Beautiful Weekends in Ontario – Kortright Centre, Green Living Show, Live Organic Food Bar.

While I always like travelling, I love finding places to call home in the city I call home. This weekend was spent being busy discovering all those things that made me fall in love with Toronto and the surrounding area in the first place.

This city is always full of some kind of interesting event. This weekend I went to the Green Living Show on Friday and on Sunday evening. It was nice to see some old favourites like Tiffinday, Daiya, Larabar, LPK‘s Culinary Groove, and a few others. Though I’m always surprised when environmental events end up devoting so much space to car companies (hybrid or otherwise) and meat & dairy companies. I felt very similarly to Air Eater.

The Farm Fresh Fare especially was full of meat and dairy options, and while I loved the fresh pressed cider from Lincoln Line Orchards (which was so good we had seconds), and the Donuts from LPK, and the Chocolate Blondies and iced chocolate drink from Chocosol, it would have been nice to see some non dessert vegan options. I guess I just expected better.

Saturday morning we visited St. Lawrence Market and picked up several bags of veggies for the week. Some of them are local, some of them are from Mexico, but you have to ask to find out. North Market was full of local and other products, preserves, and general deliciousness. We picked up pickled beets, preserves from Stassis Preserves, and three jars of sauces from Saha International Cuisine.

I had a meeting up near Live Organic Food Bar (264 Dupont St. Toronto, right by Dupont Station) so JC and I went there for brunch. Why has this taken so long? Brunch is the best meal of the day, and I completely enjoyed my experience at Live (as usual.) Service was friendly, and food was delicious.

JC Surprised me by ordering something raw, the Quiche, a tart filled with cauliflower cashew egg, with zucchini, mushrooms and fantastic eggplant “bacon”

I had the gluten free Mac Muffin, which was a GF English muffin topped with with baked black beans, cauliflower tofu scramble, avocado, that delicious eggplant bacon, and macadamia cheddar cheese.

I picked up a couple of things for my foodie penpal and my veganswap pal before we left. I’m hoping they will both enjoy my finds from around the city.

On Sunday we scoped out one of our potential wedding venues – The Kortright Centre in Woodbridge, On, just north of Toronto. It’s a beautiful conservation area and renewable energy education and demonstration centre, and also acts as an event space. Sunday was rainy and grey, but we missed the rain on the drive up to the Kortright. It reminded me a lot of the John Janzen Nature Centre visits of my youth, but much bigger.

We had an amazing time walking around the grounds. I was conscious of how fresh the air was and how great it felt to be walking around in the forest.

We still have more places to check out, especially other facilities associated with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. The visit was very educational, both from an environmental perspective as well as a general wedding planning one. Selling points for the Kortright is that they already have a vegan menu or they will work with us to develop one that’s a bit more exciting than the usual fare. Food is obviously going to be an important factor, since we both love food, and fell in love over food.