The 2006 Veggie Awards, Vote!

Just 7 Days Left to Vote in the 2006 Veggie Awards!

VegNews is just 7 days away from closing the 2006 Veggie Award polls, so now is the time to get out the vote! Some of the categories are very close, so let your voice be heard and vote for your favorite vegetarian people, places and products today.

All ballots are entered into a Grand Prize Drawing for a chance to win these great prizes:

Grand Prize: BED & BREAKFAST FANTASY GETAWAY
Second Prize: VEGAN VICE PACKAGE
Third Prize: $100 VEGAN ESSENTIALS SHOPPING SPREE
Plus, Weekly Giveaways! VEGAN UNLIMITED SPA BASKETS

Vote Here

After you vote, put in our comments, your favorite thing you voted for.

Siam Orchid Thai Restaurant goes Vegan!

Well at least for one evening. We just had a huge Thai dinner at Siam Orchid in Sarasota. They provided a delightful vegan spread including veggie spring rolls, curry puffs, coconut curry, and a delicious peanut tofu stir fry dish.



Yes, just this evening (August 27th, 2006) VegSarasota organized a Thai vegan buffet for about 55 people.

Here's Dill & Raylon joyful for the turnout!


We were able to pull together a really wonderful group of people for this event. Everyone was so friendly and a real joy to talk to. Some group members brought their parents, and there were a few kids in attendance as well. Chris helped us set up our microphone which allowed us to speak to the group without having to stand on chairs and shout :) We had a 2 place raffle in which we gave away a CD by pianist and activist Will Tuttle, and 2 tickets to the upcoming Earthdance Festival.

Lenore won the CD, and Dimitria won the tickets - congratulations ladies!

The owner Nissy even did a traditional Thai dance for us.


As usual with these kinds of events, the most important things that happen are the inter-personal connections that get made. Several of us took time afterwords to engage in discussions with each other. As I bounced around to the different tables, I heard and joined in discussions of art, music, meditation, healing, compassion, and economics. After we cleared out, we snapped this shot to celebrate the few folks who stayed to learn something from each other.



Left to right thats Peter, Dimitria, Beth, Shane, Kimberly, Daniel, Dill, Chris, and Kris. Yours truly had his finger on the shutter.

Thanks to everyone that came out to help us show another Sarasota Restaurant that there IS a demand for tasty cruelty free food!

Vegetarian Vegan Sarasota August Meetup 8-24-06

Last night we had our 18th monthly meetup and boy was it successful!



VegSarasota.com has been at it since last March and I'm proud to see so many people come out (just as the clouds parted for us) to enjoy the company of like minded friends. A group of over 50 people descended upon Whole Foods Market in Sarasota for this event. I got to meet some really great people like Stacy, Andy, & Krystin the nutritionist for the first time. Plenty of good food and a few good drinks were enjoyed before we started the meeting at 7:30pm.

Raylon (that'd be me) started things off by welcoming everyone giving a little background on the group. Dill picked things up by introducing us and reminding everyone why we're doing what we're doing. She then talked about the recent Vegan Day at Whole Foods, and the upcoming Thai vegan buffet at Siam Orchid on 8/27. Then Lisa came up to talk a bit about the upcoming Earthdance festival and describe how buying a ticket from VegSarasota (which you can do with the click of a mouse) not only saves you $5 off the $15 the ticket price, but also helps out the group finances a smidge.

Kris told us all about Biotica Ecotours and their upcoming schedule, including an October veggie outing. Stay tuned for more info on that, these are always really fun and educational. She also said some new photos are up from past events, so check out their site! After Kris spoke, Beth (our girl on the inside) told us about some tasty raw 'burgers' that she had tried that earlier day and provided samples for anyone interested. Slim had a couple of articles to share discussing the recent federal ruling that the FDA cannot prohibit experimental drugs from being used by terminal patients, and 2 other articles by physicians stating that a plant based diet is the healthiest way to go. Then Becky talked about the need for volunteers at the Bee Ridge extension animal shelter, and Karen talked about the upcoming walk in St. Pete for Farm Sanctuary. Brittany talked about an upcoming play series at Booker high in early October. Some free Neem plant was given out along with a bag of mixed tea's provided by Judson (thanks Jud!). Then Andy from Bamboo Grove talked about the organic gardens and most-monthly potlucks on the first Saturday of the month in Arcadia. What a great sounding place!

Lastly, Raylon (ahem) talked about his work with the Outreach Coordinator team and their efforts to effect change through writing letters, emails, and editorials.

With that, we concluded the meeting and were able to get into smaller group conversations and really connect with each other while we all still had our 'veggie buzz' going.



If you want more detail on any of these events, please visit our calendar for dates, times, places, and contact information.

McDonald's giving out Hummers in Happy Meals

Yes it's true - Apparently, instead of opting for candy cigarrettes, McDonald's has decided on this as their new promotion for kids: A free toy hummer with each happy meal - yeay! Can you hear the dripping sarcasm? I thought when I heard this I was having some sort of nightmare about combining the 2 most terrible things in the world, but it's happening. You can read more about the promotion here.

Most people in their right mind could not defend McDonald's food or their mode of operation involving selling the most cruelly mass produced and unhealthy food on the face of this fast-food earth. And most people in their right mind will agree that the Hummer represents the apex of gas guzzling, eco-stomping vehicles. But when you put these 2 things together I cannot imagine what is going through the minds of people who think this is in some way a good marketing campaign. What are we trying to teach children? On top of teaching them it's ok to hurt animals while slowly poisoning their bodies, do we also need to teach them to idealize giant environment harming vehicles as something which should be desired?


Well I'm glad the Environmental Working Group has done something to provide a fun way to speak out against this public insanity. They've created one of the funnest sites I've seen in a while. Check out
Ronald McHummer.com. Their main page has a form letter you can send to Ralph Alvarez, McDonalds USA President. But while your there you can have some fun too! Make your very own sign like the ones below and download the jpeg for fun. I think they look very much like an actual photo, what do you think?

This is one I made up quickly with the added veg message.


And this is one of my favorites from the archive of slogans.



Thanks to Eric Marcus and vegan.com for covering this in his most recent edition of his 'Vegan Diner' podcast.

I talked about it at our meetup last night and everyone was quite amused, but amused in that way where you can't believe the insanity in the world so you just have to laugh at it. Help take a stand by sending the letter, or at least have fun making a sign!

Since I initially wrote this last night I realized a TON of people are speaking out against this. Everyone from Vegan Porn to WIRED Magazine, countless blogs, the NY Times and of course, groups like the Sierra Club. That should tell you something.

VegSarasota named Best Web site for local event listings

VegSarasota named Best Web site for local event listings under "Vegetarian Lifestyle" in the Herald Tribune in an article for college newbies guide to Sarasota. Click here to read all about it.



Love & Peace,

- Dill

Vegetarians of Sarasota & Outreach

Well we recently had our first informal meeting of the VegSarasota outreach coordinators. Thanks to Lisa W. for the title, it fit well. I've been wanting to apply my talent for writing to something I care about for some time, and while I know you are thinking "What could be better than this blog?", I found yet another a great way, and a topic - food! More specifically, getting healthy and tasty cruelty free food options expanded for veggies in this area and of course other (and more important) good causes that we as vegetarians/vegans are empowered to speak out about due to our special brand of enlightenment.



So Thursday, I gathered the top minds (if that's saying much) of VegSarasota who have inspired me and whom I know to be talented in the ways of communication and very intelligent (ok we're a little strange too, but that helps!). So we have Chris O. & Kris F., Sam H. and Lisa W. I provided the Indian food (mild for public consumption), and they provided a sounding board and valuable feedback to this new wing...ok I don’t like wing that's an animal reference... to this new branch of our veg group (yes much better).



We outlined our goals for the task force, namely to leverage our and other members talents and distribute the product of our work to a wider audience within our community. By doing this we can empower our members to help make Sarasota and the world a better, greener, more veg friendly city. We discussed how best to structure different letter and email campaigns, how to effectively reach out to businesses local and national, and how to engage members of our group so that we can have a real impact. Then we (and this is where I need you to pay attention) discussed several institutional targets that we wish to praise and thank for their efforts, others that we would like to see set up shop in the Sarasota area, and yet others that need nudging in the right direction. The reason I asked you to pay attention (you did, didn't you?) is that we want you to submit your good causes to us for consideration. I think a lot of company directors just sit around wanting to know if anyone is paying attention, so they concoct the most ludicrous stuff to see if anyone will react. Things such as media statements that are on the verge of stupidity or business promotions that illustrate the fractured nature of our thinking as a society. So we want help in finding these societal 'areas for improvement'. Please submit or forward any campaigns you come across or think of to raylon@vegsarasota.c om for consideration. We're going to be creating initiatives on several fronts, and I would like to thank the team thus far for really getting involved and each being motivating & inspirational factor in their own way.

Vegetarian & Vegan news reporters - a couple folks working hard

While surfing I came across this really great blog, http://veganworldwidenews.blogspot.com/ where a gentleman from the UK has been blogging the Veg way for some time. Tony has an interesting collection of entertaining and newsworthy articles there, so check him out! As soon as I figure out how to put a links bar I will certainly have a link to this blog up there.

Also, I've been wondering what Eric Marcus is up to over at http://vegan.com/. Since backing off from doing 30+minute podcast and downloadable audio segments of his news roundup 'Vegan Diner', he started producing shorter, more compact segments. However, he has not produced one since July 12th. He did talk about this great article covering an event called Summerfest that sounded really awesome. At any rate, I hope the machine of the meat industry didn't catch up and consume him. That would be terrible if he ended up in someone's burger. I highly recommend his book, Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money for veggies of all persuasion and especially for meat eaters who wonder why a person would take up this cause. Eric was kind enough to visit us for a Vegan Thanksgiving talk last year, I only hope we can out do ourselves this year. The family atmosphere of coming together as veggies on a holiday was truly worth all the effort.