Vegan Ice-Cream Social, Book Reading & Signing

Vegan Ice-Cream...Yum!

Everyone’s talking about veganism—from my college roommate to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. Alicia Silverstone even wrote a new book about her experiences as a vegan.

That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals couldn’t have come at a better time. Author and illustrator Ruby Roth explains vegan- and vegetarianism to kids using simple text and striking artwork. Praised by Booklist as “A unique effort that is to be applauded,” this book has been discussed all over the web. If you haven’t had a chance to read That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals, or if you’ve read it and want more, bring your children by Café Gratitude in Berkeley on December 12 for a vegan ice-cream social, reading, and book signing! Admission is FREE!

December 12, 2009, 1-3pm
Café Gratitude
www.CafeGratitude.com
1730 Shattuck Ave @ Virginia
Berkeley, CA 94709
510-725-4418

To learn more about Ruby Roth, That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals, and the upcoming vegan ice-cream social, please visit www.WeDontEatAnimals.com.

Author Symposium: ALL ABOUT CHI

An acupuncturist, a Reiki teacher, and two artists who work with chi and creativity and chi gung will present their healing arts on Saturday, Nov. 21 from 2-4 p.m. at Berkeley Public Central Library in downtown Berkeley. This is the second author panel in the free series Get Well! Alternative Practitioners Talk With You About Healing, sponsored by North Atlantic Books and Berkeley Public Library.

Moderator for the Nov. symposium is Lindy Hough, Co-Founder and Publisher of North Atlantic Books in Berkeley.
The panelists:
- Kaleo and Elise Ching, Chi and Chi Gung;
Authors of Chi and Creativity: Vital Energy and Your Inner Artist
- Don Beckett, Reiki healer;
Author of Reiki–The True Story: An Exploration of Usui Reiki
- Robert Johns, Acupuncturist;
Author of The Art of Acupuncture Techniques

Authors will describe their practices and theoretical framework and read from their books. Audience questions will be followed by a book signing.

Kaleo and Elise Ching live and practice in El Cerrito, Robert Johns practices in Berkeley, and Reiki teacher Don Beckett is from Mesa, Arizona.

“We’re interested in helping people understand how these modalities work and how effective they are. Hearing how our authors, who are also practitioners, treat different diseases helps people see whether a given modality might be helpful with their own troublesome conditions or something a loved one is struggling with.” Most people who don’t use alternative medicine find it hard to distinguish how these different systems work. “The goal of the November panel is to have the audience come away with a clearer idea of how chi energy works in Reiki, acupuncture, chi gung and creative work,” Hough said.

“The Berkeley Public Library is excited to be working in partnership with North Atlantic Books to better serve the interest in mind/body/spirit their readers are seeking,” said Douglas Smith, Deputy Director of the Library. “We’re pleased to be expanding our programming, outreach, and collections in these important directions.”

ALL ABOUT CHI
Get Well! Alternative Practitioners Answer Your Questions About Healing series
Saturday, November 21, 2009
2pm-4pm
Berkeley Public Central Library
3rd Floor Community Meeting Room
2090 Kittredge Street
Berkeley, CA 94704

Do you plan to attend this event?

Wheelchair accessible. To request a sign language interpreter, real-time captioning, materials in large print or Braille, or other accommodations for this event, please call (510) 981-6107 (voice) or (510) 548-1240 (TTY); at least five working days will ensure availability. Please refrain from wearing scented products to public programs.

Free Thanksgiving Appreciation Meal at Café Gratitude

If 10,000 households spend their Thanksgiving meal dollars on local food, we’ll invest about $446,100 into our communities. Sounds pretty good to me! But for those who won’t be preparing their own holiday meal this year, Café Gratitude will be serving a FREE Thanksgiving Meal at each of their restaurants.

For the past 5 years, every open Cafe Gratitude location (all in the San Francisco Bay Area) has served this free meal to an average of 300 people, as a way to give back to customers and to the community for their support and patronage all year long. On Thanksgiving, the cafes operate on 100% volunteer efforts, of both employees and non-employees. This year there will be four Cafe Gratitude locations serving the Thanksgiving Appreciation Meal, all open from 11am to 3pm. Please join in the festivities and bring your friends and family, bring someone new, or come serve your community!

Participating Locations:

San Francisco
2400 Harrison Street (@20th Street)
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: 415-830-3014

Berkeley
1730 Shattuck Avenue (@ Virginia)
Berkeley, CA 94709
Phone: 510-725-4418

San Rafael
2200 Fourth Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
Phone: 415-578-4928

Healdsburg
206 Healdsburg Avenue (in the Olive Leaf)
Healdsburg, CA 95448
Phone: 707-723-4461

To volunteer for the Thanksgiving Appreciation Meal at Café Gratitude, please arrive to the location nearest you, between 11am and 3pm. There is no need to RSVP. Together, all volunteers will serve as many meals as possible, until all the food is served.

Café Gratitude gives special thanks to Veritable Vegetable, Bariani Olive Oil, and other local merchants, who have donated food to the Thanksgiving meal in past years. To donate this year, please contact info@cafegratitude.com.

Will you be attending? If you don’t reside in the Bay Area, is there a free Thanksgiving meal in your city?

Café Gratitude has published several books with North Atlantic, including I Am Grateful, Sweet Gratitude, Sacred Commerce. They are all printed on 100% recycled paper!

CLICK HERE to learn more about Café Gratitude and to get more details about the Thanksgiving Appreciation Meal.

Autumn: Something to Love?

Image provided by Wikimedia Commons

There is a distinct chill in the air of Berkeley today. I felt it in the morning and put on a long sleeved shirt again. I felt it while walking to work holding my hot coffee instead of the usual iced one. I felt it creep through me with every dried and crunchy leaf I stepped on. Looking out the window, my gaze fixes on trees with leaves turning a vibrant red, when just last week they were a deep mid-summer green. So when I grabbed a copy of Reunion on the Rainbow Bridge: My Parents’ Past Lives and the One They Shared with Me, I realized that it would be the perfect book for a blog post on the transition of the seasons.

OK, I’m sure your brow is furrowing. How can a book about someone’s parents remind me of the changing seasons? Well, this is no ordinary book about parents. Sherri Defesche explains that the book began “as a biography of [her] parents, taking them from their Depression-era childhoods, through [her] mother’s tragic accident and into four decades of marital bliss.” With the death of her mother and floods of grief, Defesche turned her attention to the afterlife and what truth it held for her mother: “This longing to know the truth led me on a journey back through my life, as I excavated my religious beliefs. It required me to research the Bible and understand its origins, as well as ponder the beliefs of other religions.” Explaining that the Eastern belief of reincarnation took her “in a wildly unexpected direction,” Defesche then comes to the realization that the love story of her mother and father is bigger than this lifetime. In fact, “it had been going on for aeons.” Part biography, part history, and part metaphysics, Reunion on the Rainbow Bridge touchingly retells the story of her parents’ love and its manifestations throughout the passing centuries.

Concluding that no matter what the time period, no matter what the people, no matter what the circumstances, Defesche tells us that love is the common thread. Her parents were put on earth to remind us to care for one another—“to bring hope when there is none, food where there is starvation, knowledge where there is ignorance, compassion for those in pain, healing to our planet, and love for all.” As summer slips into fall, I encourage you to find something to love about the changing seasons. Whether it involves putting on a long-sleeved shirt, a hot coffee to warm your hands, a satisfyingly crunchy red leaf, or a long conversation with a parent, remember that Autumn is a wonderful time to love.

Author Sherri Defesche will be celebrating the release of her book this Saturday, October 3, at Casa de Luz in the Serena Room from 2-4pm (1701 Toomey Road, Austin, TX, 78704). Here is a list of her other upcoming events as well:

•    October 14, 2009/Book signing at St. Edward’s University Bookstore from 5-6pm

•    October 15, 2009/ Interview on World Puja Network Radio (Host: Brenda Braden, Program: Authors Corner)

•    November 14, 2009/Book signing at Barnes & Noble at the Arboretum (Austin, TX)

You can also hear a radio interview with Sherri on the Co-Creator Network recorded on Aug. 25 here.

Chocolate in the Raw

Healthy dessert is not an oxymoron. And to prove it, here’s a gorgeous collection of raw vegan cheesecakes, pies, cookies, ice creams, and chocolates—all totally free of refined sugars, partially hydrogenated oils, and preservatives. Penned by the dessert chefs at Cafe Gratitude, Sweet Gratitude: A New World of Raw Desserts is a lavishly illustrated and expert guide to creating everything from White Chocolate Lavender Cups to Pomegranate Cheesecake.

Armed with more optimism than expertise, marketing intern and chocoholic Jennifer decided to try the Sweet Gratitude recipe for Raw Cacao Fudge. Here’s her annotated version of the recipe:

RAW CACAO FUDGE (makes 25 squares/35 balls)

• 1 cup raw cacao butter. (If asking for this at Whole Foods earns you a blank stare, head for the body care aisle and substitute a tub of 100% pure food grade cocoa butter.)
• 3 vanilla beans. (Individually boxed in the spice section.)
• 1 cup light agave syrup.
• 1/2 cup raw cacao nibs, finely ground.
• 8 1/2 oz raw cacao powder. (Cacao powder tends to be sold in 8 oz packages, so I added more nibs.)
• 3/4 cup raw almond butter.
• 1/2 tsp salt.

Melt cacao butter by placing jar in a bowl of warm water. Slice the vanilla beans in half lengthwise; thoroughly scrape insides and add to blender. Add melted cacao butter to the blender and blend until vanilla is broken down and feels warm. Pour into large mixing bowl; stir in salt, agave, and almond butter by hand. Grind cacao in clean coffee grinder (or mortar and pestle), add to bowl with cacao powder and stir by hand until smooth. (I also added about 1/2 cup dried tart cherries.)

Transfer mixture to an 8×8 pan lined with waxpaper, using a spatula to smooth the top. (The batter was very thick for me, so I shaped it into 1″ balls instead.) Refrigerate about 20 minutes or until hard.

Comments from the folks at North Atlantic Books:

“Very chocolatey without being too sweet.” —Talia

“Decadent, chocolatey, crunchy fudge.” —Dylan

“Like a giant chocolate bar smashed down into a tiny ball of goodness.” —Terri

“Fresh, rich, but not overwhelming. Chocolatey but in a really clean way.” —Allegra

“An intense chocolate experience which actually feels good for you. Heavenly!” —Hisae

(Which is really just to say that you, too, can win the popularity contest at the office if you bring these in.)

In the spirit of Cafe Gratitude, Jennifer is grateful to:

• the clerk at Country Sun in Palo Alto who told her that cocoa butter was kept in the body care section
• the marketing department at North Atlantic Books, which agreed to let Jennifer loose in Whole Foods; and
• Kevin, the quintessential supportive boyfriend who, without complaining once, ground all the raw organic nibs using a mortar and pestle.

CLICK HERE to read more about Sweet Gratitude.

CLICK HERE to check out more raw foods cookbooks.

CLICK HERE to visit the Cafe Gratitude web site.