GoVegan.net

Do you want to make history? from The Vegan Society on Vimeo.

Hello my fabulous friends!!
I am about to hold an online fundraiser for the www.victoriaveganfest.com I am writing to ask if you have any goods or services you would like to donate. I am looking for anything and everything that you think would sell. 100% of the $$ raised goes to the costs of running the festival.

An example of some of the items I am selling are:

$500 for vegan author Sarah Kramer to sing a ukulele song of the persons choice for a youtube video. Yikes 😉
$150 for a painting by Gerry Kramer
$150 gift basket from Vega
$75 gets you a 10 minute facetime conversation with vegan author Sarah Kramer 🙂
$50 gets you a limited edition Victoria Vegan Fest t-shirt
$10 gets you a twitter shout out
Etc. Etc.

If you have anything you’d like to donate whether it be your services, an autograph, a gift card, a massage, a trip to Brazil … whatever you think would sell well on the fundraising website. I would really appreciate it. Lemme know asap if you can help by e-mailing me HERE.

I’ve been so busy that I totally forgot to blog about the bakesale!  🙂

First thing – I have to thank all the volunteers who came out to our 3rd annual Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale Day event. You guys rock!!

Thanks to a small army of generous and imaginative bakers, we had three tables full of goodies. We fell short of our ambitious goal of $2000 but we did manage to raise $1039.98, which will go towards the Vegan Fest. Wahooo!

The tables were set up beside my store – and at 12noon the Vegan food frenzy began!! 🙂

MUST EAT! YUM!!

So much to choose from!!

We also had a ton of raffle prizes donated to us!! This included a raffle, with a ton of amazing prizes donated to us by Vega, Sarah’s Place, Tattoo Zoo, Vshoen,  Vancouver Island Paragliding, artist Martin Machacek, OrganicAthlete Victoria,  Friends of Animals, Lotus Pond, Green Cuisine and Purica

There will be more fundraisers coming up in the next couple of months so stay tuned for that. For those of you out-of-towners who want to help out – we will be launching an online fundraising page very soon. Join our email list to keep posted on our events

Thanks again to everyone who came out!! 🙂

Hey everyone! The bake sale is on Saturday, and this is all the 411 for you, please read!

Please bring your goodies by Sarah’s Place (533 Pandora Ave) around 11:30am on Saturday. Later is fine as well, tho we’d prefer the majority by noon. If you cannot make to it Sarah’s Place on Saturday, you can drop off at Dave’s place on Friday – I’m near the Thrifty’s in Fairfield.

Ingredients Listing – please be sure to write up a list of all ingredients! Consider sharing your recipe as well. (Very important for people with allergies. Frustrating seeing something that *might* be fine, but not knowing!)

Pricing – no need to list a price, all items will be ‘By Donation’.

Fun Item Names – don’t be shy, have some fun naming your goodies, and feel free to draw or create a graphic! There may be a prize for most creative!

Cupcake Alert – I’m amazed, so far only ONE PERSON has offered cup cakes!!?? What’s going on? We need more cup cakes, stat!!!

Baking Tips – HERE are some tips for vegan baking, and also watch out for ‘secret’ animal products, such as whey, casein, honey, gelatin, etc..

Containers & Presentation – hopefully you can come back later to pick up your container, but if not, we’ll hold onto for you, PLEASE LABEL WITH YOUR NAME IF YOU WANT IT BACK!! Also, ideally baked goods should be easy to walk off with, with just a napkin or in a paper bag. (If your name isn’t on your container, we’re not responsible if it goes missing..sorry!)

Confirm What You’re Bringing – please let Dave know if you haven’t already, we haven’t heard from a number of people and are a little worried!

Volunteers – 1-2 people needed to oversee the Raffle portion, and another 1-2 for the event itself, email Dave if you can help and want to hang out and chat with people! Also, Dave need help transporting supplies, prizes, etc.. Is anyone in the Fairfield area driving that can help out? Email Dave if you can help.

Raffle – As a thank-you, all bakers will receive a ticket into the raffle – lots of great prizes this year!

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns, otherwise we’ll see you Saturday morning.

Again: THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! It’s so great to have you showing off how good vegan food is, and setting such amazing examples, as well as enabling us to organize the Victoria Vegan Festival. =)

I was a guest on MikeyPod and had SO much fun. Have a listen …

It all started innocently enough…

I was reading through my twitter feed and my friend @melisser mentioned something about Tater-Tot pizza … so we tweeted back and forth about it and suddenly @LaziestVegans started to tweet about Tater-Tot Pizza. Next thing I knew @DiscerningBrute was part of the conversation and then @AJShannon and @SnarkyVegan both weighed in with their opinion …It became a wild frenzy of back and forth about the perfect Tater-Tot pizza.

After talking about all the different topping possibilities for our fantasy Tater-Tot pizza … I decided talk was cheap and made one for dinner on Monday.  😉

Instead of tomato sauce I made Mushroom Gravy (from the GoVegan! w/Sarah Kramer app) and set it aside to thicken up. Then I made a quick GF pizza crust (thanks Bob’s Redmill) and while that was rising – I got to work on the Tater-Tots.

I wanted the tots to be crunchy so I pre-baked them until they started to turn golden brown. Then I added gravy to the pizza dough and topped it with the pre-cooked Tater-Tots and a healthy helping of Daiya vegan cheese. Then tossed the pizza back in the oven and baked until the cheese had melted.

It turned out pretty great but I think next time I would bake the Tater-Tots until they were darker. I like a crispy Tater-Tot!!

I think that because I’m Canadian and because this pizza is a combination of gravy, potatoes and cheese that my version of this pizza should be called Poutine Pizza. What do you think?  🙂

Hey everyone!
A quick reminder that our 3rd Annual World Wide Vegan Bake Sale event is this coming Saturday, Apr 28th, from 12-4pm!

We have a new location this year, at Sarah’s Place, in Market Square off Pandora, which is good, offering some shelter from the elements, and also more space to spread out! We could use more bakers – we’re hoping for a huge array of vegan goodies, so please get in touch with Dave HERE if you’d like to contribute something, either sweet or savory!

The money raised will all be going to the Victoria Vegan Fest – mark Canada Day off on your calendar for the first-ever Vegan Festival in Victoria! We’ll have speakers and tables and all sorts of events to celebrate veganism. Check the website for more info.

Don’t forget to wear your eating pants!! See you on Saturday!! 🙂

Had a great weekend. I got to see Raven. Gosh … he’s the most beautiful baby! Look at those dimples!!

My friend Chris Hold came over from Vancouver to do a guest spot and he stayed at our house while he was here. Chris was Gerry’s apprentice and has blossomed into a great tattoo artist and I knew I wanted to get tattoo’d by him while he was here but what to get? What to get??

I decided on an apple with a heart shaped bite. 🙂

It’s close to my elbow so it was a little painful in spots but Fergus made me feel better…  😉

After my tattoo – the night turned into a tattoo party!  Chris jumped on the massage table and Gerry and Kyle put stencils on both of Chris’s legs.

And then they both tattoo’d Chris AT THE SAME TIME!!

Tattoo guys have the worst posture …

This is the tattoo Gerry did on Chris.

It’s our shop tattoo. It’s a tradition we have, everybody who works here gets this tattoo eventually. Chris did his apprenticeship at Tattoo Zoo years ago, and never ended up getting one, so Gerry gave him one.

It’s not a tattoo party unless Gerry is telling stories … I love my man! 🙂

To make the weekend even better – our friend Greg Bennick popped into town. He was here for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We didn’t get to see much of him as he was so busy but we did spend a few fun hours together. We had Chris in the guest room and Greg on the couch. I love a full house!! 🙂

On Sunday Larsen Music Ukulele Week started and I went to the Ukulele Love-In.

It was so fun to play ukulele with a group of people. 🙂

Monday I cleaned the house, ran errands and then Gerry and I went for a hike around Thetis Lake.

Great weekend …

It’s Larsen Music’s Ukulele Week in Victoria and I’ve been invited to be a guest judge for the Ukulele Dinner/Contest on Wed night (6pm-9pm) at The Fernwood Inn.

Details are on the website HERE.

I hope you can make it. It looks like it’s going to be lots of fun!  🙂

YAYYYY! I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be speaking the New York BlogHer 2012 Conference on Aug 3-4th!!

Who’s going?? Show of hands?? 🙂

For more information about BlogHer’12 go HERE.