GENTLE READERS,
Miss Dish devotees know that Her Royal Chowness regularly eats animals. She
deep-fries turkeys, downs burgers and enjoys a nice corned beef on rye. Miss
Dish is not a member of the meat-is-murder brigade (although she is a
Morrissey/Smiths fan, but that's an entirely different story).
Still, Miss Dish somehow has a bunch of friends who are vegetarian or, egads!,
vegan. In fact, during one period in her life, Miss Dish had a vegan roommate,
which she thought was great--she never had to worry about him eating her food!
She has been blessed with vegans in her life who are not particularly preachy,
so she worries about them: Are their needs being taken care of? Vegans need
to partake in the ecstasy of eating, just like the cud-chewer-chewing cads of
the world! Without tasty treats, how will our vegans conquer the world with
vigilante pride? They need celebratory foods to come back to when they've set
that last chicken free from the coop.
Enter Amanda Felt.
This young lady lists Martha Stewart and football as both her weaknesses and
her inspiration. Felt started her one-woman enterprise Black Sheep Bakery
with a mission to create "vegan treats for the masses." Her sweets, such as
peanut butter fudge pies and chocolate-chip cookies, can be found at coffee
shops and restaurants around town, such as Chez What, Groundswell, the Paradox
and the snackeries at Powell's, among others.
Now, Miss Dish was once the butt of a cruel joke when she was asked to partake
of a birthday cake created à la vegan for a friend. Never a dryer, sadder
cake ever was born, and she hasn't forgotten it. So while Ms. Felt's products
sound good on paper, the proof is in the pudding pie. The proprietress of Black
Sheep was beckoned to show what she is really made of.
We gathered vegans and heathens in a room and unleashed the Black Sheep's goods
on them. Miss Dish was pleased to find nary a dry crumb in the treats, even
though they don't contain egg, butter or sugar. And best of all, that heavy
feeling one can get from eating a real German chocolate cake is gone. Felt has
pushed the limits of science to use alternative products such as molasses and
margarine to re-create a lush taste. "It took freakin' forever to figure it
all out," she told us. The vegans were, of course, ecstatic but surprisingly
critical as well: One noted an odd aftertaste in the peanut butter fudge pie.
All praised the pumpkin pie to the sky; this, our baker told us, was adapted
from a Libby's recipe and used coconut milk.
After the sweets were devoured, the vegans started talking about all the banned
food they get nostalgic for at times: bacon and a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish among
them. Miss Dish, always one for being delicate, quietly tiptoed from the room
as the vegans got lost in trading sweet nothings.
