For us, food festivals are often an exercise in frustration. Someone is selling ice cream that we cannot eat. Another person is selling corn dogs that we cannot eat. Pretty much everything is unsafe for us.
However the vegans can be counted on to provide a lot of gluten-free choices (and by definition everything is dairy-free) so after my son spent a frustrating weekend at a carnival where he could eat nothing, we went to Vegan Mania where only two booths were off limits and where he could stuff his face.
Vegan Mania was held at the Chicago Armory which is on Broadway in the Lakewood Balmoral neighborhood. The facility is about the size of three basketball courts and they also used several meeting rooms for lectures.
He enjoyed comparing gluten-free brownies (Bot Bakery won) and eating teff injera from Das Rashen (my favorite place for an anniversary dinner) and exploring Ethiopian food. He also enjoyed Bot Bakery’s deep dish pizza (yes a gluten and dairy free deep dish that is not too oily or salty). We would have eaten more but the vendors started running out of food…and we were getting a little too stuffed.
But I think that the most fun thing for him was to be in a room full (and I mean full, they started running out of certain dishes at 2pm) of children who all ate special diets. Eyeballing it I would say that between 20% and 25% of the attendees were under 18. Sometimes, I think he feels like he is the only one. Sure there is another celiac in his school, but that is out of over 400 students. To see literally one hundred children all of whom are dairy-free and many of whom are also gluten-free was liberating.
We are not vegan but we do avoid meat. One tiny serving a day is our animal product max. I have had people tell me this is unhealthy. So let me offer a second data point. There were two vendors selling gluten free brownies, two vendors selling dairy free ice cream and one vendor each selling deep dish pizza, one selling soul food, one selling gyros, and one selling macaroni and “cheese”. It was vegan, but it was not sprouts. Yet out of the thousand or so people I saw during our three hours perhaps five were obese. Five. And at least one of those five was carrying an awfully tiny baby. And the crowd was mostly middle aged parents and children.
Not a lot of skinny or buff people, just people who looked “normal”. Like photos from the 1960s where few people are truly skinny but no one looks overweight. In Chicago. It lent a lot of credence to the people saying that if we just ate a plant based diet we would not have to fear obesity.
We will be back next year, but in the meantime we will be off to Ras Dashen and we are looking forward to getting some food from Bot Bakery. The cheese in her pizza is nut based so it is not at all stretchy but it is still delicious and rich and cheesy tasting and we are very happy to have pizza!
Bot Bakery doesn’t have a storefront, but they sell at Farmer’s Markets and by special order. You can find Bot Bakery here
http://bettybotbakery.wordpress.com/places-in-chicago-to-purchase-bot-bakery-treats/
or by seeking them out on Facebook
