What are the Leguminadi all about?

The Leguminadi is a social club at MacEwan University. We are focused towards creating a welcoming atmosphere for those who are vegan, vegetarian, or those who want to engage in a plant-based lifestyle. We try to provide opportunities for students and faculty alike to get to know us, talk about issues that they’ve had, find out new recipes, or ways to help them in their transition to veganism. It’s not just all workshops or activities, we do host outings outside of the school so we get to learn and get to know each other outside of the school and develop greater bonds.

Who should join the Leguminadi?

Of course as a club, first year and second year students would be great because we want to engage them and see if they want to take part in politics of the Leguminadi, but I’d really like to see people who are just interested in veganism regardless of what religion or ethnic background they might have. We like to try and accommodate people because there’s that stigma that veganism can be expensive, and it definitely can be if you’re not doing it right. All of us at the Leguminadi are students so understand, most of us live on our own, most of us work during school, so we just want to engage everybody.

If somebody isn’t a vegetarian or vegan can they still join?

The club isn’t specifically for vegans or vegetarians, although it is made up of (them). We try to include people just so we can get the word out.

What inspired the name change from the Veg Club to the Leguminadi?

We had our little ragtag group of people we found through Veg Club and there’s just kind of a running joke that being vegan and getting people to try and be vegan is a bit like a cult. So, we had the idea that we should just call ourselves Leguminadi, because it combines illuminati and legumes. This year our group put it to a vote, we thought it would be really funny, but probably should play down the part where we’re a cult, ‘cause that’s not who we are really.

What are some of the upcoming initiatives that you have planned this year?

Something that we want to do is try and support local businesses that do encourage plant-based lifestyles. A lot of people actually don’t know about the Buckingham, which is ludicrous to us, as it’s like our bar scene. So we want to help them out, as well as Earth’s General Store, which is a local grocery store that does cater to that as well. They had a location downtown, but because of poor support from the local business sector and students it just didn’t take off. Another business that I want to support through our activities this year is Orii. They provide a lot of transitional meats, plant-based meat alternatives, at a reasonable price and in bulk and they’re actually located quite close to MacEwan in Chinatown, like a 10-minute walk. That was one thing, we want to support our local businesses, get to know our people as well. Something that we’re looking into as a future project is having a doctor come do a talk, maybe answer some questions about the health and nutritional benefits to help people make the change.

What’s your favourite recipe from the Leguminadi?

I guess my favourite recipe was one I did for the last potluck. It’s super simple and something that my grandma used to make, but of course it had meat it, so I missed it. It is an egg and ham fried rice, so I would use plain jasmine white rice with this vegan ham substitute or you could use like (vegan) sandwich meat slices and you dice that up. Then there’s the vegan egg which is from Earth Island, which is the business, you scramble that up and mix it in with some rice then pan fry it all with some olive oil. You can add some seasoning if you like, I like to make mine really spicy.

Edited for length and clarity.