You don’t have to look very hard online to find gory images or video footage of unfathomable things happening to animals.  These images may, in some cases push people over the line to become vegan at a time when they are receptive. But we have observed that even when faced with violent and graphic images or footage, most people are able to quickly rationalise their continued consumption and use of animals. Some of the reasons for this are as follows.

It is natural to want to believe that you are not supporting horrendous activities. Sometimes footage comes from unknown sources. This leads to an assumption that it’s come from a far-off place. People are quick to rationalise that there are laws or regulations that protect animals “at home”.  It is easier to believe terrible things only happen overseas and that things must be different and “better” locally.

It’s natural to try to find and believe information that supports your current view.  Often graphic and violent footage comes to light through undercover investigations. Regulatory bodies are quick to respond after an exposé and assure us that a facility has been shut down, staff have been reprimanded or removed, or there was some other anomaly that has since been rectified. This can make it easy to think that issues are not widespread, or that the upsetting incident was an aberration, a once-off, and everywhere else is okay.

In any case, a big problem with graphic and violent imagery is that it leads vegans and non-vegans alike down a path of focussing on a certain activity or species. This shifts the focus of advocacy to treatment and welfare rather than use.

There is no “good” way to exploit sentient beings who can never understand why they are being exploited or give informed consent. A focus on better treatment and welfare can leave people under an impression that it is acceptable to exploit animals if it is done in a “better way”.

We don’t want to get bogged down in conversations about “animal cruelty”, bigger cages or banning certain farming practices for example. In other words, we don’t want to get bogged down discussing matters of animal welfare. This is because animals have the right to not be used as human property, period. Whether that is for food, clothing, entertainment or any other use. This is an important distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. When we focus on animal welfare, we are unwittingly condoning animal use.

These are a few important reasons why we don’t use graphic imagery on our pages. It’s been a long while between blog posts, so we’ll be working on getting more writing done as well as having some guest bloggers contribute to the page. Thanks for reading and supporting the page, it means a lot!

If you have any feedback or if you’d like to become a Happy Vegan Living contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.

Gift giving and sharing a meal are ways in which we may connect or show those around us how much we care. As a vegan, this can be a bit of an emotional minefield, if you allow it to be.

Here are our top tips for Christmas:

1.            Host your own vegan Christmas

For the past four years we have hosted our own vegan Christmas at home. We invite friends and family (both vegan and non-vegan). Some years there’s been lots of people, some years a couple. Every year, it is relaxing, fun and enjoyable. We make loads of “traditional” Christmas food – all vegan of course!

2.            BYO delicious vegan food to share

Hosting Christmas may not be for you.  If you’re heading to a non-vegan gathering, take along a couple of delicious vegan dishes. This is your insurance policy to having a full tummy of guaranteed vegan food. It is also a great conversation starter and advocacy opportunity. If our experiences are anything to go by, everyone is always interested in the delicious food we bring. It always gets eaten – and not all by us! We love hearing non-vegans say how delicious our vegan food is! Best of all you avoid being a “hangry” vegan and reinforcing the old stereotype of the angry vegan with nothing to eat.

Some ideas of dishes to take along:
• Pasta bake/salad
• Potato bake/salad
• A big tray of roast veggies (doesn’t get much easier) – pack some vegan friendly gravy powder too!
• Coleslaw or other salad

If you have a sweet tooth you may like throw a dessert in your cache too. There are several vegan friendly Christmas puddings available here in Australia. Check out your local vegan options or whip up your favourite dessert.

Other easy things we often bring along to gatherings include vegan friendly crisps/nibbles and vegan friendly wine.

If you are concerned about offending a well meaning host, have a chat with them in advance. Let them know that you would love to contribute to the day by bringing along some dishes to share. Showing up to the party with food to share, drinks and a big smile is usually met with great enthusiasm!

3.            Pitch your gift ideas ahead of time

Don’t wait for Christmas day to receive a pile of non-vegan gifts. Although you may not be able to predict everyone who is likely to give you a gift, when it comes to family and close friends, it’s often possible to have a chat in advance about gift giving.

Some suggestions include:
• no gifts
• donation to your favourite vegan run animal sanctuary
• your favourite vegan sweets/chocolate
• your favourite vegan wine

4.            Leave the angst at home

If you have made the decision to head along to a non-vegan Christmas celebration, do yourself a favour and leave anger or hostility at home. We know it can be difficult to be around loved ones while they consume the flesh and secretions of sentient beings. Chances are you have had many conversations about veganism with them in the past. You might be wondering how they can continue to consume animals. There are great opportunities for advocacy at Christmas time, but avoid heated arguments. Share your delicious vegan food, share the message of animal rights with a calm and rational approach and, of course share the joy and the positivity that is veganism!

By bringing your vegan food, sharing a positive vegan message, and not living up to the stereotypes of the angry and argumentative vegan, you are changing the dialogue about veganism. Be patient with your family/friends who are yet to understand veganism and remember:

The last thing other animals need is another reason not to care about them. How we act towards other people can provide just such a reason. Being rude or judgmental [sic] doesn’t help any nonhuman. A coping technique I use (to quell my impatience, when I feel it bubbling-up in my throat) is to think of the people who ask questions I’ve been asked hundreds of times as mirrors. Yes, I think of them as mirrors. When I look at them, in other words, what I see is a reflection of who I used to be.

Like them, there was a time when I didn’t know how other animals were being treated.

Like them, there was a time when I knew but didn’t care.

Like them, there was a time when I knew and cared but not enough to change how I was living.

Like them, there was a time when I was . . . them!

That’s what I try to remind myself. I don’t want to come across as self righteous or arrogant. That would give the questioner another reason not to care about other animals, and I don’t want to do that—I don’t want to be that reason.

Tom Regan – via ARzone 20 May 2011 Full interview can be found here.

We hope that these tips help you have a joyous holiday season! If you have any questions, comments or feedback, get in touch with us via email or any of our social media pages.

Much love from the Happy Vegan Living team x

Thank you so much for clicking the link to read this – it means a lot! We’ll try to keep it short and sweet as we know time is precious.

Whether you are vegan or not, we hope that you enjoy the Happy Vegan Living community.

We are 100% volunteer run, so we do this in our “spare” time (ha! What is that?) between working full time, and generally living life. We won’t ever ask for donations to run the page, and we want you to know that. Your company is enough for us .

We find people assume we must be activists or health buffs or gluten free (what’s with that?). Online it can be quite a minefield of graphic images and heated arguments. To make matters worse, there is also a lot of confusing information about what veganism really is.  Not to mention vegans arguing with vegans making it hard for newcomers.

We can’t help but wonder, is this helping animals? Is this helping vegans? Is this helping people to become vegan?

Cue Happy Vegan Living.  

As the name suggests, we are Happy, we are Vegans, and at the time of publishing, we are Living .

We have created this space for both vegans and for people thinking of going vegan that is positive and friendly.  As we mentioned above, this is a community, not a business. We share ethical vegan education, (always minus the graphic imagery), recipes and vegan businesses and events.

You’ll see the words “easy” and “quick” on our recipes (we work full time remember!). We do apologise in advance for our bad food pics. The meals we post are our meals, if a photo is standing between us and eating, the photo is going to lose each time! In saying that, we think our recipes are actually pretty good, so we do hope you give them a go and enjoy them.

Supporting vegan/100% plant-based business and events is important to us. Please know that we do not receive any “kick-backs” or freebies from the businesses we share. Sometimes we will have visited as paying customers, and others we have become aware of online. If you know of or run a vegan business or event you would like us to share on our pages, we would love to hear about it.

This is a space we have created for you, so if there are other things you want to see on the page, please get in touch with us. 

Thanks for reading our first blog post! Love it? Hate it? Don’t care? Let us know anyway – contact us via our social pages or by emailing contact@happyveganliving.com

Serves: 6 
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 8 cups vegetable stock  
• 2 tbsp of soy or tamari sauce  
• 1 tbsp of finely grated fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp of white miso paste
• 1 tsp sriracha or more to taste
• 3 large cloves crushed
• 3-6 dried shiitake mushrooms
• ½ red onion finely sliced
• Greens of your choice – you cannot use too much greens so use as much as you like – remember that greens usually reduce down in volume significantly
• 1 -2 cup mushrooms sliced (you can use regular button mushrooms or Asian stir fry mushroom mix if you like)
• 1 block tofu (optional)
• Noodles of your choice cooked per package instructions and drained (we use Ramen noodles, udon noodles etc)

TOPPINGS: Fresh Chili, shallots, coriander, lemon/lime wedge

Method

1. Add water, stock, soy sauce, ginger, miso, sriracha and garlic to a large pot and bring to a boil. If you have time boil it for ten mins or so to let the flavours really get in there but it isn’t necessary.
2. Add, onion, mushrooms and greens to pot and cook for 5 minutes (overcooking isn’t the end of the world but your greens will basically disintegrate).
3. Carefully add the tofu and noodles* and cook for an additional three minutes.
4. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed. Ladle soup into bowls and add optional toppings.

* If you are making a big batch of this soup for yourself to have later meals DO NOT add the noodles as when you refrigerate the soup for later – the noodles will continue to absorb the soup and become too squashy. Just pop the cooked noodles in the bottom of your bowl and pour the hot soup over them when you serve yourself so that you have nice soup and cando fresh noodles when you go to have leftovers.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

* The nutritional information provided above is to be used as a guide only and your meal may differ

Serves: 10
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes (2 hours including chilling)

Ingredients

• 2 sheets of vegan friendly puff pastry
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup vegan friendly custard powder  

• ¾ cup corn flour
• 4 cups of your favourite plant-based milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 60 grams of Nuttelex or vegan butter substitute/margarine

Icing Ingredients

• 2 cups of icing sugar (sifted)
• 1 teaspoon Nuttelex
• Passion fruit pulp (about 1 passion fruit) – we keep a tin in the pantry for impromptu vanilla slice *alternatively if you don’t have passion fruit use 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
• 1 – 2 teaspoons of water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 C. Place the puff pastry sheets on lined oven trays. Prick with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes at 200C or until lightly browning on top. When you remove them from the oven flatten them if they are too “puffy” with a clean tea towel as you want them flat for the slice.
2. Mix the caster sugar, cornflour and custard powder in a saucepan. Gradually add milk, whisking continually to ensure no lumps form.
3. Add the Nuttelex/ vegan butter mixing continuously until the custard is thick over medium / high heat.
4. Remove from stove top and add the vanilla.
5. Let everything cool slightly. Place in a 22 cm square tin, first the pastry, then spread the custard evenly over the first sheet of pastry then place the second sheet of pastry on top. Place in the refrigerator.
6. Once completely cool, make the icing and ice the slice

Icing

Place icing sugar, Nuttelex (vegan butter) and passion fruit pulp in a bowl and mix. Add small amounts of water at a time until you have a medium textured spreadable icing. Spread evenly over the top of the cool slice. Only cut the slice when completely cool.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

This recipe is adapted from: https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/vanilla-slice-l1483.html

We haven’t tried it yet but it could make a great 24h snack served with vegan ice cream…

Serves: 3 (2 pancakes per serve)
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup of rolled oats
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate (baking) soda
• 1 tsp of cinnamon powder (substitute nutmeg if preferred)
• 1 scoop of vegan protein powder (we used White Wolf Nutrition Vanilla – you could definitely experiment here with different flavours for your pancakes)
• 1 medium banana
• 1 cup of your favourite mylk (we use Pure Harvest Activated Almond Milk)

Note – depending on the protein powder you use, as well as the sweetness of your banana, you can optionally add 1 tbsp of sweetener such as coconut sugar, agave etc. However,we do not use additional sweetener.

Method

1. Simply blend all items in your high-powered blender until it creates a smooth batter
2. Prepare a pan with a light spray of oil and heat to medium-high heat. Measure out 1/3 of a cup of batter (this makes one pancake) and add the batter to the hot pan
3. The pancake is ready to flip when there are bubbles forming on the batter. But be warned, if your pan is too hot you can get bubbles too early and your pancake will then be difficult to flip!
4. Once you have navigated flipping the pancake, cook the other side for a couple of minutes. Again, if your pan is too hot you can get a brown outer with an under cooked middle. Every stove top is different so have a play with getting the right temp and timing for flipping your pancakes

Serve with berries or other fruit, maple syrup or your favourite vegan yoghurt for a delicious but guilt free breakfast or snack.

They will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days if you don’t eat them before then (you will).

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

This recipe is adapted from: http://www.littlewellnesscorner.com/recipe/easy-healthy-vegan-protein-pancakes/ 

Serves: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 tsp oil (olive or vegetable)
• 1 diced onion
• 1 garlic clove – crushed
• (Optional) – Chilli – fresh of flakes
  
• 1 400g tin of diced/chopped tomatoes
• 2 celery sticks, sliced
  
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 400g tin of four bean mix
• 2-3 tbsp Vegan pesto – we use IPastai Vegan Basil Pesto available at Woolworths or Rosa’s Dairy Free Pesto available at many small grocers or wholefood/health food stores
• 150g baby spinach (half a family size bag)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley or coriander to garnish

Method

1. Heat a fry pan to a medium-high heat
2. Add the olive oil and the onion, garlic and chilli to the pan and cook till the onion is soft
3. Add celery, un-drained tinned tomatoes (chop up if they are whole), tomato paste and bean mix
4. Bring to boil, simmer, covered for about 5 minutes
5. Stir in pesto and spinach, cook for another 1 minute
6. Season to taste
7. Serve and garnish with fresh herbs

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

Serves: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

• One large onion – diced
• 1-2 tbsp Olive oil 
• 1 Birdseye chilli
  • OR 1 tbsb of chilli powder
  • OR 1 Cayenne chilli if less heat preferred
• 1 tbsb of cumin
• 1 tbsb of oregano
• 1 tbsb of hot paprika
• 1 tbsb of chopped coriander
• 1 tbsb of chopped jalapeño chilli (optional)
• 1 400g tin of beans (black beans, maxi beans, kidney beans – we prefer black beans) or you could use lentils, tofu or a Vegan mince like TVP (textured vegetable protein) –  whatever you have in the pantry
• 1 400g tin of diced/chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp of porcini powder (not essential if you don’t have this it is mushroom powder it makes it super yummy)
• 1 tsp of sugar, agave nectar or maple syrup
• You can include other suitable ingredients such as corn, diced capsicum (peppers), 
  

Method

1. Heat a deep dish fry pan (or saucepan) to a medium-high heat
2. Add the olive oil and the onion to the pan and fry for 2 minutes
3. Add chilli, cumin, oregano, paprika and coriander  and fry until onions become translucent
4. Add remaining ingredients, reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes stirring occasionally
5. If the chilli is drying out while simmering, add small amounts of water to maintain the desired consistency
6. Serve with your favourite Mexican dish —  Tacos, Nachos, Burritos, Tortillas, salad or eat on its own for tasty high protein dish

This dish can be easily stored in portions and frozen and reheats easily in the microwave.

This recipe was originally adapted from  “Mexican Vegetarian Cooking” by Edith Metcalfe De Plata Healing Arts Press  (1983)

Nutritional Guide

The following approximation is based on using black beans, sugar, a red chilli and including Jalapenos.

Amount per serving:

Serves: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

• 1.5-2 cup red lentils – we make it with 2 because I like it more “lentily”.
• Bunch of coriander (if you hate coriander you could probably use parsley and from memory, the original recipe called for parsley here).
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1.5 tsp ground cumin
• 1 brown onion
• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 8 cups of Vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp Olive oil
• Juice of half a lemon.
  

Method

1. Chop onion and cook in olive oil in a large pot until soft
2. Add chopped garlic, turmeric and cumin and stir through for a minute or two
3. Rinse lentils and add to the onion and garlic and stir through
4. Add stock and leave soup to simmer for about 30 minutes until the lentils are cooked (soft)
5. Add coriander (we usually add a lot, but add as much as you like) and the lemon juice
6. Allow that to simmer through for another 5 minutes

Serve on its own or with some crusty bread. Left overs are great for a quick lunch or dinner.

Nutritional Guide

The following approximation is based on 2 cups of lentils.

Amount per serving: