Traffic Jam: The Week Ending January 6

1. “I went to sleep last night dreaming about the eggplant parm hero.”—Associate Editor Jennifer Chen, sharing with the rest of the staff the menu at Long Island’s vegan Italian restaurant 3 Brothers Pizza Café. Oh hello, Baked Ziti. We want to eat you.

2. Seabirds Truck (of The Great Food Truck Race fame) released an e-cookbook! Somebody please tell us the recipe for Beer Battered Avocado Tacos is in there.

3. And this week in ridiculously disturbing news (really, don’t read this while eating), a man sued Pepsi claiming he found a mouse in his Mountain Dew. Pepsi’s defense? It couldn’t be, because the acid in the soda would have turned the mouse into a “jelly-like substance.” Yeah.

4. Mark Bittman (one of our favorite mainstream men of 2011) asked New York Times readers to “make semi-veganism work for you.” While we prefer to go big, everyone should go home and make all 10 of the vegan recipes he offered.

5. And for our Tweet of the Week, Terry Hope Romero’s cold-winter plans almost make us nostalgic for cold winter nights: “15 degree weather & what time is it? Seitan borscht time, that’s what.”—@terryhope