We at Friends of Animals wish everyone a happy and healthy World Vegan Day. The international celebration is the 1st of November. This year’s theme is vegan diversity.

The vegan diet itself is diverse, drawing from worldwide traditions, and especially influenced by Mediterranean, North African, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican and Caribbean kitchens, where good growing seasons for grains and beans have been complemented by rich arrays of herbs and spices.

The vegan lifestyle, too, encompasses an ethic without borders – between species or between peoples.

Ideas for introducing friends to vegan living:

Adopting a plant-based diet is the most important step you can take to celebrate biodiversity and respect living beings. A vegan spares more animals each year than a busy sanctuary can rescue. Vegans save trees, as the diet bypasses the need for grazing land.

All life ultimately depends on plants, which do not have to be wastefully passed through an animal in order to be food for us.

Vegan Day — and every day — is an opportunity to learn and tell others how animal-free food growing is possible, and environmentally essential.

Gift idea for you or a friend who wants to celebrate with you:

Friends of Animals’ newly published cookbook, Dining With Friends, offers recipes to welcome the holiday season. It’s all here: Greek Bean Soup, Walnut Pear Salad, Tofu Hummos with Toasted Cumin Seed, or a rice and bean dish (Arroz y Habichuelas) to bring back the warm aroma of home, wherever your travels might take you.

It’s a diverse and life-affirming cookbook that includes a range of fresh, unique ideas from the playful to the elegant.

You can order Dining With Friends: The Art of North American Vegan Cuisine (2005) here at the Friends’ of Animals online store. Foreword by John Robbins. As seen in the November/December 2005 Holiday Special issue of Vegetarian Times.

And thank you for supporting our efforts to make vegan cooking effortless.

Happy 61st birthday to the Vegan Society

To the people who started the movement 61 years ago: Congratulations! Much more information appears on the Society’s site at www.vegansociety.com.

Priscilla Feral
President,
Friends of Animals