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Vegan dating
Story: Vegan datingThe way to a person’s heart is through their stomach – even if things don’t quite happen as you expect them to … A friend of mine recently told me excitedly about a romance with a surprising twist – and it’s such a good story that I don’t want to just keep it to myself. Who knows, perhaps you’ve even experienced something similar? So my friend starts telling her story: The pictures and details on the dating site made every fiber of my being come alive. He was an architect with a sculpted body, sports mad, a good head of…
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The coconut – a superfood
Story: The coconut – a superfoodFor people in the South Pacific, coconuts are a staple food – and one which brings them long, healthy lives. So, what are coconuts all about? We’re off to find out more about a very special superfood… Gentle production methods, substances which are useful for the body On closer inspection, it turns out that this delicious tropical fruit is a real wellness booster, and a very valuable addition to our diets. And not just for vegans! By cold-pressing the dried coconut flesh, also known as copra, pure, valuable, non-hardened coconut oil can be obtained. This gentle process means that the…
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Bye bye egg
Story: Bye bye eggScrambled eggs, pancakes, sunny side up, egg liqueur, Eggs Benedict or a festive eggnog? – chicken eggs are a very versatile ingredient in the kitchen. If you decide to live a vegan lifestyle, you have to go without eggs – which are so enjoyable to eat that in German, egg yolks are synonymous with “the best bit”. But do you really have to go without them? In the eyes of those who implement the idea of a purely plant-based lifestyle to the letter, the only eggs which can rightfully be perceived as being from happy hens are those which never…
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Hotel ahead of times
Story: Hotel ahead of timesIn the northwesternmost corner of the German state of Brandenburg, somewhere between Hamburg and Berlin, you’ll find the historical castle “Burg Lenzen” in the beautiful Elbe River Landscape Biosphere Reserve (Brandenburg). The castle, which is a listed building, and the surrounding town have a colorful history which is still being written. The newest chapter is a hotel which looks set to be very different from other hotels, and it certainly piqued our curiosity here at VELIVERY, because it’s a completely vegan hotel. When we had the idea of writing about a 100% vegan hotel, there was a lot of interest,…
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Benedikt Faust – Free spirit & futurist
Story: Benedikt Faust – Free spirit & futuristThis VEGAN CHEF is really great company. The best way to get to know Benedikt Faust is when you have a drink in your hand and plenty of time to spare. It’s very easy to talk to him for hours, and his passion for what he does and for new things really comes across – just as it does in his vegan recipes and interpretations of dishes: which you’ll be able to find here at Velivery. But who is this Mr Faust, I hear you ask? Originally from the German region of Franconia, this genuinely nice guy has become a…
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How Alex got his life back
Story: How Alex got his life backAlex Flohr is what many people would call a “really genuine guy”. He speaks his mind, doesn’t think much of convention, and likes to enjoy life. It’s this affable mix which will be noticed right away by anyone who watches his successful YouTube cooking channel HIER KOCHT ALEX (in German). This is someone who really does put all the clichés about vegans to bed once and for all. Originally a trained master road builder, Alex has now become successful in this format. And his success is every bit as self-made as his recipes are. His newest book, VEGAN OCEAN, has…
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Friendships between cows
Story: Friendships between cowsThanks to the branding of a particular brand of European chocolate, some European children imagine cows as being lilac, and as passing their time on mountaintops where they make delicious chocolate. When they grow up, the lilac chocolate fantasy is replaced by a rather boring idea of cows: ruminant, slow and lactating, cows are generally seen less as cute or sweet and instead as cumbersomely large. The situation gets even more precarious for factory-farmed cows. All that counts is how much milk they can produce. The more liters they can produce per day, the better. They are also judged by…
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Veganuary – vegan in January
Story: Veganuary – vegan in JanuaryThe old year has made its exit, and old habits are being assessed. Bring on the next cycle of positive resolutions! While our calendars may still call this month January, in the now ever-expanding cosmos that is vegan lifestyle, this month of change and transformation is quite simply called Veganuary. What started out as a small-scale campaign intended for a plant-based minority in 2014 has now evolved into a global charitable organization, with more than 1.5 million registered members on the Veganuary website. The movement’s stated aim is to raise awareness among as many people as possible about the conditions…
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Topias Rohde, the eco-warrior
Story: Topias Rohde, the eco-warriorThere was a time when Topias Rohde was part of the furniture of the Hamburg nightclub and party scene. As an event caterer, he burned the candle at both ends and got the energy for his exhausting job from meat-heavy meals during the day. “My diet used to feature much more meat than it did salad. When I ordered a kebab, I would just have the bread, sauce and meat, and leave out the green stuff”: this is how Topi describes his earlier culinary self. All this changed when he met the woman he would eventually marry – she had…
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Vegan Christmas
Story: Vegan ChristmasChristmas – the celebration that brings everyone together – is here again. However, if you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s very rarely the time of peace and contemplation that it’s meant to be. In the supermarkets’ overflowing freezer aisles, crowds of stressed people fight over the last fattened geese or turkeys, buttery biscuits are bought to feed the hungry gaggle at home, and the present-buying process (along with the tonnes of packaging its hysteria incurs) mutates into a last-minute emergency operation after which all the ribbons and wrapping paper end up in the trash. And in the midst of…
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When you stop eating meat
Story: When you stop eating meatThe World Health Organization (WHO) has made a clear statement on meat consumption: eating too much meat is unhealthy. Furthermore, red meat and processed meat have been proven to be carcinogenic. One American study goes even further and names specific illnesses which are linked to meat consumption: alongside cancer, the risk increases for heart and respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, infections, Alzheimer’s and for liver and kidney diseases. These are therefore all pretty strong arguments for putting little or no meat on our plates. But what will happen to my fitness, my metabolism and my body if I just get rid…
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Different times alto-goose-er
Story: Different times alto-goose-erGoose season is here again. Different species of wild geese have come together and are making their way south. The north of Germany, in particular, is an area that’s known worldwide by ornithologists (who study birds) who go there to witness the spectacle of umpteen thousand geese coming together alongside other bird species to set off on their annual migration. While their relations commence their long journeys (often of over 6000km), domestic geese in Germany have a not-so-nice time ahead of them: they’re about to be eaten to celebrate St Martin’s Day or Christmas. Thousands of animals have to lose…
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Tasty Levant
Story: Tasty LevantThis time, our VEGAN WORLD TRIP is taking us to the beautiful Levant region: the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia, and a culinary melting pot. This has always been a place where scents, spices and flavors from all over the world collide and blend. Few other regions in the world have been shaped by as many cultures or as much history as the Levant, which spans the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and its hinterlands; that is to say what is today Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, the autonomous Palestinian territories, in addition to the southern Turkish province of…
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Bernd Arold
Story: Bernd Arold“My name is Bernd Arold, I’m 48 years old and a trained cook. In my youth, I learned to cook in a classic Franconian kitchen where the animals were slaughtered in-house and we used fresh, home-grown vegetables. Even back then, I loved the fact that everything got prepared from scratch, and that the food was treated with respect. On top of that, my mother used to work in an organic grocery store, where she cooked vegetarian meals. She introduced me to many vegetarian and vegan foods. Today, both vegetarian and vegan cooking have remained great passions of mine, as they…
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Supply and demand?!
Story: Supply and demand?!I recently learned firsthand (again) that demand doesn’t necessarily determine supply. To be precise, I attended a business dinner with my boss and some colleagues which left me not only with question marks written all over my face, but also with a gaping hole in my vegan stomach. While most supermarkets and food shops in Germany now have quite a large range of plant-based food on offer, restaurants offering traditional German cuisine seem to have not yet gotten the memo about this alternative but growing food offensive known as veganism (which, by the way, protects not only animals, but also…
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Unlikely friendships
Story: Unlikely friendshipsGood friends stick by you through thick and thin. True friends will never let you down, whatever scrapes you get yourselves into. True friends are friends for life. Friendship can have so many beautiful facets, and it’s always astounding to learn where and how friends find each other. Here’s an example of how friendship is not limited to a single species, or even limited to human beings. In fact, that couldn’t be further from the goose. “Goose, Highland bull together 10 years” – this was the title of an article in the Gisborne Herald. The small, New Zealand-based regional daily…
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Niko Rittenau – farewell to vegan clichés!
Story: Niko Rittenau – farewell to vegan clichés!“How is it possible that something as essential as food and nutrition has become so difficult and complicated to understand?” This is the question which has led Niko Rittenau to where he is today. As a successful author, nutritionist and public speaker, he is keen to bring his knowledge about healthy vegan nutrition to as large an audience as possible. Through his work, he aims to raise people’s awareness of their own health, sustainability in practice, and to instill a sense of responsibility for the planet. Originally from Austria, Rittenau is a trained cook and tourism agent. While he was…
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Michael Spahn – vegan visionary
Story: Michael Spahn – vegan visionaryMichael Spahn is a trained master butcher who has been self-employed for 30 years. He’s a father, a creative, and… a vegan. Decades of being in such close proximity to meat through his work eventually led to high cholesterol levels, which forced him to change his diet. For the good of his health and animal welfare, the master butcher decided to live a completely vegan lifestyle. This dietary about‑turn in his private life led to vegan meats appearing in his butcher’s shop. From then on, his own business produced only plant-based products, while the production of the traditional Spahn classics…
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Vincent Vegan
Story: Vincent Vegan“Vincent Vegan makes fast food from plants – and nothing else – for everyone. It’s time to herald the dawn of a new chapter in which we treat our Earth and its inhabitants in a more careful and responsible way. Our aim is to play a part in writing this chapter.” “Refreshing and friendly!” – is my first impression when I enter the branch of Vincent Vegan next to Hamburg main train station. It smells delicious, and the bright colors and friendly team behind the counter make you feel welcome and at ease straight away. And, of course, put you…
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Donald Watson – Vegan Pioneer
Story: Donald Watson – Vegan PioneerDonald Watson is regarded as the forefather of the word ‘Vegan’. In 1944, Watson and five others founded the VEGAN SOCIETY in Birmingham (UK), which still exists to this day. Watson dedicated his life to using it as a vehicle to win people over to a vegan way of thinking. Of course, the vegan lifestyle wasn’t man-made. It is a natural form of diet, which is older than most of the languages that we speak today. For instance, Neanderthals in Southern Europe, unlike their relatives in Northern and Central Europe, ate a diet that was primarily vegan, something scientists were…
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Paul Ivić – Vegan Chef with Star
Story: Paul Ivić – Vegan Chef with StarWhen chef Paul Ivić’s restaurant “TIAN” opened its doors in December 2011, it set new standards in the world of plant-based cuisine. It is the first time that a vegetarian or vegan restaurant has been awarded a Michelin star and four Gault & Millau toques. In special recognition of its sustainability, TIAN was also awarded a Michelin Green Star. With Jerusalem artichoke, black salsify and rocket, Paul Ivić’s menu reads like a walk through a vegetable garden. The Michelin-starred chef sees himself as sustainable, which means that he is uncompromising in choosing produce from farmers who are treated fairly, as…
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No deficiencies please
Story: No deficiencies please“People who eat a vegan diet bring about a permanent state of malnutrition and unbalanced nutrition.” Few prejudices about plant-based diets are as persistent as the mistaken belief that plant-based foods do not provide enough for the body or the metabolism, and that they cause a gaping hole in the range of nutrients your body has access to. But after all, prejudices are there to be broken down. As is the case with any diet, anyone who decides to follow a plant-based diet must make sure that what they eat each day is balanced. This involves being conscious of what…
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Flavors of Thailand
Story: Flavors of ThailandMy first really good Thai curry is something I’ll never forget. It was some time around the turn of the millennium, and it so happened that life had gifted me a bit of time between finishing school and starting what I was planning to do next. I knew I wanted to use this time to get to know the rest of the world a bit better. So, as was all the rage in the early 2000s, I booked a flight to Bangkok. As soon as I arrived at Don Mueang Airport, I felt the culture shock that every tourist experiences…
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Samson the Smart Swine
Story: Samson the Smart SwineSamson the pig’s life was nearing its end, but he didn’t want to end up as ham. He was spending his latter years in a horsebox which had originally been intended for ponies. Every morning, he slid open the door and went out to have his morning wash. Pigs are very clean animals. Even if the typical image of a pig suggests something very different, these animals keep strict separation between the places they eat, sleep and go to the toilet in. After his daily morning stroll, Samson picked up his “friend” Maria from the neighboring pen – the chicken…