Over the weekend, my best friend and I attended the 22nd Annual Boston Veg Fest, a vegetarian food festival in Roxbury Crossing. Although I am not vegetarian, I am dairy free and the festival provided a lot of vegan/dairy-free options as well. I also find the lifestyle of being plant based very interesting, as a lot of my friends have taken up the diet. I'm also here for any kind of food, at any time of the day. Here are some of my favorite things I enjoyed throughout the day at this vegetarian food fest.
Elmhurst 1925 Nut Milk
Elmhurst 1925 is a plant-based beverage company that specializes in minimally processed nut milks. I've tried countless dairy-free milk options over the past year, and let me tell you, this isn't any regular old nut milk. I sampled the almond, cashew, hazelnut, and walnut milks, and they so unique from any other dairy free milk I've tasted.
They were incredibly creamy and each one had such a different flavor. I found the cashew one to be the creamiest, but flavor-wise the hazelnut won. All of them would taste incredible in your morning coffee. You can order the sampler pack online.
HippieCakes Vegan Bakery
Desserts are my weakness, so I had to get something from HippieCakes! HippieCakes Vegan Bakery is a wholesale bakery based in Southern New Hampshire. Jenny, the owner, runs the entire thing out of her homestead kitchen. Her booth had loads of delicious-looking, beautifully decorated vegan treats, from cupcakes to donuts.
The swirls of blue and purple in her galaxy donut specifically caught my eye, and I had to have it. It was the first vegan donut I've had, and if I didn't know, I wouldn't have been able to tell! The donut's texture was cake-like yet moist, and it had the perfect level of sweetness.
Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener
I have a huge sweet tooth, but I hate refined sugar. This is a constant struggle. I'm also pretty skeptical about artificial sweeteners too; they can cause countless negative health effects and they always taste a little bit off.
Lakanto's Monk Fruit Sweetener is simply made from the monk fruit and non-GMO erythritol. Monk fruit gets its sweetness from mogrosides, antioxidants that are metabolized differently than natural sugars are.
This contributes to the fact that it ends up being a zero calorie sweetener with no glycemic impact. I tried it sprinkled on a strawberry, and it was actually quite good! It had no weird after taste that sweeteners often have, and it was super sweet. It's definitely a game changer for me.
FoMu
Last, but certainly not least, we stopped at FoMu's booth.
FoMu is a vegan ice cream / bake shop with locations in Allston, Jamaica Plain, and the South End. They are committed to carefully crafting their treats from scratch with locally sourced ingredients, and it shows. In the spirit of fall, we decided to get a pumpkin caramel ice cream, which was made with coconut milk, and a pumpkin whoopie pie. I think I shed a tear.
I can honestly say that this ice cream was the best ice cream I've ever had, even compared to dairy ice cream. It was incredibly creamy and smooth, with the perfect amount of pumpkin flavor. It tasted like a literal scoop of autumn. The whoopie pie was so good as well; I ended up crumbling it and mixing it in with my ice cream for the ultimate dessert to finish up the day.
With our stomachs filled to the brim with the most bizarre combination of foods, we called it a day. I had such a fun time and got to try so many delicious kinds of food, I'll definitely be returning next year!