By Jamila Alfred, VO Maryland/DC Events and Outreach Coordinator

A few weeks ago I met up with the tremendously talented triplets of 3 Twisted Vegans (3TV)—who make the most delicious vegan comfort food in Washington, DC.

As relatively new businesswomen, triplets Rhoni, Rhone’t, and Rhoneika Jacobs feature their sensational all-vegan menu as a pop-­up restaurant at EatsPlace, near the Georgia Ave-Petworth Metro Station in DC.

I wandered into their pop-­up location with a mouthful of questions and ended up with a mouthful of fries!

As soon as my order of the Rudeboy burger, sweet potato fries, and peanut butter Oreo milkshake hit my table, I went to town with no traces of food left. It’s just so hard to explain how tasty this meal was! The tastes were nostalgic, the textures were spot on, and the homemade sauces were absolutely delicious!

If the food itself wasn’t enough, the sisters were an absolute delight! Despite only being in the early 20s, they were as wise and strong as elders. The more we talked, the more evident it became that these three sisters were beyond passionate about their work.

I’m excited to introduce you to this vegan trio—let’s get to it!

Jamila Alfred: Where did you grow up?

Rhoni Jacobs: We grew up right here in Washington, DC—maybe 2 or 3 minutes away.

Jamila: What’s your collective vegan story?

Rhoneika Jacobs: We went vegan pretty much overnight. Rhoni woke up one morning and said, “Let’s just go vegan!” We had never heard of it or been around people who were vegan. We usually go grocery shopping every Sunday, and she told us on Friday that she wanted us to go vegan, so we had no choice but to get vegan food.

We kind of argued about it for a while because the first thought I had was, “I’m going to be hungry!” We literally just did it overnight. At the grocery store that Sunday, we shopped all vegan and we continued up to now.

Jamila: What is 3TV and how did it come to be?

Rhone’t Jacobs: We would say that 3TV is good food that happens to be vegan. And we put the word “vegans” in our name—even when people didn’t think it was a good idea—because we don’t want people to be afraid of vegan food.

When people think of vegan food they equate it to like a salad, rice, or something small. We’re not small people, so we don’t eat light. We want people’s minds to be changed about how they see vegan food—it could be comfort food, it could be fast food, it could be fatty food. It doesn’t have to be this little salad. We don’t like stuff like that. Everybody needs comfort food!

Jamila: What makes you different from other vegan vendors?

Rhoni: Our food tastes better because we season it like we did in the past. If you can’t cook non-­vegan food, then you can’t cook vegan food. We brought all of our experience with cooking non-­vegan food to vegan food.

Jamila: Did you come across any cooking challenges after you became vegan?

Rhoneika: We’re Jamaican and we thought we’d have a hard time cooking vegan Jamaican food because of certain foods like curried goat, oxtail, beef patties, and stuff like that. Our grandmother is the best cook ever and we wanted to have our food embody the authentic Jamaican flavors she created. Honestly, if you tasted our food, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between our grandmother’s and ours.

Jamila: What’s your favorite music to play while cooking?

Rhone’t: We all agree that it’s rap music! I think it gives you this motivational feeling, but it depends on who you listen to. I listen to Meek Mill, and it’s something that gets you motivated at the gym. Same with cooking—it puts you in the mood to cook. You listen to people you’re relatable to, and he always talks about starting from the bottom or starting from nowhere.

That’s how we feel about Nicki Minaj, too—we love her!

Jamila: Thank you, Rhoni, Rhone’t, and Rhoneika for taking the time to talk to us about your new business!

It’s obvious that these intelligent sisters will surely go far!

Take my advice and drop by EatsPlace in DC on Saturdays from 5:00 pm – ­9:30 pm to get the twisted experience!

By Lori Stultz, VO Rocky Mountain Outreach Coordinator

At the beginning of the year, when I drove through San Antonio, TX to leaflet the four college campuses in and right outside the city, I have to be honest and admit that I didn’t have high expectations.

I wasn’t expecting the students to be as receptive as they were when I handed them VO booklets, or was I expecting the city of San Antonio to be as lively, fun, and veg-friendly as it is—check out the blog post I wrote earlier in the year to get the full scoop on the veg scene in this city.

In fact, I think San Antonio was one of my favorite places I toured through last spring, and it was by far one of the most memorable weeks I had while living on the road.

Most if not all of this was due to the lovely host I stayed with, Kaz Sephton. Despite being the president of the San Antonio Vegan Society, helping rescue and foster stray dogs—San Antonio has one of the highest stray dog populations in the U.S., taking care of her five special needs dogs, and working full time, she made it a point to show me all the unique places in the city and to take me to all the restaurants that served delicious vegan food.

Throughout the entire week we spent together, I kid you not, I spent the majority of that time doubled over in laughter because of Kaz’s amazing sense of humor, and I remember wishing I could stay in San Antonio longer.

Kaz’s dedication to helping animals is inexhaustible, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised when she recently announced that she’d joined a few other animal-loving folks to open a highly unusual shop called Munch On and Beyond.

Chris Sauve, founder of the San Antonio vegan snack company Munch On!, opened Munch On and Beyond in mid-July. She had enough left-over space to let three other vegan food companies move in with her—My Tea Soul; Papi Agave Paletas, Fiestas y Más; and Famous Juice Co.—as well as Kaz’s resale store called Golden Horn of Plenty Resale Shop.

Golden Horn of Plenty is a simple 100 sq. foot room within Munch On and Beyond, and it’s filled to the brim with donated goods—like clothes and household items. 100% of the proceeds from Kaz’s shop go to the Golden Horn Foundation—pending nonprofit status—which goes towards rescuing, providing medical care, and finding forever homes for stray dogs.

If you ask me, bringing multiple small vegan businesses together to work individually, yet as part of one large operating business is such an awesome and inspiring idea for anyone who might be considering starting a vegan business. Teaming up with other people inevitably creates a bigger pool of resources, which yields a greater chance at raising awareness about living a vegan lifestyle.

Needless to say, my love for San Antonio pretty much went through the roof knowing that Munch On and Beyond now exists within this surprisingly veg-friendly city!

So if you’re in or near the San Antonio area, go grab yourself a delicious vegan goodie, plan some time to do some thrifting, and don’t be shy about sharing your experience in the comment section below!

Keep your toes cozy this fall while sparing animals from suffering!

These fabulous Vegan Outreach socks are back by popular demand and available only until Wednesday, November 2.

Get your pair now and show your friends you “stand” for animals! Every pair you purchase will benefit VO’s work to persuade more people to go vegan!

Socks are $14 per pair, plus shipping. Materials are 75% bamboo rayon, 22% nylon, and 3% elastane. One size fits all. Hand-printed at a family-owned, U.S.-based company, using fair labor practices. Packaging made from recycled paper.

Buy a pair now while you can!

By Lori Stultz, VO Rocky Mountain Outreach Coordinator

Last spring when I was leafleting in the American Southwest, I stayed with an incredibly kind and strongly motivated family whose newfound mission was to save as many animals as possible.

When I met Karla Reyes and Victor Flores, their four children, and the rest of their lovely family, none of them had been vegan for even a year, yet their passion and enthusiasm to raise awareness about animals was as strong as those who have been in the movement for years.

Karla’s mother and aunt live in Texas in El Paso, which is where I stayed, and Karla, Victor, and their kids live about two hours northeast in New Mexico in a small mountain town called Cloudcroft.

I’d never even heard of the town until I met Karla and Victor, and I remember wondering to myself whether or not they were actually being serious when they talked about living in a place called Cloudcroft. Maybe I’m the only one that thinks the name of this town sounds like a space alien video game?

The town of Cloudcroft and the surrounding area has a combined population of about 2,000 people. Needless to say, after Karla and Victor went vegan, they didn’t have a great selection of restaurants and grocery stores to enjoy tasty vegan meat and cheese alternatives. More importantly, there wasn’t an established vegan community nearby that this family could connect with.

Despite living in a small town where the words “animal rights” and “vegan” were pretty much unheard of, Karla and Victor started seeking out people who’d be interested in hearing about veganism—whether it was for health, animal, or environmental reasons.

The couple initiated the Otero Veg society—Otero being the county where Cloudcroft is located—and they started tabling at various events in and around New Mexico and Texas.

A little more than a year has gone by since Victor and Karla started their community building, and the changes they’ve made in and around Cloudcroft are unprecedented. A few weeks ago, I received the following message from Victor in an email—

Since you last visited the area, our group has grown. And since the Earth Day Fair, we have been non-stop! We’ve done a few health fairs and cancer 5Ks, shown movies, hosted numerous potlucks, and we’ve convinced two restaurants to prepare vegan dinners for anyone wanting to come.

Our first potluck had 15 people, the second one had 22, and the last one we did at a park had 24. The Asian dinner we hosted had 26, and today’s Greek dinner had 32!

We are also organizing our first Thanksliving potluck for November and we have a few other things planned for the future. We have met with Albertsons and they are bringing in tons of vegan options after we gave the store suggestions and helped them promote their new vegan food products. They now carry Gardein, Beyond Meat, Sophie’s Kitchen, Carla Lee’s Nut Tacos, Daiya, Follow Your Heart, Lightlife, and tons of other things we have told them about. They are now stocking raw cashews, nutritional yeast, and vital wheat gluten for some seitan!

We’ve also been active in nearby Alamogordo, NM, population about 30,400. We were at the New Mexico State University Alamogordo Diversity and Inclusion Fair and I got the university to let me leave pamphlets in the students’ lounge permanently,

Some members of the group will be tabling at another health fair at a popular resort casino in the area! We are slowly starting to get the help, instead of just me and Karla being out there by ourselves! Good things are happening!

Karla and Victor’s incredible efforts remind me of a quote I once read—“We all have a super power—it’s called initiative.”

Their story is a great reminder that no act is too small when it comes to helping animals and forming a community of people who are like-minded. It’s also a good reminder that your environment, even if it seems unlikely, can change starting with only one or two voices.

Thank you, Karla and Victor, for being an ongoing inspiration in my personal vegan journey and now to several other people who have learned about your inspiring work in and around Cloudcroft! Please keep it up!

By Alex Bury, VO Organizational Development Consultant

Back in August I traveled to Wisconsin to visit family members and friends who live in the area. That hot summer week in the Midwest left me with 1 cucumber, 12 cherry tomatoes, 4 mosquito bites, and a ridiculous amount of vegan jerky.

Ok, who’re we kidding? You can never have enough vegan jerky.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering—yes, it’s a little tricky to pack ripe tomatoes safely in your suitcase!

My hosts were master gardeners, and while I was there I helped harvest a ton of different veggies, melons, apples, herbs, and more. I also did some weeding. To be clear, though, I spent less than 8 hours total sweating and bending over. I mostly cooked and ate the produce while the true gardeners did the outside dirty work! We had great vegan meals all week long!

I’ve a new appreciation for the farm workers who spend endless hours in the sun harvesting all the produce I love to eat, and for people like VO’s Brenda Sanders who start and manage community gardens in food deserts. If you want to know more about food deserts, check out David Carter’s recent post on this topic.

On my way home, I made a special stop at The Herbivorous Butcher in Minneapolis, MN. If you’re vegan or leaning vegan, you’ve probably heard the buzz about this place—an all vegan butcher shop! It’s bright, airy, clean, and designed to look exactly like a traditional butcher shop.

If you’re not leaning vegan yet and you’re confused about why a vegan wants to visit a butcher shop—because YUM!

In all honesty, though, I don’t know a single vegan who stopped eating meat simply because they didn’t like the texture of animal meat.

Vegans go vegan because they learn how animals are tortured and killed in slaughterhouses, they want to improve their health, they’re upset by the environmental impacts of meat, or they don’t agree with the way slaughterhouse workers are treated—or all of the above!

We were greeted warmly as soon as we entered the shop and immediately offered samples. There were huge cooler cases—the old fashioned meat case kind—full of vegan meats and cheeses, as well shelves full of vegan treats like cookies and spreads.

The staff seemed to be having a blast—working fast, but smiling and laughing. We told them we were feeling overwhelmed and didn’t know how we could possibly choose what to sample. They told us to relax and take our time. I suspect they get that comment from customers all the time.

By the time I left Minneapolis, I had a ¼ pound of each type of jerky. I would’ve left with a lot more, but most of their products need to stay cool. Note to self—the next time I’m anywhere near Minneapolis, bring several massive coolers!

That just meant I had to do more sampling when I was there! I tasted their feta cheese—literally to die for—and a turkey slice, which was moist and wonderfully savory. The jerky was very rich and chewy, but not so hard that it hurt your teeth—just enough “tooth bounce” to really give it some oomph.

If you’re like me and mourning the fact that you don’t live near Minneapolis, but you want to try The Herbivorous Butcher’s vegan meats and cheeses, hop on over to their website! You can order several of their products online. It’s guaranteed you’ll find something deliciously fitting for your taste preferences!

Social media addicts—be sure to check out The Herbivorous Butcher on Facebook and Instagram!

By Kevin Gallagher, VO Operations Manager

A few months back, I heard through the local vegan grapevine that a new vegan ice cream shop, The Cookie Counter, had recently opened in my city of Seattle, WA in the Greenwood neighborhood.

In fact, checking online, I discovered that prior to their new stand-alone vegan ice cream shop, that the Cookie Counter had since 2014 operated a vegan ice cream truck during the summer.

Curious to sample the sweet tastes of the Cookie Counter’s new storefront shop, I ventured forth on a summer weekend along with my more than willing companions—my brother, Mark Gallagher; Vegan Outreach Board of Directors Vice-Chair, Melissa Li; and Melissa’s adorable chihuahua, Pablo.

Given that it was a warm summer Sunday, we found ourselves at the Cookie Counter’s store at the end of a long line of people that stretched out the door onto the sidewalk. However, as it was a beautiful day, we didn’t mind the wait and just chatted among ourselves. We had ample time to see what the shop’s menu and display cases had for us to enjoy.

All of the Cookie Counter’s ice cream is made from organic coconut milk, and is both soy and gluten-free. Besides ice cream as a single or double scoop in a cone, the Cookie Counter serves vegan sundaes, floats, and shakes. They also make an assortment of baked goods such as cookies, brownies, and pies. And as this is Seattle—the capital of coffee!—the shop includes an espresso bar.

I also had time in line to reflect on the following. My interest in wanting to visit the Cookie Counter was both professional—since I’m a vegan and I work for VO—and partly one of my own personal history. Growing up in suburban Chicago, IL, I and my family had long patronized a local ice cream and candy shop, a shop that was and still is, as they say, “a Chicago landmark institution” now of some 85 years’ standing.

Thanks to this family connection to it, I ended up working for a number of years at that very same suburban Chicago ice cream store during the summer when I was on my breaks from school. Sadly though, this Chicagoland ice cream shop wasn’t vegan, but as I worked there in my vegetarian, pre-vegan days, that didn’t trouble me at the time. Only later, once I became vegan, did I wish that veganized versions of such memorable places existed.

So all of this went through my mind as I was waiting in line at the Cookie Counter. There was nostalgia about the ice cream shop days of my youth in Chicago, and my hope that the vegan ice cream shops of today can create similar strong ties with and memories in their local patrons.

Fortunately, from the looks of it that day in the Cookie Counter, that strength of local connection is being well established. And the Cookie Counter’s ice cream was being much appreciated by old and young patrons alike. This is, after all, rather an integral part of the Cookie Counter’s aim—to provide a nostalgic and enjoyable experience at a neighborhood vegan ice cream shop.

Eventually, Mark, Melissa, Pablo, and I made it to the head of the line and placed our orders for single scoops of lavender flavor ice cream in waffle cones—pretty much the nostalgic ice cream shop treat!

As a former ice cream shop employee, it’s a heresy to admit this, but I’ve never been the biggest ice cream fan. I was always much more drawn to the fruit tastes of sherbet and sorbet, and I stuck to basic vanilla on those rare occasions when I did have ice cream. But as a vegan, I’ve taken a liking to the vegan ice cream I have had.

Given that it was such a glorious summer day in Seattle, we decided, ice cream cones from the Cookie Counter in hand, to have them outside instead of remaining in the comfortable but crowded interior.

Even Pablo was very inquisitive about the ice cream we had in our hands, and we all thought it only fair to let him indulge his sweet tooth as much as we did. So like us, Pablo too got to have a wonderful taste of ice cream on that warm summer’s day!

Though summer has now drifted to autumn—and it being long past peak summer ice cream season—there’s no reason not to enjoy the sweet treats of a vegan ice cream parlor at any time of year. And this is the perfect time of year to sample and enjoy their baked goods. After all, the Cookie Counter is thankfully open year round for one to savor its desserts.

On October 12, 2016, TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site, announced a policy change that can’t be easily ignored—

[The company] announced its commitment to launch a set of industry-leading actions, including changes to its policy on selling tickets to animal attractions, and the launch of a new education portal to help inform travelers about the standards of care for wild, captive, and endangered species in tourism and their interactions with tourists, and their impact on wildlife conservation.

This is a huge step in the right direction in terms of raising awareness about wildlife captivity.

To read more information about TripAdvisor’s recent decision, check out the full press release on their website.

By Jamila Alfred, VO Maryland/DC Events and Outreach Coordinator

We all know Russell Simmons as being the ultimate businessman and professional hustler, but not everyone is familiar with his relaxed, compassionate side.

Who would have thought that the long-time hip-hop mogul would become a hardcore yogi, let alone a super-passionate vegan? I definitely didn’t, so reading his engaging book, The Happy Vegan: A Guide to Living a Long, Healthy, and Successful Life, not only helped me learn more about him, but it also reminded me of the main reasons why I chose to live vegan.

The books starts with Simmons telling his personal story of transitioning to a vegan lifestyle and all the cognitive dissonance that came along with it. His experience was similar to many—he ate a lot of animal foods, dabbled in recreational drugs, and overall wasn’t feeling healthy. With his discovery of veganism he now has more energy and zest, which prompted him to share his newfound happiness with the world.

Simmons sectioned off the top factors that concern vegans—ethics, environment, and health—but he also discussed issues that affect communities of color, namely African-Americans. He touched on the concept of soul food being “slave food” since it derived from the time when African slaves were given the scraps of animal carcasses and other swill as meals. I was glad that he touched on this because not many people know about this important historical fact.

His conversational tone and personal stories made this such a fun and relatable read! Simmons, like many other people, thought that by giving up animal products he would be betraying his heritage and culture. He explained that those animal products—among other things— have been killing fellow African-Americans for centuries and invited people of color to understand that veganism is just as much for them as it is for anybody else.

Simmons dropped so much knowledge in an entertaining yet laid-back way, which I’m sure, converted many pre-vegans. It’s clear he wrote this how-to guide for middle-aged people of color, and for that I’m truly grateful! Marginalized groups aren’t usually included in the vegan message, so I think it’s a good idea for people like Russell to continue to speak up for his community.

Get yourself a copy, give it to a friend, and let us—or Russell Simmons himself—know how much you liked it!