By the Organized Vegan
Every year I have the pleasure of volunteering for Worldfest, a festival that is completely vegan, solar powered and all around amazing day that happens once a year in Woodley Park in the San Fernando Valley. My job is to help organize the food and drinks for the bands and speakers in the backstage area. Everyone is always so nice and this year was no exception! We had so many amazing speakers and rock out/hip out/ska out bands for dancing and swaying.
The weather was beautiful..not too hot but not chilly either. This year the food was donated by Native Foods Café and Follow Your Heart. From Native Foods we had delicious Scorpion Burgers and Ensalada Azteca, perfect combo for a Sunday afternoon. We had so many advocates for plant based, healthy and yummy foods that I just had to get their photos!!
Here we have the beautiful and talented Mariana Tosca with Sun Flour Baking Company founder Rey Ortega. Mariana was our host for the day and Rey supplied delicious vegan cookies and sweets at a booth. Both Mariana and Rey are advocates for the animals and delicious vegan food!
Lorrie Houston, founder of Animal Acres was there looking as pretty as ever! She is a fan of Native Foods and has been for many years. Her dedication to the lives of so many factory farm animals in need is something to behold indeed. If you’ve not toured Animal Acres yet, please treat yourself! It’s an experience you will not forget. I volunteered there one day and my job was to clean out and organize a little goat hut! I think this goat’s name was Chocolate. He let me arrange his hay just the way I wanted to!! Who says billy goats are stubborn??!!!
Two more advocates for delicious vegan fare are author and vegan Kathy Freston. Her book Quantum Wellness has changed the lives and diets of hundreds of people. With her is Chef Tal Ronen, also an author of best selling cookbook The Conscious Cook. Here they are having a chat before they talk to the crowd about how easy it is to be vegan in today’s world. Chef Tanya and Chef Tal should get together and have a cooking extravaganza!!!!
Singer/songwriter (and my new friend) Gayle Day was there with her almost all girl band, The Brunette’s. How I love seeing an almost all girl band on the stage. No offense fellas, but it’s about time more women were on the stage instead of behind it!! Gayle is a vegan activist as well and hails from outside of London. She now resides in Los Angeles and frequents Native Foods Café when her schedule permits. She loved the Ensalada Azteca!
Dan Piraro, a.k.a Bizarro has been at Worldfest all three years that I have volunteered there. He’s such a snappy dresser and so talented in cartoon and wit. He was lovin’ the food and fun backstage! He seems to always give his time for the cause of the animals and the environment.
Here is Rip Esselstyn, author of the best selling book The Engine 2 Diet. Rip is a top professional triathlete as well as a fire fighter!! He turned his whole engine company on to the health factors of a plant based diet and showed them how easy and delicious it really is!! He is based out of Austin, TX…hmmm…time for a NFC in Austin don’t you think? I can help get that organized! Here he is showing how strong he is from eating a delicious Scorpion Burger!!!
John Salley was on hand as one of the speakers. Man is he ever awesome! Besides being a professional basketball player, he’s an actor, philanthropist, environmentalist and best of all animal activist! He told me that 9 years ago Chef Tanya was at Worldfest. She called him over and suggested he try one of her burgers. He told me that he was so blown away by her food! From that day forward he was vegan and that Chef Tanya’s delicious food convinced him that this way of eating is the only way to go! He told me she changed his life that day, with that burger!! I can relate John!! The same thing happened to me with the Native Wings!!!
And last but not least is Debra Wilson. What can I say about Debra? She’s talented and beautiful and just an all around wonderful person!! She told me she has yet to go to Native Foods!!! I said WHAT?????????????????? I will take you there!!!! Haha..she looked at me like a crazy stalker and said that’s ok..she’ll take herself! I told her I could easily organize her transportation there..and closets if she wanted me to! She was blown away by the menu so I hope she gets there soon!!!
All in all it was an amazing and fun day. Being surrounded by like minded people at a festival where I could eat anything and everything without asking any questions was just so fun! And I’m so grateful to Billy Hulting who, along with many, many volunteers, puts this festival together each year. It’s a massive undertaking and he pulls it off year after year. Thanks Billy!!!!
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