I’d like to thank everyone on behalf of the NCVA for coming out to last Tuesday’s “pizza party” meetup at La Dolce Vita. 

I think we were just shy of twenty people – about evenly divided between old friends and newcomers.

Neil and I had the pleasure of sitting beside Katie Gibbs and her partner, Dave Bagler. Dave is probably the funniest person I have ever met and, with Neil’s permission, I have declared him my new best friend.

He’s also the Ontario Green Party’s Candidate for Ottawa-Vanier…I’d almost consider moving there just so I could vote for him if the area weren’t so riddled with crime and heavy metal contamination (Now don’t go freaking out over that comment Vanierians…resorting to violence will only entrench the stereotype, haw haw).

But where was I?  Oh yes, pizza party…

The ravenous crowd went through four bags of Daiya and untold packages of Yves veggie pepperoni, which were brought in specially for our event. The general consensus was that the pizza was exceptional. Mine certainly was – I got the “Toscana” with olives and artichokes.

Homemade cupcakes were provided for dessert. The tiramisu ones were chosen to reflect the Italian theme of the evening. The black forest ones were mainly backup to appease that small but vociferous portion of the population that objects to food soaked in booze (??).

There was one drawback to the evening. It involved Neil and his calzone, from which greyish chunks of sausage tumbled mid-meal. Neil handled the situation calmly, and the wait staff were very apologetic. And the mishap actually had the benefit of reaffirming Katie and Dave’s previously bitterly lamented decision to order pizza instead of calzones.

So, gross as it was, the sausage by no means spoiled the evening. I wouldn’t even have mentioned it but for the valuable lesson the tale holds for all vegans: always be very specific when placing an order in a non-vegan restaurant and don’t be afraid to write the chef a note. Our sausage mishap was apparently the result of the chef thinking Neil wanted veggie pepperoni “in addition to” rather than “instead of” sausage in his calzone.

So thanks again to everyone for coming out ad for being so forgiving of the fact that I forgot all of the dates of our future events. And a big bravo to all the subsequent friend-making that occurred on facebook! After all, meeting like-minded people is what these events are about 🙂