Vegfest 2010 Review

It was so awesome!

90% of the stalls were vegan, I ate until I could eat no more and I even snatched up a few free goodies to take home with me. One of the highlights was So Delicious Coconut Milk ice-cream (called Purely Decadent) of which I tasted the Passionate Mango and Cherry Nirvana which were both equally delicious. Another highlight was my first slice of Tofurkey. I will never eat it again (the texture is far too Turkey-like) but it had to be tried. There were also these vegan burgers there and I honestly thought they were meat.

I was a little sad, though, that a city of only 700 00 people (2.7 million in the urban area) could have such a large festival like that with so many people (you could hardly move there were so many people) with such a great range of vegan restaurants when Brisbane has two vegan restaurants and a few vegetarian ones and you tell people you are vegan and they wonder if there is a cure for it. And a lot of the products were local so it's not just about the huge population of the US being able to snap up their share of Tofurkey. I just think Australia is really behind when it comes to changing our lifestyles for someone (or rather somethings) other than ourselves.

There was a stall promoting drinking water (apparently not everyone knew it was good to drink water) and they had free samples of an immune booster drink. I have been a bit flu-ey since I've been here so thought I'd try it. Everyone else trying it was pulling funny faces but not me. I thought it was delicious. Turns out, it's because it's almost exactly like my super secret honey-ginger-garlic-lemon drink. Here's their recipe:

Natural Immune Boosting Drink

2 litres of water

8-10 lemons (juiced)

9-12 cloves of garlic

1 inch of fresh ginger

1/2 cup of honey (try to use non-commercial honey)

1/2 onion (chopped)

1 tsp cayenne pepper

Pour 1/3 of water into blender with juice of lemons. Blend. Add garlic and onions. Blend very well. Add honey and pepper. Blend. Add remaining water. Blend.