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EAT! Vancouver Festival 2015 Event Recap

June 6, 2015

Hi everyone!

About a month ago, I attended the EAT! Vancouver Festival at BC Place. It was an afternoon filled with being introduced to lots of different food trends, food supplies, healthy alternative food – basically, everything to do with food!

From their website: EAT! Vancouver attracts Canada’s culinary stars, food producers and restaurants, from Vancouver, North America and beyond. Consumers, from across North America, will come to the EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival to participate in Vancouver’s vibrant food culture and experience great food from around the world.

After getting our tickets, we headed down to the main floor of BC Place. What usually holds football games and concerts was transformed into a food lover’s paradise. As this was our first time coming here, we were really surprised at how many stands and how big the festival was.

Instead of purchasing products by cash or card, guests purchase tickets which they can then use to pay for things they want. We decided to walk around once and purchase tickets afterwards.

The first stand that caught my eye was the vendor, Tea Sparrow. Each month, Tea Sparrow will deliver four teas to your door, which have been tested and approved by their staff before delivery. I sampled some of their rooibos tea, which was delicious!
There was also a cheese seminar presented by the Dairy Farmers of Canada happening. Unfortunately, all of the seats were already full but it looked like an interesting show. For all you cheese lovers, this one is for you.
In front of the cheese seminar, was a long lineup where you can sample many different types of cheese. I don’t think I’ve had that many different types of cheese in one sitting before. I’m no cheese connoisseur, but I think that cheese lovers would really love this!

I certainly enjoyed all the different sorts of cheese and it was nice to sample them all. You normally don’t get to sample all these types of cheese, so it’s good to keep in mind what you may want to buy when you are grocery shopping in the future.
Some free dark chocolate samples from Urge Chocolates. Some samples required tickets, which was up to the individual booth. Since we didn’t buy tickets yet, we were only able to sample the freebies.

More chocolate from President’s Choice. I believe they were giving these bars out for free when you sign up for a President’s Choice MasterCard.

I normally avoid tea that has caffeine but I’ve always wanted to try Pure Leaf. They had a few flavours to choose from that day – raspberry, lemon, regular, and unsweetened.

I didn’t find the sweetened flavours to be overly sweet or sugary, which is a plus.
Apart from all the different vendors, there was also a ‘food’ area for visitors to eat and featured different eateries in Vancouver. A food area within a food festival!

We ordered an oreo BeaverTail and poutine, which were both very good.

We also tried the Montreal smoked meat sandwich from Dunn’s. I’ve never been there before, but I think it would have been better at the actual restaurant and not a mobile stand. Some parts of the smoked meat were cold, while other parts were slightly warm.

The worker there was also not wearing any gloves and handled the bread and toppings with her bare hands. She was also the one that was taking care of the ticket payments from customers…so touching all of the customer tickets (where you don’t know where it has been?!) AND then touching the food with your bare hands?

After all our samples of food, we decided to check out the alcohol section. We didn’t know this at first, but you exchange a ticket for a wine/beer glass and will receive the ticket back after you return the glass.

This was slightly annoying as we were left with one single ticket that we didn’t know what to do with in the end, we wished that we could have applied that ticket to one of our wine tastings but not a big deal.

The carpeted floor was also very static-y that day, and everyone would get zapped when accidentally brushing shoulders. At first, I thought it was only me who kept zapping everyone but I heard a lot of other people complaining, and one of the staff members told us that it was due to the carpeted floor. =(

One of my favourite gelato places, Bella Gelateria, was serving gelato martinis!
Scotch served with freshly grounded espresso beans and Bella Gelataria’s salted caramel gelato in a shot glass. It was very creamy and rich, but wasn’t very strong. This stand was definitely one of the most popular stands at the festival.
There were also a lot of BC-based craft breweries at the festival! The craft beer samples were pretty cheap, at $1 a sample and they were also a pretty generous size too!
Originally, we planned on staying no more than 1.5 hours, but were shocked when we checked our phones and saw that 3 hours had passed by! We were also given a goodie bag filled with some samples at the end of our visit.

There was definitely tons to discover at EAT! Vancouver, and lots of new food to try. The festival is held each year around the end of April/beginning of May so I recommend that you check this out if you love trying or learning about food!

Did you go to Eat! Vancouver 2015 as well? How did you like it?

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

Fiesta Fridays- Nesters Market Deli Review

June 11, 2014

Hello Fiesta Friday-ers! I forgot to mention that EatMunchLove invited me to the first party, so thank you for introducing me! After my pleasant visit to Urban Fare, I was craving deli eats again. This time, my mind wandered to Nesters because I was at school, and there was a location on the mountain. I also didn’t want to deal with a rush of students in the main cafeteria, so decided that the walk there would be worth it. Fortunately, my friend agreed so we went in between our classes.
Nesters deli was pretty standard. There were many delicious looking items to choose from that day. I wasn’t super hungry, and felt a slight tickle in my throat so settled on getting a small soup and slice of pizza ($4.50). There were 3 types of soup that day, I got the chicken potato soup with chorizo sausage. It was very flavourful and had a generous amount of veggies. There wasn’t much chicken in it and the chorizo was very soggy, I don’t think I want chorizo sausage in my soup again. Usually, after having Western style soup, I am left parched but I did not find myself needing a massive amount of water, which is good.
The pizza was warmed in the oven. A there was only one type to pick from. The dough was very thick, soft, and chewy- I loved it! There was also a lot of deli meat topping and veggies on it. My friend got the soup and sandwich combo and a samosa, which I forgot to take a picture of. He said the samosa was a bit dry but enjoyed his ham sandwich. If I had time to spare on campus and wanted a quiet spot to eat, I would come here again.

I hope you enjoyed the post! Happy Fiesta Friday, I look forward to reading everyone’s posts! 🙂

-Carmen

TRADER JOES MINI HAUL – PART ONE!

February 21, 2014

Hi everyone!

Trader Joes is like a little country that welcomes you with open arms and smiling faces. The reason why I say this is because everything in store is produced and manufactured by themselves. Their staff are really friendly, and their interior design gives me a modern day cottage with a laid back feel to it.

Apart from that, most of TJ’s products are super healthy – organic, no preservatives, low fat, gluten free, no artificial flavours, but you get my point! I love that most ingredients that you read on the package are actually recognizable, meaning that they are all natural and do not contain artificial preservatives or things ending in -oxide -xide -acid, etc.

The best part though, is that even though all their products are super great quality and healthy, it’s extremely affordable. Usually, the trade off when buying healthy products is the cost that’s attached.

I took the liberty of taking a few pictures of the store shelves, just to give you guys an idea. The shelves are jam packed with yummy products, and as I mentioned before, their signage is really cute. I also love the packaging of their products. Kudos to the design team!

On their website, the coconut cranberry granola sounded really delicious, as did the triple berry o’s I laid my eyes upon on their shelves. However, these two did not live up to my expectations, especially the triple berry o’s. At first taste, they tasted no different than honey nut cheerios, which was disappointing to me.. Secondly, the dried berries inside the cereal looked really unappetizing, and tasted really unappetizing since they were super, super dry.

The blueberries were the worst part. To me, it tasted like cardboard and they were also really shriveled up even after I waited for it to absorb the milk.

On the other hand, the coconut cranberry granola was not bad, I just didn’t really like the taste of it that much. I felt that it tasted like regular granola that you can get at Walmart, and there weren’t that many cranberries inside. I also didn’t really taste much of the coconut flakes, although I could see a generous amount.
These caught my attention because of the nutritious and healthy ingredients in it. It’s also a good source of omega 3 and fiber among other nutrients, not to mention that it’s not fattening. I’ve also tried their other quinoa chips, so I decided to give this one a shot too.

I was glad I did because I liked these ones better. These chips had a fair amount of seasoning to it, bringing it away from the bland flavour tortilla chips usually have. I also liked how there were different chip varieties in there – carrot tomato, spinach garlic, and red beet onion. My favourite was spinach and garlic, although the other ones weren’t bad also. The variety in the chips kept it somewhat exciting. They were also pretty crunchy and had a thick texture to it too!
Saved the best for last! I was randomly walking by the frozen dessert section, not really aiming to buy anything but this caught my eye. Chocolate non-dairy frozen dessert made with coconut milk. I was really intrigued by this, so I decided to give it a shot. Am I ever glad I did!

There is a rich and creamy chocolate taste, but also a hint of coconut too. I honestly can’t tell the difference between this and real dairy cream, which is a great thing since this is much healthier for you. Eating this gave me less guilt as it is lower in fat and calories than regular ice cream.

The ingredients in this are also more familiar than ones in ice cream, which is always a plus! I will most definitely be buying this tub of goodness again.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading this! I have several more products I bought that weekend, so expect another haul sometime. Happy grocery shopping and remember to be aware of what you’re putting in your body!

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

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