{"id":2604,"date":"2016-10-01T20:55:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T19:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tetrisandcheesecakes.com\/?p=2604"},"modified":"2016-10-01T20:55:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T19:55:04","slug":"blogtober-day-1-vegan-fest-edinburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/?p=2604","title":{"rendered":"Vegan Fest Edinburgh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the first of October, one of my favourite months of the year and my very first<\/em> Blogtober! You might remember I did #BEDM<\/a> back in May, when I somehow managed to blog every day that month by the skin of my teeth; well I’m evidently slightly masochistic and have decided to do the same again!<\/p>\n

I thought it would be nice to kick off this Blogtober<\/span><\/strong> with a wee visit to Scottish Vegan Fest<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/a>I’ve been to the smaller Vegan Festivals but not the Big Kahuna.<\/em>\u00a0I looked on with envy as I saw posts on Instagram and Facebook with the most epic food hauls, and vowed I would get there this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I met up with my fabulous friend and fellow blogger Siobhan<\/strong><\/span> from Siobhan Claude Van Damme<\/a>, <\/span><\/strong>who I’ve been dying to have a catch-up with. Siobhan is veggie, but even before we met IRL she always posted lovely comments on my Instagram pics of vegan goodies and was always just interested in trying <\/span>all<\/em> the vegan cake. \u00a0Soon as we walked in we realised we needed a tactic. The Corn Exchange is a\u00a0reasonably sized venue, there were 100+ stallholders, and every vegan in Edinburgh was likely to be there. We decided we would do a “food lap”, followed by an “everything else lap”, so we basically ate our way around the room and then had a look at the beauty, cleaning product and clothing stalls when we were too full to shovel any more cake into our faces. I swear it’s a vegan binge eating mecca. \u00a0We overheard a lass behind us in a <\/span>queue say to her friend “you should just accept that we are\u00a0going to eat a LOT of unhealthy food today,\u00a0and we are\u00a0going to love it”. It was a queue for cake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things We Ate<\/h2>\n

First we said hi to the lovely lassies at Organically Yours<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, a vegan AND gluten free small business based in Portobello. They do cakes, muffins, and “nice cream”. As this was our first stop, Siobhan and I just started out with a muffin each; Siobhan went for the Super Woman Muffin\u00a0with blueberry, cranberry, flax, chia seeds, and pomegranate juice, and I went for the apple and cinnamon spice. I honestly don’t know what magic they’ve worked on their cakes, but these were incredible! Great if you are a vegan, have food intolerances, or even if you just like great cake. Oh and of course I had to include the requisite pic of one of my friends eating, because apparently that is a thing I do.<\/p>\n

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\nNext up was the Sgaia Mheat<\/a> <\/span><\/strong>stall, just in time to nab the very last sandwich. This was at about 2:15pm, and they had just about sold out of\u00a0everything<\/em>. Hilary and Alberto are the nicest people, and I’m just so happy their business has become such an awesome success! Every VegFest and Vegan Quarter, they have the biggest queues of folk wanting to buy their plant-based steaks, burgers, varieties of bacon, and that incredible Herbed Roast.<\/p>\n

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\nI’d told Siobhan all about the doughnuts at ConsiderIt Chocolates<\/a>,<\/span><\/strong> so of course that was our next stop. Salted caramel filled deliciousness, which there is a photo of me devouring somewhere on her phone. Thankfully that’s not surfaced on Instagram yet ;-).<\/p>\n

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\nI was lured in by the promise of a mushroom and hazelnut sandwich with cranberry and orange dressing at the Holy Cow<\/strong> <\/span>stall, and whilst we were waiting picked up FIVE slices of apple pie. I mean, it’s been a long time since I had a proper, old-fashioned apple pie with the lattice top and lashings of cinnamon. Their cakes looked absolutely stunning, and I’ll admit that pie was the only thing I brought home to share with friends.<\/p>\n

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Things We Bought<\/h2>\n

I am a sucker for a chutney, so made a beeline for The Spice Witch<\/a><\/span><\/strong>. Maple and chilli mustard? Cranberry, orange and chilli mustard? MANGO CHUTNEY??? We were there for a good 20 minutes tasting every single one.<\/p>\n

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\nDuring our “everything else lap”, Siobhan and I came across a stall called You Dirty Scrub<\/a><\/span><\/strong>. Selling bath salts and coffee body scrubs that smelled incredible.<\/p>\n

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\nI stopped by the Coalition for the Abolition of the Fur Trade<\/span> <\/strong>stall, and bought myself a couple tops and this wee pin.<\/p>\n

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\nI managed to pick up 5 brightly coloured mineral eyeshadows from Bohemian Chic Mineral Makeup<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, which can be used with a damp brush for an eyeliner effect. I’ll be attempting this when I’ve got a bit of time to play around with them. The colours came up very vibrant on my hand so I have high hopes.<\/p>\n

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\nI made sure to go round to the Humble Stuff<\/span> <\/a><\/strong>stall to say hi to Marie, who I have been chatting to on Twitter for a few weeks now. I first met these guys at a Vegan Fete in Glasgow, bought a couple of their cleaning products and was WOWED. I’m pretty careful about what I use around the house a I have pets, so anything containing toxic ingredients is a big no-no for me. Humble Stuff is all-natural, cruelty-free, and contains absolutely zero harsh chemicals. Not to mention they smell fabulous. I’d actually just ordered from them online so didn’t buy anything this time, but I honestly cannot recommend these guys enough.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the first of October, one of my favourite months of the year and my very first Blogtober! You might remember I did #BEDM back in May, when I somehow managed to blog every day that month by the skin of my teeth; well I’m evidently slightly masochistic and have decided to do the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[153,205,257,575,587],"class_list":["post-2604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-vegan","tag-corn-exchange","tag-edinburgh","tag-foodie","tag-vegan","tag-vegfest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luciedhog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}