D Magazine intern Jessica Melton attended yesterday’s Texas State Veggie Fair. She files this report.
The Texas State Fair is renowned for its vast array of weird, interesting, and just plain crazy fried foods. The same could be said about this weekends’ Texas State Veggie Fair—minus the meat.
Yesterday, the 2nd Annual Veggie Fair ground, otherwise known as Winfrey Point at White Rock Lake, was filled with vegan, vegetarian, and perhaps a few meat lovers like myself. (I was a vegetarian for a brief stint, but one day I woke up with a hankering for a T-bone steak—medium rare, if we’re being specific—and I haven’t looked back.) But diners are demand for vegan and vegetarian food is skyrocketing and the folks who hosted this event, DallasVegan.com, now have two successful day-long events to prove it.
Pictures and more galore.
My personal philosophy is that if something is fried, it must be delicious, and there were about as many variations of fried vegetables as one would find fried anything else at the State Fair. Oh, and a lot of cheese, too, which was awesome.
Food trucks that served the vegan-friendly cuisine from 11AM to 6PM were there to impress, especially for the food truck competition, which took place between some of the best vegan food trucks around.
Aside from food, there were a lot of info booths and shops around promoting the idea that animals were friends, not food as well as the message of sustainability in the process.
People were selling everything from recycled notebooks with the covers made from old cereal boxes to vintage jackets to sustainable jewelry and everything in between.
Animal friendliness flowed through the grounds with people who brought their dogs to mingle and a booth sponsored by animal shelters that brought pets for people to adopt.
All in all, the fair was a pretty relaxed, fun environment that gave people the information they needed to make an informed decision on whether or not to eat meat. I even considered going back to vegetarianism—until dinner.
OK, lunch.
