VSEP Introduces VOYAGER!
VOYAGER! (Vegetarians! Our Youthful Activities Group Encourages Reciprocity!) is a recent development of your Vegetarian Society of El Paso. We are delighted to be able to provide our community's youth with healthy, cruelty-free activities and education. All youthful souls are invited to join us Click here for more info...
What You Missed
Quarterly dinners are more than just food
We had a wonderful quarterly dinner and the vegan buffet was very tasty at the Sunland Park Holiday Inn in May.
Michael Robinson, a wildlife advocate for the animal protection group Center for Biological Diversity, was our guest speaker on May 2nd. Michael is an expert on wolves and told us about the plight those animals face in the southwest.
A sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing slide show provided graphic memories of how we have persecuted the outcast brother of man's best friend.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service poisoned and trapped almost all Mexican gray wolves in the southwest from 1915 until 1973. Five wolves were captured in Mexico in the late seventies and a captive breeding program produced wolves that were reintroduced in 1998 in the Gila Wilderness. This was the effort to reintroduce gray wolves into the southwest under the Endangered Species Act.
By 2004 there were over three hundred wolves in the southwest forests of New Mexico and Arizona. But at the end of 2008, only two Mexican wolf breeding pairs remained in the wild. The rest killed by government agents and by ranchers.
To learn more about the Center for Biological Diversity, and how you can help them protect the wildlife of the southwest, go to http://www.biologicaldiversity.org.
Don't miss the VSEP Quarterly Dinner in July. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau will be our speaker. Colleen is the author of The Joy of Vegan Baking and The Vegan Table. She is also a regular columnist for Veg News Magazine.
Please see our Calendar of Events page for information about this dinner.
The Wrap-up Veggie-FARE 2008!
by Leeann Peacock
WOW! What an amazing day July 26, 2008 was! Who would have guessed (months ago), that the VSEP would somehow manage to contract the date of our second-ever Veggie-FARE to occur on the same day the remnants of a hurricane would make its way through our part of the world? Especially a hurricane so sweetly named “Dolly.” However, as wet, threatening, and messy as it was, our date was set, our advertising had already ran and been paid for, the health inspector was scheduled AND our caterer had been working feverishly since Thursday to be prepared…the show HAD to go on! (So many thanks to Imelda Spurlock, Richard Sargent, Daniel Peacock, Greg Lawson, and the Champion family for their super early arrivals…only to be soaked for their efforts. Set-up took much longer since we not only had to bring in supplies…but to dry them off as well!)
But rain or no rain, what a show Veggie-FARE was! All kinds of thundering fun were contained in those fast three hours. Thanks to Alison Brown and her procurement expertise, we had twice the amount samples that we did at our first Veggie-FARE! That, along with the generosity of Leonard Jones and Sun Harvest as well as the bounteousness of Carlos Mendoza, Marcela Atkinson, and Cielo Vista Natural Market, meant that there were oodles of new taste experiences to explore.
Three terrific speakers were on hand—Greg Lawson presenting “About Animals,” Rev. Sandhi Scott on “Spiritual Aspects of Vegetarianism,” and Liz Walsh with “Vegetarianism and the Environment.” Unfortunately, Dr. Jim Gibson was unable to join us for his discussion of “Diet and Disease.”
Three wonderful demonstrations gave practical exposure to the joy of vegetarian cooking. Maria Clay-Emerson and Larry Emerson demonstrated delectable squash enchiladas and lip-smacking cilantro pesto, Greg Lawson showed off his scrumptious Italian stir fry, and Sukie Sargent explained many mysteries and busted many bean curd myths in her mouthwatering rendition of Tofu 101.
Thanks to the wonderful baking skills of Jamie Newlin, Linda Liebich, and Laura Cahill, we had five delicious vegan cakes for our cake walks. I hope everyone had an opportunity to meet the astounding operators of the Cake Walk corner—Ward, Sue and Cody Champion—my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew!
Our luscious lunch was catered by Aida S Cuisine this year, relieving so many of our members from the dreaded kitchen duty. However, several members still put in kitchen time—thanks bunches to those who did. I saw Mary Murray-Jenkins, Jamie Newlin, and Cody Champion serving selflessly. Kudos, too, to our lunch orders/cashier team, those who made lunch service work: Ashley Valadez, Malti Raghavan, and the handsome and affable Daniel Peacock.
Terri and Tima Velardi made sure the book and cookbook sales tables operated smoothly, and peddled our lovely VSEP store with selections generously donated by Cielo Vista Natural Market. Howard Pearlmutter not only manned the information tables, but also fielded questions and acted as our impromptu Veggie-FARE greeter.
Thanks, too, to our delightful vendors—we had so many this year!
Participants included: Animal Rescue League, Christian Vegetarian Association (thanks to Pat Carafano and Bobby Hatfield), Desert Lotus (featuring Cori Maynes, Dr. Joe Chang, Eliza Mendoza-LaLiberte, and Judy Tallmon), El Numero Tres Healing Arts (thank you Anastacio and Rosario), Environmental Advocates (their president, Stephanie Reyna, is also a VSEP member and manned the table with Andre Sanchez), Josie and Ruby with their veggie café venture (maybe to be called “Vege-licious”?), Betty Marcus-Randle, and Rose Kupfer’s with her Tupperware table.
We had ten grand gift baskets that yielded ten delighted winners. The baskets were generously donated by Vegan Divine, Richard Sargent, Linda Liebich, Laura Cahill, and an anonymous VSEP member. Veggie-FARE gifted eight lucky attendees with delightful door prizes (selected by the team of Ginger Cloud and her daughter Chloe every twenty minutes—thank you). Each door prize included one of Laura White’s beautiful bookmarks, as well as a surprise item!
Of course, no one would have been allowed in to have all this fun had it not been for our beautiful and charming front door lineup of Alison Brown, Laura Cahill, and Laura White. Thanks, ladies, for your hospitality and throwing open the doors of our show—even though opening was delayed for a few minutes while we passed (with an almost perfect score, by the way) all four of our inspections from the El Paso Health Department!
I cannot complete this report without relating the fun we had the Thursday prior. Several of the volunteers met at Sukie and Richard’s home for orientation and the stuffing of the goodie bags (while Linda Liebich decorated Richard’s fruit basket gifts). Wow, what a pleasurable evening of fellowship, “exercise,” and Sukie’s and the Velardes’ tasty snacks. If for no other reason than that, you surely want to be a volunteer next year!
As you can see, it took a lot of hands to put this event together. Our crowd was twice the size of the first Veggie-FARE and we netted enough to procure renowned speaker for our Compassionate Thanksgiving Dinner. (You will be there, right?)
Yes, there will be a third Veggie-FARE; watch for the date announcement and be thinking of what you might do to help. Yes, it takes a lot to put on an event such as this. We had 33 individuals (members and family) physically assisting at this event, and, since our goal is to double attendance again, we want YOU to come have fun with us as a volunteer!
To those of you who assisted, I surely hope I named you all—THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP! To all who sold pre-event tickets—THANKS for your support! To you who gave financial gifts, for all the different reasons why—THANKS for your benevolence! To all who attended—THANKS for braving the weather and being ambassadors of our message to our community! Until our next Veggie-FARE, I continue to be in awe of your gracious generosity and copious commitment.
Great American Meatout
On March 19th, on the campus of the University of Texas, members of the Vegetarian Society of El Paso and the Environmental Advocates of UTEP celebrated the Great American MeatOut by giving out close to 300 vegan sloppy joe sandwiches and lots of literature about the benefits of a plant based diet.
"I have no doubt that is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals" -- Henry David Thoreau
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