The L.A. Times Test Kitchen, reporting for Vegan Month of Food duty

Isa, you can count us in.

Noted vegan chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz issues a challenge each October to her fellow food bloggers: Blog as much as you can about vegan fare, for the entire month.

Now, Vegan Month of Food has taken on a life of its own with hundreds of blogs participating. (You can read more here at Moskowitz's blog.)

Well, we can't call the Daily Dish a vegan blog. But the L.A. Times' Test Kitchen turns out plenty of vegetarian -- and vegan! -- recipes. So, for the month of October, we're joining Moskowitz's challenge by publishing one recipe a day. (We're going to do our best to stick with the vegan theme, but we reserve the right to hide behind a vegetarian recipe if we get desperate enough!)

Yesterday we did Lentil salad with tomatoes, zucchini and arugula. Today, it's Quinoa salad with shiitakes, fennel and cashews.

Bon Appetit!  

--Rene Lynch

Photo credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

Vegans get blogging for Vegan Month of Food

For all of October, vegan-minded bloggers are being asked to toil around the clock (only a slight exaggeration) to celebrate a month dedication to vegan fare. Vegan Month of Food was started by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, vegan chef and cookbook author beloved for Veganomicon as well as Vegan Brunch. Moskowitz says her goal is to urge bloggers to write as much as they can this month about vegan fare:

The blog entries can be about anything food related -- your love of tongs, your top secret tofu pressing techniques, the first time your mom cooked vegan for you, vegan options in Timbuktu -- you get the idea. There is no strict guideline for how much you have to write, but we shoot for about 20 times a month, or every weekday.

Confession time: You know we love bacon in the L.A. Times Test Kitchen, and we just ran a front-page Food section story on making your own sausage. But we also enjoy eating (and writing about eating) lower on the food chain, so we're looking forward to seeing what Vegan Month of Food brings.

If you're a vegan, you are probably already a fan of Moskowitz's blog, and website The Post Punk Kitchen (you can click here to read a Q&A that The Times did with Moskowitz this year).

But what else are you reading? What are your favorite vegan-minded websites, and why? Also: Cake Maker to the Stars is rounding up the names of participating bloggers here.

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Lentil salad with tomatoes, zucchini and arugula. Click here for the recipe. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

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