would have been eating something anyway.   If one of us likes it, it won’t go to waste.  Surely.  Hopefully.)

**If you’re a listener/reader and would like to send us something that will fit in with our upcoming podcasts, and isn’t offered in the Philadelphia area, and are feeling generous, absolutely, we’d love to have it!  it’s always nice to taste things that are available elsewhere. (and it’ll also keep the podcast from being too local to Philly.)

If you have any tips or ideas, lay ‘em on us.