VegFest 2012

I decided to make September the month of just eating vegetarian, ok and seafood, but absolutely no meat. It's a good way to wind down all the calories I needed for the summer, start the slow down process and prepare myself for winter. So it was just serendipitous that VegFest occurs every year in September. Held in the Convention Center VegFest promotes sustainable, healthy, all vegan food and lifestyle choices. It is a great event to taste all the new veggie-friendly products available before actually buying them. From previous year's experience one can eat their entry ticket price of $6, which we did quite easily.

The stand outs for us this year were the kale chip companies, the eye opening purified water (did you know Brita water filters are made by Clorox and does not filter out bleach from the water?) and several bakeries and cookie brands, especially the yummy CocoRoons. Other than Organics to You, our local produce delivery company, the majority of the food vendors were selling processed items and we actually found ourselves going for samples that used a carrot or an apple as the scoop because we were filling up on all that soy, seeds and grains. A surprising number of items were gluten free as well and we snagged as many coupons to the restaurants and products we thought we liked. VegFest also gave us an opportunity to try flavored hemp milks, which we haven't liked much in the past, but the new chocolate hemp was very delicious. VegFest makes it easy for you to try alternative sustainable foods before committing to them at the grocery store, plus we basically had brunch for $5 because of a $1 off coupon.