What is Las Cruces like? It came up in the top three when I took the "Find Your Spot" quiz. :)

I grew up in Las Cruces. The first thing to think about is that it is very hot in the summer (over 100 for weeks sometimes). It is a pretty friendly, low-stress place to live: few traffic problems, lots of sunshine and big beautiful skies. It has most services, businesses, shopping, etc, you need, although not too many specialized things to do. (The closest to an organic market, I believe is a small co-op that has mostly packaged things and a Trader Joe's.)

I'll be moving to Albq from Clovis early next year...are there any good stores/restaurants/or even a csa (or something similar)?? I'm excited bc Clovis is so little and am hoping that the options will be better for us in the albq/santa fe area. It's just a little frightening too bc it is so much bigger and I'm sure a bit harder to find things. we just know that most things aren't in town here. LoL thanks for any help!

Oh my... I did not see your post until now sararie! Yes, there's actually a lot for Albuquerqueans and Santa Feans. Albuquerque has more than its share of HFS's, both the small, locally owned kind like Keller's, as well as the larger kind like Wild Oats, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Vitamin Cottage, and my favorite because I am a member: La Montanita Coop.

There are a lot of good restuarants for vegetarians too:

Annapurna is Ayurvedic Cuisine.
The Green Light Bistro is a hodge podge of good food and good coffee.
I've never been to Fei's, which serves vegetarian Chinese food.
I've never been to La Sirigitu, which serves a variety of vegetarian sandwiches and other goodies.

Places that are not fully vegetarian but cater to us well, include:
Twenty Carrots Cafe
Huong Thao Vietnamese Cuisine
Orchid Thai Cuisine
Santa Fe Peppers
Nothing But Noodles
The India Kitchen
Dos Hermanos, though you need to give them specific instructions and order the veggie tortilla.
Einstein Bagels has hummus.
No shortage of stuff for us.

I got on here, because I want to plug my Meetup Group. If you're a Vegetarian in Albuquerque, unless you're at the University, you might have had trouble finding the rest of us. There are a lot of us.

I've just launched a new Meetup.com group for vegetarians in Albuquerque and its surrounding areas called Albuquerque Vegetarian and Vegan Group. As our first meetup, we're going to be having a Potluck on January 6th, 2007. If you're going to be near Albuquerque, you should come join the fun!

You can find out more at: http://vegetarian.meetup.com/420/

If you live in New Mexico, another group you should check out is the Vegetarian Society of New Mexico at www.vsnm.org. I went to their Thanksgiving Potluck and someone brought a Tofurkey. Need I say more? ;)

Thanks thanks! My hubby is from the balt/washington dc area, but after living in clovis for awhile we had forgotten that there truly could be so many positive options available to us. Right now we drive to lubbock to go to their little health food store (mostly for goodies for my daughter (special diet) that I don't feel like cooking) It's nice to know that we won't be so limited. Hubby is an omni and loves the brazilian bbq in albq. have to try and keep him away from there LoL-they have a great salad bar though. I've never had a tofurkey. I assume that is soy and that is another nono for daughter. As it sounds, I am a veg, but vegan bc that is what her diet requires. Thanks again, I will check everything out!

Anyone know much about Silver City, NM?

What do you need to know?

Small - artsy - pretty isolated - hot in summer

Sararie, there are two different CSA's here in ABQ. One is Los Poblanos Farms. I love their stuff. The other is called ERD I think,though I cannot remember what it stands for...Los Poblanos has a good website to check out.

What do you need to know?

Small - artsy - pretty isolated - hot in summer


Is it very vegan friendly? It is not a cow town, is it?

That I'm not sure about - the demographic should be pretty vegan-friendly, but whether it's big enough to actually provide options, I don't know. Haven't been there myself, just lived in the southern NM for many years.

A quick google search doesn't seem to encouraging. There's a co-op grocery, but didn't see anything positive in restaurant listings.

Well, if I get the job, I hope its a fun place to live. Never lived in NM, so its worth a shot.

Froggythefrog

Thank you for all your recent (Nov) postings here. I will be moving to Abq at the end of next summer, and the list of restaurants will be very helpful. I've spent a lot of time in Abq, but I pretty much have only eaten at 20 Carrots. They're great, but it'll be nice to have more options.

Invictus

Looks like I am moving to Hobbs, NM in the next month or so, then on to Silver City in May or so. I'd rather stay in Colorado, but such is life.

Enjoy my birthplace, Ducati. (Hobbs)

Enjoy my birthplace, Ducati. (Hobbs)

What can you tell me about Hobbs? Will I have to learn to chew tobacky?

Hee Hee.... I know little about it, except that they have a place where you can choose what goes into your stirfry, so with some adjustments, you can make it vegan (I think I had to opt out of their sauces entirely).

Everyone has a Texan accent, and you might learn to chaw, but they're fairly metropolitan for being in that corner of the state. Don't get me wrong, the town looks tiny to me, but it's not the "gas station" town that most of the towns around there seem to be.

I visited Hobbs a couple times, some years ago. It felt depressing; an old oil town on the decline. Very bleak.

Sorry. :sick:

That's the general atmosphere of that corner of New Mexico. It's been like that my entire life (except it seemed they had a lot more oil drills when I was a kid.) I usually go down that way to visit my folks.

Hi. I'm moving to Albuquerque and am a vegetarian who is transitioning to veganism (I'm there on food, but I'm wearing out my shoes, etc.). Can you suggest some employers who might be more vegan friendly than others in that area? Thanks.

Employers? What do you do for a living, Bapace?

If you're just looking for an odd job, Annapurna is a mostly vegan restaurant that may or may not have openings.

Hiya -- I'll check out the restaurant. I've done a little of everything
Marketing manager (creating materials, not sales)
Magazine editor/writer
Newspaper photographer/writer
Computers (database development; some Enterprise)
Document control (setting up and maintaining electronic filing systems)
Human resources
Display design
Some accounting (Invoicing, general Accounts payable, general accounts receivable)
Office manager
I've worked for engineering and insurance companies for the last few years. In Indiana, where I live now, they tend to be less friendly to "alternative lifestyles" like veganism, so I'm looking for a company where I'm likely to find interesting folk, as work is usually the first place you meet folk when you move to a new city. The actual "job" is less important than the environment. (My husband is older, and he's starting a second career there-- I'm glad to move, as I grew up in the west and love it.)

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, and I look forward to any others.

bapace; froggy also heads up a Vegetarian Meetup group http://vegetarian.meetup.com/420/ that gets together monthly for potlucks, hikes, other stuff. I think they went to the Petroglyphs a few weeks ago and I'm SO jealous...

Even while job-hunting, you could check that out, as a way to meet people in the area.

If you're just looking for an environment where people are open-minded to vegans, I don't think you will have a lot of problem. Though they tend to be deep in the woodwork, there are a lot of vegetarians here. I get jokes and a little ribbing at my software engineering job, but when it comes to gatherings and whatnot, I am taken care of.