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food ethics meal
Thursday, November 11 2010
In the evening I went on a little bit of cleaning jihad (both indoors and out in the driveway) because Gretchen and I would be hosting a vegan dinner for some students from Sullivan County Community College. One of Gretchen's colleagues in the prison college program she works for teaches a food ethics course at Sullivan, and Gretchen had given a presentation on veganism and animal rights issues to the class in the past. (They'd also received an alternative viewpoint from the guy who runs Hudson Valley Foie Gras, though, unlike Gretchen, he hadn't brought sample foods from his gustatorial world view.)
They all arrived promptly at 6:00pm: six students and their professor. They were a surprisingly non-white group given the rural county from which they'd come; only two of them were white and the rest were black. Most of them seemed thoughtful and curious, though one of the students was a white grandmotherly lady with a penchant for monopolizing the conversation with uninteresting observations and repeating herself. She reminded me of my mother; she even used the same voice when addressing our animals.
I'd prepared a roaring fire in the woodstove and Gretchen had prepared several easy-to-prepare entrées (the idea being to showcase what a vegan might put in the center of a table to go with side dishes, which are easier to imagine as vegan). These included a nut roast, chili, lasagna, and "chicken salad" sandwiches. For dessert, Gretchen had made a chocolate cake. The students had brought drinks, which were (since most of them weren't drinking age) all non-alcoholic. These included fruit jucie and soda pop, though it later turned out that the orange juice had been supplemented with omega-three fatty acids derived from fish and so wasn't actually vegan (this didn't keep me from drinking it).
Dinner conversation centered mostly around such issues as industry manipulation of the public so as to get us to eat certain products. One question that was debated was whether or not McDonalds should be able to distribute toys with their Happy Meals. Most of those present (including Gretchen and the food ethics professor) seemed to think this shouldn't be allowed, but I personally had no strong objection (though I didn't give my opinion; sobriety was keeping me shy). My view is that the best way to get kids to eat healthier foods (and get parents to feed it to them) is to stop subsidizing the fattening stuff that works against the goal of a healthier American population.
One of the students announced that, presumably due to Gretchen's influence, he'd been vegetarian now for some number of weeks. He also declared this meal tonight "the best food I've ever eaten."
At the end of the meal, Gretchen handed out printouts of all the recipes of the foods we'd just eaten.
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