This year the Vegan Life Live London 2018 was held at Alexandra Palace 10 – 11 February. The event showcases hundreds of vegan products and stores. Best of all you get a free goodies bag when you line up! (Skip to the end of the post to see our loot). This was our second vegan event, first being the VegFest and we were surprised at how well organised this was. Expect to find loads of veganised products such as:
- Soap
- Non-leather shoes
- Protein bars (like every corner)
- Chocolate
- 2 rows of glorious street food vendors
- ice-cream
- coconut oil goodies
We loved the talks and cooking demos during the day. Our favourite was the Southern Fried Chicken by the London Afro Vegan. Without further ado, let’s get into the photos!
Cost of Entry: 12 Pounds per adult (but we got a Groupon deal for half price!)
Venue: Alexandra Palace (There was a bus shuttle service that ran from Wood Green station to the front of the building and there are lots of parking spaces if you are coming from further away.)
This is the entrance into the event. It was very grand coming up the stairs. You can see a view of London in the distance from the top.
Free goodies bag! This year we received coconut oil, protein balls, skincare samples, vegan mayonaise and so much more! We had to line up for about 30 minutes but it was well worth it. You can either pick up a pre-packed bag or you can choose your own items. This was definitely a nice way to start the event!
Inside Alexandra Palace, there is a nice open air area with amazingly high ceiling and so much natural light. We were told that this place was built for the Queen and used to race horses.
Soap blocks – so beautiful and fragrant, however, they were too pricey for my liking. It did sort of inspire me to make my own though.
Cooking demonstration on Fish Cakes – Roxy and Ben So Vegan
These Fish Cakes were made primarily from chick peas and nori seaweed. We thought they resembled more like falafels as most of the ingredients were similar. It was nice to see how vegan mayonnaise was made, which was a combination of silken tofu, mustard paste and lemon juice blended together. Fish cakes were pan fried on a shallow pan and voila!
Inside of the hall, we are continually immersed in beautiful architecture. There’s a large organ on one side of the building.
I am Vegan because…
One of the Ethopian food vendors. These ladies were probably the happiest food vendors we saw. They were so cheerful and vibrant, it was a contagious energy!
Hot dogs stand – Wowzers! These were good. At 6 pounds a rolls, it was well worth the money. The flavours worked really well or maybe because I’m a big fan of pickles. From left to right, barbecue flavour, mac and cheese with truffle oil, sauerkraut and mustard.
Frys Chicken Nuggets. They were handing out these chicken nuggets by the tray and swarms of people hovered around for the next tray to finish baking.
Making a Vegan Chocolate Cake – Key things I got from this demo was you can make any cake out of these things – dates, coconut oil, linseed (as an egg replacement) and practise! It seemed quite straight forward to make a cake when you just simply replace the milk and eggs. That is, instead of normal dairy milk, you could use coconut milk, soy milk, oat milk, almond milk. For egg, you can soak ground up linseed in water and after 10 minutes you get a gooey looking substance that you can use as an egg replacement in a cake.
Wasn’t expecting cereal but this was awesome! Never really tried coconut milk for cereal before but it was definitely nicer than expected. It wasn’t as watery as I thought and it gave a nice coconut flavour to the overall cereal.
Our freebies after 8 hours of the event. This didn’t all come from the Vegan Life Live goodie bag, we got a lot of things from the Vegetarian Society. At the Vegetarian Society stand, you take a photo with their cardboard cut out and post it to instagram and they give a massive free gift bag. This include:
- Magazines (3 The Vegetarian from previous seasons)
- Black Jasmine Pasta
- Soup
- Koko milk
- California prunes
- Vitamin Tea
- Tofurky badges
- Protein bars
- Mints
- Pumpkin/ Squash seeds to start in your garden.
Recommend it?
Yes! Definitely recommend Vegan Life Live London event if you are in London. If you can get the Groupon deal – it’s half price for entry and the free things you get from the event pretty much pays for your entrance fee.
The good:
- I enjoyed the cooking demonstrations
- Having all the vegan food vendors from all over London in one location so I didn’t have to venture out to find them.
- Got to try loads of vegan products that I wouldn’t typically purchase due to the price at supermarkets. Able to find out what I liked and didn’t like without spending money to try.
The bad:
- There was only one store serving coffee (bit of a monopoly)
- Sort of hard to get to the location, could be more centrally located or closer to a transport hub
- There is not enough seating for the demonstrations and food stores so we ended up either standing or sitting on the ground near the exit doors.
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