Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner with the Tampa Group (recap)

Today we spent Thanksgiving day in a non-traditional way with the vegetarian group of Tampa. It was a beautiful day of sharing and mingling amongst happy veggie peeps.


The buffet was huge!! Yes, I ate too much!

Our new friend Clint, Don, Luke, and Raylon

Here's me with the organizer of the event, Michelle LaFleur of Food For Life Now, Pasco Vegetarian Society, Tampa Vegetarian Meetup Group and VegTampaBay.com

Giving Holiday Gifts? Try Sustainable Stationery & Gift Wrap

This year, let's not get sucked in by the consumerism of the holidays. Consider for a moment all of the waste created by gift giving. Check out these cool recycled alternatives PAPOrganics

Sustainability means living in a way that will create a future for all people to flourish while keeping the planet balanced and healthy.

Stationery is only one small piece of the picture. Even so, approximately 7 billion greeting cards are purchased annually by consumers. Think of the impact of producing those cards on 100% recycled paper and other organic agricultural fibers, and then keeping them in the paper stream by recycling them again. Now expand that vision to encompass the entire paper industry. Now we're going somewhere!

VegSarasota Thanksgiving Event Recap

On Sunday, November 19th VegSarasota hosted their 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Dinner Party. Last year we had about 45 people due to limited seating at the venue. So after all the people who expressed their desire to attend this year's soirée, Dill & I decided we really had to do it up. So we went and rented out a gorgeous meeting hall at the South Gate Community Center, and signed up a great band Radio Free Carmela & The Transmitters to provide the entertainment. And entertain they did! In the short 45 minutes we had to set everything up and decorate, they set themselves up and had music going when we opened the doors to the public.

They had everyone dancing, I took a breather to take this photo


We had people crashing the gate even before we were done decorating, and we had to add an extra table for all the food that people brought. I saw so much good food going by me at the front desk I felt like I gained weight just watching it. All in all we had over 150 people in attendance, including folks from Tampa, St. Pete, Venice, Cape Coral and beyond! We had a lot of kids come out as well, and the beautiful park setting and extra room to run really made it enjoyable for them.



I'd be here all day if I listed all the Vegan food people brought, and you'd be running to the kitchen to get yourself something to eat. There there were some standout items though: Somosas (thanks Ted & Shikha!), Fruit bundt Cake with caramel icing, photo-perfect sweet potato pie, many kinds of cookies & pies, veggie loaf, fresh fruit combinations, celebration loaves, and all kinds of fresh steamed veggies like Asparagus, Garlic, squash, carrots and more! The best part about all of the food is that it was completely cruelty free! Folks were very accommodating when Judson & I asked each person if their dish happened to contain any animal products.


This is just a small section of 1 of the tables.

Also during all the fun, Michele & Aurelia had everyone mixing and mingling with the fun party game they brought, which involved finding a matching note card to the one you were given. I spent most of the evening looking around only to discover that Dill had my match! I think it was a setup.

Thanks to everyone for coming, and especially those who contributed food and energy!


Michele, Raylon, Dill, Carmela, Aurelia & Barry

VegSarasota would like to thank our many sponsors without whom this event would have not been the outstanding success it was:
Guest speaker Kimberly Braun, M.A. of Urthdance, LLC Minister and Reiki Master
Better World Media
East-West College of Natural Medicine
Jessica's Organic Farm
Center of Integrated Medicine
Webber Appraisal & Consulting
Two Amigos
Uva Rara
Artists Daniel Bilodeau & Beth Holder
Whole Foods Market
Siam Orchid Thai Restaurant
Two Amigo's Mexican Restaurant
Michele Mician, Yoga Instructor
Aurelia Webber, Yoga Instructor
Lisa Wilson, Photographer
Trance Hands Massage
Biotica EcoTours
Good Earth
and of course Barry

Hooray for higher meat prices!

Due to the vast majority of low-grade corn that animal agriculture uses to keep meat prices low, they are very sensitive to its cost.

That's why I am glad to repeat this story I found out about from the 11/14 episode of vegan diner. The story describes how as the ethanol created for alternative fuels ramps up, so does the demand (and therefore price) of low-grade corn. That is causing major animal abusers like Tyson Foods Inc. to post quarter after quarter of fiscal losses.

And since a company used to raking in profits like they are will only withstand so much bludgeoning by the market, they are faced with having to raise the prices of meat. And if meat becomes 25-50% more expensive, Americans will consume much much less of it. Then all the subsidies that animal agriculture receives which has been allowing them to keep meat prices low for the last few decades will not be enough to sustain the ridiculously low prices.

The only problem with the article is that they allow Tyson CEO to make the following misleading statement. "I believe the American consumer is going to have to pay more for protein." And as most people know, you can easily get plenty of protein from non-animal sources, so his statement is not factual.

Hopefully the trend in meat prices will look something like this


The original article can be found here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0611140231nov14,1,3934157.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Gimme Shelter, Cool TV Show, Promotes Local Shelter Adoption

I just spoke to the show's Executive Producer, Michelle Sampson, and am pleased to announce Gimme Shelter, a show dedicated to promoting local shelter adoption for cats & dogs. Airing Monday & Tuesday Nights at 5:30pm on Comcast channel 21, and Friday at 10:30pm, Channel 21. They film a new episode every two weeks picking a different local shelter. Tivo it!

Dill

Vegetarian Festival of Sarasota Recap

Hey folks, this was a big event for us this year, so the blog entry is correspondingly large (and belated) - enjoy!

On Sunday November 5th, VegSarasota participated in it's second annual Vegetarian Cookout & Compassionate Living Festival, Sponsored by Sarasota in Defense of Animals, from noon to 3:30 pm. The location was the beautiful grounds of the Edison Keith Mansion at Phillippi Estate Park. Over 300 people came out to enjoy the food, music, and educational opportunity.

The VegSarasota booth was once again gorgeous and sprawling, even after having to pull a McGyver to get our banner to stay up (the rules state nothing may be affixed to the walls). I've decided that binder clips are the new duck tape! We had starter kits, pamphlets on poultry factory farming and "Why Vegan", magazines & books on display, and plenty of smiling faces to talk to. Here's a picture of the booth, Raylon & Dill cheery & smiling as always.



The best thing about these types of events is the people. It was really a pleasure to share that mind-expanding interaction with so many people while meeting them for the first time. It is always satisfying to help people gain knowledge that they seek out. Coming to this type of event shows a spark of interest, and that's all that's needed to plant the seed when the truth is so glaring. We sold several veggie buttons that we made and a couple Vegan Planet (or as I call it the Vegan Bible) cookbooks to help us cover our costs. We also got to talk to many people about the Thanksgiving Potluck and invited everyone we could to join us for this spectacular event.




Of course, it wouldn't be a great event without some great music & food as well. I didn't get the name of the band because I was working the booth all day, but they were phenomenal! I had just enough time to snap this photo, so here they are, followed by a shot of some folks enjoying themselves on the terrace under a perfect Florida sky.






And here's some of our friends enjoying the veggie dogs & Dill's special potato salad, which we had at the VegSarasota booth (along with Newman O's vegan cookies). This apparently made the potato salad a commodity to be envied, and if you knew where to find this magical food, it made you a quasi-celebrity.


(Michele, Aurelia, Barry, Jud)
Of course our good friends at Biotica Ecotours were there renting Kayaks by the hour. They were so popular due to the good weather, they actually ran out of Kayaks about half way through the day. Congrats guys! Here is Kris & Chris happy with the turnout.



I would like to extend special thanks to Michele for being a wonderful meeter & greeter, Judson for helping to talk to interested persons, his mother Bonita & Dill's mom Brenda for helping us distribute flyers for the Thanksgiving event.