Spit out that mystery meat and get on over to the Great South Texas Meatout

Are you ready to treat your body right, be consistent in your moral values and help the environment? Then you might want to put down that barbacoa taco and head over to the third-annual Great South Texas Meatout at the Good News Mennonite Church in San Juan (on the corner of Raul Longoria and Eldora) on March 30 from 2-6 p.m.

The free Rio Grande-wide festival will feature vegetarian cooking workshops and demonstrations, with a wide selection of delicious meat-free dishes available for purchase from a cash bar. Samples of the classes include Growing a Salad on Your Front Porch, Vegan Nutrition, Easy Bake Recipes, Mexican Vegan Cuisine, among others.

Visitors will get to sample food from the classes, and for $5, visitors can purchase the Rio Grande Veggie Cookzine, a magazine complete with numerous original South Texas-inspired recipes.

The Great South Texas Meatout is sponsored by the Association for Vegan and Vegetarian Awareness (AVA) and the Cochehua Vegetarian Collective.

AVA (www.myspace.com/ava_utpa) is a student organization on the campus of the University of Texas-Pan American. Cochehua (www.myspace.com/cochehua) includes vegetarian (and non-vegetarian) members from Cameron and Hidalgo counties and conducts regular meetings in both counties.

For more information about the festival, please contact Sara Alvarado, AVA president at (956) 330-3721 or tataboxbp@gmail.com.

For more information about the Great American Meatout, visit www.meatout.org, and for a free download about the reasons and concerns of switching to a vegetarian diet, go the Web site for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk.

Bummed

I do not like writing when I only have negative things to say, but I am really saddened by the announcement of the impending deah of Herbivore Magazine. I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall when they reduced the size of the publication to a tiny booklet and reduced the number of issues per year. The magazine was the one real true voice for vegans. The magazine made me feel less like a freak and more a part of a greater community of people who have similar beliefs. It was edgy and provocative. It cut straight to the heart of the issues more politically correct publications (i.e. Veg News, Vegetarian Times) wouldn't dare cover. Herbivore Magazine once bravely asked meat-eaters, "Why not eat your pets, too?" That isn't such an outrageous statement considering our bloody habits toward other creatures. I learned about people who promoted vegan issues I might never have learned about otherwise, including the singer, Michael Franti. The death of Herbivore Magazine comes on top of the recent closure of Satya, another publication that highlighted vegan issues. To make all of this bad news worse, members of our local vegetarian society recently expressed a desire to allow dairy and egg dishes at our local potlucks. They say that the rule of vegan dishes is discriminatory against vegetarians. Um, isn't vegan food vegetarian? Ugh. It's not like vegans can eat dairy and eggs. Which rule is more discriminatory? Anyway, I'm not posting again until I have something positive to say. RIP Herbivore Magazine.