Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

  • Nylund

    I like it when kids use the W sound for all their R’s. It’s pretty darn adorable.

    • MonkeyBoy

       also substituting “f” for “th”. It’s sweet enough to make me fwow up.

      • Boundegar

        The English do the same fing.

        • http://www.facebook.com/stevebosman Steve Bosman

          I think it is more a South East England thing. Having grown up in Southend-on-sea (Sarfend) I used to do the same, but now I live elsewhere I’ve pretty much had it beaten out of me.

    • Amber Light

      Or say “teasoon”

  • TheOven

    An odd choice for vegans. Consider that red food colouring is often made from bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal

    • http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
      • TheOven

         Thanks for the update.

        Seems to be true, but it’s made mostly of petrolium now, not even coal. (Which apparently was linked to cancer.)

        From the Wikipedias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allura_Red_AC
        Red AC was originally manufactured from coal tar, but is now mostly made from petroleum. Despite the popular misconception, Allura Red AC is not derived from any insect, unlike the food colouring carmine, which is derived from the female cochineal insect.

        However it’s still not good for you.
        It is banned in Denmark, Belgium, France and Switzerland, and was also banned in Sweden until the country joined the European Union in 1994.

        • http://twitter.com/WikiTruths Wiki-Truths

          ugh – Can boing boing please do an article about this? The poison we eat on a daily basis. If it’s on the food shelf it should be safe to eat and we shouldn’t have to be doing mass amounts of research on every ingredient. What is there now for tools on testing foods / water / ourselves? Clearly companies couldn’t give a shit – it’s up to us. 

        • Boundegar

          But drinking coal tar is fine, as long as you respect its rights as a fellow-being.

          • cub

             ARE WE TALKING SENTIENT BLACK OIL, AGENT MULDER?

        • Alanna

          Actually, a popular red colourant used these days is made from tomatoes. The petroleum-based dyes are being phased out by a lot of food companies.

      • http://profile.yahoo.com/NB5F7GHWTNWIXEJILSR3H6GIQU zibuki

        Woah, not so fast.

        It’s all about which brand you use.

        Cochineal IS still used, and Starbucks got into a huge PR disaster last year when it switched to using it in an effort to be more “green”, no pun intended, then had to switch yet again:

        Starbucks Ditches Bug-Based Red Dye In Strawberry Drink
        http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/04/19/150972539/starbucks-ditches-bug-based-red-dye-in-strawberry-drink

        and Cochineal is still very popular as a food dye:

        Cochineal and Starbucks: Actually, this dye is everywhere
        http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/20/news/la-heb-cochineal-starbucks-20120420

        Of the red food dyes on the market that are not made from the insects, there are some that are really vegan and are not made from petroleum, again, it’s all about the brand.

    • http://twitter.com/puppetdark puppethead

      I’m surprised the recipe didn’t use beet juice, the original red coloring for red velvet cake.

      And as a related serious question, what makes “Vegan Cane Sugar” something more than just marketing? Cane sugar is vegetable-based, so as a non-vegan/non-vegetarian I don’t understand. “Organic” I could see, but is labeling a vegetable (sugar is a vegetable, right? Sugar cane certainly must be) vegan something like kosher or halal, a special preparation?

      • http://twitter.com/gladcow summer

        cane sugar is traditionally filtered through a charcoal made from animal bones in order to whiten it. when it is whitened without the use of “bone char” (as the industry calls it), it is vegan. also vegan, beet sugar (which is already white, so does not need whitening), and turbinado sugar or evaporated cane juice, which is not whitened at all. 

        • http://twitter.com/puppetdark puppethead

          Excellent, thanks for the enlightenment. It’s amazing how animal parts can slip into the food stream in unknown ways.

  • Fef

    First Hello Kitty in space, now this. Prepare for internet takeover by cute, precocious Rojas kids.

  • robotnik

    Red velvet? And his name is Rojas? Pretty suspicious…

  • marilove

    “People who eat too much salt can die, wright?”

  • zuben

    I welcome our new vegan (and Cajun?) chefs!

  • jac blades

    so adorable!

  • EvilTerran

    Huh… I just caught myself checking which of the BBers posted this, with a mind to judging based on their gender whether “I could watch young Petey Rojas all day. What a cute kid.” was a creepy thing for them to be saying.

    It’s always disconcerting being confronted by your own prejudices.

    Oh well, better make some cakes to cheer myself up, I guess.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      I just caught myself checking which of the BBers posted this, with a mind to judging based on their gender whether “I could watch young Petey Rojas all day. What a cute kid.” was a creepy thing for them to be saying.

      Get help.

      • EvilTerran

        Eh, I mostly attribute it to the periodic rounds of pedophile hysteria in the media (the latest — the Jimmy Savile fiasco — being still rumbling along in the background). The way some of the press sell it, it’s like they want you to think that any man expressing any interest in a child is a monster and a pervert. Even though I know full well that they’re doing that on purpose ‘cos it sells papers, I still find it difficult to keep the indoctrination out of my instinctive prejudices. It’s insidious.

        Don’t worry about me, I disregard the thought as soon as I become aware of it. It just saddens me that our society pushes such ideas, and bugs me that the scandal-peddlers have “got to me” even though I know what they’re up to.

        It’s pedogeddon, I tell you!

  • TheMudshark

    Pretty cute, but for me the little girl doing the sunflower makeup still rules supreme.
    http://boingboing.net/2011/09/15/halloween-makeup-tutorial-from-a-5-year-old-girl-how-to-be-a-sunflower.html