The Soup’R Bowl: What football?

Ryan – Souper Bowl
Originally uploaded by marleah

The Humane Society of the High Plains held their annual Soup’R Bowl this past Sunday. This is our second time participating in it, representing the Western Kansas Vegetarian Society, and also our second time serving Harvest Chili (here’s the recipe, but we added butternut squash – yum). You may remember that Harvest Chili has been our centerpiece at Thanksgiving for the past two years as well.

Well, we didn’t place in the top three, but we did get lots of positive comments from people about how much they liked it. A lot of people would come up and get their sample, then pause as they were walking away and turn back around, as if they were simply shocked that vegetarian chili could be so delectable! Many who sampled it also came back and got a full bowl of it – some commenting that they were full from sampling soups, but our chili would be their dinner that evening.

Even if we didn’t place, it was definitely worth participating. The Soup’R Bowl raises money for a great cause, plus we raised awareness about vegetarian and vegan foods. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the competition, but the most important thing is remembering that we are doing this for the animals, and we helped the animals two-fold that day.

A Quick Recap

Lawrence Earth Day 2009

So it’s been an entire semester since I’ve written! I guess that’s what happens when someone is taking graduate classes / doing an internship / working part-time / doing a thesis on top of regular home stuff.

But that doesn’t mean that I have cut back on activism and good cooking, either! So here is a quick rundown of what I’ve been up to lately …

- We’ve been keeping up our Western Kansas Vegetarian Society discussions, but have switched from two Saturdays a month to now doing one Saturday and one Wednesday a month. Hopefully it brings in a few more people, what with all of the summer activities scheduled on Saturdays.

- Ryan and I tabled at the Lawrence, KS Earth Day celebration in April like we did last year. The picture with this post is of this year’s celebration. We ran to Target that morning to pick up the canopy thing, because it was raining here and there and we didn’t want our stuff to get all wet. Of course, after an hour or so there wasn’t any more rain, but it did protect us from the sun that afternoon. We got a lot of good positive comments, and once again got to speak with some amazing vegans and vegetarians, including some kids and the parents who support them.

- I got my copy of Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s new cookbook, The Vegan Table! I absolutely love her cookbooks and want to fix every recipe in the book. I’ve already tried a few dishes from this one, and I will blog about them soon. I love all of the extra tips that Colleen gives with each recipe, and the pictures are beautiful.

- Ryan and I are thinking of making a cookbook of our own! I love taking photos of the food we fix, and sometimes the pictures turn out really great. So hopefully I can keep that up! My only concern is, what if a recipe is based on a recipe I found on the web but that I have altered in some way? I’m just not sure how that works, if we would put together a cookbook that we would actually sell or something. I’ll obviously have to do a bit of research before I take the plunge completely. I come up with a lot of recipes on my own, but lots of them are “inspired by” something else, and I just don’t know how much alteration is significant alteration and would make it my own. Hmph.

Now that classes are over, I’m hoping to be updating regularly again. We will see how that goes, because I always end up being busier than I planned.

We’re in demand!

Since we’ve been doing our vegetarian and vegan discussions at the Hays Public Library, we were asked to do a presentation at the Center for Life Experiences for their Community Connections program. The purpose of this program is to connect international students (we have a large international student base for our local university) with local community members, and each time they meet they have a different presentation. Well, just this past Friday we gave a presentation about vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, as well as local resources for various ingredients or food substitutions.

We got a lot of great questions, which I thought that, between my husband Ryan and me, we were able to answer clearly and thoroughly. Many of the community members who attended were senior citizens, and some of them were quite traditional. We were met with some skepticism from some, but I think that we are able to hold our own while still being respectful so that our message came across without ruffling too many feathers. I was frustrated when one person mentioned the egg as being “the perfect protein, since everything in it goes to produce a chick.” I replied that yes, the egg is a perfect protein … for the embryonic chick itself, but not necessarily for people, considering the huge amount of cholesterol in one tiny little egg.

Besides the small amount of frustration we experienced, we heard from many people who were quite interested in the topic and who were eager to learn about our lifestyle. On another positive note, we served barbecue tofu and chocolate mousse (made from silken tofu). There were about 30 people there, and all the barbecue tofu got eaten, and we only had a few cups of the chocolate mousse left. In fact, many people took seconds! It’s great to get such a good response to your own cooking.

Anyway, this was a great opportunity, and I hope that there are a few more western-Kansans who are now considering reducing their meat consumption.

Here is a PDF copy of the Powerpoint presentation we gave: Veg Overview