Photo by Rashaad Bhamjee

Written by Dan O’Keefe

As I mentioned before, every hospitality location on campus can offer something that is vegan friendly. Fresh fruits and vegetables are great, but they can get boring after a little while. So, this week, I took a look off-campus and around the city to see where vegan Guelphites might find some of their foodstuffs.
A very useful tool for any vegan anywhere is the website, www.happycow.net. Happy Cow is an online “compassionate eating guide,” which calls itself “the most trusted source for finding vegetarian food since 1999.” It contains a database of vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants from around the world, as well as recipes, discussion forums, and shopping links to numerous vegan/vegetarian online stores. I used Happy Cow to find three restaurants, two food stores, and a bakery in Guelph.
A friend of mine took me to Wild Organic Way at 22 Carden St., located across the street from Guelph City Hall. This lovely little restaurant offers a diverse menu with some amazing and delicious dishes. One of these dishes is Tasty Tacos: corn tortillas surround a blend of sunflower seeds and sun-dried tomatoes, sitting beside a salad of organic mixed greens with the restaurant’s own salad dressing. This was absolutely delectable, very much like the long list of desserts and smoothies also featured on the menu.
Wild Organic Way takes veganism to the next level – raw veganism. The vast majority of their dishes contain only raw ingredients. As basic biology tells us, proteins exposed to extreme conditions, such as heat from cooking, are irreversibly denatured, and provide little benefit in comparison to an unheated and unaltered protein. Raw vegans limit the amount of cooked food they consume in order to obtain more of the beneficial proteins and nutrients from their foods that cooking would otherwise destroy.
The Cornerstone is another downtown vegan option. This cozy and relaxed little restaurant sits on the corner of Wyndham St. and Carden St. The Cornerstone serves a variety of dishes and their menu marks all of the vegan options with a ‘v.’ The diverse menu ensured that both my omnivorous father and vegan self could have a suitable and enjoyable meal together when he visited me this past weekend.
Stone Store Natural Foods is located at 14 Commercial St., just off of Norfolk St. They offer an abundance of organic and health foods, catering to vegans and vegetarians as well as health-conscious omnivores. Here, I picked up some groceries, including milk-free chocolate – perfect for a vegan Valentine’s Day – and organic peanut butter with only two ingredients: peanuts and peanut oil. As an added bonus, this store offers a 10 per cent discount for students every Monday.
A little further north at 355 Elmira Rd. N. lies the Vege-Hut Natural Bakery. This bakery makes delicious breads and baked goods with organic flour and without preservatives. Most of their products use honey as a natural and healthy alternative to sugar. Technically, honey is not vegan, since it comes from bees. However, as the bees are generally not killed, some vegans will consume honey. This is one of the grey areas of veganism. The choice whether or not to consume honey is at the discretion of each individual vegan. Regardless of the decision, Vege-Hut offers products with and without honey. In an effort to remain true to the official definition of veganism, I chose a tasty loaf of sourdough bread and some almond cookies, all without honey.
Over the weekend, my friend took me to the Farmer’s Market on Gordon St. just outside of downtown Guelph. Stocked full with a plethora of fresh fruits and vegetables, this was the perfect place to load up a few bags with close to my weight in produce. In addition to produce, I purchased some apple cider and the perfect vegan Super Bowl snack: pizza crackers and spicy chipotle dip from Sprouting Life, a small vegan food business that operates out of the Farmer’s Market.
As for me, I still feel awesome. I’ve cut out the vast majority of processed foods, and I’ve never felt better. I’m actually contemplating continuing with some aspects of veganism past February. I might return to vegetarianism, or possibly have one vegan meal per day. But, I am also considering remaining completely vegan. It may be the initial enthusiasm that often accompanies something new; however, I have been completely engulfed by veganism after only scratching the surface.
We’ll see if I change my mind as the Vegan Challenge continues.