Monthly Archives: April 2013

Austin’s Worldwide Vegan Bake sale was a great success!

Every year our worldwide vegan bake sale gets a little bigger. This time we spread to two locations and raised money for two sanctuaries. I was really worried we wouldn’t have enough baked goods but Capital City Bakery, Red Rabbit Cooperative, Sugar Mama’s, Mr. Natural, and Happy Vegan Baker along with others all pitched in so I knew we’d have quality! We ended up having tons of volunteer made baked goods too. Sinfull Bakery even shipped us some goodies all the way from Houston! I made pretzel dogs and they sold out super fast! I will definitely make them again!

Here’s some shots from the Counter Culture sale, I wish I could have made it to Monkeywrench. 

Thanks to everyone that helped especially Brittany my co-organizer, everyone that helped sell stuff all day, and of course everyone that donated!!!

Here is a post from The Horn about the Monkeywrench sale!

Austin Bakes for West is this weekend so please consider donating to their humanitarian aid for our neighbors as well.

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Austin’s Worldwide Vegan Bakesale is coming this weekend and we need your help!

Cherry Bomb from Capital City Bakery

This Sunday, April 28th, the Austin vegan community is holding two simultaneous bake sales and we need your help! We still need lots of people to sign up to bake and we need help running the tables as well. From 11-2 we are going to be set up at Counter Culture Vegan Restaurant and MonkeyWrench Bookstore. Our goal is to raise 2,000 dollars for Sunny Day Farms Animal Sanctuary and SARA Sanctuary but we can’t do that if you don’t sign up!

Sign up to make baked goods: http://tinyurl.com/2013AustinWWVBS

More info about the WWVBS: http://www.veganbakesale.org/

If you are looking for recipe ideas I am hoping that someone out there makes these Butterscotch Cupcakes With Coconut-Bacon from the ppk. Or what about these  Mini Almond Poundcakes or Cherry Chocolate Chunk Mini Loaves? I was thinking about making these Nanaimo Bars from the vegan cookbook aficionado because I became kind of obsessed with these on a trip last summer. Or what about these Balsamic Chipotle Roasted Strawberry Brownies with some Poteet strawberries from Eating Appalachia? They sound amazing. I have had these chocolate dipped candy covered pretzels from What does a vegan eat anyway pinned forever because I think they would be the perfect bakesale item for a non baker. I love pretzels & peanut butter with my chocolate and these Peanut Butter Fudge Pretzel Bars from Bittersweet would be awesome too and just a little more work.  And if you are gluten free please make these Brownies from Cakemaker to the Stars. They look scrumptious.

If you can’t bake for the sale we need lots of eaters and inviters too! So join the event on facebook, invite your friends, share on twitter, and tell your coworkers! Vegan bake sales are great for spreading the word that you don’t need eggs to make a cake and you don’t have to be only about health food if you are going to go vegan. We are going to have doughnuts from Red Rabbit Bakery and all sorts of other goodies from Mr Natural, Happy Vegan Bakery, Unity Vegan Kitchen, Sugar Mama’s, Sinfull Bakery, and Capital City Bakery too so there will be plenty of sweets to wow your most skeptical friends! All the proceeds are going to go to dogs, kittens, sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, and a whole bunch of other animals that need your support so please do what you can!

Texas VegFest 2013: a resounding success

If you look at my tweet cloud of the words I say the most “excited” is by far the number one. I’m usually excited about something. If I’m not, I get completely melancholy about how I have nothing to look forward to. For Texas Vegfest I think I might have just been too excited, I missed it last year because it was my bff’s wedding and thought that was one of the best events of my life, missing vegfest and hearing all about it just built up the anticipation even more for this year’s fest..  The night before I went to ATX Vegan Drinks with my friends from North Austin Vegans and had a fun time playing trivia even though my team abandoned me for the final round. Saturday was a freaking gorgeous day and by the time I finally got to the fest I’d already missed some events and sat down to see Dr. Montgomery talk about cardiology.

He was a great speaker, he talked a lot about how preventable heart disease is just by cutting back meat and that a lot of people know that and just replace beef with chicken. It’s not enough! He was dressed in his surgeons gear just in case any meat eaters showed up. I wanted to pay close attention but I just couldn’t sit still. I really wanted to get a shirt from Herbivore before they sold out. Then I got distracted by tacos.

Good Karma Kitchen had rolled in from Fort Worth to bring us their delicious tacos and noodle dishes. I got the barbecued Korean tacos with jalapeno cream sauce, sliced vegetables, and ginger pickles and they were amazing, and my favorite thing I ate all day.

I couldn’t believe the line for Arlo’s next door was a million times longer since Arlo’s is usually parked just down the street. They do have my favorite veggie burger in the world and people were waiting over an hour! I went looking for the Herbivore booth after trying some tempeh on a stick and then I ran into friends who wanted something sweet. We headed to Sinfull Bakery, I was stoked to finally try their Kolache after not being able to find one on a recent trip to Houston. I also tried one of their dark chocolate cookies and both were fabulous.

There were 5,000 people there and I saw so many folks that I have met over the years. It was sweet to see so many kids.

Actually, my favorite story of the whole day was hearing about a teacher that brought a group of her school children to volunteer for the day. Apparently she takes them to different places every other weekend to help out in the community and they had never even heard the word vegetarian before. They were really excited to see Omowale talk about boxing and wanted to try some of the food, but the teacher didn’t have the money buy them all expensive festival food and mentioned she would have to take them somewhere cheap like KFC. The Texas Vegfest staff heard about this and pitched in to buy them awesome local food from the vendors and they loved it! Meanwhile I was spending tons and tons of money gorging myself and Dan. I got him a plate from Aster’s Ethiopian because we don’t get up there enough and we love it.

We got to watch a very happy young lady dance for a while before she was joined by others,

But then I remembered I wanted to hear Colleen Patrick-Goudreau speak about how we are all taught to have compassion for animals but then we are taught to eat them too. She such an inspiring speaker. If you are considering trying to go veg I recommend checking out her 30 day program and her cookbooks. Halfway through the talk I remembered that I still hadn’t gotten my Herbivore T-shirt and by that time they had ran out of the one I wanted! Damnit! At least I’ll be in Portland soon enough. I drowned my sorrows in funnel cake.

and I got completely covered in powdered sugar.

The funnel cake completely did me in and I bought more treats for later.

And I missed so many other places I wanted to try. Mostly Unity Vegan Kitchen which I head everyone raving about. And the Happy Vegan Baker’s Mac & Cheese. And Capital City’s Cheesecake. And Counter Culture’s Sweet Potato Salad. And Sweet Ritual’s Salted Carmel ice cream in a Waffle Cone. There was a lot of food. I was so sunburned and exhausted I had to go home. It was all too much. As we were walking out Dan said, “you know the only vegan I didn’t see was Wes” and then there he was, waving to us goodbye Big Tex style.

It was that kind of a day.

Interview with Texas VegFest Vendor Amelia Raley

Texas VegFest is tomorrow April 6 at Fiesta Gardens and people have already started celebrating, I’ve been enjoying watching photos from Herbivore Clothing, Food Fight Grocery, and Vegan Houston as they populate my instagram with Austin’s vegan goodness. Tonight is the Texas VegFest edition of Vegan Drinks and they are even going to have vegan trivia so bet there at Cheer Up Charlies! If you are curious about the festival details check out my interview with board member Molly to learn about the bands, speakers, children’s activities, and more and go to the official website. And join the facebook event. And follow on twitter. Earlier this week I interviewed speaker Christy Morgan and today we are getting the vendor perspective from local ice cream proprietress extraordinaire Amelia.

I’m so excited that Sweet Ritual is going to be one of the vendors at this year’s Texas VegFest, first can you tell us what kind of treats we can expect?

We’ll bringing several flavors of scooped ice cream, including dark chocolate, salted caramel (which is soy free!) and a few other flavors. We’ll have cups, cones, sundaes, caramel by the jar, and t-shirts to sell.

Oh that sounds so good, is this your first vegfest?

We were there last year with Salted Caramel soft serve

What was your favorite part about last year’s event?

As a vendor, I didn’t really get a chance go see the lay of the lend or participate in the fest because we were so busy serving ice cream. When we sold out early, I brought out my hand-cranked phonograph and played music for passerbys.

Serving ice cream kind of sounds like the best job ever but I bet it is actually really difficult. What is the most trying aspect of participating in something like this since you all aren’t usually very mobile.

We have to contend with ice cream melting at outdoor events. We’re bringing an arsenal of waffle cone bowls, so, if it gets too hot, everyone will have delicious ice cream soup!

I love waffle cones. I think I have even dreamed about them. OK last question, if you get the chance to trade ice cream for a snack from any other vendor what would you be most excited to try.

We are super-duper excited about Atkinson Candies from Lufkin, Texas being at the show with our favorite candy – Chick-o-Stick!

Oh, wow, I just looked at that list for the first time in a few months – I can’t believe how many vegan bakeries we have in Austin. That’s so amazing!

It’s going to be a great fest! Thanks so much for answering my questions and I will see you there!

Interview with Texas VegFest Speaker Christy Morgan

Texas VegFest is this Saturday April 6 and I am so excited I can’t stand it. I think I should stop eating now to get ready. Or maybe eat a whole lot to stretch out my stomach? How does that work anyway? If you are curious about the festival details check out my interview with board member Molly and go to the official website. And join the facebook event. And follow on twitter. It’s going to be a hell of a time and you have to get their right at 11am to beat the lines and to get a good spot to hear author Christy Morgan do the first talk of the day at 11:30. I asked her a couple of questions so we would know what to expect.

Hi Christy, can you tell us a little about what you do?

My professional focus is teaching others how to make delicious, plant-based meals whether that be through my cookbook Blissful Bites, with recipes and videos on my blog, private and public cooking classes, or with my online wellness program Wellness Reboot. I travel quite a bit teaching at festivals and conferences.

In my personal life I’ve become pretty obsessed with fitness and working out. I’m training for a triathlon later this year so I’m working out a few hours a day 6 days a week. Eating a whole foods vegan diet, with ample protein, has done wonders for my active life. I’m able to push myself harder each day and lift more weight. I actually have bigger muscles than I ever did before I went vegan. It’s pretty awesome. I workout at Beyond Fit during the week, which is a gym run by a vegan. You don’t find that everyday!

That’s for sure, is there going to be a Beyond Fit presence at Veg Fest? Did you hear boxer Omowale Adewale is going to be speaking? Maybe you two should have a showdown. 

I actually saw Omowale when I was speaking at the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival but didn’t have a chance to say hello. I’m excited to meet him this time! I’m always down for a showdown 😉

Yes, Chad and Beyond Fit will have a booth there and also the guys from VeganProteins.com will be there flexing their muscles. I love how these guys are proving that you don’t need meat or whey to be an athlete or bodybuilder!

I heard you are also going to be making food for us to try, can you tell me about it?

The focus for my cooking demo is on protein-filled dishes and a discussion on getting enough protein as an athlete. Since my life is all about training right now I’ve been experimenting with my diet and the amounts of protein that allow me to build lean muscle mass and recover from my grueling workouts. But it’s not just about smoothies, I’ll show you a few delicious way to incorporate protein into your diet.

That is exciting! God knows, it’s the number one question we seem to face as vegans, so I will be happy to have some more answers. Speaking of diet, is there anything in particular are excited to try at this year’s festival? There are a lot of vendors.

Well, I plan to fast the week before so I can eat at as many food vendors as possible. I can’t even name my favorites…I want to eat at them all! There’s such a great list of vendors this year; some names I don’t recognize so I’m excited to check them out. Thankfully my talk is at 11:30 so that will give me the rest of the day to enjoy the festival 🙂

I hear that! What, in general do you like to indulge in, when you are going to go all out?

I love me some desserts or pastries of any kind. One reason I work out so hard is so I can have treats every once in a while and not feel guilty about it haha. Capital City Bakery has the best naughty treats and I’m addicted to the gluten-free chocolate mini donuts from Mr. Natural. Counter Culture always has a delicious cheezecake too!

I haven’t had the mini donuts from Mr. Natural! I will have to check them out.

 
Thanks so much for your time Christy!!!