Taking Action for Animals and Filling My Belly with Lots of Vegan Food
This weekend I drove down to the Washington, D.C. area to exhibit for the Humane League at the Humane Society’s Taking Action for Animals (TAFA) conference. It was a fun, though busy and tiring, weekend. I got meet people who I work with through phone and email but had never met in person, and just generally enjoy being in the company of several hundred like-minded people. But most of all, I got to eat! There was such a high prevalence of good food at this all-vegan conference that I easily overate.
On my drive down, I munched in the car on green grapes, a banana, and coffee with soy milk.
After I arrived and got set up, I used my lunch voucher to grab more fresh fruit, a vegan egg salad sandwich, a vegan BLT, and the largest chocolate chocolate chip brownie ever (which I am still working on). They also served a couscous salad and chips.
For dinner, there was a sit-down banquet. It was weird to grab a roll and spread some butter on without even thinking about whether it was vegan or not. I even jumped a little when the server started pouring a creamy dressing on my garden salad. The entree included a rice dish, broccoli rabe, and two faux chicken cutlets from Gardein. Dessert was a fancy-looking red velvet cake (shown here) with a few different sauces and icings. Sadly the cake was a bit dry, but everything else was excellent.
The next morning I was treated to a free drink and pastry at the hotel’s Starbucks since I had a less than desirable room. (I was right next to the elevator and people kept trying to open my door thinking it was the stairs.) I planned on just getting my standard iced soy latte until I saw the sign: “Lemon poppy seed muffin and chocolate chip scone are vegan.” I went for the muffin.
Lunch for Sunday included two more delicious vegan sandwiches - a panini with pesto, tomato and Daiya cheese, and a wrap with faux chicken, lettuce, dried cranberries, and apples. There was also more fruit, chips, chocolate chip cookies, and some pasta salad.
Two days later I am still full!
This dessert picture was snapped by VEGdaily and Ecorazzi blogger Michael Parrish DuDell. Check out both of these blogs for more TAFA posts including an interview with celebrity speaker actress Ginnifer Goodwin.
July 29th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
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