I received an email earlier this year, and finally got to met a lovely lass, Lara Drew, who came to Brisbane from her hometown of Canberra to attend my Green Earth Day festival. Lara recently graduated with a Bachelor of Community Education and for her final year project she had the opportunity to research an issue in the community. This is Lara's story she's compiled (and somewhat of a guest blog!) on the plight of factory farmed turkeys in Australia.
Once again some friends and I took our families to the Loving Hut Mother's Day buffet to celebrate Mother's Day. Even though Eric didn't deliver on his promise of the now-no-longer-available-at-Loving-Hut-Mt-Gravatt Singapore Noodles being available for all to consume on this day only, he once again out did himself with the menu (including the punch below):
There's a new raw, vegan restaurant in town and it's at the Sunshine Coast - about time I know for all you vegans up that way who have had slim picking for years now. So, join me as Renata, Nick and I ventured to Kind Living Cafe one Tuesday in early May:
If you happen to be on the M1 highway between Gympie and the Sunshine Coast and see a billboard with the word vegan on it, fear not, it's the lovely Dave & Mandy from Vegan Era who have raised funds to erect this billboard:
Keep an eye out for other sightings in Queensland in the near future.
So I organised, promoted, marketed etc an all-vegan environmental festival, Green Earth Day that took place on Saturday 12 March and as it was just so exhausting and overwhelming this year I went away for awhile afterward.
I LOVE this song, Vegan Myths Debunked, it's an ever so cute, witty and catchy. Ivory King is the vegan gal who musician Jonathan Mann quizzes about her diet in duet form. Jonathan writes, records and videos a song each day, whether it's good or bad. I grew out of wanting to be a rock star awhile ago now, but I still enjoy performing sporadically and still love writing and recording, though I am getting sick of singing about heart break...
Now back to the myths, just where do we get our protein, calcium, iron, zinc? Oh, yeah, PLANTS!
So, I'm organising a festival in Brisbane. We have changed the venue to Albion Peace Centre, Windsor.
This massive undertaking started at the beginning of 2009 from a seed planted in Nov 2008 by Kas from Adelaide's Vegan Festival and Jess who started Sydney's Cruelty Free Festival. At the time these lovely ladies suggested this to me, I was in the middle of writing my Detox Diet and said that I had way too much on my plate to be adding anything else, but once an idea germinates in my mind, it grows and grows with the possibilities until the prospect of not doing the task seems worse entirely.
Thank you for your support in sharing my blogs, emails, videos, interviews, articles etc with your friends and family, via social networking sites, on your own websites/blogs and more! I truly appreciate it.
The silly season is upon us and rather than getting annoyed and upset about the amount of money people are spending on useless items that will be collecting dust in a few months, credit card debt they still haven't paid off from last Xmas, consumerism etc, PLUS the enormous amount of lives that will be slaughtered for another excuse to be gluttonous... I have enlisted Janine who is a wonderful plant-based cooking coach in Brisbane to share some of her Christmas creations for a Cruelty-Free Christmas:
Other friendly, enthusiastic and inspiring vegans make me feel enthusiastic, inspired and just a little bit impressed with myself that they're on the same side as me. A friend of mine, Denis, originally told me (on our road trip from Washington DC to New York) about some footage him and his business partner, Casey had shot for two sisters who cooked amazing food and were about to launch a new website. Cut to later on in the year, I'm home in Brisbane and the lovely Jenny and Heather Goldberg have launched their Spork Online website.
What comes across with the Goldberg gals is that they are extremely passionate about food, educating others on how to have fun with food and most of all promoting the positive. The two of them bounce ideas and energy off from each other in all the videos I've seen and I'd love to be a part of one of their cooking classes in the future. Jenny and Heather have been running their Los Angeles-based, gourmet organic vegan food company, Spork Foods for four years.
It's almost my birthday again, in exactly 1 week today to be precise ;) I love my birthdays, and I especially love my birthday when it falls on a weekend and if it's a big milestone event, like my 30th last year. I had a great night with most of my favourite people helping me celebrate in vintage-style, it was a blast! This is me below wearing a 60s number in my favourite colour with a great hair accessory that I made (and yes, back in the days when I drank cocktails):
A lot of people have always complained about what to get me for my birthday, mostly non-vegan friends. Now, I don't think I'm that hard to buy for, I think it's quite obvious what I like and what I don't like...
Green Earth Group are running some competitions to help raise money for Brisbane's first all-vegan environmental festival, Green Earth Day which will take place once again at the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens on Saturday 12th March.
There are three competitions: Art Competition, Short Film and Green with Envy Fashion Competition. For more information on details and how to get involved see HERE.
The wonderful Australia publication, Vegan Voice included an article about the competitions in its latest editon
Saturday started very early with my friend, Rico picking me up at 4:30am to head to the Brisbane airport where we parked his car for the weekend in an unusual spot... The flight was good with both of us trying to get some rest, unfortunately we didn't travel with Qantas so I didn't get my usual breakfast that I'd grown accustomed to the previous two weeks. A mutual friend, Sundara picked us up at the airport as he'd arrived earlier from Canberra. We were all tired from very early starts and just wanted to get some breakfast. We had a couple of options and proceeded to try to actually get from one side of the city to the other. Unfortunately not only was it raining and horrible weather - yet again! but there was some sort of Christmas parade that had closed off just about every street. It was very annoying and we were getting more hungry. I don't understand how hard it is to put "road closed" signs up and have the detours indicated...
Anyway, after about an hour and a half and with the help of Sundara's trusty GSP, we finally made it to Joy Discovery a great little place owned and run by followers of the spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy, similar to the My Heart Garden restaurant here in Brisbane. Great, healthy meals served with friendly staff early in the morning. I had a lasagne and a selection of the salads AU$15.50 - I LOVE my photo below:
I got to Sydney a bit before 10am after sleeping most of the flight and getting another great breakfast from Qantas: Sanitarium Rice Bubbles this flight with soy milk, an apple and a Nanaberry from Rowie's Cakes in Marrickville, with Organic QUINOA flour! One of my closest friends, the lovely Jess from The Cruelty Free Shop picked me up. Once again the weather is cold and miserable when I'm interstate, though at least it's not raining, yet. I hung out with Jess for awhile at her place where I'd be staying for the long weekend and then let her get some work done so I headed into Rozelle which is just around the corner from her, and where some of my favourite second-hand shops are!
First though is lunch at Iku Wholefood one of my favourite places to go when I'm in Sydney, it's a vegan macrobiotic place that has many different stores and a great selection of healthy meals. I had the lasagne with greens. I normally get the eggplant version, but as they didn't have any ready to eat, I had the tomato, olive and baked vegetable version AU$10.50 yum
This video is shot beautifully, well edited and designed. Ella Todd is the Creator and Managing Director of Environment Films and she also directs and Produces Making the Connection. Making the Connection is an informal take on the many benefits to being vegan and eating a plant-based diet. They have worked hard to include as much information as possible but still delivering the facts in a relaxed way.
The end of the year is always the best time of year for me: World Vegan Day, vegan festivals, beautiful weather in Brisbane and my birthday in December! I know that even if everything has felt as thought it's been stalling for most of the year, after the end of October, it'll be great!
Incase you're not aware, World Vegan Day is celebrated on the 1st of November every year. Melbourne holds a great WVD festival to celebrate this fantastic day in Australia and here begins the story of my Melbourne adventures for the end of 2010:
