The seventh annual Treme Creole Gumbo Festival returns toArmstrong Park on Saturday and Sunday (Nov. 8-9), and for the second year, the festival will featurea Vegan Gumbo Contest. The 2013 winner, Miss Linda "Ya-Ka-Mein Lady" Green, will be on hand to defend her title.

The 10vendors each will offer $3 6-ounce tasting portions of their vegan gumbos, as well as a larger $6 portion and other gumbos and menu items. Festival-goers will vote to name the winning vegan gumbo.

Almost all the vendors will sell other gumbos as well. Caf Carmo's tropical gumbo is described as having blue crab, smoked wahoo, shrimp, okra, black-eyed peas and more. Palmer's Cuisine is bringing a chicken and sausage gumbo with dark meat chicken (as well as homemade sweet potato pie). Praline Connection is preparing file gumbo, and Woody's Fish Tacos will have Meaty Gumbo Z'herbes as well as their vegan version.

To name just a fewother menu items, L'il Dizzy's will sell Trout Baquet; Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club will have a fried Soft Shell Crab Po-Boy; Dreamy Weenies will have all-beef and vegan hot dogs in traditional and "Satchmo Slider" versions.

Here's the complete listof vendors and their menus.

The festival is all about the brass, organizers say. Soul Rebels, Stooges, Trem, Hot 8, To Be Continued, Pinettes and Brass-A-Holics will be featured, as well as two winners from this year's Class Got Brass competition: St. Augustine High School and Edna Karr High School. The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra's brass band will perform, as will trumpeter Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs, Ecrib Mller's Twisted Dixie. Who's when? Here's the complete music schedule.

Every year, the Treme Creole Gumbo Festival has dozens of local artists in an expansive arts market. This year, several vendors as well as local nonprofits will offer new crafts and activities in a ramped-up Kids Area. For the first time, the festival will have private areas to change and nurse babies.

The free festival has free parking, in the lots behind the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts. Enter through Basin Street. No pets, coolers, outside food and drinks, audio or video recording will be allowed.

For more about the festival, visitwww.jazzandheritage.org/treme-gumbo.

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Vegan Gumbo contest returns to the Treme Creole Gumbo Festival this weekend

While the world celebrates World Vegan Month, our expert resident nutritionist Ian Marber turns vegan for the weekend

Perhaps I was swayed by the words of film director James Cameron (of Titantic, Aliens and Avatar fame) who says that one can't be an environmentalist if you aren't a vegan. Or perhaps it was simply that I have become lazy about what I eat, favouring the same lean meat and poultry with vegetables most of the time, but in recognition of World Vegan Month I tried my hand at a vegan diet for the weekend. Now I realise that one weekend isn't going to save the planet or do a lot for my health but I wanted to see what it was like, and what I could eat.

Aside from enjoying the food, following a vegan diet if only for 48 house forced me to eat mindfully. As a beginner I think I would have found it hard to know what to eat without eating the same few foods again and again and so I sought the advice of author Tony Bishop-Weston, former Vegan Society chief turned author and vegan chef. His most recent work, The Vegan Cookbook can be found in bookshops and online.

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Five reasons to become a vegan

1) Health - because veganism leads naturally to eating more fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. By cutting out things with animal fat in, it makes it more difficult to eat badly. 2) The EPIC study was a vast piece of work that can't easily be summed up. However, it confirmed that vegans were at least as healthy as the healthiest omnivores. 3) Veganism celebrates its 70th birthday this year and its founder, Donald Watson pointed out the irony of feeding our crops to animals for us to eat rather than eating the crops themselves. 4) The cost in terms of energy to maintain livestock - from electricity to water - isn't sustainable for the planet in addition to the additional methane gas that livestock produce adding to potential global warming. 5) Traditionally vegans feel that it is morally wrong to exploit and kill animals for food when eating meat isn't necessary.

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Bishop-Weston suggests that an easy way to transition to a vegan diet is to take a practical approach, replacing meals here and there with increasing frequency. Here is the menu that we put together for my weekend:

Breakfast

Porridge or museli with non-dairy milk such as soy, rice, hemp, almond, oat, flax, hazelnut and coconut milk

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What To Eat Now: a vegan diet

About a year ago, I wrote a blog about how animal rights activists are heavily targeting college students in an effort to raise the next generation of vegans and vegetarians and to disparage modern animal agriculture.

Between People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Glass Walls Project to the Humane Society University sending speakers (including President Wayne Pacelle) to Colorado State University, animal rights activists are tryingand succeedingin convincing impressionable young minds that the grass on the campus quad is greener if youre a vegan.

About a year ago, I wrote about one such college student, my cousin Martha. Martha has always been an ambitious and adventurous young woman. She even studied abroad in high school for an entire year, which I know I would have been too homesick to do, especially at such a young age.

But when Martha was abroad, she didnt eat much meat, and came home forgetting about the deliciousness of meat, milk and eggs. As I wrote in my original post:

I started noticing it six, or so, months ago: some particularly veggie heavy recipes in the annual family exchange, a few Pinterest posts tagging Meatless Mondays. It was a slow build, but soon enough my teenage cousin was visiting my family, sitting at my mothers Sunday table and refusing bacon: Im a vegetarian.

Excuse me, what? Its true, came the replyshes sworn off turkey on Thanksgiving, her beloved ham roll-ups, burgers, hot dogs, and of course, bacon. The only silver lining is that shes still eating cheese (otherwise I dont know if our home state of Wisconsin would ever forgive her!). My cousin is off to college this fall and will likely be packing newly acquired vegetarian habits in the U-haul along with her bedding and shower caddy.

Im all for consumer choice, and after working for this industry for most of my adult life, Ive quickly come to recognize that if consumers want it, farmers will find a way to produce it. Its our freedom of choice that makes our country different, and that bounty at the grocery store is what allows us to have opinions and make personal decisions for our families and ourselves.

So while I was a little surprised by my cousins decision, it was 100 percent her right to choose what works for her and what her preferences were: and I had no right to say one word about it.

So I didnt. Not even once. And trust me, it was a little hard (especially when she would share articles from PETA or HSUS on her Facebook feed!!).

But just a few weeks ago, I was traveling near where she goes to college and wanted to see her to catch up in person. Knowing her dietary restrictions, I let her pick the placeand when we got thereI took a quick perusal of the menu and said, Martha, I dont think theyre going to have enough options for you here, maybe we should go somewhere else.

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Meredith: Update on 'When your cousin goes vegan'

McBusted stars Dougie Poynter and Tom Fletcher turned vegetarian and vegan after watching Joaquin Phoenix's harrowing animal rights documentary, Earthlings.

Poynter revealed the 2005 film, which was nicknamed The Vegan Maker, "warped" his mind and made him "scared to death" of eating meat.

The singer says Fletcher now lives off seeds as he made the decision to become vegan, meaning he abstains from consuming any animal produce.

Poynter tells Britain's Fabulous magazine, "I very recently turned vegetarian. About two months ago, I watched this documentary about where meat comes from and what the animals are fed, so essentially you're eating that, too. I have a very fragile mind and it has been warped by that programme. Now I'm scared to death of eating meat... Tom turned f**king vegan, that's extremely New Age. He lives like a chicken. Off seeds. I think Tom's only being vegan so he can get close to Natalie Portman."

Tags: McBusted - Dougie Poynter - Tom Fletcher - Joaquin Phoenix

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Mcbusted Stars Turn Their Backs On Meat