Friday Food: Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale Edition

Vegan cupcakes! Photo from QuintanaRoo at Flickr (aka Emilie of Conscious Kitchen)

Before we get to the actual focus of this post, I want to say this: One of my favorite people in the animal rights movement is Gary Loewenthal of Compassion for Animals, among other endeavors. He is terribly smart and knowledgeable, wonderfully kind, and full of both patience and compassion; back when I was blogging elsewhere, for example, I was continually impressed and grateful whenever I’d be on the verge of blowing a gasket in a trying comment thread, and Gary would show up in the thread — or in my private inbox or sometimes both — with something brilliant and calming and impossibly patient. If you’ve encountered him, whether in person or online, you know that there is something unmistakably genuine and gentle about him — and creative and active too.

And that brings us to the Friday Food aspect of the post (which is deviating from the usual Friday Food recipe content/format). Last year, Gary launched the first Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale event to great success, and this year, it’s even bigger and better. In a world in which so many people (but, on the upside, fewer every day) still ask that so frustrating question, “But what do you eat?” or believe that after going vegan, you can’t have, for example, cheesecake (here’s my favorite) and muffins and cupcakes and all sorts of other baked goodies, vegan food activism, including in the form of bake sales, is an excellent and nonabrasive outreach tool. It gets great vegan food into the hands (and mouths!) of people, it creates opportunities to talk to people about veganism and animal rights, and it provides a way to raise funds for vegan/AR causes all at the same time.

I’m late writing about this because I kept forgetting, and so the 2010 event has  been underway already for a week, but there are sales going on through this weekend too. In the unlikely event that you’re learning about the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale for the first time, (1) I apologize for sucking and not writing about it months ago, but (2) that doesn’t mean you have to wait until next year’s official WWVBS dates to run with Gary’s awesome idea. You can put together vegan bake sales in your community at any time. And summer festivals and fairs and farmers’ markets offer some great opportunities to do that.

Read more about the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale here. And if you want proof of how cool and global this event is, consider too that even as I was writing this, I started seeing links to a CNN.com story on the bake sales! (Just focus on the good parts and try to ignore the annoying continued muddying of “animal rights” and “animal welfare” and the appearance of PETA in the article. Media: It really, truly isn’t necessary to bring up PETA in every article that relates to veganism and animal rights. Really. The organization does not remotely represent all of us.)

Finally, head on over to Herbivore if you want your very own awesome Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale shirt.