Vegan Chef Showdown

Date: Saturday, July 23, 2011
Time: 3 p.m.
Location: The Funky Buddha Lounge, 728 W. Grand Ave., #1, Chicago

Competing compassionate chefs will use Upton’s Naturals Gourmet Seitan to create a tantalizing vegan dish and entice visitors with samples for a suggested contribution of $1 each to be donated to Mercy For Animals’ work on behalf of farmed animals. The chef who receives the most votes from the sampling public wins! The top three chefs will win prize packages from Chicago’s favorite vegan and eco-friendly businesses and restaurants.

Expect mouthwatering sandwiches, chilies, soups, and more. The event is all ages, open to the public, and there will be a bar serving beer, cocktails and wine for attendees 21 and over.

The competition includes a diverse mix of local chefs, including 20-year-old Kelly Peloza, who is the renowned author of Vegan Cookie Connoisseur, which has attracted national attention and been featured in such magazines as Vegetarian Times and VegNews. Other challengers include Sandi Swiss and Brian Duda of Canary Confectionery, a vegan dessert catering company based in Naperville. The deliciously dynamic duo will dish up Lime Corn Cake with a Pepperjack Salsa Glaze.

Why vegan? Animals on today’s farms are routinely mutilated without painkillers, intensively confined and cruelly slaughtered. There are no federal laws protecting animals during their lives on factory farms and most states specifically exclude farmed animals from anti-cruelty protection, meaning farmers are able to get away with treating billions of cows, pigs and chickens in ways that would warrant felony-level cruelty charges if even one dog or cat were the victim instead.

The United Nations has announced that a global shift away from animal-based foods is necessary to save the world from the most devastating impacts of climate change, stating that meat, dairy and egg production is responsible for more deadly greenhouse gases than all of the cars, trucks, planes, trains, ships and other forms of transportation in the world combined.

“These amazing and adventurous Chicago chefs have developed an exciting array of great-tasting vegan meals that are not only good for you, they’re wonderful for the planet and kind to animals,” says Kenny Torrella, Chicago Campaign Coordinator of Mercy For Animals. “We can choose compassion over cruelty every time we sit down to eat by choosing healthy and humane vegan alternatives to meat, dairy and eggs. Luckily, more and more chefs and restaurants are proving we can still enjoy all of our favorite foods, without all the saturated fat, cholesterol and violence associated with animal products.”

For more information, visit MercyForAnimals.org.