Central Florida Earth Day 2011

Hello friend!

My wishes that Earth Day 2011 has brought about at least one positive change in your life.  Perhaps as simple as forgoing plastic bottles for a stainless steel reusable water bottle?  Not recycling?  Perhaps you have reconsidered.  No matter what your personal choice I only hope that you took a minute or two for reflection of your life's impact to this fragile planet.  That's all one can ask of you.

That being said, Tiffany and I enjoyed our first visit to Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando.  Saturday was the annual Central Florida Earth Day.  Complete with vendors, arts, animals, education, cooking, music, discussions, and sharing of information.  Tiffany and I actually gave up a Metropolitan Opera Live in HD event to make the visit!

Tiffany poses for me!  Vendors in background.

We arrived early before 10:00 AM and left around 4:00 PM.  It was a truly nice, relaxing and educational day.  Tiffany and I concentrated on checking out every vendor, stopping a some, enjoying some discussions, eating some vegan food, and watching three cooking demonstrations.

I now pose for Tiffany as I wave to the thousands I am facing.

Not to knock other vendors or events, but the following are the ones we chose to attend or visit:

• 11:00 AM - Food Demonstration:  Chef Velva Peterson, Vegetarians of Central Florida - Eggless Thousand Island Dressing & Pesto Sauce with Linguini
• 12:00 PM - Food Demonstration:  Chef Olive Mackey, Central Florida Raw Food Connection - Nut Mylks
• 1:00 PM - Speaker Panel:  Health and Wellness - Suzette Boyette, Orlando Energy Healers; Dominick D'Anna, Simply Well; Gena Gibson, Avatar; Emily Ruff, School of Holistic Living
• 2:00 PM - Speaker Panel:  Our Energy Future - Michael Brown, Solar-Ray; Dawn Moncrief, A Well-Fed World; Diana Schultz, Green and Healthy Homes; Mighk Wilson, Florida Bicycle Association
• 3:00 PM - Food Demonstration:  Chef David Tran, Loving Hut - Sauteed Lemongrass Seitan
• Food Vendors we visited were:  Ethos Vegan Kitchen and Sah Nevaeh, The Vegan Hot Dog Guy
• Other:  We said hello to our friends from Eat More Produce.  For ease, we waited for our trip home to drop by their store to make our purchases.  We did not want to lug around the produce all day long.
• Other:  We did purchase ($12) a recycled tote bag from the Vegetarians of Central Florida vendor stand. They've take previous years unsold t-shirt and reworked them as tote bags.  Yes, we could have gone to some of the other vendor stands and received a free tote bag but it was our way of giving something back to the fine volunteers who make this fabulous event possible.  As did we donate a few dollars here and there to other good causes.

We stopped our only potential miscue of the day seconds before almost making a really big mistake.  I won't identify the vendor but one was raffling a nice wine refrigerator amongst other items.  All I had to do was fill out a raffle ticket and insert into their lock box.  OMG!  When I saw the really fine print I shouted to Tiffany, "Stop!"  In very small print reads, "By signing this form I give my expressed consent to the sponsors, the promoters, and the independent distributors of the promoters of this sweepstakes to contact me via telephone at the number listed above, even if my phone number is registered on the federal or a state do not all list. ..."  Who are these "sponsors", "promoters", and "independent distributors"?  Why would I sell my privacy for a 1 in a million shot of winning a raffle?  Uh... I think not my fine friend!  Do I look like an idiot?  Er... scratch that... don't answer this please.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone it took to pull the event together and all of the vendors and volunteers giving their time and sharing their product or cause!  We will be back again next year!

David Tran and his wife give Seitan cooking demonstration.

My absolute favorite part of the day?  Without doubt, meeting all of the friendly like-thinking people enjoying the day as I was doing.  After that?  Most definitely the cooking demonstrations.  All three cooks who we watched were personable, honest, and freely shared their ideals and recipes.  Outstanding foods prepared and shared by them all!  It was all free and I could not have placed a price on that which they shared.  Thank you Velva, Olive, David and David's wife!  My words would never be able express my gratitude.  I shall attempt to honor you by taking that which you shared and exercising it into my daily life.

Hi-dee hi-dee you-are-never-too-old-to-learn-ho my friend.