U.N. Day for Veggie Gals in Park City

This is the yummy chicken paella that Veggie Gal Annette fixed for us.

A few weeks ago my informal group of girlfriends, called the “Veggie Gals,” met in Park City for a Veggie Gal lunch hosted by one of us, Annette, who we don’t regularly see. She moved from Provo to Park City, and at that time we all sadly thought that was the end of the earth and we would never see her again. That was about eight years ago or so, before I moved from Provo as well. Last June we had a Veggie Gals shindig just to reunite with Michelle, who was in town from Guam. Annette came to that, and afterwards I guess she decided Park City wasn’t so far away. She invited us all up to her place in Park City for September’s Veggie Gal lunch. (We get together about once a month for a potluck lunch.) Annette is the only non-LDS in the group. We have all loved getting to know her. She has a wry sense of humor and a perspective about living among Mormons that refreshes us.

Our group started out as an offshoot of our La Leche League Group of Provo. Our shared meals are a place where we can meet over lunch or dinner and discuss life and mothering. We started out with a common devotion to breastfeeding and loving life. Since the start, others have joined us who are not involved with LLL but who share a common devtion to loving learning and life. Some have come and gone, and some have been with the group since it began, over 15 years ago.

Every time I go to Park City I fantasize about bumping into the Food Nanny, Liz Edmunds, somewhere in town since she lives around there. She’s an LDS mom of 7 and cookbook author of the same name. See http://byutv.org/foodnanny/ Well, Food Nanny, move over, here’s the Food Maven, Annette. She used to bring these to-die-for cheesecakes to Veggie Gals that we all appreciated except one of us, who was a diehard anti-dairy person and food ascetic. She has been known to have a fetish for cabbage for about 8 years now. That’s her pleasurable indulgence. All I can say is, she missed out. Annette’s dishes always look too pretty to eat and taste as good as they look.

Dining on the patio.

Annette invited a bunch of her Park City friends. We didn’t know them, so when we sat down to eat we sat in our comfortable groups, the Veggie Gals on one side and the Park City gals on the other. She jokingly said that her lunch was a meeting of the U.N. to unite the Republicans and the Democrats.

A tribute to hospitality on Annette’s wall.