Flickr/bgottsab

really nice eggs

Someday you may just be able to eat fast food for breakfast in good conscience. The AP reports that fast food powerhouse Burger King announced today that as of 2017, all of its eggs and pork products will come from cage-free animals. The king is dead; long live the king, I guess.

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fishermansdaughter

Backyard Hive

Imagine a Sunday morning breakfast of a simple omelet with goat cheese and herbs, and a hunk of toasted bread drizzled with honey. How great would it be if you could ensure the freshness of those eggs and the quality of that honey by harvesting them yourself? If only you lived in a place where you had the space and ideal climate to fully realize this possibility. As it happens, you live in exactly such a place.

Last Saturday, 40 eager students gathered at the L.A. Arboretum to learn the basic logistics and concerns of raising backyard chickens and "fostering" a beehive. John Lyons of The Woven Garden offered ideas on getting started, tips on keeping your egg and honey producers happy, and troubleshooting from his years of experience keeping both chickens and bees.

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Felicia Friesema

Chickens are nothing new to L.A. -- Highland Park has the white noise of the freeway juxtaposed with the crows of several competing roosters who live along the Arroyo. Then there are the famed Freeway Chickens of Los Angeles, who have been living under the Vineland off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway since the early 1970s (there's a second colony two miles away at the Burbank off-ramp). Chickens have been our neighbors for a while now. What is new are the growing numbers of urban homesteaders and backyard farmers who are transforming their tiny tracts -- sometimes even balconies -- into mini-barnyards.

There is one inevitable dilemma faced by every backyard chicken keeper: Over time, birds stop laying, unwanted roosters crow their way into adulthood and urban flockers may start contemplating "table retirement" options in order to make room for more productive (and less annoying) livestock. Collecting eggs is easy, but going from coop to kitchen isn't something most L.A. urban farmers have grown up with. And it can tweak all sorts of hot buttons, from emotional to political. Market, meet class -- the Institute for Domestic Technology -- turning feminist-curdling Home Ec sensibilities into reputable home science with a sustainable twist -- is offering a new Coop to Kitchen course on Sunday, March 25, to help interested chicken folk responsibly and humanely manage their birds. No bird required. They've been carefully raising heritage breed chickens specifically for this class. Details after the jump.

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PETA has never shirked from showing human skin in the name of saving the hides of beasts both wild and domesticated. Yet the organization's latest publicity scheme takes mere nudity one step further -- past second base, 'round third, and all the way home. PETA's newest online venture won't just be a source of animal cruelty watch-doggerel and veggie burger recipes, but instead a porn site where activists can walk their dogs, diddle their skittles, and take in a seal-clubbin' in just a few clicks. Believe it or not, according to PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt, this move will get PETA some attention:

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Felicia Friesema

Eggs from Kendor Farms at the Hollywood market.

In a surprisingly unprecedented move, the nation's largest egg farming cooperative, representing, according to their website, "95% of of all the nation's egg-laying hens," has partnered with the Humane Society of the United States to ban barren battery cages and phase in more humane standards nationwide, starting as early as this year.

The federal legislation they are pushing for would mimic some of the tenets of California's Proposition 2, which was passed by voters in 2008 eliminating all barren battery cages in the state by 2015. Granted, the proposed federal legislation only increases the individual bird space requirements from 48 square inches to 67 square inches per animal, but when you're talking about the welfare of approximately 280 million birds, a little more wing room couldn't hurt.

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el daybeh/flickr

The taps scene from the last fest.

We wonder how former Roxy regular Alice Cooper would feel about the vegan festival set to take place at the club next weekend. Remember that Cooper, for all the guillotines and gory lyrics, a relatively sweet-tempered rock personality, once joked in an interview that his last day on earth would begin in Maui and end with Sir Paul McCartney succumbing to "a big, thick steak." Yet even the most dedicated carnivore, particularly one who in his heyday made a lot of beers disappear, would be at home at the 2nd L.A. Vegan Beer Festival on Saturday, June 25th.

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[Update (May 11th, 1:30 p.m.): Through May 15th, the Pink Taco in Century City will be featuring a special margarita, the "PETA-rita," with 100% of the proceeds from going to PETA. And Friday, May 13th is "bring your pet to the patio day" from 3 to 7 p.m.]

[Update (May 5th, 1 p.m.): Our sister blog, The Informer, reports that Pink Taco owner Harry Morton issued a statement vowing to never again use animals in promo stunts. It's the same pledge he made in 2008 -- after pulling a similar stunt with the opening of the Century City location. Maybe this time he means it.]

(Original post after the jump.)

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Do you love your rodent? I bet you don't love it more than Mathijs Van Der Paauw loves his hamster. Van Der Paauw (yes, that's really his name) cooks for his hamster Lucy. He makes teeny tacos for her, and itty bitty pizza, and pine seeds in a tiny bell pepper bowl, and micro-cheeseburgers, and little banana split cakes.

When he isn't busy fending off Richard Gere gerbil jokes, he runs the website Hamstertracker.com.

He spoke to us from his home in the Netherlands about his new cookbook Happy Hamster (Chronicle Books, 2010). It is not, as some might imagine, a book on how to cook your hamster, but a book on how to cook for your hamster. A very important distinction for both sides of the chef-diner equation.

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SeriousEats.com

Last week, SeriousEats published a thought-provoking piece about foie gras production, claiming the process can be ethical and perfectly humane -- if done correctly.

In Los Angeles, foie gras recently stirred up controversy when animal rights activists protested Providence for serving it. Could it be that many of us only know the worst case scenarios when it comes to foie gras?

In "The Physiology of Foie: Why Foie Gras is Not Unethical," author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt takes the reader on a tour of La Belle Farms in New York, the second largest of the three foie gras farms in the United States, offering detail and photos of their process of their manufacturing process from start to finish. After the jump, some of his more interesting discoveries.

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