Veganuary, World Vegan month and Vegan Day are hard to escape in the winter months, a selection of national awareness days running from October through to January, designed to encourage people dabbling with consuming a plant- based diet to think about the bigger picture and just go for it!
Or, of course, to inform those who are maybe not yet enlightened, about the many benefits this lifestyle can provide, not just for your humble body, but the entire planet and the other wondrous life forms co-habiting on it.
Insight from the Kantar World- data panel tells us that people are already increasingly choosing to eat meat-free dinners, potentially making that jump to veganism less daunting. A consistent 29% of our evening meals are now veggie, and this has grown steadily over the past few years. The biggest spike to date was in 2017 during which we ate an additional 200m meat-free evening meals.
However, like anything that’s perceived as a ‘trend’ or the latest fad diet, there are a lot of stereotypes about what being ‘Vegan’ entails and for most of you this could conjure up the image of a very hipster, cool- specs wearing, (vegan ink) tattoo sporting, animal -testing protesting, mung bean munching character.
Whereas it’s just not an accurate representation these days and as Veganism becomes more mainstream and the media plays a part in making information more accessible – we can see a real opportunity to reinforce the idea of health, wellbeing and treating yourself, without eating boiled chard for the rest of your days.
At Get Cooking we believe in keeping things interesting – creating veggie focussed meals that are tasty, simple and with heaps of flavour.
We know that people get stuck in a recipe rut when cooking generally, and if you factor in diet restrictions… well then, that can leave you with fewer dinner party invites and fewer staple meals on rotation.
So to help give you some inspiration, whether it’s for yourself, cooking for friends or someone in your household , we bring you our ‘Fast Spanish Vegan’ half day course, which runs on Saturday 15th September and is a great introduction for people starting out as vegan or just looking for inspiration for some key veggie/ vegan dishes that they can make again and again. Meals that are versatile and can be adapted for multiple occasions.
We use the classic flavours of Spain and the Mediterranean and create a stunning Vegan Paella dish that your meat- eating friends would be envious of.
Then we try our hand at ‘Cocas’ which are leavened Spanish flatbreads typical of the Catalan region and designed for sharing.
You’re advised to bring a couple of containers to take your new found faves home in and get in the frame of mind for some fun, friends and you-time.
‘Buon Provecho!’ (Spanish for ‘enjoy your meal’.)