I recently flew out of Australia with QANTAS and the vegan food was on the correct side of acceptable.
First up was the main meal an even though the photo is atrocious, the meal itself was tasty and satisfying.
I enjoyed and pasta, vegetable, and tofu dish with a mini vegan bread. This main was also accompanied by a moist slice of chocolate cake and a pack of dried fruit pieces.
Once again, economy lighting and space restrictions mean I feel the need to apologise again for the terrible photography.
Next up was some sort of breakfast muffin sandwich that was so outrageously hot from overheating, I actually couldn’t hold it for fifteen minutes.
Once it cooled, I chomped my way through it and loved it. It was like a breakfast muffin filled with a bean patty.
Finally, I was served a breakfast dish consisting of vegetable and bean rissoles, mushrooms, and tomatoes.
This was accompanied by a bread roll and a packet of quinoa and apple crispy bites.
Of course this food wasn’t going to win awards, but it certainly kept me feeling well-fed and nourished during the 13-hour flight between Brisbane and Los Angeles.
As far as inflight meals go, QANTAS is up there with the best.
Some non-vegan stores are better for plant-based consumers than others, but I think I might have just been to THE BEST non-vegan store catering to vegans on the planet.
Seriously. This blog post is dozens and dozens of photos of vegan products all taken in one store.
Sam Coco in Brisbane, Australia is a 24-hour (that’s right, they never close!) fruit store and butchers that for some reason also has an amazing amount of vegan groceries.
I don’t know what else to say except please take your time to savour all my photos below.
These photos don’t represent even close to everything vegan available in the store.
London, you had better not sleep on this incredible food event.
It is sensational.
Anri of Fussy Chilesaurus was always a crowd favourite at my market and her delicious vegan take on Japanese cuisine is legendary. She once had a queue of dozens and dozens of people on a bizarrely warm day at Guildhall market because word had spread among the diners about how fantastic her food was that day.
So you need to take advantage of the fact that Anri will be cooking and serving her exquisite menu as a pop up at Tottenham Social Pop Ups at Craving Coffee this week.
Curated and hosted by vegan blogger, writer, and event planner Fat Gay Vegan (that’s me!), this Mekong cruise has been designed to be a relaxed, inclusive, and safe adventure for LGBT travellers as well as their friends and families.
As a gay person, I have often longed for an LGBT-friendly vegan vacation opportunity. I know what it is like to put a lot of effort into planning and paying for a holiday and I want to know that every part of my trip celebrates who I am. My partner and I want to feel safe and relaxed whether we are in our cabin, sharing cocktails in the bar, or dining together at night. Vegan Culinary Cruises helped me turn this dream into a reality for me and my LGBT community!
Even though our gorgeous Mekong adventure is focused on celebrating LGBT community members, the cruise is also welcoming to non-LGBT friends and family members. We have worked hard to create an experience in which everyone can celebrate our diverse communities.
Our luxury Mekong river cruise combines places rarely visited with opulent world heritage sites exploring the wonders and culture of Vietnam and Cambodia
With only 25 cabins, this luxury cruise is an exclusive adventure for only 50 guests. It is all inclusive and means the cruise, delicious vegan cuisine, open bar, tours and more!
Vegan Culinary Cruises Vietnam & Cambodia Mekong river cruise is one of the world’s most exotic and unforgettable journeys. Marvel at ancient temples, mist-covered mountains and colourful floating markets along the Mekong River as you travel by luxury river cruise through two of Southeast Asia’s most beautiful countries. Along the way, visit temples and monasteries, royal palaces and pagodas, rural villages and experience first-hand everyday life in this unique part of the world. This deluxe river cruise ship features delicious regionally-inspired vegan cuisine, spa treatments and a pool on the sun deck so our guests can return to luxury after each on shore adventure.
Our all-inclusive program includes delicious vegan cuisine, thought-provoking lectures, entertainment, and fabulous on-board programming, along with local tours at each locale we visit.
Picture yourself watching the river flow from the window of your cabin or one of the decks as it takes you to new places and reveals storybook landscapes as you relax in total comfort. The sublime ambiance and personal service aboard your Vegan Culinary Cruise ship creates an oasis of relaxation that is simply unexcelled. Each one of the bright, airy cabins has unrestricted views of the scenery through panoramic, glass windows with private balcony that spans the cabin’s width. Experience travel like you never have before with the sheer ease of river transport.
Details
Pricing from: US$5790 per person based on double occupancy Dates: July 4, 2020 until July 11, 2020
We are offering a US$500 per person discount if you book your cabin before September 1, 2019.
There is also an optional Siem Reap Cambodia pre-tour available at additional cost.
Pre-tour
Day 1 – Thursday July 2 – Siem Reap – Arrive transfer to hotel Day 2 – Friday July 3 – Siem Reap area tour Day 3 – Saturday July 4 – Siem Reap morning area tour, afternoon transfer to ship at Kampong Cham
Cruise
Day 1 – Saturday July 4 –Afternoon transfer Siem Reap to ship at Kampong Cham Day 2 – Sunday July 5 – Kampong Cham, Angkor Ban, Wat Hanchey – Cambodia Day 3 – Monday July 6 – Kampong Tralach, Kampong Chhnang – Cambodia Day 4 – Tuesday July 7 – Phnom Penh – Cambodia Day 5 – Wednesday July 8 – Tan-Chau, My An Hung – Border crossing Vietnam Day 6 – Thursday July 9 – Sa Dec, Binh Thanh Island – Vietnam Day 7 – Friday July 10 –- Cai Be, My Tho – Vietnam Day 8 – Saturday July 12: Ho Chi Min City / Saigon – Vietnam – Disembark
Get all the finer details of this incredible vegan, LGBT-friendly cruise along the Mekong online here.
You can also find out about future cruises like our south of France general vegan cruise next year. Follow Vegan Culinary Cruises on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Put the animal cruelty aside for a second and some people just don’t like the salty crunchy things at all, while some people adore the traditional pub snack.
For people who were fans of pork scratchings after a few pints in the pub, there is great news.
Two passionate pork scratching fanatics have taken it upon themselves to create a vegan version of this divisive snack.
And they are running a Kickstarter campaign to get the compassionate version into pubs around the UK.
The founders of Vegan Pig said:
We never dreamed we would end up with a product that not only tasted so great, but was so similar to a pork scratching in both texture and in taste.
We’ve overcome challenge after challenge, but now, our next step is getting Vegan Pig into production.
We’re asking the Kickstarter community for £5200. This money will help us scale up our production and get our pig snacks out into the world – as well as helping us meet the minimum orders required to use 100% recyclable packaging.
Once we begin to produce them, we’ll be able to go from pub to pub to sell this delicious snack – so you can all give them a go yourself, with a nice cold pint.
If you check out their Kickstarter page right now, you’ll see they have already broken through that fundraising target!
It seems vegan pork scratchings are an in demand product.
You still have a week remaining to get behind this project and of course some of the reward levels include your own packets of Vegan Pig pork scratchings when the first retail packs are produced.
TWO COPPER BRANCH LOCATIONS IN TORONTO ARE NOW OPEN PAST MIDNIGHT
The chain’s locations on Bathurst St and at the Sheppard Centre now offer vegans and omnivores alike the chance to eat plant based at nearly any hour.
The Montreal-based chain, which is now the largest plant-based restaurant chain in the world, has announced that two of their key Toronto locations are now open past midnight seven days a week. Their Bathurst and Sheppard Centre stores will now feature their full menus well past the time any other healthy or plant-based restaurants have closed for the evening. This will allow anyone out for the evening in the city or night shift workers to enjoy the benefits of delicious, plant-based meals at an hour when previously the best they could do would be burgers and fries.
Copper Branch’s location at 410 Bathurst St is open until 2am seven days a week and their restaurant at the Sheppard Centre is open Thursday through Saturday until 2am and Sunday through Wednesday until 1am.
“Customer response to these two locations staying open late has been incredible,” says Copper Branch Global Director of Marketing, Andrew Infantino. “Our customers love that they can replicate their late night favorites such as burgers, Buffalo wings, nachos, and even poutine in an all-natural, healthy version when they’re out late in the city.”
With over 60 restaurants worldwide, what sets Copper Branch apart from other quick service plant-based restaurants is its commitment to both familiar fare as well as unique global recipes that diners can only get at Copper Branch. The chain features an all-day breakfast and an all-encompassing menu that includes power bowls, burgers and sandwiches, soups and chili, and power smoothies. The entire menu is whole food plant-based, with many non-GMO, organic, specialty and naturally gluten-free foods.
Though the entire Copper Branch menu is vegan, the company has found that the vast majority of its customers are not strict vegans, but rather omnivores who want to replicate the delicious foods they currently enjoy but in a healthier, more ethical and sustainable way. “This is food I’m proud to have my children eat” adds CEO Rio Infantino. “Now our customers can do so at any hour, which is exciting for the industry and for the company.”
Copper Branch is considering adopting the late night strategy at more locations.
ABOUT COPPER BRANCH
Started in 2014 and headquartered in Montreal, Copper Branch is a privately held company and holds the distinction of being the largest and fastest growing plant-based fast casual chain in the world. The company’s mission is to Empower, Energize and make people feel their Best; providing a convenient, plant-based dining experience without sacrificing taste, quality or satisfaction. The reasonably priced, 100% plant-based menu items are never fried and consist of mainly organic and non-GMO ingredients. For locations, menus and other details, visit the website.
The Nuneaton Vegan Fair is taking place in the Warwickshire town this Saturday August 3, 2019.
The following description of the event is from the organisers and it sounds fab.
The Nuneaton Vegan Fair will feature 30 stalls selling a wide range of vegan products including delicious cake, chocolate, cheese, cosmetics, clothing, recipe books, and a selection of hot food.
FREE entry. All welcome.
STALLHOLDERS
Caterers
Got No Beef Burger Bar
Sheila’s Kitchen
Vegan Joe’s
U-Juice
Cakes & Confectionery
SOOKS Ltd
Sweetest Things
Trishul Raw Chocolate
Totally Vegan
Lakeside Ethical Treats
Vegan Cheese
Soul Cheeze
The Naturally Vegan Food Company
Other Food Stalls
Venitin FOODS
Butterbelle
Vork pie
Natures Finest Juices
Tropical Paradise Preserves
The following is an excerpt from my first book Fat Gay Vegan: Eat, Drink and Live Like You Give a Sh!t.
While I am sometimes marginalised and oppressed with regards to my sexuality and weight, I understand that I also live with extreme privilege because I am a white, cis- gendered and able-bodied man. It’s the white man part of me that gets a lot of people to listen to the fat and gay parts of me.
The modern world is designed to reward me for simply being me at the expense of people who are not me.
We need to know our own place in the world in order to be the most positive force we can be. So, with that in mind, let me start by exploring my understanding of my privilege for a short while before we move on to a plan of action. (Apologies. Plan of action is included in the book but not here)
I grew up in a poor family with a lot of abuse and sadness in a town where gay kids like me were routinely harassed by law enforcement and local homophobes, but I survived when many people around me didn’t.
Inequitable systems of oppression were in place to benefit me as a white man even while I was being targeted for my perceived sexuality. People around me who didn’t present as white men had safety and opportunity taken away or denied to them.
I left school at age fifteen and moved out of my family home. Even though I didn’t complete the most basic high school requirements, I was never out of employment from the moment I left the school gates for the final time.
Of course, a lot of that employment was dreadful and underpaid, but the point is that even as an uneducated young person I was employed for any position for which I applied and nobody can tell me my appearance wasn’t responsible. I was able to earn a desperately needed income for food and accommodation when a lot of people my age were discriminated against because of institutionalised racism embedded in Australian society.
An adult close to me sexually abused women in my family and these women have lived with the ongoing trauma of that abuse. As a young man, I was statistically less likely to be abused by this person and I wasn’t.
My teenage friends and I were searched by the police with alarming regularity during our often drunken nights wandering the streets of our hometown, however, indigenous Australian young people in the same predicament didn’t get off with just a warning or even with their lives in a lot of instances.
The worst thing to happen to my group of white friends was watching our cheap sparkling wine being poured down the storm water drain while the police laughed at us and ridiculed our clothing. We were not arrested, detained or physically assaulted thanks to our white skin and we were afforded privilege, consideration and relative physical safety during these acts of police surveillance. This was not the case for young people who didn’t look like us.
There is a story I think of quite often involving a young man in my hometown. He lived with a physical disability that resulted in him walking with a limp. I would smile at him as he passed by my workplace maybe once a week. We were the same age and we both recognised the other as a queer teenager in a sad town where our kind was not celebrated. We both started going to the same gay bar as teenagers where we mixed with a lot of older people.
One terrible night, my hometown comrade was targeted by an older man who took him to a dark alley behind the gay bar and brutally bashed him until he was no longer alive. I found myself in countless compromised situations as a young gay man but I didn’t find myself targeted for living with a disability. To understand how people with disabilities are more often targets of violence, search for statistics in your local area and be prepared to be upset by what you find.
Following on from decades of dead end jobs, I secured a place at university to follow up on my interest and desire to become a schoolteacher. The four-year undergraduate degree culminated with a multi-month practical placement in a real classroom. I was the only person out of my group of friends offered a job by the school at the end of the practical teaching placement. I was also the only one of said group who was identifiable as a white man and I’m comfortable in saying that I was nowhere close to being the most accomplished or hard-working student teacher amongst my cohort.
I’m not reflecting on these memories to get a pat on the back for being progressively aware, I’m telling you because it is crucial for those of us living with and benefitting from privilege to understand that the animal rights movement is not separate to everything I’ve described above.
I have discovered that if I want to be a worthy activist for animals I must also learn to resist and challenge oppression in multiple forms within vegan circles. Vegan businesses, vegan activist groups, vegan socials, and vegan online spaces all operate within the same systemic framework of oppression that favours me in the ways I described above. If I am being rewarded, someone is being oppressed. That is how it works.
If you would like to read the follow up to this section, you can order my book from independent bookstores as well as online via WH Smith, Foyles, and Amazon. The book is also available via Audible for listening.
The following message was shared on the Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary Facebook page:
It is with much sadness and regret that I must advise that we have hit the end of the road.
Fiona’s mission to rescue as many animals as possible and to promote the cruelty free lifestyle in her unique and awe inspiring way of the past 25 years looks like it is over.
We are so grateful to all our supporters who have helped us with the feed bills over the years, but tragically the level of support is simply not enough for us to continue on. Despite Fiona’s incredible athletic achievements gained in the face of chronic disability, she remains relatively unknown/supported within the vegan community and virtually unknown in the wider community – the UK’s most accomplished athlete that no-one has ever heard of.
We had hoped that her film, Running for Good, would reach a wide audience, but despite our & the producers best efforts this has not happened – frustratingly everyone who has seen it has been blown away by Fiona’s accomplishments and many of those have gone on to donate to the sanctuary, but again the numbers are painfully low and not just enough to make the difference we needed to make the animal sanctuary work.
We had hoped that as promised during filming, Fiona’s inclusion in the Game Changers movie would bring her name and work to the 10m+ audience that will see this film and that this would save the sanctuary, but having been edited out from the final cut, this now will not happen leaving poor Fiona to reside in relative obscurity.
The running costs of the farm site have escalated beyond our initial expectations as the amount of work required to turn it into the sanctuary for animals that we wanted it to be is colossal – we thought we had completed the fencing having fenced what was absolutely necessary, we had hoped that the original fencing in some of the fields combined with dense natural hedging would be enough to keep the animals in, but the cattle have tested the fencing in several places resulting in them getting out a few days ago – net result is that we have to spend around a further £19k on 1000m of additional fencing – Funds we simply do not have.
We are behind some £20k on feed bills & as we head towards the end of the summer, we have done the math & we just can’t carry on.
We have 350 loyal supporters to whom we are very grateful & we have personally put everything we have into keeping going these past few years, but we have nothing left to put in.
In the meantime we will clearly keep caring for the animals in our care, but if we can’t find additional supporters and raise significant funding in the next few days, then it’s over.
I can’t even begin to explain how crushed Fiona is. These events have destroyed her totally.
Please don’t let this happen to her and the rescues.
If you can donate or set up a monthly direct debit it would be so appreciated.
Click here to donate or set up a monthly donation.
