I thought I’d write a little post about Easter and what we’ll be eating to celebrate as a vegan family. We’re not religious, so Easter is all about chocolate for me. When Ebony was younger, I used to buy her carob Easter eggs as a way of avoiding the sugar in chocolate. These days, I’m not quite so strict, but do still make an effort to limit her sugar consumption. For this reason, other people tend to buy her Easter presents that are free from chocolate. For example, my parents have bought her a swimming costume and my Nanny usually buys her tights. My Nanny doesn’t know that there is such a thing as vegan chocolate and thinks that depriving a child of chocolate is child abuse, but Ebony is always really pleased with her tights.
Ebony won’t be deprived of chocolate, in fact she already has more than I really feel comfortable with. I decided to buy a little extra this year so I could send things into nursery in case they give out chocolate around Easter. I don’t really like the thought of her missing out, so I’ve sent in some small solid chocolate eggs for her.
Ebony’s main egg is a Sainsbury’s free from egg. I bought it from the Sainsbury’s local down the road and it cost about £2.75. It’s small which I’m pleased about, I’m not really keen on the idea of giving her an egg big enough to hold a month’s worth of sugar. Whilst I was there, I also picked up one of these Choices Easter bunny bars for little more than £1. I’m always pleased to see how many vegan products are stocked in the tiny Sainsbury’s in the tiny place I live.
I also bought some Divine dark chocolate eggs. Divine chocolate is Fairtrade so I don’t need to feel guilty about child labour and unfair working conditions (wondering why your Easter egg might be responsible for child labour? Read this). The Divine eggs are small, individually wrapped solid dark chocolate eggs. We use them for an Easter egg hunt in the garden, it’s a family tradition (you can see last year’s vegan Easter egg hunt here). I read you could buy them from Tesco, but they didn’t have any when we looked so I placed an order with Vegan Town.
I also bought myself a Choices chocolate egg. I love the caramel cups it comes with, so that’s why I decided to have this egg for myself. Laurie isn’t huge on chocolate, so I just bought him some vegan creme eggs. I again ordered them from Vegan Town, so I don’t know what they’ll be like yet. I’ve had the Lakeland Ethical Treats creme eggs before and they’re really good, but they seemed to be out of stock everywhere when I placed my order.
For something a little different, I also bought a couple of Easter chocolate lollies from Vegan Snacks Sorted. These were only £1 each so I thought they were a pretty good price, although you have to pay delivery on top. I think that’s the one downside to veganism, it ends up costing a fortune in delivery charges because so many things are easier to order online. I think the Easter lollies will make a great addition to our outdoor Easter egg hunt this year.
Finally, I’ve just noticed that Amanda’s Foods have brought out a new vegan wagon wheel with honeycomb, so I’m off to order one of those for myself now. I love her wagon wheels, they’re so tasty. I’m really hoping that one day she’ll bring out either a Tunnock’s teacake style vegan product or, my personal favourite, a Snowball.
Oh, and because not everything should be made of sugar, she’s also got this paint your own Easter egg kit. The egg is ceramic and the kit came from Poundland, I think they had quite a variety of egg-free egg painting kits, but this is the one we have. I used to love painting eggs, so I’m glad Ebony won’t have to miss out on that tradition.
So, that’s my vegan Easter haul. What vegan goodies have you found to enjoy this Easter?