Vegan cupcake heaven

This morning I read an article about the rise of clean eating and it cited the fact that there’s been a 350% increase in the number of vegans in Britain in the past 10 years.

It almost seemed to be blaming the unhealthy fad of clean eating on the rise of veganism, and forgot to mention the other reasons that someone might convert to a plant-based diet.

It also suggested that a vegan diet was synonymous with a super healthy (but actually kind of unhealthy) diet.

I beg to differ.

And since pictures speak louder than words, I’m just going to show you a collection of vegan cupcakes I’ve made and bought over the past month. Because vegan diets don’t have to mean raw superfood diets.

Cupcakes are life.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BE6LBe1oPA9/?taken-by=samanthalhopps

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFHodNjIPHz/?taken-by=samanthalhopps

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFZseyjIPBT/?taken-by=samanthalhopps

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFeM7F4oPOH/?taken-by=samanthalhopps

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFodPjdoPIa/?taken-by=samanthalhopps

 

Giant oreo cupcakes

Peanut butter chocolate giant cupcake (filled with peanut butter) – so yum!

Salted caramel and strawberries & cream cupcakes from Ms Cupcake in Brixton

Fighting the French: an egg battle

Bonjour!

I got back from France last night, and just before we left my parents and I popped into a supermarket to get some breakfast for my stepmum, who left for work early this morning. She normally likes her M&S brioche, so she went straight for the brioche section of the supermarket. Being in a rush for the ferry, none of us thought about the ingredients.

Back in England this morning, my pa realised that brioche has eggs in it and that, being French, those eggs aren’t free range (M&S uses free range eggs in all of their products, so I guess it’s something they’ve stopped thinking about).

So, my mission this morning was to write to the company who made the brioche we bought, Pasquier, and ask them why they don’t use free range eggs. I will copy the email I sent them below, and keep you updated on the response.

Please excuse the less-than-polished French 🙂

Cher(e) Monsieur/Madame,

J’étais en France jusqu’à hier, et j’ai acheté un paquet de votre pains au lait. Je n’avais pas le temps de regarder les ingrédients donc je n’ai vu pas jusqu’à maintenant que vous n’utilisez pas les œufs de poules élevées en plein air.

Je suis très malheureuse comme cette, et j’ai jeté le paquet parce que je ne mange pas les œufs de batterie, qui je pense que vous devez utiliser.

Cependant, aujourd’hui j’ai acheté un paquet de brioche de Marks and Spencer, qui était fabriqué en France, et il contient les œufs de poules élevées en plein air.

Donc mon question est cette : pourquoi vous n’utilisez pas les œufs d’origine éthique dans vos produits, quand je sais que c’est possible.

C’est très surprenant de devoir venir en Angleterre d’acheter les produits traditionnels de France qui considèrent les éthiques animaux, puisque ils n’existent pas en France.

Merci de votre compréhension et j’attends pour votre réponse.

Translation:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was in France until yesterday, and bought a packet of your brioche. I didn’t have time to look at the ingredients so I didn’t see until now that you don’t use free range eggs.

I’m very disappointed about this, and I threw away the packet because I don’t eat battery eggs, which I think you must use.

However, today I bought a packet of brioche from M&S, which was made in France, and it contained free range eggs.

Therefore my question is this: why don’t you use eggs from an ethical source in your products, when it is possible to do so?

It is very surprising to have to come to England to buy traditional French products which take into account animal ethics, since they don’t exist in France.

Thank you for your time and I await your response.

Why I’m angry about eggs

Fundamentally, I don’t believe in veganism.

*a sharp intake of breath from the crowd as they examine the hypocrisy of a vegan blog spouting such nonsense*

I have no issue whatsoever with humans eating eggs to maintain a healthy, balanced diet, so long as the hens are treated well. The problem is, a lot of chikens are treated well, but a lot aren’t, and were there a way to tell the difference I would eat eggs…

I maintain my standpoint that if I can see happy chickens running around, chilling out, laying some eggs, I’d happily eat those eggs. I’d whip up one hell of portion of scrambled eggs and I would gorge.

So my problem is this: while some, and indeed most, animals are treated well, there are some that are not, and since I don’t know any better, I’d rather not participate in the acceptance of that system.

A while ago, I went to stay with my Dad, and I’d given him my spiel about eating eggs if I knew which chickens they came from and could see for myself that they were properly free range. Before I arrived, he went off to his local farm shop, picked up some eggs, and asked the guy at the till if they could see the chickens from whence they came.

A simple request, one would assume?

No. He could not see the chickens, because they were eggs sourced from elsewhere. Then, he thought, I can take them home and use the stamp on the individual eggs to check where they are from. No. Also not possible.

He decided to file a freedom of information (FOI) request, asking which farm his eggs were from, but this request was declined on the basis of the data protection act.

The data protection act, protecting a business. This is where it gets crazy. In absolutely no way should a straight-up business, selling eggs, be able to hide behind data protection. What have these free-range egg producers got to hide anyway? It’s completely nonsensical that we cannot trace eggs back to the farm where the chickens are being raised. It seems like a crazy thing to have to even file a FOI for, and yet to have it refused…

Something is wrong here.

We assume our food is fine because we work on the basis of ignorance. We are under the illusion that we could find things out about our food if we wanted to, but it’s not true. And the problem is, this way suits everyone involved. The sellers don’t want us to know what’s going on, and the buyers don’t want to know what’s going on. They’d rather turn the other way and pretend the whole food industry is perfectly innocent because people aren’t immoral, right?

So this is why I’m angry about eggs. We should be able to eat them. As far as I’m concerned, in an ideal world, we have a symbiotic relationship with chickens. We look after them, give them regular food, shelter, protect them from predators, and they give us a few eggs in return. Think of it as rent. But I’m not prepared to accept that system when it’s so caught up in the red tape of government that we can’t just see where our bloody eggs are from.

It was never a big request, and yet the barriers that were erected as a result make me deeply concerned about what there is to hide.

A Western Malaise

What I’m finding is that my interest in food has significantly decreased. Knowing me, you’d know this is no small thing.

Two nights ago, I got back from a six-hour shift having eaten pretty much nothing beforehand, and all I had for dinner was a small pot of roasted vegetable couscous I got given at the end of the shift as it was about to go out of date.

I then went to bed.

Hold the phone.

I went to bed?!

Without chocolate, or cake, or biscuits, or something sweet?!

Yes, sirree.

This seems to be a recurring theme. Last night I made some more bonfire biscuits (I was craving sweet stuff then), and today I ate one of those for breakfast and didn’t even think about food until about 4pm, when my stomach really started objecting.

I think this is a really healthy attitude to have (there are probably people here going no no no regular meals rah rah, but I mean in a more abstract sense).

I found that, perhaps as a result of an overly-westernized and spoilt upbringing (I mean in terms of being able to eat whatever I wanted and pretty much whenever), resulted in a kind of addiction to food.

Let me elucidate on that point.

Obviously every human being ever is addicted to food, in the sense that we need it to survive, but you reach a point at which you’re never hungry: you eat because you’re bored, you eat because it’s breakfast time, or lunchtime, or dinnertime, it almost becomes a mechanical response between your hands and your mouth that really takes no account of your stomach.

I don’t mean to sound selfish, or ungrateful, or any of those negative sentiments. I’m merely noticing a wider malaise of the western world and pointing it out to myself and anyone who will listen.

We have so much more food available to us than we could ever possibly manage to eat, and I cannot fathom why we enforce institutional suffering on innocent animals for a surplus food requirement that is entirely recreational.

The End.

P.S. sorry for being so intense

P.P.S. here is a picture of a piglet

ISN’T IT SO CUTE?!?!