The Vegie Bar.

Tim mid-Grooming and Cale being.. Cheeky?!

I have food poisoning. I think. I dunno. It's a really bad time. Fuck. I'm so annoyed.

Sophie and Cale invited me to eat with them at Vegie Bar last night because Sophie wants to work there, I guess. I hadn't been there since my accident in 2007 but I had enjoyed it the couple of times I'd been there prior-to losing my teeth and my dad especially likes this place and often reminds me of when I took him there and "What was that bar called?". I invited Tim and Pip and suddenly I was fifth-wheeling (jokes. we're all friends. but couplesville + Lena seems to happen a lot).

Vegie Bar is normally quite busy but there's never been a long wait in getting a tbale and there's pretyt good service and the place has a pretty successful "it's all happening" kind of vibe, y'know? There's a tiled specials menu above the bench seats and a cabinet displaying desserts. Apparetnly the outside area is really nice and once I went to a birthday dinner here and we sat upstairs and it was real homely up there.

My only big complaint is that there was no salt and pepper shakers on the table andw ehad to ask for salt, which I would have assumed would have prompted a "woudl you like some pepper?". MAYBE this is because they're so confident with their own seasoning that they dont ened to provide this service, but COME ON, really?!?!

There's a great amount of stuff on the menu and we fickle vegans deciphered our way through it and ended up with the following.

Sophie had the Gado-Gado, which despite being not Pip's favourite south east asian dish, she approved of the sauce (we all did, I dipped chips in) and I suppose it was delicious enough to get through despite my feeling that disregarding the sauce it looked like a kind of plain meal. It was nice that they served the sauce on the side, but I like this dish for its full-drowning-of-vegetables effect it can have when served with the sauce everywhere. I should have gotten a report from Sophle but I didn't. Sauce Delicious, good amount of veggies and tofu.

Tim had the Vegan Supreme, of which I could not partake so I have no opinion other than Tim's which is that Tim is Supremely Vegan and this pizza was quite Supreme and he ate the whole damn thing and let Pip have A BIT. And Pip is very good at sneaking tastes of other peoples food for her own judgement and for the fun assortment of flavours it provides. Tim likes to eat, and he at the whole thing, no complains. Cale said that they've changed the cheese, so those of you who are on the ball with Vegie Bar, WATCH OUT- THEY'VE CHANGED CHEESES ON THE VEGAN PIZZA. Crazy. Absolutely wild, this place.

Pip and Cale did twin-orders of the Bean Burrito thingy made Vegan. Pip seemed pretty non-plussed about it, but made little complaint. The Guacamole was fine, I guess. I had ordered a bowl of chips with tomato sauce (not pictured- a bowl of hot chips. and a dipping bowl of tomato sauce. use your imagination people, it was very mystical and avant garde looking so if you're lost on this one then maybe I should take a photo of a potato) which was probably what I enjoyed most about eating the things I ate. It looked real cute though, a nice bready parcel of beans on soem rice and corn chips, some guac as a condiment and a nice leafy salad.

And I had this. It is a rissotto of (apparently) three kinds of mushrooms (Pip and I counted one: BUTTON. whatever), white wine and truffle oil. If I were a vegetarian it would have chevre and parmesan. Which may have made this dish more pretty and maybe may have saved it. Complaint the first: They used BROWN RICE to make this risotto. PRetty sure the best choice would have been Aborio, thanks guys. There was a lot of information and the dish was promising but I couldn't handle the intensity or something. I dunno. It really needed saving. I put a fuck load of salt on it, as is now much custom due to low blood pressure + a taste for salty food anyway, but that didn't seem to do much. The best way I could explain the disappointment I had for this dish was the following way.

IMAGINE SOMEONE IS TELLING YOU A REALLY INTERESTING STORY ABOUT SOME AMAZING FUCKING SHIT AND IT HAS ALL THE KEY PARTS TO MAKING A GOOD STORY AND THE LANGUAGE IS REALLY GOOD BUT THE PERSON TELLING YOU THE STORY IS TELLING IT IN A COMPLETELY MONOTONOUS VOICE. I don't know about you but if/when this happens I think I'd want to be listening to the story, and I'd want to be enjoying the story, but the voice is just not engaging me AT ALL and I keep tuning in and out of it and I don't really see the point of the story anymore even though there is the promise of one.

This is the first time in a long time that I haven't been able to finish a meal. I just. Couldn't handle it. I guess. Maybe it's me, maybe the Risotto is fine. BUT I AM prepared to take the risotto accountable for my food poisoning. WHATEVER. Fuck you, risotto.

+++ Also Because I couldnt finish it and I didnt wanna waste it i thought mayeb I could take it home with me and mayeb make it tastier. APPARENTLY Vegie Bar doesn't allow this, which makes no sense.

Pip will back me up. Risotto was annoying and disappointing.

Dessert, however, saved the vegie bar last night.
There were two vegan options available from the display last night. One was an apple rubarb crumble (could not partake of crumble, but I ate some of the berries which was like HOLY FUCK WOAH OMG AMAZING) which Sophie and Cale shared. Lovers.

Pip and I shared the Choc Royale. Pip dug into it before I got a photo but this cake was gluten free and amazing. I've made a similar cake a couple of times, served warm. This wasn't warm but it was damn humungous and damn delicious and layered and rich and ohmygoodness.

My only real excitement about this place was when I discovered, as -ahem- relieving myself in the single-room ladies toilet, was the AMAZING TOILET. Holy shit.
So. The toilet is a water saver. HOW? All a toilet does is flush lots of water and constantly refill its basin and water water everywhere but not a drop to drink and WE'RE IN A DROUGHT, PEOPLE. FUck. So Anyway, the sink is for washing yourself after doing your what-have-you in the loo, and it is attached to the Cistern of the toilet.
So. what you do is, right, You flush the toilet (half or full, whichever appropriate) and then the TAP TURNS ON. OMG. Magic. So the tap turns on and you wash your hands and then you're like OMG HOW IS THIS SAVING WATER THE TAP ISNT TURNING OFF HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP.

but Stop. Hammertime, check yourself. For reals. Because what the tap is doing, is refilling the cistern. HOLY SHIT.

But really, this place?

Not worth the vomit/diarrhea/nausea party that continues to follow.

Sorry Dad (who is 61 today), I'm not taking you back here.

Jinhua Vegetarian Ham

This is that "Ham" used in my sweet-n-sour ham dish. It's a beancurd mock very similar in texture to ZhangXiaoBao's Vegetarian Duck (which you can have served at the Shanghai Dumpling house for between $1/$2 more than the price at the grocery store I get it from), and the flavour is only a little bit different to the duck. The main difference is the shape tha tit comes in. It looks like pork chops (I GUESS? I THINK I KNOW WHAT PORK CHOPS LOOK LIKE?) and kind of steaky.

I actually have a recipe for preparing a "Vegetarian Duck" with beancurd sheets which one day I will prepare again and you will all star at me in awe and devotion and OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE THERE IS NO MSG IN IT. Until I buy a packet of MSG, for tastey stomach-hurting good times. (Alex's kitchen has one of these bags -which at last check remains unopened- and it has contact information on the bag for emergency services on it. AMAZING.).

love and kisses, L.

Festivus Bird.

Or: FUCK YOU MOTHER FUCKAZ I GOT 2xTOFURKEY WITHIN 3 DAYS OF EACHOTHER AND Y'ALL IS JUST JEALOUSES.
Or: I shouldn't write food-blog posts whilst thinking about listening to Wu-Tang Clan because the echo-effect of being hip hop isn't actually as reflective of bringing the mother-fucking ruckus (ain't nuttin to fuck with, etcetera).

Tofurkey of the Festive Season #1:
Prepared quite hastily (well, considering that it is a recipe that requires resting over night, i did it pretty chaotically) for Fjorn's birthday pot luck (other contributions to the luck included: olive loaf and coffee scrolls - from Ruth, a curry yum from Sam, salad by Tim and Fjorn herself provided some delicious chickpea stuffed mushrooms from the grill!) - to the stuffing I added cranberries for festive charm or some shit. Mostly because I had intened to probide a cranberry sauce but napping happened instead.
Fjorn's birthday is the 24th of December which makes her Jesus' totally cooler and more-legit twin. The pot luck was on the traditionally (like, according precisely to the episode of Seinfeld that it comes from - information I collected from WIKIPEDIA, TELLER OF TRUTHS) celebrated date of Festivus. For the rest of us.


Tofurkey of the festive season #2:
At Mgtvle, the warehouse my partner and friends live in - in Sydney. Alex had bared witness and ploayed an integral part to the creating of the tofurkey we celebrated winter in Anglesea with in July and had prepared the 'tofu mold' for this bird before I got to Sydney to help finish it off with stuffing, basting, etcetera.
I have little doubt that we're going to make this roast a off the cuff thing tradtion very soon considering I only checked the recipe for cooking times and how to make the cornbread (which I pretty much disregarded in both cases) for stuffing.
Despite being a quite involved, messy and slow cooking recipe, it has become really easy for this to be made based purely on instinct and taste. I realise whilst writing thist post that this was roasted 1 year exactly from the day I first roasted this kind of tofurkey. December 26th, the day of boxes.
We charred it a little on the skin - this bird has a crispy beancurd 'skin' that was marinated and thrown over the top of the roasting tofu halfway through it's time in the oven- because we got a little distracted and excited about the deep frying machine that has recently surfaced at Mgtvle. I have no shame in this fact: I HAVE WANTED TO HAVE A DEEP FRYING MACHINE SINCE I WAS 15 YEARS OLD. Now, I am pretty young, so this is only 5 years ago but still. I am so excited and bouncy.
It's a bit tricky to decide how to slice and transfer the bird from dish to plate elegantly. Here served with sweet potato chips (deep fried). The alterations to the stuffing were carrots in place of celery, and the addition of flat beer with the stock.
Another difference between these two birds were the variables of herbs and stock put into the tofu mould, the kind firm tofu used in either (I can't tell you what Alex used because I wasn't there. I know he didn't have "chicken" stock and that his tofu felt different to the stuff I used on the 23rd) also that Alex left the bird in the mold in the refrigerater for at least 48 hours longer than I did (I only had mine in over one night) which I think spoke for much in terms of what kind of texture we got from the bird.

It took me forever to re-surface the link from which I first decided to make this kind of tofurkey over a year ago, but I found it originally from, and adapted it from here: at What Do I Know? by Kathy - who adapted her recipe from a popular one at VegWeb. I made the bean curd skin from inspiration taken from Bryanna Clark Grogan and what I did was basically just get a sheet of dry bean curd skin, soak it in a watered-down warm version of the marinade we gave to the rest of the bird and wrapped the top of the tofu-lump with it after it had been in the oven for a little over half it's roasting time.

I really wish I'd taken photos of the FUCKING LOVELY Apple & Strawberry custard crumble Alex made for me (with a short crust base that blows my gluten-freed mind) as well as the Veganomicon feast that Louise made for a bunch of us on Christmas Day as well.

Louise made for desert following the bird, a cake based on the Brooklyn/Boston cream pie cupcakes from VCTOW using wheat flour that I should not have partaken of. hehe.

BackTrack : Pip's Birthday Cake.

The wonderpuss, miss Phlippila celebrated her birthday in (gluttonous!) style through food in September. She hosted a potfuck which you can read about on her blog. I am going to now talk about the cake I made for Pips.

I have to say at the outset that because of the use of Stout (coopers. my favourite) in the cake batter, it isn't really 100% gluten free, but I made it okay for myself by just putting lots of booze in it and in my belly anyway so I was due to suffer from -something- that night, in any case. Wheee!

I've finally gotten around to looking at the photos my housemate, Riva let me take using her camera, so I can blog with pictures about food. like it's actually a food blog, for reals.

I used this recipe from Susie's Parsnip Parsimony. Which is a blog I love and adore and wish she would get bloggin' again because I feel like I'm for-real really learning when I read her blog. And she does cute things and is a big science nerd. A few things went wrong in the making of this cake so it only ended up as two-tiere and I didnt want to waste the icing if I fucked up with my piping bag (I don't know how to use it, ok. i use a spatula. that'll do) but it was all my fault, and not Susie's. Susie can do no wrong. Science can do no wrong. Well. That last sentence, maybe.

Things that went wrong (from my memory, this feels like ages ago!):

• I bought a really delicious looking raspberry jam to use, that came in a big jar so I could still have some for myself to do private-things with (like, put it on rice and gross stuff like that which I do when noone's looking), hehe, and would make a good storage jar after I was done with the jam. My sister called me whilst I was on the tram to the bus that I take to get home (I travel an hour each way between my house and work, three times a week, lots of room for conversation) and as I walked from the tram to the bus, the jam jar kamikaze'd itself infront of the bus. I cut up my hand a fair bit cleaning up the mess, and missed the bus. Damn distracting family exploits! bah! So I had to buy cheaper smaller jars of raspberry jam the following day, for a less friendly price.
• I am absolutely USELESS with our oven in this flat. It is electric, and I think it tells me lies. and the oven thermometer confuses me. and I just can't bake like I used to. so the first layer was slightly burnt. and then collapsed a little. so I couldn't split the damn thing and make the ultimate decadance of cake-piss-ups for the Pips.
• WTF would I get liquid lecithin drops for? I settled for lecithin granules, and they seemed to do the job? I don't know why I needed them, but they didn't ruin anything so Its okay.

I replaced the flour with a standard general-mix of Gluten Free Flour, from a supermarket. For the icing I used Bacardi and I found a vegan vanilla pudding mix at Rishon's in Balaclava. Ummmm.... I also melted down some lindt chocolate and mixed in coffee essence, because the Pip loves coffee.

When the cake collapsed, it left this chunk crumb. I put the filling, some chocolate and some icing and a raspberry on it to serve to Riva as she had international guests staying with her and couldn't attend the potfuck. The mini-cake was much more photogenic and adorable than the mama-cake, but man did the mama-cake work a treat with booze.

x x

TASMANIA IS EMPTY

this map shows our route.
yellow dots is where we slept the night and green dots are where we stopped.
if you click the map it will expand and you can identify it. we drove clockwise.

Or so you'd think, seeing as the only people in these photos are Alex and I and the golliwogs (R.I.P) I am basically going to cut+paste what I emailed to my family about our trip with more tidbits of info and probably more foodie stuff (though we didnt have much excitement after hobart) because I am lazy.

day 1 - Hobart. we arrived the night before to go see Mt Eerie play a show. My friend grant supported. it was nice. This picture show an armchair that was constructed out of golliwog dolls at the resource collectables shop on Elizabeth street... Hobart was kind of dull but there was an awesome vegetarian chinese place we had lunch pretty cheaply (this was Shu Yuan and was FUCKING AMAZING and we both had dreams about it). There is also a veg/vegan restraunt that is open for dinner but it was INCREDIBLEY pricey/bourgeois and so we gave it a miss (this was Siren's. We read the menu outside the door, Quinoa Caviar, and other fancy crap. averaging $25 a pop, no thanks!). We also found a decently stocked record store on elizabeth street.

day 2 - Upper Florentine Valley. We drove to the site of the Camp Florentine (camp flozza) on day 1, got told some information (see: myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened) about the site and had tea and soup with the protesters (tree punx) we made dinner at ted's beach at lake pedder and slept at a lookout point over the gordon dam. We thought this would be nice to wake up to in the morning but it was SOOO WINDY AND RAINY that we didnt even look outside.
We had breakfast at ted's beach again and then went back to the tree punx! yay! they showed us where we could go for a beautiful rainforest walk and we gave them an assortment of tea and bread and chillies. We really should have taken photos of the camp site and the treepunx but it didn't happen. The campsite was attacked by a group of loggers earlier this week but as far as i know, camp flozza is still going on. a logger kicked one of the punx in the head and a part of the blockade was hit with sledgehammers.. nb: Camp Flozza is still going at this point and will celebrate it's 2 years of peaceful community protest next saturday!

day 3 - After our rainforest walk, we drove (forever!) around lake st clair and through the national park and ended up in the (very incestuoous, but also helpful) Queenstown to park and sleep the night. They sold fools gold in the petrol station we stopped at which reminded me of being a kid and loving fools gold! There was nothing to do in Queenstown so we got right out of there and drove north and into cradle country.
We didnt do any of the national park walks and stuff becuase those cost money but we walked around and it was really lovely. it was the first day of sunshine we got in tassie and so we were pretty stoked. Lots about the lodge and also heaps of other stuff about tasmania reminded us of twin peaks, creepy and beautiful, lots of beautiful dutch houses and stuff.. heh.
We kept going and ended up in Wynyard, and it was just before the Tulip festival so there was tulips everywhere in the township and we went to see the tulip farm and looked out at the bass strait. we then drove to stanley to see the nut, which is basically uluru, but wet.
Stanley was a really beautiful town parked at the very base of the nut and was tiered, it made driving around the town really cool but also kind of confusing. and we saw penguins (dodgy dark photo with white marks. some of the white marks are penguins) and bunnies! there were lots of bunnies whereever we wanted there to be penguins. heehe. we slept in Wynyard.

day 4 - We drove from Wynyard to Launceston, where the museum has the science centre inside and it is free and there was a really cool exhibition on fungus and lichens and moss and stuff. cooool.
And we went to cataract gorge which was ENORMOUS and AMAZING and IN THE MIDDLE of launceston. We climbed a mysterious way along the side of the gorge (we didnt go through it because we didnt wanna pay for parking!) and found an AWESOME hydro-electric house that'd been run down. we have lots of photos of that.

Most of Tasmania's electricity comes from either wind or water. there were lots of water mills and a big wind farm that we didnt go to. yay natural resources! We then drove from Launceston to the east coast and watched the sun set over coles bay, mt freycinet and the hazards. ti was beautiful. We slept at a coastal town caleld Bicheno (we kept saying 'Bitch-no' because we're gangsta)

day 5 - in the morning it was hot so we went to 9 mile beach which is beautiful and overlooks oyster bay, such beautiful white beaches and crystal clear water!! the water was FREEEZING so we just sat there for a while.
We then drove straight down to hobart to have a geeze at the salamanca markets (boring! couldn't find them veeg pies you bloggers raved about) and went into the huon valley and looked at the APPLE MUSEUM. amazing and creepy! yay, I bought two cook books - one full of apple recipes and one full of pumpkin recipes.
I feel like the apple cookbook should have been called "WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THESE GOD DAMN APPLES", seeing as I think that almost every residence in the Valley either had an apple tree (in beautiful blossoming this time of year!) or was right next to an orchard. We were given some apples for free (this is actually the only time we ate apples during our trip) with purchase, score, they were wonderful apples.
we slept in a nice little bay past franklin. we slept for about 12 hours.. quite tuckered out, i'd say!

day 6 - we woke up and cleaned the van on the inside and then drove to a model village in the town of glen huon. the village was built by frank & betty clarke over the past 20 years and was brilliant. you could go into the big shoe (at the back in this photo)and see the little old lady who lives in it and there was all these bells in the churches and children singing and there was a crooked man in a crooked house and a sculpture of an aboriginal spearsman(not very politically correct) and a teepee and at the end we stuck our heads in the applehead thingy. Back through Hobart we stopped at the Royal Botanical Gardens which was beautiful and informative but I think I was probably too hungry to enjoy it.

we then drove to dodges ferry and sat by the beach which was lovely and then cleaned the rest of the van and flew back to melbourne and slept forever.

we used the standard campervan offered by devil campervans (pictured - ours was yellow) we had a devil of a time. bikini babes were not included.

the end.

PS: AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO ALWAYS MISREADS THE WORD 'POTLUCK' FOR 'POTFUCK'. ALSO WHENEVER I GO TO WRITE 'POTLUCK' I INSTINCTIVELY START WRITING 'POTFUCK'. CAN SOEMONE PLEASE SHOW ME WHAT A VEGAN POTFUCK IS? DOES IT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH CAKE FARTS?

I Promised this was a Food Blog...

And so I've pirated pornography of my own efforts from Phillipa. I hope she doesn't mind (!!!)

During Alex's most recent trip to visit me down here in old cold Melbourne, we invited Pip and Tim to come and eat at my home.
This invitation was partly an act of mischeif and deceit as we're actually quite terrible at ever picking a place that has things that everyone can eat and enjoy without spending too much money/ending up at Shanghai dumpling (the deceit within the invitation).

The mischeif lies within the following meals we presented to our dear friends,


1. Cocoa Shepherd's Pie. I believe that the revolution is somewhere in the following "recipe".

We used: two carrots, pealed & diced, one onion roughly chopped, two minced cloves of garlic, a healthy handful of sliced cup mushrooms, a tin of diced tomatoes, maybe 500g of potatoes, two cups of TVP, and the following process:
Soak TVP in 1.5 cups (veg) chicken stock (or whatever you've got), tamari, sesame oil, heeeaps of salt & pepper. Sautee Onion, mushrooms, carrots, whatever veg you're keen on in your pie till it makes you happy (the potatoes are for the top, yo.), and through in the (thoroughly drained, no soggy pies please!) TVP.
I use the following combination of herbs & spices: Rosemary, Thyme, Coriander, Cayenne Pepper, le the veggies absorb the flavours and then added the can of diced tomatoes, and let the whole lot brew for a few minutes. I then added 1 cup of instant gravy mix (1 cup produced through the instructions on the packet. not one cup of gravy powder. gross) and 2 teaspoons of apple cidervinegar. And then. Between one and two tables spoons of dark cocoa powder. It looks amazing going in, and smells completely awesome.
All the while we had the potaotes boiled and then mashed with some rice milk, agave syrup and nutritional yeast, s&p, whatever.. I am actually really really shit at making the kind of amazing potato mash that this pie deserves, but i'm working on it.
Slopped the filling into a pie dish (whether or not us use a pastry crust is up to you, i don't because i am lazy, gluten free etc etc but i'm sure puff pastry would work), sprinkled some cinnamon ontop of the 'meat' and dollopped the mash ontop.
Into the oven preheated at 200c for about 20 minutes and oh-boy.

2. Cashew Cheese stuffed Capsicum (with Shredded Broccoli and Gluten Free Risoni!).

Alex's dish is something that he and I endeavour to convert the world to. We first came across the recipe for "Cottage Cheese" in the Easy Vegan Cooking book by Leah Leneman that my father bought for me before I was a vegan (that's some good intuition, dad!). We were intrigued immediately dismissed the scoffing of raw-food type recipes due to the fact that both Alex and I have a great nostalgia for the treat. And I have to make the following disclaimer: THE CASHEW CHEESE RECIPE TASTES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE COTTAGE CHEESE and if you don't do much to alter the flavour, smells like feet and tastes a little bit like haloumi. But, we actualyl fucking love this stuff. because you can transform it into a really nice stuffing for veggies or put it in salads and stuff. Just don't call it cottage cheese, because no Hungarian would talk to you if you fed this to them with that name.

The basics are: grab a handful (or however much you're game for) and let it soak in room-temperature water for about three or four days. It's ready for processing when you get the courage to eat one of the cashews and it tastes like haloumi. Smash the shit out of it using your food processor and add garlic, rosemary, lemon, mustard, nutritional yeast, whatever 'cheesey' or at least complimentary flavours you want. we mixed this in with shredded broccoli and some gluten free risoni (hoorah for Orgran!) and stuffed them into halves of the skinned char-grilled (stove top) capsicums that Alex so very much enjoys to make and show off. Into the oven after the pie for about 10 minutes and drizzled a bit of Balsamic Vinegar like the proto-gourmets we are.

And for drinks, Pip brought along an assortment of Phoenix's Juices. we split each small bottle four-ways throughout the meal, it was really cute, like we were taste testing each juice. Next time anybody does this, I reccomend the juices be served in shot glasses. Whee!
And I provided hot cocoa made with ginger and coffee bean essence, compound chocoalte and coconut cream.

I announced on the delivery of the cocoa that I would very much like to one day make a cocoa so fucking delicious that the Coco-Loco would cry his egyptian tears and immediately reduce his prices to something more happy. I stand by this argument, and challenge that I put to myself. Fuck working Vegans into a panicky sweat over prices. Fuck $8. Chocolate Alchemist. Whatever*.

*I should note that his cocoas are totally delicious and like, if you're a bit cashed up and in the area with a lovely eye-fancier, this place is totally cool to go on a date to but for someone who gets hot choclate cravings A LOT, I really really really can't justify $8 a pop on something i could have surpassed at home.

Vegan Bake Sale.

let the air-humping begin. (Promo pirated from adukionline, bitch).

Inspired by the success of aduki’s Great Vegan Bake-Off, Vegetarian Network Victoria (VNV) will be holding a vegan bake sale on 1 October to raise much needed funds. The bake sale forms part of VNV’s National Vegetarian Week activities, commencing 29 September 2008.

VNV will be out in force that week, looking to highlight the many benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet and lifestyle. The Great Vegan Bake-off was a fantastic opportunity for the vegan bakers of Melbourne to showcase their talents to each other – now they can show off those talents to the rest of Melbourne and help raise money for a good cause at the same time!

VNV is inviting interested parties to bring their vegan baked goods (not necessarily sweet items, just food that’s easy enough for people on the street to eat with their hands) down to its office in Fitzroy so it can be sold for a gold coin donation. The money raised will go directly back into the community via the support VNV provides for vegetarian and vegan businesses and the information and resources it provides to the community.

What: VNV's Vegan Bake Sale
Where: Kindness House, 288 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
When: Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 9am–12pm
What to do: Bring along your vegan baked goods and donate them for sale
More info: email info@vnv.org.au