Ottawa, pshaw

So I attempted to go to FNB in Ottawa. I emailed the email I found, and got a response, giving a time and place.

So I went to the appointed time and place, and...nothing. It certainly seemed like the location of FNB, as it was in a community vegan kitchen space or something, and there were two boxes of donations of kitchen stuff and vegan foods outside.

After waiting about an hour (I know FNB can start late sometimes), I gave up, took some of the food donations, and walked back to my friend's house (in the rain).

Still, Ottawa wasn't a total waste FNBwise, as I did at least get to give my friend a copy of the cooking zine which featured a couple of recipes she'd given me.

Sunday servings

So in Vancouver FNB news, someone accidentally took our key to another province! Oh no! I hope the serving on the weekend went okay. I really have no idea if it did or not, as I was in Edmonton.

FNB in Edmonton is not doing so hot. They lost their cooking space a while ago, and are now just cooking in various people's houses. Also, as it's summer time there're lots of people traveling and stuff. I'm sure it'll pick up again once school starts.

Anyway, I went to their serving behind the library downtown and hung out with some of the people that had made some food. There was pasta salad, sandwiches, water, and beet greens (a bag of which I took back to my friend's house and then failed to cook, hopefully she will use them).

Not that many people came by, but they didn't have a sign or anything, and it was a kind of gross cold day. Brrrrr. At any rate, I met some nice people, ate some tasty food, and gave them a copy of the Van FNB cooking zine. Hurray!

Zombies.

So since I was back in town for the weekend I decided to help out with FNB this weekend.

Katie and I were going to do food pickup on Friday after I did a shift at Spartacus books, but by the time we got to Sunrise they had closed. They close at 6? That's crazy!

So we headed down earlier on Saturday, and did pickup then. On the way back a couple of people made comments about us being Food Not Bombs. Hurray.

Anyway, we got apples, pears, tangerines, melons, pineapples, limes, green beans, carrots, lettuce (which we thought was cabbage) and... I think something else, but I don't remember it. Tomatoes! Oh, we also had frozen bread, which we put in the oven to defrost.

Anyway, we hauled the stuff back to DERA, and started cooking. Well, I did, Katie had to go run some errands.

I soaked some lentils, and chopped up the tomatoes. Then Ricky showed up and we started peeling and chopping the carrots. Dave showed up and he started cutting apples. Katie came back and we progressing fine. And then I dressed up as a zombie and left.

As the zombie walk was today, and I missed it last year, and one of my friends was supposed to be there. Well, she never showed up, and I used my uncanny ability to fail to talk to anyone. It was still fun though.

It went practically as far away from FNB as it could though, that beach thing past the Burrard bridge. So I hoofed it back to FNB and got there just in time to help with the serving. Sasha and Saoirse had shown up to help too.

We failed to find the duct tape, so couldn't put up our sign. And we had less food that expected. But that just made the serving go faster! Which is sometimes a good thing.

After I was going to bring the food we hadn't cooked over to Pigeon Park. Except that I couldn't! as Pigeon Park is surrounded by fences. Crap! So I just brought it across Carrall and left it there.

Then there was the guy who we accidentally let into the building. And we actually did to it this time (and by "we" I mean "me"). Still, we managed to get him to go outside as we left at least. Hurray.

Now, on to Edmonton.

Bits and Pieces

A friend of Anna (who was an awesome FNB member while she was here) visited her and took some photos at FNB. You can find them here (scroll down). Hurray! I'd put some up here, but this computer sucks too much to resize them or anything.

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My friends in Food Not Bombs in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, have a blog. It so far seems to be less about just FNB, but more about general politics/activist stuff. Still! Worth checking out. Did you hear about the huge riot/protest in KL recently? Crazy stuff.

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I left some of the FNB cooking zines (Sugar and Snails/Slugs and Spice) at Spartacus Books before I left on my trip. And they've all sold! Hurray. I will drop some more off before I go.

For those that don't know, the zine is filled with vegan/vegetarian recipes and stories. Some of the recipes are things we make at FNB, some aren't. A couple are even from one of my friends in KL (see above). They are all delicious.

Not with a bang...

So my last day in the America I was in Seattle, and decided to go check out the FNB group I'd helped last time I was in town.

I'd even run into one of the people who'd been cooking last time at a vegan restaurant the day before. He wasn't going, as he had to work, but I still intended on it.

Except it wasn't happening. Or it was happening somewhere else that nobody knew where. There were a lot of people in the community centre where they cooked, and the kitchen was full of people. So if FNB was happening, it wasn't happening there.

I thought about going to the serving later, but I decided I didn't want to go across town to something that maybe wasn't happening. Oh well.

Next stop: Vancouver!

The San Francisco Third

So yet another FNB serving in SF.

On Monday I went back to where the group I'd help cook with had served on the previous Wednesday.

One guy showed up with a bike cart full of soup and some bread. He did FNB by himself! Incredible!
I helped him serve soup and we talked a bit about our experiences. Also I ate a lot of soup because I was hungry.

Also that day I started to stay at the place where I'd done FNB the week before. Everyone there was really nice. Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch : )

On the second day of San Franciso my FNB gave to me...

So day two of San Francicso (last Thursday) led to another food not bombs experience.

This time I headed to a place in the Mission district, and after pulling on a rope attached to an actual bell, headed up some stairs to a really neat community space.

It had a big kitchen, an oven you had to open with a crowbar (!!!), a huuuuge pot (bigger than the one in Vancouver! well, maybe not taller) and a room full of bicycles on the second floor.

A girl who was at the couchsurfing party the night before was there! Amazing! And lots of other people. It was pretty fun.

We made a big salad thing. A soup thing. And I made banana bread, which people said was very good. Oh, and limeade.

I used the recipe from the FNB cooking zine we made (!!!) though we struggled to find flour at first.

We served outside and it was cold. Afterwards there was an open mic poetry/etc. thing where we served. But I decided to sit inside and watch Mirrormask, because I was cold.

Oh! And there was a huge free box. I got pants, a hoodie, _and_ sneakers! Hurray! This isn't about FNB that much, but apparently I forgot everything that happened on that day.

On Friday I went to the critical mass bicycle ride, and met a guy who had been at FNB the day before. Some of his friends came up and started talking to him/me. We hung out all evening, and they invited me to play bicycle polo on Tuesday. Exciting!

San Francisco 1

So yeah, I just do FNB wherever I go now it seems.

Wednesday I got to San Francisco, and with nowhere to stay and no idea of what I should be doing I wandered around, ate some food, found an anarchist bookstore and saw a sign for FNB. "Hey! There's a serving today, I should check it out." So we called the number from the poster, but it didn't work.

So I went to a nearby library, got a different phone number, went back to the store, called it, and got an answer. I was soon on my way!

I showed up to an apartment building, and went up three flights to help cook in someone's apartment. We made a vegetable soup thing, an apple/fruit crisp, and apple/carrot juice! That was exciting that they had a juicer.
They also apparently had a deep fryer, which they used sometimes, which just sounds like chaos.

After cooking, most people didn't want to go to the serving, so it was lucky I was there! Two other people took the stuff to the United Nations Square (or something) by bike cart, and I went along to help serve.

The serving was where the police used to hassle FNB a lot, and there was a nearby fountain where I was told FNB would serve standing in (cold!) when the cops came. It had water in it again, but apparently for a while it was empty.

The serving itself was kind of intense, with some sort of crazy people coming by, and two guys getting into a physical confrontation. Thankfully nothing really bad happened, but it was kind of scary!

Later that night I went to a couchsurfing.org party and found somewhere to stay. Hurray! Then I threw up all night. Boo!

(Oh! One thing I should have mentioned about the last serving I went to in Portland was that there were people dressed up and playing croquet with bowling balls and sledge hammers! Awesome! I asked them about it, but they wouldn't give me a straight answer.)