Today I visited the The Cruelty Free Shop, conveniently located in St Kevin’s Arcade with my gorgeous friend Courtney, and got chatting to the wonderful woman behind the shop counter. In my excitement in the hunt for vegan goodies, I didn’t catch her name but did explain the purpose of my visit. I suppose I expected some kind of negative reaction, being that in a sense I’ve jumped on a bandwagon – the ‘vegan’ lifestyle becoming like the new wave of gluten free obsessives – but she was so charming and helpful, even offering to post about my blog on their social media pages…they’re on twitter if you didn’t know already!

After my friend Kenny, who is also traversing this journey with me as an octo-lacto vegetarian explained to me the previous evening that Il Buco offer a vegan pizza topped with vegan chorizo (main ingredient being wheat protein), and that this chorizo was available for retail purchase at The Cruelty Free Shop, I had to check it out.

I spent a long time discussing my confusion about these pseudo-meat products with the staff, hovering over the refrigerated goods. It’s confusing to me as someone who is both uninitiated and uneducated about veganism that a person who had made the decision not to consume our furry friends, would want to eat proteins designed to simulate the taste and texture of flesh or dairy. She explained to me that she often referred to these types of products as ‘transitional foods’, mainly designed for people who were making the change to a plant based diet. And that totally made sense – in essence, these products were designed for people like me.

With her guidance, I pored over the plethora of vegan, organic, sustainable products on offer, quickly finding the Gran Chorizo that I can come in search of.

This vegan sausage is produced by Wheaty, a company that offers a unique range of products based on wheat gluten, or its more commonly used macrobiotic name, seitan. Seitan is derived from the protein portion of wheat and is an excellent source of protein for vegans, being that gluten has a low sodium and extremely low fat content.

Whilst chatting, I apologised repeatedly and profusely for my ignorance as a carnivore. I asked what I thought were most likely questions frequent visitors to the shop would think were completely stupid about each of the products that piqued my interest, and she more than happily obliged by explaining the origin of each product, whether they were made locally, what particular items would be used for and how they would be best prepared.

I also grabbed a box of Fry’s Family’s Meat Free Chicken Style Strips, because I thought they would appeal to my son, Ethan.

I’ve yet to try them myself, but I hear from an excellent source that they taste just like chicken!

As I was checking out, she suggested that I might be interested in attending a Vegan 101 class, held by the Vegan Society of Aotearoa. After reviewing their website, I noted that the last event was held in December, so I plan to keep a dutiful eye out and head along to the next one!

Visiting the Cruelty Free Shop definitely made me a lot more excited about this journey. A lot of the vegans that I have been exposed to in my life have been almost, for want of a better description, elitists; almost as if their dietary choices made them members of a secret society that I could never be a part of – so this experience was uplifting and made me all the more curious and left me feeling inspired about the challenge.
Check out their website or better yet head on into the store on K’Rd and grab a meat analogue or ice cream sandwich!

Love,

Charli x