Thursday, April 24, 2008

May meeting


The May meeting of the Orillia Vegetarian Club will be on Sunday May 4th, from 4:30 to 6:30p.m.

It will be held at the Friends Meeting House, at 231 Westmount Drive South.

Please bring a potluck dish - enough to serve yourself and 5 others (and please print off and bring copies of the recipe!). You are also asked to bring your own drinks, as well as $2 per person to help cover the cost of the venue (kids exempted).

If you need recipe ideas, there are some vegetarian recipes here, and loads more online - just do searches like vegetarian recipes or vegan recipes.

If you have any questions, just email orilliaveg [at] gmail.com.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

future meetings


Please save these dates and plan to join us for one (or all) of our monthly gatherings! The locations and themes are tentative at this point -- so please let us know if you have any special requests or suggestions :)

Note: The monthly event is held on the first Sunday of every month, starting at 4:30pm. Please email orilliaveg@gmail.com or check back here for changes (if the first Sunday is a holiday weekend, we will meet on the second Sunday instead).

May 4th - potluck at Friends Meeting House (no theme)

June 1st – dinner at Brewery Bay in Orillia

July 13th (alternate date because 1st Sunday is Mariposa!) – potluck at Couchiching Beach park (meet at the greenhouse)/bring your own plates, cups, cutlery and lawnchairs

Aug 10th (alternate date because 1st Sunday is long weekend) – potluck and farm tour at Nora, Stephen and Natalie's/bring your own plates, cups, cutlery and lawnchairs. Email us for directions.

Sept 7th – potluck at Friends Meeting House/theme: 100 mile diet

Oct 5th – potluck at Friends Meeting House/theme: Soup Night

Nov 2nd – potluck at Friends Meeting House/guest speaker: Sprouting?

Dec 7th – potluck at Friends Meeting House/theme: Holiday party

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants


Michael Pollan is not a vegetarian. He is however a journalist who has written some powerful pieces that explore, and support, the vegetarian argument.
In his January 2007 New York Times article, Unhappy Meals he uses nearly a dozen pages to prove his opening thesis that we'd all be better off if we ate "food" (real food - apples, not apple derivatives), and only a little bit, and stayed as far away from meat as possible.
His 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma examined the different types of meals available to North Americans - a fast food meal vs. an "organic meal" vs. a completely self grown & cooked meal. It was at it's most powerful when examining the factory farming system, and part of this can be read here.

Really interesting reading, especially if you haven't given much thought to food issues & and industrial agriculture before, and want to be introduced to the field by a fairly neutral, but very critical, omnivore.

Thanks to Debris for the picture.