August 2014 – VeganMoFo

Looking Back at 2013 VeganMoFo Faves

August 24, 2014 jess sconé Comments 6 comments

Hi everyone! With the start of the annual Vegan Month of Food aka VeganMoFo just over a mere week away, I wanted to take this time to reflect on some of our own favorites from 2013.

via Teeny Tiny Tantrums on Etsy (We heart Kelly! You can buy this!) — via Teeny Tiny Tantrums on Etsy (We heart Kelly! You can probably buy this!)

Reading other vegan blogs and being struck by other people’s designs, creations, skills, writing and most importantly, being awed by their vegan culinary endeavors and purchases (all the UK vegan cheese never fails to get to my heart), is such a swell way to draw inspiration for your own projects and bloggin’ shenanigans. It’s an ever-growing, ever-impressive community that’s constantly changing and doing more and more (again, especially with vegan cheese, hello Miyoko-effect <3!).

Let’s dig right in…

One of the most mentioned by my organizer colleagues was the month of jaw-dropping classic German desserts by Mihl at Seitan is my Motor. There were so many bakery-case starring pastries and detailed recipes that you should have a go at!

Here’s a couple more to pique your fancy, trust me:

Slice of Apfelkuchen, Seitan is my Motor

Poppies!

Try out some Tschechischer, Seitan is My Motor

Now, if you’ve been paying attention to the vegan internets this past year, it should come as no surprise that the newsworthy, tortilla-stockpiling TACO CLEANSE out of Austin, TX not only tops my own list of memories from 2013, but everyone else’s at VeganMoFo-land.

Tacos, people. Tacos. Sandwiches are so dumb (IMO, at the moment).

Maria’s Tacos on Taco Cleanse Day 27, Lazy Smurf

The Lazy Smurf breaks down the Hows and Whys on her blog here.

Now, I’m not really one for leisurely math, but TACO CLEANSE + all their new vegan food carts (including taco carts, of course) + Capital City + Sweet Ritual pretty much cemented Austin’s status as THE VEGAN CITY TO VISIT IN THE USA…AND BEYOND. What other vegan city in the USA is this exciting right now?!

Vegan diners & bloggers from all across Austin (and again, beyond, in honor of this delicious cultural phenomenon) took part in the TACO CLEANSE, which naturally thought to include dessert:

Chocolate Taco special at Sweet Ritual, via Rabbit Food Grocery

As someone who’s liked Austin’s vegan taco scene so much they’ve pushed to help move a certain Vida Vegan Con there for 2015, wanting the TACO CLEANSE to return is an understatement. It’s a way of life, right?

Speaking of Mexican goodness, Cadry of Cadry’s Kitchen took us “Back in Thyme” all month long for an always-creative look back at cooking in her own life, often giving a revamped take on some of her all-time favorite food memories and dishes, including these Puffy Nachos:

Puffy Nachos & Spicy Black Beans, Cadry’s Kitchen

Family-style Taco Joe’s!

Jeremy’s Taco Joe’s, via Vegan Eats & Treats

I can’t quite let tacos go yet…

Another wonderful VeganMoFo spirit comes our friend and fellow organizer Amey. Last year, she took a Noshtalgiac look on her blog, Vegan Eats & Treats!, with drawings, heartfelt stories and just as many appetizing creations. The two featured here come from the tale of family-style Taco Joe’s:

Okay, another one of my favorite personalities in the vegan community lately is Randi of Laughfrodisiac. She had the charm and zest to do a whole month of Veganizing Friends recipes, I kid you not. One of the most memorable of the month, for both Randi and her readers, was Rachel’s monstrous English Trifle:

Rachel’s English Trifle, via Laughfrodisiac

From the blog: “My main theme for VeganMoFo 2013 is to veganize some of the dishes featured on one of my all-time favorite TV shows, “Friends”. As those of you not living under rocks should know, Monica was a professional chef, so we have some interesting & fancy dishes coming up in the next few weeks. However, I had to start not with one of Monica’s amazing creations, but with perhaps the most famous dish of the ten years of the series’ run…and perhaps the most famous TV dish of all time (yes I went there): Rachel’s English Trifle, or the Thanksgiving Cockup“.

The thing is, I was just talking about Friends, of all things, with another vegan pal last night, who I really need to point that way. Read all about it and get the recipe here!

Moving on, because I’m currently inside a chilled coffee shop, regretting my choice of iced coffee and wishing I had a mug of coffee and these to dip in from Veg-Am:

Apple Butter-Filled Donut Holes, via Veg-Am

All right, I’ve got to bring it back to Mihl for one dessert!

So, keep in mind: If you’re looking for inspiration & great reads, just spend some time checking out the ‘VeganMoFo’ tags on any of these blogs!

And hey, you’ve got three little days left to officially sign up and participate in whatever form you like. See ya there!

A MoFo Preview in Themes…

August 23, 2014 veganinbrighton Comments 18 comments

Our inbox has been flooded with your sign ups and everyone here at MoFo HQ has loved seeing your ideas, plans and themes roll in as the month’s gone on. You only have five days left to sign up so if you’re still debating over whether to throw yourself into MoFo now’s the time to throw caution to the wind and jump right in. To make it super easy for you here’s the link to the sign up sheet again!

It was getting impossible to narrow down my favourite themes for this post, I’m excited about everything! Here they all are, come back to the site on September 1st to see who’s doing what.

A – Z Ingredients
Adventures in Vegan Eating
Around the World in 20 Recipes
Baby Bump Cravings
Bella Vegan Italia
Bento Boxes
Burgers
Canning & Preserving
Carbs & Rec – Veganizing Pawnee One Plate at a Time
Celebrating Summer!
Community
Cookbook Challenge
Cookies
Cooking For One
Cooking With Isa
CSA & Farmer’s Market Finds
Daily Eats
Desserts
Dining in NYC
Dining with Disney Movies
Dinner and a Movie
Eat to Live
Eating Vegan on a Budget
Fermentation
Finnish Coffee Table
Food from Buffy / Angel
Fork Food Shaming
French Food
Gravy
Halloween
Harry Potter
Healthy & Delicious
How This Kid Gets Protein
Fighting Inflamation
Ice Cream
International Cheese & Chocolate Month
International House of Pancakes Turned Muffins
Intervention of a Food Hoarder
Japanese Inspired
Jewish and Middle Eastern Recipes Veganized
Legumes
Louisiana Locavore – Eating Locally for 30 Days in Northwest Louisiana
Lunchboxes
Mister Rogers Neighbourhood & Childhood Nostalgia
Music For Your Mouth
New Foods
Oktoberfest
Packed Lunch
Pizza
Return of the Mac
Roadtrip Across America
Salads
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Curry
Smoothies
Southwestern Cuisine
Tea
Thai Food & Travel
The End of the World
The Food of Wales
The Letter S
The World in My Kitchen
Travel
Urban City Vegan Eats
Vegan Challenge
Vegan Cheese
Vegan Crafting
Vegan Eats For Fuelling Your Body
Veganising Not-So-Vegan Cookbooks
Vegan Faux Show
Vegan Food Diary
Vegan Wedding
Will My Kids Eat It?
10 For 30: A Month of Top 10 Lists

It’s Time to Share Your Own #VeganMoFo2014 Press Release!

August 22, 2014 jess sconé Comments 1 comment

If you’re reading this, I bet you’re gearing up for VeganMoFo 2014! It makes sense. Since we’re here, you’re over there, and I’m right inside this here blog with a fuzzy marketing comm. degree to dust off, I’d like to help ya spread the word about our big month ahead!

Because seriously, outreach is KEY and we all know it can be quite a productive month, you & your piece of the internet deserve a little time in the spotlight!

First, let’s share some of my recent eats from Beyond Sushi, because you’ve got some legit reading ahead.

Here’s what to do:

Think & go Google search: What are the local media avenues in my community (state, country, district, town, county, area, favorite blogs, online news sources, etc.)? Is there an alt weekly? Is there a monthly, city-wide cultural magazine and/or website? Where do you see local food & dining news? For example, in Portland, OR, I’d send this to Eater PDX (and there are a ton of Eater sites out there!), Willamette Week, Portland Mercury, Oregonian FoodDay, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland Monthly Magazine and a bunch of my favorite culinary-focused blogs. Plus, the huge local vegetarian outreach group, Northwest Veg, other vegan-friendly events that have caught my eye, and maybe, The Kitchn, Serious Eats, and so on. If you’ve been involved with media outlets/events, who are your contacts? Do you have friends that work in PR? Are they relevant and could they help get the word out? Do they like vegan cookies? Is there a VegFest? Basically, find out their contact email/fax (right?! You can totally send faxes for free online these days in case you actually want to do that). Take note that there is typically a contact specifically *for* press releases and calendar info with the bigger outlets. Go cover your ground and spread the word!
Download a personalized or general copy of the official VeganMoFo press release (I’ll get to this below!), generously assembled by VeganMoFo’s own Amey of Vegan Eats & Treats (Thanks again, Amey!!).
Save the (ideally revised) press release as a PDF with a clearly marked file name, for example “Media Alert: VeganMo, The Vegan Month of Food Writing Returns September 2014“
Next, copy/paste the press release content into the actual email message from title down. I like to do this, it doubles your chances of being read. At the top, if I know who it’s going to well, I’ll often include a little note in a different font and color and sign it, like “Hey Jojo, I’d love for you to take a look at this news! I’ve got a whole month of xxx in store and daily updates! Let me know if you would like more information or photos for a story” (or something a little less lame then that, but I hope you get the point).
Make sure you’ve attached a copy of the press release PDF (or Word Doc or whatever you prefer, but this is getting crazy talk) to the email itself.
Press send and let that baby fly, preferably one at a time, but one big blind BCC can do in a pinch (but don’t tell my Writing for Marketing teacher at Emerson that I actually said that).

And here’s how to do it! There are two versions of our shiny, official press release all ready to go below:

OPTION 1) We’ve got the official press release ready to be personalized linked right here and copied below. It is super important to make sure you personalize all the red bits! If not, you look like a noob, and no writer potentially ready to put your name in lights and spread the word about veganism is gonna let that fly.

OPTION 2) Okay, if you don’t want to personalize it and are just thinking this is far too annoying to open and add some text to (I feel ya), but you’ve got some contacts and simply want to help, please know that A) We still heart you! and B) Go for it and pass the info from this link right here along, using the instructions above.

Thank you!!!!

Now, let’s get back to pondering thematics and/or bloggy and social media whims, as you please.

P.S. And tell my teacher I didn’t go on hiatus to NYC and posted this 30 days ago, sheesh.

The Return of the MoFies!

August 21, 2014 veganinbrighton Comments 1 comment

Our official VeganMoFo awards ceremony, The MoFies, is coming back this year and it’s going to be bigger and better than ever before. Why I hear you ask? Well, this year the MoFies have a sponsor! Can I get a fork yeah?!

The Raw Chocolate Co have come on board to offer every MoFie winner a bar of their award winning raw chocolate and a bag of their raw chocolate covered berries, how exciting (and delicious!) does that sound?

You get to blog your hearts out just like usual and you might even win a prize. Categories will include Best Theme, Most Adorable Companion Animal, Most Epic Post, Putting Your City on the Vegan Map and many more so get ready.

Sign ups close in just under a week on Wednesday 27th August and if you haven’t joined us yet what are you waiting for? The sign up sheet’s right here!

Community Building During Vegan MoFo

August 17, 2014 Panda With Cookie Comments 2 comments

Greetings friends! We get a lot of questions leading up to and during MoFo and thought we’d answer some in short blog posts for your edification.

Today Panda is here to address some related questions we hear a lot. How will people find my blog? No one is commenting on my blog. Why isn’t anyone reading it?

We have hundreds of bloggers signing up for Vegan MoFo every year, so it can be hard to be found and be noticed. There are some simple tricks to help get your blog into the flow of the Vegan MoFo community.

First up, make sure you are reading and commenting on other MoFo blogs. This is huge! Mollyjade on the PPK had a challenge one year to comment on x number of new-to-you blogs per day for MoFo. It’s a great way to see who else is out there in blogland and to start building connections. The more you get to know people, the more fun it is to follow along.

Second, make sure you keep on blogging! If you just put up one post and then don’t post again because you aren’t getting comments, you still won’t get comments. Communities are built over time and it can take a while for your blog name to get out there.

And last, write posts that are of interest to you. Find your own voice. If you’re writing content that is interesting to you and engaging to others, the readers will come. Not everyone is going to read your blog, but there will be some out there who will like your voice and style and will be clicking refresh waiting for your next post.

We’ve got 2 weeks to go! Happy MoFo!

2014 Vegan MoFo Graphics Are Here!

August 13, 2014 veganinbrighton Comments 12 comments

Yay! You have two weeks to sign up and in two and a half the blogging begins! Get your logos here, we have different themes as well as banner sized and sidebar sized graphics so hopefully everyone can find room for one somewhere.

Thanks as always go to Amanda Chronister for making these for us, if you’re looking to support a vegan doing the freelance illustration and design thing please check out her work.

Why Take Part in VeganMoFo?

August 8, 2014 veganinbrighton Comments 4 comments

Hey there! Jojo here, I’m franticly working on my mofo theme, attempting to trace / draw/ collage myself a logo with minimal artistic skills and getting ready to eat everything in sight come September. What are you doing? Are you working hard on your theme? Are you planning to wing it? Are you still undecided about hopping aboard the MoFo train? Let us know in the comments but, if it’s the latter, I’m here to give you 5 good reasons why you should join in.

It’s super fun! I’ve seriously loved every moment of taking part in VeganMoFo since I first joined in back in 2010. Even on days when I’ve felt a little burnt out I’ve been inspired to continue by everyone else’s amazing posts.
During MoFo you’re not just one person out there in the blogosphere cooking, photographing, eating and typing your little heart out, you’re part of a community. And an awesome community at that. We’ve had over 100 sign ups so far and the only thing missing is you!
Year on year I gain new followers and make new blogging buddies. Whether you’ve been blogging for years or are just starting out this is a great way to get involved in the online vegan community.
Discovering new blogs is great. If, like me, you enjoy starting your day gazing at other people’s gorgeous foodie creations whilst you nom on your own breakfast then MoFo is the place for you. We’ll be organising the participating blogs by country and category so you can browse that way. The site randomofo (link coming soon) is aother fun option for browsing through the feed. I also like to add the blogs I’m enjoying to a folder in Bloglovin’ so that I don’t miss anything during or after MoFo.
Challenging yourself is fun. Whilst we ask that you blog 20 times during the month (and a lot of us shoot for the full 30) we won’t be putting you on our shitlist if you miss a day! Just hop back on the hobbyhorse the next day and keep on blogging.

Are you convinved yet? We sure hope so! If not we’ll be back next week with a post on Community Building!

We’ve got 3 weeks to go! Happy MoFo!

VeganMoFo

The Vegan Month of Food: 2017

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Month: August 2014