Chinese New Year dinner, more monthly dinners

February 4, 2004

Hi folks,

Just a recap on the Bay Area Vegetarians' Chinese New Year Dinner held last week to celebrate the Year of the Monkey .. We had 23 RSVPs and 3 cancellations, so that left 20 of us to dine on a delicious 9-course dinner. Because we had a fixed menu, with prepayment in advance, the food just kept coming and coming, and we had lots of opportunity to chat and mingle at our two tables of 10 people, without having to worry about number-crunching the bill.

Although Chris & I are not single, we thought it would be fun to have a "singles" table. We didn't define what 'single' meant, but let people opt to sit at that table. It ended up being 10 women and 2 men. The second table, for non-singles, had 4 women and 6 men. So, on this occasion, the women outnumbered the men, and at the singles table, it was a ratio of 5 to 1 (but the two men were very good sports and didn't complain at all).

As many of you are aware, this was the first dinner to kick of our monthly SF dinners to be held at Shangrila on the last Thursday of every month. Based on feedback received, we're going to keep the dinner as a fixed price/pre-arranged dinner AND we're going to keep a singles table. In chatting with the self-described "singles", our definition of 'singles' will be those arriving singularly and not planning to sit with anyone. The next SF Shangri-La dinner will be 2/26 so mark your calendars! Once I have the menu details, it will be posted here.

Special thanks to Mike who surprised us with gifts of vegan jewelry, including a prototype necklace that spelled "vegan". Mike designs jewelry and also has a line of veg themed pins (he donated several of them to our restaurant contest winners). So for folks who asked, here is the URL directly to the "veg" jewelry section:

http://www.wildbryde.bigstep.com/category.html?UCIDs=515505%7C1274250

I've had a pair of the carrot earrings for years, and was happy to see the new 'go vegan' and 'vegan' jewelry arrive.

Additionally, I wanted to give a special thanks to Bob who has been hosting the monthly Oakland dinners at New World since last summer. They've been having lots of fun, meeting lots of new people. I understand it was about 23 folks last month!

For folks who are in the South Bay during the week, we've got a monthly dinner for you, too! Starting Feb 10th, Sean is starting a new dinner series at Bay Leaf Cafe in downtown Palo Alto on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. I hope you'll join him!

We think these monthly dinners are a great way to meet and mingle with like-minded folks, and look forward to meeting up with more of you at the next one. If you live in an area that needs a veggie dinner, consider hosting one. You can do it just once, or you can do it monthly -- just remember that this is a community-driven organization. The events that happen (or don't happen) depend on all of us.

Cheers,

Tammy

govegan

Perform a death-defying act... Go Vegan!Bay Area Vegetarians - http://www.BayAreaVeg.org