My recent trip back to my home city of Brisbane, Australia left me shocked.
When I lived there, it was a vegan wasteland. There used to be only two vegan joints in town and it was a big deal to get along to them.
2019 is all different.
Brisbane is now overflowing with vegan eateries and is a plant eater’s paradise.
Heading up this vegan revolution is Grassfed in South Brisbane.
Grassfed is serving the best vegan fast food on the planet. The menu is stacked with burgers, cauliflower wings, curly fries, shakes, ice cream sundaes, and craft beers.
I could go on and on singing the praises of this place but maybe I’ll let my photos do the talking.
I really don’t think I’ve eaten tastier junk food in recent years.
How can you argue with soft serve ice cream topped with a battered and deep fried piece of Vego bar?
Pea Shoot is teaming up with Made in Hackney to bring you an evening of feasting, drinking and merriment.
Get involved with this fab event for a hearty meal, clothes swapping, and games in order to raise funds for Made in Hackney’s vital work.
Made in Hackney is a community kitchen that teaches nutritious, plant-based cooking to London communities and promotes sustainable and local food practices.
If you want to show your support and eat some delicious food, grab a ticket and join the party on September 11, 2019.
Your ticket gets you three hearty vegan courses, including a decadent dessert and a festive aperitif, all cooked up by the Pea Shoot chefs.
Expect colourful and creative dishes, celebrating seasonal British fruits and vegetables using the freshest ingredients from local farms.
This is a win-win situation. Great food and fun for you, plus you raise funds for one of London’s most crucial organisations.
Something has been playing on my mind a bit lately.
Is the absolute onslaught of vegan food options such as KFC buckets and burgers done vegan or Impossible burgers actually reducing sales of dead animal products or is it just taking sales away from independent vegan businesses?
Are the customers of these huge chain restaurants and fast food franchises eating less meat or are meat-free people like us now also just flocking to these places where non-vegans also still eat?
Is anyone keeping track of this topic? Where’s the data?
Is bakery chain Greggs selling less meat products while also breaking records with vegan sausage rolls, or are they making all that extra money and still selling the same amount of meat? Or maybe they are selling more meat because vegans are coming into the stores for the first time and dragging friends, family members, and colleagues along for the ride.
Someone with more intellectual capacity and spare time than I have needs to look into what real advances we are making with the wave of vegan menu items swamping the UK and the planet. Are we making a change to the number of animals being killed for food or these businesses simply stealing our funds that would normally be directed to indie vegan business?
Without seeing hard date and sales figures to prove otherwise, I fear we might be paying the multinationals to feed us vegan food with no real improvements for animals.
Let’s discuss Pret A Manger. Do they sell less meat and dairy now that they are championed as a go-to place for vegan options, or do they still sell the same amount of animal products (or even more) and just rake in the vegan cash on top? Has the vegan boom lessened the demand for non-vegan ingredients in a real way for this company or is the plant-based business additional to what they already do and will continue to do?
It’s easy for us vegans to get lost in the excitement of what has been a plant-based food revolution. However, we should be asking these questions and shifting our strategies accordingly if needed. We don’t just need more vegan options. We also need these businesses to be selling less animals.
We are vegan activists, not just vegan consumers.
If these big companies are doing all this vegan stuff but not reducing their use of animals and our indie vegan places are closing because of them, we need to TAKE ACTION. Just because we can get a vegan pizza on every corner doesn’t mean our fight is over.
Veganism ain’t that.
We don’t want our money to be a garnish on top of the money spent on dead animals, we want it to be instead of.
I’m not sure who has the resources to carry out this type of research but I would certainly support such a campaign financially if one of the big action groups or charities wanted to take this on.
Yes, I know that mainstream vegan choices help people transition and helps raise the profile of veganism. But as activists I think we need to stay front and centre of this movement and make ourselves aware of the shifting landscape. If this explosion of vegan food turns out to be doing little to stop animal cruelty significantly, we might need to reassess our tactics.
Maybe our demands need to stop being ‘more vegan options, please’ but rather ‘for every vegan option you put on your menu, you need to take a non-vegan option away’.
Real change, not just taking our money and putting our independently-owned vegan shops and restaurants out of business.
Some of the best brownies I have ever tasted in my life were made by Horia Vegan.
Every single time Horia would trade at one of my events in London, they would completely sell out of their luscious, decadent brownies.
If you aren’t in the London area and cannot get along to an event showcasing these gorgeous baked treats, the good news is Horia is now delivering these delights via Royal Mail all over the UK.
And delivery is FREE!
Yep, Horia is shipping these beauties via Royal Mail 1st Class for free.
People of the UK. Get familiar with one of the best brownies on the planet!
VegFestUK London is back in a big way for another huge year in West London.
VegFestUK has long been the best vegan lifestyle show in the UK and really one of the best on the planet.
You get to see and taste all the latest plant-based products, watch exciting cooking demonstrations, meet independent business owners, listen to fascinating talks, meet friends new and old, eat delicious food, drink tasty drinks, and SO MUCH MORE.
Get along on October 26 and 27, 2019 at Olympia, London.
Need another reason to go? How about cheap tickets?
Buy-one-get-one-free tickets for VegFestUK London are available online only until August 31.
In other news, I will be there on site all weekend running the stall for my new Vegan Culinary Cruises venture and hosting some social sessions. More details will be coming soon!
Also expect cocktails, beer and wine (all vegan too!) to be flowing, brought to you by All Good Beer and El Garito.
On the night, you’ll also be able to explore on-site zero waste emporium Re:Store for environmentally friendly and sustainably sourced goodies, as they’re extending their opening hours just for the event. Bring your refillable containers!
You will also be able to visit the resident shops of Hackney Downs Vegan Market including Low Company record store, The London Loom, and The Well Garden and expect a vegan cheese tasting at Re:Store.
So much fun.
The Facebook event already has over 1,500 RSVPs so we expect this to be a big night. RSVP to the event now and invite friends.
The final Hackney Downs Studios night market of the year is taking place on Friday Septmeber 13, 2019 between 6pm and 11pm.
Click here to see the exact location thanks to Google Maps.
I’ve loved Sweet Freedom for many years so it is great to see this fab new product suitable for people looking to cut down their sugar intake.
This new Light Syrup contains 31% less calories than sugar and is sweetened with carob and apple.
Aldi is currently the only place in the UK selling this gorgeous new vegan product AND if you buy a bottle from them, you can enter a competition to win a hamper featuring twelve products of your choice from the Sweet Freedom range.
Simply email a photo of your Aldi receipt showing a Light Syrup purchase, tell them why you love it and where else you’d like to see it stocked for your chance to win the exclusive goodie box!
In the meantime, you can follow Sweet Freedom on Instagram and see all their products online.
*Competition closes at midnight on Monday 2nd September, 2019
Little Green is a vegan café, bar, health food store, and social space in Newcastle.
It has proven to be extremely popular with, and valuable to, the local community and it needs your help.
If you are reading this post on either August 21 or 22 of 2019, it would be wonderful if you could take a moment out of your day and a few coins out of your wallet to help support the security and expansion of this crucial independent vegan business.
Little Green currently has a CrowdFunder campaign in order to enhance their refill station in order to promote low waste living.
This is what Little Green has to say about the campaign:
When we first discussed our ideas and plans to open a plant based cafe and health food shop, a huge part of it was to be as eco-friendly and kind to the planet as possible. Having a refill station so people can come in and help themselves to various liquids, using their own containers and therefore cutting down on plastic was important to us and we set up a small station in the cafe. This has proven popular with our customers as there isn’t anything like this in our immediate area but there is much more we would like to do. We have taken example from other businesses and are looking to build a bigger structure providing more options including foods such as grains and rice so more customers can visit and help themselves thus cutting out packaging.
All of this is part of our commitment to providing tasty, healthy food, great nutritional advice through our resident nutritionist Gareth with vitamins and products to suit your needs and a lasting commitment to be kind to our planet. We would really love to expand on the services we provide to as many as possible.
This is a fab campaign to throw your weight behind. There is only one day remaining for the campaign and they are currently at 82% of the target.
Made in Hackney is a community kitchen running ongoing vegan cooking and food preparation classes.
You knew that, right?
One upcoming class I thought you all would be interested in is the Sourdough Bread Making Masterclass.
Date and Time – Saturday 14th September 2019 – 12:00pm – 5:00pm
Cost – £89 (£71 concession available) inclusive of VAT
The Event
“Bread makes itself, by your kindness, with your help, with imagination running through you, with dough under hand, you are bread-making itself, which is why bread making is so fulfilling and rewarding” – Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book.
“I’ll show you how to successfully bake your own delicious, nutritious loaves at home” Becca Dye, wholefood chef & baker.
This masterclass will include:
What is sourdough and how does it work?
Health benefits, costs, and how to choose your flour
How to create and maintain a sourdough starter, and fun ways to use excess levain
How to use bakers percentages and create and tweak your own formulas
Seeds, spices, soakers; working with flavoured doughs
Learn how to mix, fold, shape and bake a variety of doughs
Q&A session, sourdough 101 and trouble-shooting
A delicious organic plant based lunch, your own starter, recipes and bread to take home
Becca is a wholefood chef and baker, who has worked in top bakeries across Berlin and London, and currently bakes at social enterprise Better Health Bakery in Haggerston. Becca has a particular love for wholegrain baking, and utilising ancient varieties of wheat and freshly milled flour.
Fee: £89 (£71 Concession*) inclusive of VAT, includes a delicious organic plant based lunch.
This fee is used to fund programmes of free courses to vulnerable and low-income community groups. By attending a Made In Hackney masterclass you get a great day of learning AND you’re providing the charity with essential funds to continue their work with vulnerable community groups.
Concessionary rate available for students, pensioners, unemployed and low waged.
Click here to book your spot for the Sourdough Bread Making Class.
Click here to see other upcoming Made in Hackney masterclasses.
Manchester. You have a wonderful thing in your midst.
On the second floor of Afflecks Palace (you know the big old fleamarket style place in the Northern Quarter with lots of cool traders?) you’ll find the UK’s first (and definitely not last) all-vegan snack vending machine.
The vending machine by Peace by Piece Vegans is the first all-vegan machine in the UK (unless someone can tell me otherwise).
And because homelessness sucks, ending the intense levels of homelessness in Manchester is something the machine is getting behind. 10% of all their profits will go towards this cause.
Vegan snacks AND sending some funds to a solid cause. Sounds fab.
Here’s all you need to know about the machine:
• Second floor of Afflecks Palace (next to vegan Not So Sweet Nails) • Open 10:30am-6:00pm Monday to Friday and 10am-6pm on Saturdays • Sundays… afraid not! • They have regular stock updates to keep things exciting • They only take card payments
If you wanna keep updated with all the treats being loaded into the Peace by Piece vegan vending machine, follow them on Instagram.
