"What, you don’t eat meat? How about some chicken… or fish? ...No? Well, we can “do a village salad”. Things have moved on in Cyprus since this typical response to “I am a vegetarian - I don’t eat meat” when I first ‘converted’ 25 years ago. Although some restaurants still seem to believe that chicken & fish are not animals (in fact, just a few years ago, one well known newspaper columnist was adamant in his weekly diary that shellfish were vegetables!), and some people still respond with “Isn’t it boring?”, things have changed….

...and it was to help this along that Food for Friends was started by my friend, Julie Hapeshi, eight years ago. I have been running it for the last 4 years.

Food for Friends is not, and never has been, a vehicle to ‘convert’, but merely an effort to encourage more restaurants to add vegetarian dishes to their menus, and to introduce more people to the wide variety of vegetarian food from many nations…. and the more people eat ‘vegetarian’, the more shops will stock ‘vegetarian items’.

There are now two main reasons given for becoming vegetarian : health and cruelty to animals. While the second was the main reason for many years, recently there has been so much publicity concerning the health risks of eating flesh—mad cow disease being the obvious, but also the hormones use to fatten animals for slaughter and the subsequent effects on human health. There is also the economic reason—the same space given to vegetables feeds approx. 8 times more people than if that space is given to raising animals and the resulting amount of food (but I have to agree that animas such as goats can, as we well know here in Cyprus, graze on land where not even a self-respecting blade of grass would grow!).

So, who are these ‘Food for Friends’? …. a ’straw poll’ at one of our meals recently showed that only one person that day was a true vegetarian—me! The non-vegetarians come because they like the company of like-minded people, they enjoy eating vegetarian occasionally or they might be toying with the idea of becoming vegetarian– or they just like that particular restaurant. …. Members of the group receive a 6-page monthly newsletter, with articles, recipes and details of the next meal—and a reduction on the prices of all our meals.

A meal is arranged once a month at different restaurants in and around Limassol, which may also be preceded by a short talk on a subject such as Cypus’ herbs, the Bach Remedies, Aloe Vera products—or even a magic show with vegetarian connections! All are welcome to the meals. Price of membership is CP10/year.

For more information, please phone: 25634487, or e-mail: penny@omninet.com.cy