A Gathering Of Midwest Vegans (and one vegetarian)!
Over the past few months (since my job with the school went on hiatus for the summer), I've been spending what seems like the majority of my waking hours online. Mainly on a great site called Vegifide. There are quite a few people on there from St. Louis, and over the past few months, a few of them have organized and gotten together for meet-ups at various places in "The Lou" - to eat out at restaurants, have drinks, go to movies, or people-watch at karaoke nights. I've been so broke lately, though, that I haven't been able to afford the gas to get over there (it's a good 35 minute drive or so) OR had the patience and determination to try to figure out the Metrolink connection points. So, in an effort to try to meet some of these people SOMEhow, I organized a picnic-potluck over on this side of the river at a park in East St. Louis called Frank Holten State Park.
It wasn't a huge turn-out, but six people - and an adorable little baby - came, and everyone brought a wonderful vegan dish to share. (Everything was homemade and entirely vegan aside from one dish, which was still vegetarian.) We had a super-dooper delicious potato salad, pasta salad, chocolate chip cookies, black bean and corn salad, chocolate cake, fruit salad, an awesome (actually good!!!) tropical rice pudding, lentil soup, a beautiful salad w/homemade orange-raspberry dressing, and some pretty biscuits.
I'd never been to the park before scouting it out on Saturday; it's frickin' HUGE! It's only a fifteen mile drive from O'Fallon, so I'll definitely have to take D out there one of these days. The weather was a little hot and muggy when we got there, but it cooled down a bit and turned out to be a wonderful evening.
It was SO awesome meeting other veg*ns. Many praises to Vegifide for linking us all together! I can't wait to start working and getting a regular paycheck again so I can go to St. Louis and check out some of their gathering spots.
