Pre-Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival

Food Festival Site

My first vegetarian festival. <beam>
Abigail and I flew to Toronto, Ontario just for this event. Neither of us had been to Toronto before. Well, I've been to the airport, but that's it.
This was a big deal.

It was the weekend before we were to be roommates.
September 7-9th, 2012.
It was a good test to see if we could live together.
As I talked about in a past post, I had moved back in with my parents since the split from Troy. Abigail is quite a bit younger than myself(10 or 11 years-but who's counting, am I right??), she hadn't moved out of her Mom's place yet. Mallory(my sister) had told me her plan to move into her boyfriend's condo, and I told her I would be interested in renting her house from her. Course, I needed a roommate because I don't make a heck of a lot of money.

Focus Alyx!!

My apologies.
Abigail and I were flying to Toronto! We were both so excited.
Well . . . ecstatic is more accurate . . . I was hoping to meet some of my vegan heroes!! Namely, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau and Erin Red. I was also very much looking forward to going to the talks from Dr. Michael Gregor, and Rich Roll.

I was a little concerned that this event would prove to be entirely too much for my brain. I get overwhelmed when more than 5 people are present. Never mind the 40,000 visitors the Toronto Vegetarian Association boasted. Plus, an unfamiliar bed, no time for my daily nap, decidedly long days of lectures, meeting lots of people, and eating. A lot of eating. I was nervous that I would get overwhelmed, then tired, then really bitchy, and Abigail would just say, "forget you!" and not want to move into my sister's house with me.
It was a lot of pressure.

We arrived there Thursday around noon. We took our bags to our hotel, then began our food vacation! We tried to hit as many vegan and vegetarian restaurants as we could. Every time someone heard we were from somewhere else, they would insist we need to eat at such-and-such. We were only there four days-not thirty! Plus we had a lot of stuff to check out at the festival.
Not to worry though, like good vegans, we photographed everything we ate.
This trip will have to be broken into more posts. So stay tuned!

It was an excellent trip, one I hope to make each year. Abigail and I decided we would plan more 'food vacations' for the future. We also decided sharing living space with one another would work out.

I was very tired when we got home. Tired, happy, full of hope and delicious plants.

Dr. Gregor-NutritionFacts.org

Dr. Michael Gregor is a founding member of The American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a physician, author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety & public health issues. He has lectured at The Conference On World Affairs, The Institute of Medicine, The National Institute of Health. He testified before Congress, and was invited as an expert witness in the defense of Oprah Winfrey in the infamous meat defimation trial. He is a graduate of Cornell University School of Agriculture & Tufts University School of Medicine. Currently, Dr. Greger serves as the director of public health and animal agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.

Dr. Gregor also runs NutritionFacts.org. He posts short videos(usually under 3 minutes) about the latest in nutrition. Basically what he does, is he goes through piles and piles of research. He posts a new video each day. 365 a year.
He's vegan. He advocates a vegan diet. <thumbs up>
He really knows what he's talking about. And I love his voice. It's very relaxing.

I found out about his videos because my friend started posting on Facebook his videos often. They were really good.
I also heard the wonderful interview with him on Our Hen House in October.
And just a few weeks ago, I even won one of his DVD's by commenting on a story on Our Hen House's website, I had entered my name in a draw! And I won!! It was very exciting!