One Fine Festival

I love the weekend. I can sleep in, spend more time outside, stay up later, and…attend my first Portland Veg Fest! Yay! On Saturday, my boyfriend and I started our morning with a long run, knowing we would be snarfing up some tasty food later in the day (perhaps with the hopes of feeling less guilty when we indulged in cupcakes, truffles, and waffle cones filled with Temptation Soy Ice Cream…and some very healthy food too!). We spent about five hours at the festival which included speakers, chef demos, veg classes, exhibitors, a silent auction, and lots of free food samples (all vegan!). While I normally do not like being immersed in a crowded place for a long period of time, this event was a happy exception.

It doesn’t look very full of people in the photo below, but we arrived fairly early.

We spent some time checking out all of the tables. I think we must have walked circles at least a dozen times, seeing new stuff each time around. Here is a photo of Food Fight’s table (that’s Chad, hi Chad!), and also a nice lady giving out samples of Sheese products.

And then we heard an announcement…something about Boston Cream donuts from Sweetpea Baking Company. Oh my. We headed straight over and waited patiently for a tasty, yummy donut. Sweetpea just happens to reside nextdoor to Food Fight Grocery at the vegan mini-mall here in Portland. And every baked good I have tried from there has been awesome! This donut was sooooooo good! It was my second breakfast. Here is a photo of the donuts, and the other offerings Sweetpea had available (plus a cool t-shirt on one of the employees). Hahahaaa! Mr. Muffins!

After we sampled some tasty foods such as: raw food crackers, several varieties of hummus on rice crackers, barley-quinoa pilaf with shiitakes and cilantro pesto, Field Roast sausages, hempnut butters, smoothies, Dave’s Killer Bread, organic apples, and some other rice-type stuff, we decided to give in to our sweet tooth cravings…namely Temptation Ice Cream. We shared a waffle cone with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Fair Trade Chocolate. Ummm…can you tell from the next photo who likes ice cream?! Hehehe…that’s Tim. Needless to say, he held onto that waffle cone with a vice-like grip. He’s so greedy when it comes to sweets (just like the donut we “shared” earlier).

The ice cream really filled us up, so we thought it might be smart to sit on our butts and be lazy, while learning how to frost cupcakes and cakes in a demo class taught by Lisa from Sweetpea. This was super fun. We got to eat wee cupcakes! Here’s Lisa making some frosting.

And here she is showing us how to pipe frosting onto cupcakes.

Here are the finished cupcakes.

And here is a beautiful cake she showed us how to assemble and frost! Yum.

After the Sweetpea demo, we decided to listen to one of the speakers who was lined up for the day, Wes Kempfer. He presented a talk called “Global Fate on a Plate”. Mr. Kempfer is on the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club’s Columbia Group. The talk focused on the role of diet in climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, etc. It was rather interesting, and I learned something new! I never knew that cows are not able to digest the corn they are forced to overeat, thus they become sick, and that is part of the reason why they are injected with antibiotics. So sad. The underlying message in this talk was obvious: adopt a vegan/vegetarian diet! Do it! Here is a photo of Mr. Kempfer enlightening us.

Right after Mr. Kempfer’s talk, we stayed seated for a knife skills class taught by Chef Al Chase. This guy was amazing! Super friendy, and super awesome at using knives. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and has an organization called Culinary Awakenings. You could tell how much passion he has for his work! Here are some photos of Chef Al chopping stuff.

By the end of his demo, Tim and I were hungry! But, we were also tired of being indoors. So, we walked home and made dinner. And that was our day at Portland Veg Fest 2008! I am eagerly awaiting next year’s celebration!

Oh! And before I forget…there was also this young guy at the festival (24 yrs old) who had a marker board around his neck stating that he was looking for a female to date! Hahahaaa! Hilarious. Basically, he was a walking personal advert. I took his photo oh so sneakily, but it came out blurry. I’d love to know if any woman was game enough to take him up on his dinner and a movie! Lastly, here is a photo of a few items we picked up from the exhibitors.

DON’T FORGET TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FREE COOKIE GIVEAWAY!!! Seriously, free cookies!!!! C’mon. Do it!

~ by tahinitoo on May 11, 2008.