Buffy Tuesday: Katie

I’d like to introduce Tuesday’s theme…vegans who like Buffy! The first interview of this series is with the best possible person for this series, my friend Katie! In fact, it was her idea. I needed a new TV show to watch last month and Katie and a bunch of other vegans really love Buffy, so I just started watching last month. I’m only on season 4 (near the very end of it, if that counts for anything!), so maybe this theme is a little bit cheating, but WHATEVER. I’ve been powering through episodes and neglecting other parts of my life instead.

Katie writes the blog Don’t Eat Off The Sidewalk and the (now defunct) cookzines of the same name, in which you can find the famous Tempeh Wingz and Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls. I met her several years ago on The PPK forums. Now we’re sisters according to Facebook and she’s one of my favorite people ever, so of course I wanted to interview her in her element, Buffy!
Katie’s favorite main character is Anya and her favorite secondary character is Andrew. And on favorite episodes, she says “for laughs, Something Blue (season 4), for sadness, The Body (season 5)”.

Find Katie over at her blog and follow her on Twitter. Onward, to the questions!

What are your favorite meals and desserts to make?
My favorite meals to make and things to bake are the kind that take awhile to cook, but not a lot of active effort, like stews or quick breads. A stew that has simmered for two hours while I watch a movie, or banana bread that bakes while I clean up the kitchen is the best. I think you get a lot of payoff for your effort, and since you already had time to clean up, you can just eat and then fall into a food coma.

What would be your ultimate Buffy-inspired vegan dinner menu?
I have a whole list and I am seriously considering starting a Whedon food blog after the craziness of MoFo has died down! Off the top of my head, things that are easy would be Yummy Sushi, cookie dough, and Ted’s mini pizzas, don’t forget to pan-fry the crust in olive oil and herbs!

Veganize some episodes! I’ll go first: Bad Egg Replacers
Go Fish Free
The Butter Replacement
Once More, With Peeling Garlic
Seeing Red Dye #4, Ew!

Do you have a collection of Buffy memorabilia?
Oh boy, do I! I have a huge box of comics, action figures (and the library playset to display them in), plushes, statuettes a few books…I even have a custom made wooden purse and an evil baby that is based on Lorne (from Angel) that were presents from my friend, Felicia. I put my vampire Angel figure on top of my Christmas tree, every year.

Sadly, I don’t have a place to display anything right now so pretty much everything is in storage.

How did you get started with the zines? What is writing a zine like?
When I first went vegan five years ago, blogs didn’t come with cookbook deals yet, so most of the vegan books I could buy were zines. I thought it was something that would be fun to do, so for the first one I took a bunch of recipes that I had been making for years as a vegetarian and veganized them. The tempeh wingz in there were new, and it makes me happy that even one thing I ever made up is so well-liked.

Even though there are a lot of vegan books now, I still think there is a place for zines. With a zine, you have no publisher telling you what you should name it, or that you can’t cuss. I rarely write recipes, but when I do, I want them to be funny and I like to say ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ a lot. It’s a lot of fun and it’s very freeing to make something all on your own. I stopped writing zines because I got tired of the part where I had to deal with Kinkos and the post office, but I would still encourage anyone else to make one.

You just did a raffle on your blog to raise money for Ride to Light. What is your take on activism? What kinds of activism can everyone can get involved in?
I think shy people need to realize that they can be activists too! You don’t have to hand out flyers, or collect signatures, or talk to people. Did you know that most animal shelters consider cat socializing a form of volunteering? My husband and I do that sometimes, I used to take pictures of the cats so the main cat lady knows me, and I usually end up asking for a brush and I just spend an hour letting cats wander in and out of my lap, brushing them.

Another simple form of activism: share other people’s fundraisers. One of the most frustrating things about trying to raise money isn’t that people won’t donate $5 for whatever reason (it’s a close second), it’s that they won’t even retweet your link or share it on facebook! It literally takes a minute, costs you absolutely nothing, and if a single person donates because of it, you did help.

Speaking of which, Carrie from Vegan Coupons, along with her husband, are currently taking donations for their yearly raffle to benefit Child’s Play, which provides toys and games to sick children in hospitals. Every dollar gets you a raffle ticket to win video games and other nerdy delights, and every dime goes straight to the charity.

What are the best/worst uses of Kickstarter you’ve seen?
I think tricking strangers on the internet into funding your road trip is GENIUS.

But seriously, I have no problem with Kickstarter, as long as donors truly get something out of it. There’s a similar site just for musicians, and they usually have anything from a pre-order of the album, t-shirts, etc. Juliana Hatfield offered to write songs for people to raise money for her album (among a zillion other things), and she ended up raising 400% of her goal. Saying that if I give you $5 to achieve your dream will get me warm fuzzies does nothing for me. I would rather put that $5 into the hands of an animal shelter.

Oh, and since this is Buffy Tuesday, I will leave you with: It eats you, starting with your bottom.

Thank you, Katie! Tune in next week for the second installment of Buffy Tuesday. The theme for tomorrow could be one of two things, depending on how big of a fight I get into with iMovie tonight!