Friday at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival and God Bless America at TIFF

This time of year makes me incredibly nostalgic. I remember coming here and extending my Toronto visit for just a little bit longer because of the vegetarian food festival and TIFF, and then deciding to stay here at least semi-permanently.

The days leading up to the TVA‘s Vegetarian Food Festival were a bit grey, but once Friday hit, it was gorgeous outside. The night air was warm and humid, and perfect weather to be at the Harbourfront Center.

I had missed Terry Hope Romero’s blogging talk at VVC, so I made a point to catch it when she remixed it here in Toronto. What can I say? She’s hilarious, and I’m sure I learned a lot from the experience. I don’t think I ever realized the full extent of her nerdiness until now and admittedly I’m still pretty jazzed about meeting other girls that are just nerdy because they are nerdy, and not because it’s hip to be square.

She recommended a book called “Will Write for Food” by Dianne Jacob, and I’ve already picked it up on my e-reader. I took a lot of good information from the talk, so if you have the opportunity to see her speak you should take advantage of it.

One suggestion she had that I do want to pass on is to make yourself write 100 ideas for a blog post. Put it away for a day or two, and then look at the list and clean it up, and take out some of the ideas you don’t really love. Put it away again, and clean it up again, until you have about 25 ideas. That can offer you an insight into what you are about and what you’re really interest in writing about, plus you’d have 25 great ideas for blog posts when you are trapped in writers block land.

I finally tried some of Apiecalypse Now!’s vegan magic baked goods. I have a personal rule about vegan baked goods and when I see something vegan with chocolate and marshmallows, I take it. The S’more pie was my vice, and I carried it around with me for a few hour as some sort of slow torture (and because I wanted my partner to try it too!)

I know APieCalypse Now! has been at the UofT Farmers Market for months now, and after one failed trip to the Distillery Farmers Market (on the wrong day) to seek out their baked deliciousness, it was great to finally taste an item.

We opted for something from Govinda‘s for dinner and shared a combination plate for 5$ (on special since everything was shutting down. I was a bit annoyed when we asked if it was vegan and the guy working there said that just the Halwah had just little bit of condensed butter in it, so it would probably be okay and asked if we still wanted it. Yeah, probably not.

Everything was shutting down, but it was a beautiful night so we spent an hour or two just sitting by Lake Ontario on the boardwalk relaxing, watching party boats pass by, and waiting for a reasonable time to head over to the Ryerson Theater to catch our TIFF midnight madness screening of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America.