From the 9th to the 12th of February, Gentle World volunteers provided healthy, delicious vegan food to participants at a healing convention at The Herb Shack Café in our local town of Kaitaia, New Zealand.
With both practitioners and patients requiring gluten-free meals three times a day (plus desserts), we had a great opportunity to exercise our creative cooking skills, while demonstrating to the recipients how scrumptious and satisfying vegan food can be. We even managed to provide some of the produce from our own veganic gardens – including potatoes, carrots, beets, zucchini and fresh sweet corn, which (as you can see) earned an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the diners.
Incredibly delicious food is a huge part of Gentle World’s outreach. When non-vegans are eating vegan food for the first time (or even for the hundredth time), it’s essential that the food is nothing short of excellent. That concept has been the basis for Gentle World’s food-based education since the very beginning of our organization, thirty years ago.
For vegan educational events, there are certain dishes that are guaranteed to win over even those who are the most reluctant – cashew-carrot paté, tofu eggless salad and dishes made from seitan are sure winners… But a gluten-free menu required that we forget about seitan and baked goods and focus on dishes like baked tofu chunks (below), herb roasted veggies, raw nori rolls and lots of delicious salads.
Creamy chocolate pudding and frozen chocolate ‘chunkies’ provided a sweet treat without flour, and breakfasts were covered with tofu omelets, hash browns and sometimes fresh fruit smoothies. All were met with rave reviews.
After the huge success of the four days, our friends at The Herb Shack made an official request for Gentle World to cater their future events, where they will be hosting detox patients in need of nourishment that will inspire them to make lifestyle changes for the long-term.
What could be more important to detoxing than eliminating the products of cruelty from one’s own body and home? We believe that veganism is an absolutely essential step on the way to all healing, whether it be physical, psychological or even the planetary healing that we are all seeking.
