Bliss Cafe, EAT Magazine, Food Not Bombs Volunteering

March 6, 2011

For breakfast I ate some of the house's leftover rice with vegetable stir-fry. For lunch I went down to Bliss Cafe ( http://www.cafebliss.ca/ ) and ordered a Chia Seed Pudding, which was $11.20 for a small bowl (complimentary chai tea). It's expensive, but raw, vegan food tends to be. But one can bring food home from a restaurant and make other meals out of the leftovers to stretch the food, like putting this sweet, cinnamon, batter-like pudding over porridge (okay, I put it over rice again because that was what I had). Also at Bliss, I came across a copy of EATmagazine ( http://www.eatmagazine.ca/news/bc/vanisland ) which is a magazine about food on Vancouver Island; it's full of great info about local food. For a one dollar deposit, Bliss also gave me a glass jar for my tea to go in, and I had brought my own tupper-ware to take out the rest of my meal in. I passed by Victoria City Hall, and noticed that they have a small demonstration food garden on the Pandora side of the building.

Then I went to volunteer with Food Not Bombs ( http://www.myspace.com/foodnotbombsvictoria ) to cook food that would become a very large, free, vegan feast on Pandora and Vancouver on Sunday's at around 3pm. It was a good experience; lots of volunteers came and went, helped out how they could, and just sat around chatting in this (also donated for a time) big old kitchen in a student house downtown. Food magically kept appearing throughout the day from donations of unused food from individuals, the donated cull produce from local farms and the scavenged food unwittingly donated by dumpster diving at local groceries (most of that being again cull produce, though I still harbor some doubts about the safety/cleanliness/desirability of this practice). There were sacks of potatoes and lentils, boxes of parsnips and spice, and many other things besides. It is an anarchist disorganized organization style but I'm told they almost always manage to feed (a lot) of people on time each week. I stuck around peeling and chopping vegetables for a few hours, but there came a time when I wasn't needed anymore, so I felt free to depart, though that did mean I didn't get a chance to try some of the gigantic pots of food that were going to be served later.