Midweek Munchies
What rift is contributing for Halloween!

BOO!

Did I scare ya?!

hehe. We had a pot luck type thing at work today. They grilled up some hotdogs and had some chili and cookies and treats and stuff.

I brought some Yves Veggie Dogs... And they got happily grilled separately. One of the girls there is vegetarian, and she had one of my dogs. And I offered them to another lady who has shown interest in going vegan... she said she's had them before and they're good, but she had a plate full of the salads.

My supervisor brought in a pasta salad that happened to be vegan. I was thrilled and it was tasty!

I also made some of my vegan cornbread. I covered the cornbread with foil and wrote with green Sharpie "Cheri's Vegan CornBread Yummy!!" And because I really wanted to get some conversations going, I also brought the EarthBalance butter, some maple syrup and my agave nectar.

Yay! Everyone who tried the cornbread said it was great! I got questions about "what makes this vegan?" Milk and Eggs, I say... I used soy milk and an egg substitute. And then I had to tell them all about the egg substitute of course. I use EnerG, it's a white powder, potato starch mostly, that mimics the binding action in baking (you can't use it to make scrambled eggs).

Later, they talked about the agave nectar. I told them it's a honey "substitute" and they asked about vegans and honey. I said that technically, honey is an animal product (bees are animals too!) and vegans don't eat animal products. But there are some vegans who do. I told them that many commercial honey producers kill everyone in the hive every winter because it's too much trouble to keep them alive until spring, since they've stolen the bees' winter food source (ie, the honey). It's terribly sad, I think. Bees are at the top of their evolutionary branch, just like humans, and I think they need a little more respect.

And then, from "some vegans eat honey", the subject changed and everyone had to make fun of the people who say they are vegetarian but still eat fish or chickens. ha, that cracked me up... because that is the biggest pet peeve of vege people!

Anyway, it was a really good potluck. I got to eat several different things and I got to talk about how cool being vegan is! And I was so happy to get so many compliments on my vegan cornbread!