Tales of Tasty Tuesdays is a vegan student recipe Instagram account run by three University of Stirling students. It was set up in January by Aysun Bora, Emily Int-Veen and Margaux Pierre to motivate themselves to cook new things after enjoying an array of holiday foods.
Aysun and Emily do most of the cooking while Margaux looks after the aesthetic side of things, including photographs and the logo.
To find inspiration they use Pinterest and BBC Good Food, then adapt and veganise recipes depending on what ingredients they have available.
Aysun said: “I think for me it was the thing of doing something together and sharing food. I really love sharing food because that’s Turkish culture. I cook every day and doing something together was a very nice idea for me.”
The three friends each have different nationalities that influence their dishes and is represented in their logo. The pretzel for Germany, Pide for turkey, and a baguette for France.
Aysun said: “Turkish people use a lot of spices and when I was an au pair I was with a Pakistani family, and they have a lot of spices.”
Margaux added: “In France, we don’t use spices so much we do a lot of stew, broths, wine everywhere, stuff like that. It’s like different ways and types of cooking so it’s interesting.
“It’s also like an opportunity to try new foods, new cultures, and stuff. At least for me, I’ve never been surrounded by different cultures of food so, for me, it means I can try new things and have fun at the same time.”
21-year-old Aysun said: “We’re having fun with it but at the same time we want to try out new recipes. Like we tried to make tahdig for example which is quite complex to make. We’re trying to perfect some things and just try out new things and not make the same things repeatedly.
“It can be difficult when you already bought some things for the week and then you forgot about Tasty Tuesdays and then you go out on Tasty Tuesdays and buy a bunch of new things. Actually, maybe we should budget better! But also, at the same time, all three of us do it.”
Emily said: “Yeah, we all just bring ingredients that we have at home already. Either, well like, if we do not have a specific plan, we will just get something together and think ‘Oh, we could do this recipe because we have 10 of the 12 ingredients.’”
In the future, they are planning to make vegan pizza, vegan sushi, vegan tuna and perfect the tahdig.
“I also like the reach we’ve had,” said Margaux. “We have had a lot of comments – even if it’s from people we know like our parents or stuff. My mum, whenever Aysun posts on the story or some food my mum’s like ‘Oh my god!’ – because she does not speak English – ‘Give me the translation because I really want to make this now!’ So, I always laugh when people message that. Someone cooked cupcakes for us as well so that we could post a review.”
Tasty Tuesdays hopes to expand to more reviews and what the students cook throughout the week. You can find them on Instagram with the handle @TalesOfTastyTuesdays.
Feature image credit: Tales of Tasty Tuesdays
Editor-in-Chief of Brig Newspaper. Final year film, media and journalism student.
