Loyola University Chicago's Vegetarian Week 2009

The week of Monday, March 16th to Saturday, March 21st was Loyola University Chicago's first Vegetarian Week (2009). Our agenda consisted of:

• Bake Sale: We had a bake sale to raise money for the group and we gave out free dorm-friendly recipe CDs!
• Colleen Patrick Goudreau Event: Author, activist, and chef spoke on behalf of the vegan lifestyle
• Ethnic Dinner: We had vegan food from 9 local ethnic restaurants around Roger's Park showcasing how vegetarianism fits into the culture
• PAWS Volunteering: Kitty City!

To kick off the week, we had a bake sale in Damen Hall. We made about $76! Not bad at all. The recipe CDs were a hit and the free vegetarian literature was gone by the end of the event. I made some vegan stout cupcakes out of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, oatmeal raisin cookies out of The Joy of Vegan Baking, and Irish Whiskey Cake (the recipe link is in the St. Patrick's Day post) for the sale.

Photo of Alexis, Paula, and Colleen. Taken by Sam Chen.

Speech description:

From Excuse-itarian to Vegetarian: Addressing the Blocks that Keep People from Making Changes:

Combining humor and wisdom to tackle the most popular excuses for not eating a plant-based diet, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau leaves no rationalization unexposed and offers sound and practical tips for living a life that reflects the values of sustainability, compassion, and simplicity.

We had a great turn out, at least 75-80 people came! Also, free food thanks to VegFund (hummus, vegetables, and vegan cookies). If anyone would like a recording of the speech, I have a copy I can e-mail you. It lasted about 45 minutes, plus Q&A and some book signing. Check out her podcasts on her website and buy her book, The Joy of Vegan Baking. She'll be coming out with a new book soon, The Vegan Table. The morning after the speech, Colleen and I had breakfast at Blind Faith in Evanston. It was quite tasty! I had the tofu scramble made vegan and she had the breakfast burrito made vegan sans the tortilla.

Photo of Paula and Colleen. Taken by Sam Chen.

The Ethnic Dinner was really tasty, haha. We had dishes from 9 local Roger's Park restaurants. Cuisines included: Ethiopian, Thai, Mediterranean, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Latin American, and American (dessert = chocolate cake!). All dishes were vegan. We had laminated sheets on the tables explaining how the vegetarian diet fits into that culture's cuisine plus laminated sheets of the restaurant list and cuisine (with ingredients).

Scanned article from the Phoenix, Loyola's school paper.

Last event on the week's agenda was volunteering at PAWS Chicago. There are pictures of this from a previous post regarding that weekend (retro bar crawl!)

Thank you Colleen for being the star of Veg Week and helping make it a huge success! Here's to Vegetarian Week 2010! :]