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Posts Tagged ‘World Go Vegan Week’

World Go Vegan Week (Oct. 24 – 31) was a delicious success with dozens of pizza restaurants participating by offering a vegan pizza for the week featuring Daiya cheese, a vegan cheese that melts, stretches and tastes like traditional dairy-based cheese. IDA volunteers worked hard to get restaurants to participate in our campaign Vegan Pizza Takes Over the World! We had 73 volunteers reach out to 142 pizza restaurants in the U.S. and Canada asking them to participate in our week of celebration of the vegan lifestyle.

Offering motivation and to make things even more interesting, we had a contest!  Daiya generously offered a month’s supply of its delicious vegan cheese to a random participant who was successful in getting a pizza place to offer a vegan pizza. We are excited to announce that the winner of our contest is Gina Stuessy of Madison, Wisconsin. Gina got two restaurants in Madison to participate, The Glass Nickel and Ian’s Pizza. Let’s hope they will keep the vegan options on the menu beyond World Go Vegan Week.

Congratulations, Gina! We hope you enjoy your month’s supply of Daiya cheese!

Pizza wasn’t the only thing on our minds this World Go Vegan Week. Other volunteers participated in various creative ways beyond the vegan pizza project. At a church in Burnaby, British Columbia, eight families took on the challenge of eating vegan for the entire week of World Go Vegan Week and, in Sri Lanka, activists held an event with a film on veganism, speakers, and vegan food to sample. These are just a few examples of the wide reach of this important week of education. This was truly an international outreach experience!

Thank you for celebrating World Go Vegan Week with us. The animals, the environment, and your health thank you for your compassionate choices. Click here for more information on the vegan lifestyle.

New to veganism? Click here to order a free Vegan Starter Kit.

The IDA San Rafael office had some fun this Halloween teaming up with the San Francisco Vegetarian Society to hand out vegan Halloween sweet treats and our Reason for Vegan Brochures to passers-by on Haight St. in San Francisco! Volunteers made frightening yummy treats like maple cookies and cinnamon chocolate chip bars to show everyone how delicious vegan sweets can be. We also had lots of donated Halloween dark chocolate peanut and almond butter bites form Shjakk’s chocolate. Yum!

Dressed in costumes, we handed out the treats and leafleted vegan materials, asking San Franciscans to help end the horrors of factory farming and try a vegan treat for Halloween. The responses were wildly enthusiastic—in fact, people were shocked that vegan treats and chocolate were so scary delicious! It was a gratifying day of outreach with lots of people discovering just how satisfying vegan sweet treats really are.

Do you wear your veganism on your sleeve?   It’s great to lead by quiet example, but consider making an even stronger impact by speaking up about your reasons for going vegan.  Remember, the animals don’t have a voice, so now is the time to amp up your game to the next level.    

Okay, so you’re a 49ers fan?  Add a little dash of vegan to your red and gold.  You’ll be surprised at the impression you’ll make.  Be prepared by having a few of “The Reason For Vegan: Compassion In Action” flyers and “Vegan Starter Kits” with you.  Click here to order them.  While you’re at the game be sure to support the stadium’s vegan menu.  These days virtually all professional level ballparks have a vegan dog or a vegan burger.

If you’re going to a dinner party or pot luck, instead of bringing a bottle of wine, bring a vegan dish or dessert.

Other ways you can make a difference for animals, for the health of people and the environment:

• Wear a vegan t-shirt, hoody, necklace or pin (click here to order IDA vegan merchandise)
• Get a personalized license plate or license plate frame
• Put bumper stickers on your car, laptop and notebooks
• Use an animal rights quote in your email signature and include the link to our vegan campaign (http://www.idausa.org/campaigns/vegan/vegan.html)
• Use Facebook and Twitter to politely promote the benefits of a vegan diet
• Set a goal to speak to at least one person each day about veganism
• Feed your dogs a healthy vegan dog food
• Show someone a video about the horrors of factory farming or about the health and environmental benefits of living a vegan lifestyle
• Cook or buy a non-vegan a vegan meal

It’s up to us to try to enlighten others and do all we can to help animals.

So keep your eye on the tofu and take it one person at a time.  Let’s do this!  Go Team Vegan!

Click here to support IDA’s Vegan Campaign

Work every day of your life to right what is wrong.

All Vegan Cheesy Chik-n Fingers! Made with Match Vegan Meats, Daiya Cheddar & Eco-Planet Non-Dairy Cheddar Crackers.

World Go Vegan Week starts Sunday and if like many people you are trying out the vegan lifestyle for the first time, you might find yourself wondering : Do I have to give up everything I loved as kid to try this out? The answer : Nope!

I’ve been vegan a long time and even I – from time to time – get nostalgic for food I enjoyed in my childhood. I loved those little cheddar cheese goldfish crackers. One of my favorite memories was my grandfather putting them in my soup every Fall. I took them to school with me almost everyday in a sandwich bag and when I went vegan I admit I missed them. That’s why when I found these Eco-Planet Non-Dairy Cheddar Crackers I may have freaked out a little. They have filled that space in my heart that thought about those those little crackers from time to time. They also made it possible to veganize Betty Crocker’s cheesy crunchy chicken fingers (see recipe below) which would be a hit at any football or baseball playoff party this Fall… or just a Thursday night dinner.

Here’s a few other childhood favorites that some of you newly veganed folks might be interested in to help make that transition into cruelty free living :

• Marshmallows! There are several brands these days that make vegan marshmallows. Sweet & Sara are a favorite of mine and they even have special Halloween marshmallows shaped like bats & ghosts on sale right now. There is also Chicago Soy Dairies’ Dandies which are pretty perfect in Hot Cocoa.
• Which brings me to Instant Hot Cocoa! Ah!Laska’s Organic Instant Hot Cocoa is a pretty extraordinary treat for those nights when you just want to add water.
• Vegan Corn Dogs by Cedar Lake Foods. That pretty much says all I need to say about that.
• Memory can be kind to some old friends – like Cheetos and I actually think Tings are much better version of the cheesy snack puffs. I think Tings are actually better than most things. To quote Food Fight Grocery “Better than squirrels and kittens hugging.”
• Of course a lot of you are wondering what to do about Vegan Halloween candy. VegNews has a great list of Vegan Candy you can give away that night and of course snack on between trick-or-treaters.

OK back to our recipe…

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Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com

Emily Deschanel, the award winning star of the hit television series Bones, is endorsing IDA’s World Go Vegan Week. Emily says, “The 5th annual World Go Vegan Week is taking place this year from October 24th through 31st. This week is a celebration of compassion and a time to take action for animals, the environment and everyone’s well-being. A plant-based diet not only improves your health, it significantly reduces your carbon footprint and preserves resources for future generations. So please join me in creating a healthy future and go vegan for World Go Vegan Week.” Emily Deschanel

Emily is a supporter of animal rights and environmental causes and a long-time vegan. She advocates for cruelty-free makeup, organic cotton clothing and green lifestyles. Her resent wedding to writer-actor David Hornsby was a totally organic, vegan affair complete with vegan s’mores! Yum! Thank you Emily for using your Hollywood starlet status to help spread the message of a healthy vegan diet. To learn more about World Go Vegan Week and how you can participate, please click here.

We gave edible underwear a whole new meaning as In Defense of Animals joined forces with PETA, East Bay Animal Advocates and Bay Area Vegetarians to march in San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade Extravaganza on June 27, 2010. When I arrived the morning of the parade, our huge flatbed truck/float was filled with voluminous fruits and luscious veggies. Ladies were pinning greens on skimpy bikinis. One gal had a watermelon cut in half strung on as a bikini top. I joined in the fun and sprouted kale on my mini-skirt. Most of the gals looked like they jumped in a giant salad and came out just covered in strategic places.

There was something for everyone and the more modest among us had the option of t-shirts made especially for the day that read “Vegan Pride” or a variety of costumes. There was a cow, a chicken and a few pigs that held “Please Don’t Eat Me!” signs and a carrot, stalk of celery and other veggies whose signs read, “Eat ME!”

The best part was the outreach. For a long stretch of 8 blocks on Market St., we furiously passed out an estimated 17,000 pieces of veg literature to the lively crowd while smiling, cheering, waving and dancing to Lady Gaga! A few scantly clad veggie people danced on top of the truck “whipping” each other with chard stalks. This was our opportunity to show the world that vegans are not cloudy, dark, doom and gloom types, but fun, humorous, gorgeous and healthy! You can see all the pictures from our adventure here.

We were warmly received and we all felt that this sympathetic crowd allowed us to offer our message of compassion. I hope this inspires you to want to get out, take advantage of the summer months and do some veg outreach! We can provide you with materials and support. We also have World Go Vegan Week coming up Oct. 24 – 31. Start planning your event now! Contact hope@idausa.org if you would like to participate and do some outreach in your area.