A Thanksgiving Feast.
Before today I had never come to a FEEST event. At first I had no idea what to do and how to help, but slowly, everyone so kind helped me to figure things out. The very first thing was making rosemary and sage biscuts. As I minced the rosemary and mixed together the butter and flour, I talked to the people around and started learning more about this event in which I participated. Slowly I began to understand the event, but still I was not sure what the even was all about. My next step in preparation was making the presentation of the food beautiful. Here I learned that not only was this event about putting some ingredients together and randomly passing it out to people; it was about the community it built around it. Pouring a vegan squash soup was part of my serving job, and by doing this I was able to get to know the people around me that were also serving, and was able to promote a healthy, mostly organic food -which I have been a huge fan of- to people that may are about to enjoy a wonderful pre-thanksgiving day meal.
I noticed all the team work and energy that went into making this event possible, and was surprised with how involved so many of these people are in what they are doing in getting younger people involved. One thing that I noticed was the game that was put on during the event, it highlighted a food that went into the meal, persimmons, and was a great learning experience as well as a fun time to meet even more people that had perhaps not been involved with the meal planning, but were guests that were just there to enjoy a good meal. This game involved the people on stage, but also encouraged the audience to cheer on each other and just have a good time. This seemed to be a theme that comes up over and over again during the night. “Just have fun”.
Something that left a very strong impression on me when the feast was over was all the people that stayed after to help out. There were so many things to be done, washing dished, composting, putting away leftovers, sweeping floors, drying dishes…etc. So many people stayed to help and it really helped to make the job go faster and everyone was having fun cleaning too. Also, there was so much emphasis on sustainability, including using organic food, and composting almost everything that was used.
This already built community called FEEST was very inviting to everyone, and made me even feel like I was a part of their team and their community. During the whole evening everyone had something to do and everyone enjoyed doing it. I was so glad to be able to be a part of this wonderful event, and it was nice to know how many people there are that are so wonderful and believe in building community and having a sustainable way of living.