Vegfest Brighton – 2018 🌱

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of posts recently. I haven’t posted in, uhh… a month and a week. Writers block, they call it. Well, bloggers block.

Secondly, I need to apologise for the shitty camera quality in this blog post. I took my nice, new, sleek pro camera with me to get some good shots and silly me left the memory card in my laptop, so I had to resort to rubbish iPhone quality. Moving on…

I thought I’d tell you all about what I got up to yesterday – I went to Vegfestat the Brighton Centre.

Don’t click away just yet – this isn’t a festival to celebrate vegetables as such. It’s a festival showcasing some of the best vegan food around. Actually, it’s not just nosh. There’s absolutely tonnes to see there: beauty and wellness brands, cooking demos, talks, competitions and, obviously my favourite part, food.

I love Vegfest, purely because it helps to fight the stigma around vegan food being shite. Regardless of whether you’re prone to shovel down steak for dinner every night or you’re more of a tofu muncher, you’re made to feel very welcome there and I’d thoroughly recommend it to everyone!

I went with my omni friend this year and she had just as much fun as I did, nabbing all those free samples and eating our way through the stalls. I promise the free samples weren’t the only reason I went!

So, what is there to see? Let’s get started!

First and foremost, let’s talk about the sweet treats. There was an abundance of cakes, cookies, sweets and chocolates on offer here. Halle-fucking-lujah. Guilt-free (kind of) sugary goodness is always a good idea.

The above picture is of Miss Muffin Top’s stand. I got the most amazing honeycomb brownie from there and it was delish (so delish that my Mum and Dad savaged 99% of it when I got home.)

So, as you can see, there was no shortage of sweetness here. You don’t always need animal products to enjoy something lush!

If you’re more of a savoury person, you wouldn’t be missing out either.

What I love most about Vegfest events is that there is so much diversity, and quite literally something for everyone. Pizza, curry, pastries, chips, sushi, burgers and hotdogs were all thrown into the mix – we were spoilt for choice!

For my 3rd Vegfest event, it only made sense to eat my 3rd vegan hot-dog there – and I didn’t regret it! Instead of going for Vegusto’s offerings, I went to a stand called Pig Out, and oh my was that a good hot-dog – way better than any animal-based hot-dog I’d ever had. It was a bit of a full-on carb-load eating a hot-dog topped with mac and cheese and god knows what else, but oh-so worth it.

Damn good. Another stall I loved there was Explore Cuisine – they sell pasta made out of beans n’ shit (a vegan staple) and my absolute favourite is this Edamame & Mung Bean Fettucine – a whopping 40g protein per portion! Anyone who still thinks we need meat to get enough protein can get in the bin.

Another of my favourite things there was this guy who was making fresh sugar cane juice – it was delish and I never knew how healthy the stuff is. Totally recommend it if you haven’t already tried it!

If you’re not a foodie (A.K.A. a right wrongen) there was plenty more to see and do.

See below for my little haul of the day. One thing I was really desperate to get my hands on was the famous Vegenaise by Follow Your Heart , and was gutted when I discovered that they’d sold out by the time I got there!

Luckily, the friendly people at One Planet Pizza decided to give me a jar of their vegenaise… for free! This literally made my entire day, so a big thank you to their lovely team.

Mayonnaise is one of those things I think is so hard to replicate, and I have never found a vegan mayo I actually like… until now! I can safely say I’ll be sticking with vegenaise as it genuinely is as good as they say it is. Winning!

As you can probably tell, I had a fab time yesterday and can’t wait for next years event… mainly just so I can consume 5,000 calories again in one day. If you’ve never been, go! Tickets are a bargain (mine cost £4) and for that little amount you get so much out of the day.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post – I’ve got a new recipe coming soon so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Love, Dayna x

Want to see what my experience at last year’s Vegfest was like? Check it out.