Toronto’s Conscious Food Fest came across my twitter feed this week and when we were wondering what to do on Saturday afternoon, it seemed like a perfect fit for a sunny afternoon. As it worked out, it would have been worth it even in the rain – history lesson and all!

The festival isn’t exactly kid-focused – though there were a good number of kids there and the Real Food for Real Kids tent had some cool activities. Isabelle and Tom had fun grinding their own oats (oh, they’re real sophisticated, my kids) – though I think the bag-decorating probably took longer. I do doubt that it will get Tom to actually eat oatmeal (he’s suspicious of the hot cereal idea), but we came away with just about enough for Isabelle and I to have a nice breakfast. We also planted a dill plant for Oxfam and collected a bunch of buttons – all a hit. My favourite may have been the bike-powered corn grinder at the Chocosol booth – though we were too stuffed to try the tortillas themselves by then!

The food? Excellent. Buddha Dog’s hot dogs are spicy delciousness (not kid-friendly, which suits me fine!) and Dan had a great taco from the Grindhouse. The kids got a big kick out of the watermelon lemonade from Marben – something I think I will need to figure out how to make now.

Lots of beer vendors as well – though we stuck to the other end of the indulgence spectrum: ice cream. Mapleton Organics in the Kids’ Zone has some rich natural flavours: you can tell a lot about an ice cream maker by their mint ice cream and theirs is excellent. Organic Meadow is a brand we often buy here anyway, so their ice cream didn’t disappoint either. Having had some bad early experiences with kefir, I was a little wary of Yogalicious. Their frozen kefir was actually very good in vanilla, despite no added sugar in the weird fermented brew that can explode without warning in your fridge (ahem).

The other nice thing is that we got to also look around the buildings at Fort York which was open. It’s not somewhere I would really think to bring the kids as a outing – seeing as I’m not that into military history (or military anything) and it’s not so easy to get to despite being right in the city. I may end up having to go back though – Tom was fascinated by the canons and the bunkbeds were beloved by all.

The festival ends tomorrow: it’s FREE admission ($15 to park and food is $1-$4 per dish) – I’m glad to read that they’ve done this, as at $15 per ticket, it got to be a pricey afternoon. If you don’t make it though, you can be glad I did as I also picked up information on a bunch of other events happening throughout the fall along the same local food/family farm theme:

27th Annual Vegetarian Food Festival: Toronto September 9-11

taste-real Feast: Wellington County (Guelph) September 11

22nd Annual Feast of Fields: Cold Creek Conservation Area (King) September 11

Fall Rural Romp: Wellington County (Guelph) September 24