Riot Kitchen

The secret to the feminist revolution is in a vegan cupcake.

Brooklyn born, Isa Moskowitz, is the founder and co-host of the Post Punk Kitchen, a public access cooking show that features recipes like sushi, coconut cream pie, and matzoh ball soup, all sans meat, dairy, eggs, honey, and other animal products.

Despite its niche focus, PPK became a hit, and Moskowitz has enjoyed the attention of animal-welfare magazines like Satya, as well as slightly more, ahem, mainstream publications (e.g. The Washington Post and The New York Times). Building on PPK’s success, Moskowitz and her co-host Terry Hope Romero launched a website with a recipe archive and an almost unbelievably active forum that connects ostracized pink-haired teenagers and vegan feminists from around the globe. The website claims: “All we believe in is punk rock and tofu.” Cute, but I have to wonder what Ms. Moskowitz thinks of all the food miles her heavily-processed tofu products have traveled.

Most recently, Moskowitz published Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, a cookbook that features 75 animal-free miniature confections like Green Tea, Tiramasu, and Coconut Lime. When asked by a journalist at the Washington Post why she picked cupcakes, Moskowitz pointed to their decadence and familiarity as, “a nice, accessible way to introduce people to veganism.” It seems you can catch more flies with vegan cupcakes than tempeh.

Like her show, Moskowitz is irreverent and smart – tying together a mix of culinary wisdom, feminist ideology, sassy Brooklyn humor and bubbe-idolizing – though her bubbe would probably “pooh pooh” all those tattoos. “Cooking was a big part of the punk rock culture I was involved in,” she said in the Washington Post. “The kitchen is a great place to start when you’re taking control of your life.” Moskowitz’s world has an urgent, riot grrrrl energy that I first discovered in seventh grade listening to Tori Amos and writing tormented poetry. Admittedly, my own activist fervor has mellowed significantly throughout the years (as did my temporary bout with veganism). For Moskowitz, however, it’s still going strong.

Read this hilarious (and poignant!) exchange on Jewcy, where Isa Moskowitz goes head to head with vegan naysayer Charles Eisenstein.

–Leah Koenig