Maidstone Vegan Festival Summer 2017

This Saturday my boyfriend and I visited the Maidstone Vegan Festival as it is local to us and we were really interested to see what was going on. Outside, there was live music and hot street style food, as well as soft serve vegan ice-cream – I uploaded a picture of this to our Instagram page!

Inside, there were so many different stands! There was an area to try vegan cheeses, milks and more, and there were so many different charities and companies present. It was a very busy day, the turn out was really big! I was surprised to see so many local people embracing veganism.

There was lots of vegan and cruelty free beauty and skin care free businesses including Arbonne, I Am Natural, Beauty by Nature, and Organic ColourSystems to name a few.

There were plenty of handmade crafts, including woodwork and animal portraits. We picked up an engraved coaster!

Of course, there were plenty of fine vegan foods on offer! There were cookies, cupcakes, sausages, and chutneys.

The most interesting food we tried was definitely the tingling daisies! These plants are known as electric daisies, toothache plant, and buzz buttons but the scientific name is acmella oleracea. We, however, have taken to calling them tingle-berries.

When you bite into a tingle-berry, there’s an intense citrus-sour flavour, and then your whole mouth tingles and your tongue goes numb! It was not a very pleasant experience for me but apparently they can taste nice cut up in a salad!

I bought a t-shirt which I am in love with and a bamboo toothbrush! I’ve been looking for a bamboo toothbrush for ages now and I finally found one at the vegan festival!