Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, author of The 30-Day Vegan Challenge, The Joy of Vegan Baking, The Vegan Table and Color me Vegan is an exhilarating speaker, powerful writer and talented chef. She is a persuasive advocate whose success can be measured by the thousands of people who lives have been changed by her compassionate message. Patrick Goudreau fosters change whether she is writing, speaking to live audiences, hosting her podcast or producing videos.

Colleen stopped eating land animals after reading Diet for a New America in 1989/1990, but once she read Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz several years later, she had a visceral reaction and immediately “woke up”- immediately “became vegan.” She knew the least she could do was not  contribute to what was so difficult to read about. Every fiber in her body was repulsed by the violence committed against animals by desensitized people. She is not someone who lives in despair, so she started figuring out how she could be part of the solution and becoming vegan was really the first step. Becoming vegan was effortless for her in that being vegan was just a full and outward manifestation of the compassionate person she already was. But, she wanted to do more and so she talked to whomever would listen (including her husband, who became vegan not long after me), and she started leafleting, tabling, and showing slaughterhouse footage on a TV screen in the middle of Berkeley on Friday nights.  She knew that as important as it was to tell people the truth about what was happening to the animals, it was equally important to give them the resources they needed to make the changes they genuinely wanted to make! So, that’s how she started teaching cooking classes and workshops, which led to her cooking DVD, which led to her podcast, which led to her videos, which led to her books,

With so much already on her plate, she tries to spend time with her husband, where they spend their free time travelling, reading, hiking and watching films. She is a huge film junkie and she is very grateful she got David, her husband hooked, too. They have the same taste watch everything from American film noir, Westerns and Italian neorealism to British ‘kitchen sink dramas’ and Japanese samurai films. Hence, why she is so thrilled the Toronto Food Festival coincides with the Toronto Film Festival. David comes with her and they see as many films as they can when she is not at the Veg Food Fest.

If you listen to Colleen’s podcast, you know that she reveals a lot about herself but she does try to keep some mystery. However, the safest thing she could say that was a something many don’t know about her is that she swears like a sailor when she doesn’t wear her professional/public hat. She loves words and some profane words are just delightfully emphatic. But of course, she’d never let a word slip that she didn’t want to slip.

Her first talk, “From Excuse-itarian to Vegan: Addressing the Blocks and Excuses that Keep Us from Making Changes” will be at 1:30 pm on September 8^th at the Studio Theatre. Her second talk, “Being a Joyful Vegan: Experiencing the Benefits of Living Compassionately and Healthfully” will be taking place at 3:00pm on September 9^thin the Studio Theatre.

Featured Exhibitor – Nice Shoes 

Nice shoes is a vegan owned independent business. They carry 100% vegan products as well as a selection of eco-friendly brands. Besides shoes, they sell purses, bags belts, wallets, vegan cookbooks and more!

For Joanne and Glenn, owner of Nice shoes, being vegan for almost 2 decades, they had seen a lot of changes in terms of food availability for vegans. 20 years ago, it was difficult to find simple vegan food products, but now everything is readily available. However, shoes remain one of those things that is just not so easy to obtain. So they decided they would like vegan shoes to be affordably accessible to Canadians and have a retail location in Vancouver as well as offer shipping across Canada for orders over $100.

In their limited spare time, they enjoy spending their evenings with our rescued cats, rabbits and their foster chinchillas!

At the festival, they are excited to meet all vegans, vegetarian and veg-curious people! You can expect to see many sample shoes for the show. They will have accessories like wallets, t-shirts, lip balm & socks for sale. Also, do not forget to stop by the booth to pick up 15% discount cards for veg fest attendees only!

Find Nice Shoes at the festival all weekend long in the Community Marketplace. 

Featured Cooking Demonstrator – Taymer Mason

Taymer Mason grew up in a family of cooks who taught her to make—and love!—traditional Caribbean cuisine. She went vegan in 2006 while an undergraduate at the University of the West Indies and discovered that, far from being limiting, it was an exciting new way to cook her old favorites. Now she writes the popular cooking blog Vegan in the Sun. She lives with her husband and their cat in the French West Indies, but she appreciates the unique culture and cuisine of all the islands—and especially of her birthplace, Barbados.

Outside of cooking, Taymer enjoys painting and writing poetry in her free time. This will be time going to a vegetarian festival she is excited to see all of the manufactures of vegan products, vendors for vegan clothing and shoes in one place.

At the festival, she will showing people what to do with Carribbean root vegetables outside of boiling them and learn some fundaments of West Indian cuisine and the historical aspect of food in that region. Samples of variety modern and traditional recipes like guava bread pudding, cassava pone and homemade pastas.

Join Taymer Mason’s cooking demo, “Caribbean Vegan”, at 2:00 pm in the Lakeside Terrace.

Featured Exhibitor – Di Martino Organic Imports 

Di Martano Organic Imports is an importer/retailer of healthy, certified organic, vegan and vegetarian foods and cosmetics from Italy. The Di Martano’s became vegan as a family almost 6 years ago. They decided to open a vegan business because as new vegans they went on a trip to Italy and were concerned about what they would eat in a country where meat and dairy was the norm. To their surprise, they came to learn that more than 12% of Italians are vegetarian (almost 7,000,000 people and growing). They experienced the most incredibly fantastic, innovative and healthy vegan food of the highest quality and knew then and there they had to share these wonderful products with the Canadian public and that is how Di Martino Organic Imports was born.

This year, at the festival, Di Martino Organic Imports are looking forward to launching new Italian vegan products. They will be highlighting their new Certified Organic, vegan sprouted brown rice mozzerlla and ricotta from Italy, unlike any other vegan cheese on the market of the highest quality and taste. They will also be introducing their new line of Certified Organic vegan spelt and Kamut ravioli, agnolotti and tagliatelle pastas. Moreover, their line of certified organic vegan drinks made from grains such as spelt, quinoa, kamut, oates, barley etc and line of vegan cooking creams and puddings.

They love to meet vegans/vegetarians and people that are looking to make a change to vegetarianism or veganism. They also love the look on the people’s faces when they try their products and are astounded by the fact that they are vegan/vegetarian. They are very excited about this year’s festival!

Find DiMartino Organic Imports at the festival all weekend long in International Marketplace. 

Featured Exhibitor – Apiecalypse Now! 

Apiecalypse Now! is a small bakery-operation run by Jennifer, in Leslieville, located in the East End of Toronto. Jennifer, owner and head baker is a Toronto native and dessert enthusiast. A graduate with a Master’s in Environmental Studies, her research focus was on food-based social movements and came to the conclusion that people like things that taste and even better if they make them feel good..so those are things she makes.

At the festival, Jennifer loves buying a massive plate of faux meat from the King’s Café booth. It is always her first stop every year. Besides that, she loves to see everyone all in one place. Being a previous volunteer with the Toronto Vegetarian Association, she looks forward to meeting Luke, Barbi and David, a bunch of other green shirted people around and making new friends. Additionally, her mother and step-dad made the decision to go vegan at the festival last year and at 50+ years of age! She is looking forward to them being at the festival for the weekend and celebrating their one-year veganversary in style!

“This year, Apiecalypse is bringing back a lot of old favourites (like the oh-so popular S’mores pie made from their home-made vegan marshmallows!) and will have a few new items. Additionally the booth will have a lot of info about the various ways people can get more involved with local animal rights campaigns, as well as take away cards about veganism, organic an fair trade food, plus postcards and stickers for the Toronto Aquarium Resistance Alliance. And she recently have tweeted, that a few of my tour-mates from the now infamous Open The Cages Tour will be behind the booth, so feel free to come by and talk shop with all of them. They have stories to share and high fives to give out!

Apiecalpyse Now! will be at the festival all weekend long in the International Marketplace. 

Anna Pippus is an animal rights lawyer and activist living in Toronto. She focuses the majority of her efforts on advocating on behalf of farmed animals because their suffering is profound, widespread, and largely socially accepted. Anna was a founding board member of Mercy For Animals Canada and is currently serving as the organization’s Acting Director of Operations.

How did you decide to become a veg/vegan?

I became vegetarian as a kid because eating meat vaguely didn’t sit well with me. I don’t think I could have articulated why I was vegetarian at that young age, but I took it very seriously, reading the labels of my vegetable-flavoured ramen noodles (the only thing I knew how to cook) and feeling as though vegetarianism was part of my identity. I didn’t know anything about animal agriculture, and I never turned my mind to it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about the realities of factory farming. I was horrified. I stopped eating eggs and dairy virtually immediately, upset that all this time, I–an animal lover–had been participating in causing so much suffering to these vulnerable, sensitive animals. I have never looked back.

Did you have to make major changes to adjust to a vegan lifestyle? 

I thought becoming vegan would be really hard at first, largely because cheese was my favourite food. The biggest hurdle for me was psychological: could I really do this? In fact, it turned out to be so much easier than I could have imagined. I have heard other vegans say this too. I was surprised to discover that the food I was eating became more diverse as I started to cook foods I had never even heard of (by this time, my cooking repertoire had expanded well beyond boiling ramen noodles). I enjoyed seeking out new restaurants, products, and recipes with my husband, and for the first time I started learning about nutrition, which almost inadvertently had the effect of improving my diet. Now I think it’s funny that I ever thought I couldn’t give up cheese. Did you know it comes from lactating cows? I know. Totally weird.

Anna Pippus’s talk, Inspiring Compassion: The Plight of Farmed Animals in Canada will be at 5:30 in the Studio Theatre 

Featured Exhibitor – Front Door Organic

Front Door Organics brings a fresh and energectic approach to organic home delivery in Toronto. They are a small family-run company owned and operated by Angela Donnelly and JJ Sheppard.

At the festival, they will be showcasing all of the fresh local organic produce they have and have a great special for Festival goers interested in our delivery service. The look forward to the great food, wonderful people they always meet and the fantastic atmosphere!

Find Front Door Organics all weekend long in International Marketplace 

Featured Presenter – Jo-Anne McArthur

The We Animals project was created by award-winning photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur who has been documenting the plight of animals on all seven continents for over ten years. Her documentary project, We Animals, is internationally celebrated and over 80 animal organizations, among them Igualdad Animal, Sea Shepherd and the Jane Goodall Institute, have benefited from her photography.

Jo-anne, a Canadian junior champion in curling is slowly putting together the first We Animals photobook. She enjoys seeing movies, reading, gardening and seeing friends. She loves the Vegetarian Festival, she says, “it’s like Christmas and loves taking part in, seeing and eating as much as I can”.

Her workshop will be fairly interactive and the goal is to get people more familiar with some photography basics and why it’s important to take good photos for the animal right movement, at sanctuaries, of animals that are up for adoption, and finally in investigative work. For her, Good pictures speak volumes, often more than any text can, so she feels it is crucial that the images representing animals are well executed and compelling.

Join Jo-Anne McArthur’s workshop, “Helping Animals Through Photography”, at 1:30 pm in Studio Lab 3. 

Featured Exhibitor – Truth Veg Belts

Truth Veg Belts owner and designer Renia Pruchnicki, back in 2001 found herself in the unemployment line after being laid off from her job. She had always wanted to own her own company. Through the help of an “unemployment assistance” program, which was a course on how to start your own business, she did just that! And that was how Truth Veg Belts got started.

With $2000.00 of her own money and a small business loan, she came out with her first line of belts. The reason that her belts were vegan is because she had never worked with leather and she did not know how to! She had been a designer of ski and snowboard wear for several years and knew a lot about technical materials. She simply used the materials that she was familiar with. And so began Truth! This year Truth is celebrating its 11^th year in business. Even cows across the globe agree that the vegan belts at Truth are the best you can find! Shipping is free!

At this year’s festival, Renia is very excited to be unveiling a couple new items such as the Kid’s Elastic Belts and Suspenders, which are known for the cute patterns that include fish, flowers, elephants and their fun colours. Another item is the SITband, which is a new product, similar to a belt but you can wear it around knees and back while sitting on the ground. It can make you sit straight up or you can lean back into it. With the idea, that because so many people are at the Food festival, it would be an ideal product and only costs $20.00!

Find Truth at the festival all weekend long in the International Marketplace

For Linda Woolven and Ted Snider, owners of the Natural Path, vegetarian journey started when they were on their honeymoon in Greece twenty-four years ago. They were sitting on the most beautiful beach in the world, when Linda turned to Ted and said, “Half the people in the world live by killing animals; half the world lives by not killing animals. We’re on our own now and can do whatever we want: let’s not kill animals.”

Ted’s says, the trick to adjusting to a vegetarian diet is loving the food your eating. If you are eating steak, you don’t miss lobster; if you are eating a delicious meatless dish, you don’t miss meat dishes. So the first thing to do is get a great vegetarian cookbook. Soon you realize that you are only giving up a few things and inheriting a world of exotic things. Linda is a brilliant cook who creates delicious dishes out nowhere. So she got to work on writing her first vegetarian cookbook. They cooked each recipe to try it out and lived on a new, exciting dish every day. For the first couple of years, they never ate the same dish twice. How exciting!

“Have you ever wondered why everyone at the Vegetarian Food Festival knows that vegetarianism is better for you and better for the planet and everyone not at the Vegetarian Food Festival believes that it is not? The reason is because the media, whose job it is to report facts to the public, consistently underrepresents and misrepresents the scientific studies on vegetarianism to the public. Since most people don’t read the medical journals, they are dependent on the media to tell them what the medical journals say. So because the media under and misrepresents them and never recommends–are rarely even mentions–vegetarianism, even the best informed people think we are wrong when we tell them vegetarianism is healthier. And that is perhaps the biggest thing standing in the way of spreading the word on vegetarianism: they are trying to spread the word to a public who, based on responsible reading, already believes the word is wrong.”

Linda and Ted will take a tour of the landmark studies on vegetarianism of the past couple of years, show how the major media in Toronto reported on them, and then show what the studies actually showed. The pattern of underreporting and misreporting the studies will be exposed.

They both are excited being at such a large celebration of vegetarianism and being with so many people who want to live nonviolently in harmony with animals and nature. They are looking forward to learning lots of new stuff. But, secretly, Ted is looking most forward to eating!

Their talk, “The V Word: Media Representations of Vegetarian Diets”, will take place on September 9^th at 4:30pm in Miss Lou’s Room

Featured Cooking Demonstrator – Lisa Pitman

Lisa Pitman, a full time social workers and raw certified chef has been a vegetarian since the age of six. Lisa became a vegan quite early owing to her body’s inability to digest animal proteins. But that decision-to eliminate animal foods-she says “changed her life” Lisa continued interest in veganism saw her becoming an ethical vegan when she turned 16. She enjoys doing cooking demos, creates food-based outreach events and contributes recipes for One Green Planet and Toronto Vegetarian Association.

Every year, she says, she looks forward to the “reunion with like-minded friends, hearing current research about plants, tasting fantastic veg products just hitting the market, and walking away from the weekend full of energy, inspiration and passion”.

This year, Nicole Axworthy and Lisa Pitman will teach you fantastic tips and tricks they have discovered over decades of thriving on plants. If you are new to plant-based eating, or simply looking for more ways to stretch your time and money, you’ll walk away with some new insights and sensational samples!

Join Lisa Pitman and Nicole Axworthy’s cooking demonstration, “10 Super Secrets That Make Eating Vegan Cheap, Fast & Fun at 12:00 pm in the Lakeside Terrance.

Featured Exhibitor – New Moon Kitchen

New Moon Kitchen is an all-natural gourmet bakery that has been devoted to making delicious and healthy baked goods since 1997.

They have been part of this festival for years and its always something they look forward to every September. They love to meet their cookie fans and give out sample to people who have never heard of them before. They really like the look a person’s face when they run through their lists of allergies and they can say, “Yes, you can eat these”.

New Moon Kitchen will be bringing back their Love Bites cookies that they usually only run for Valentine’s day. They will also run a special deal on the cookies and granola during the festival!

Find New Moon at the festival all weekend long in the International Marketplace

Featured Entertainment – Larra Skye

Larra Skye is a singer/songwriter from Toronto, Ontario. Her album of original music, The World Disappears was the #1 bestselling independent jazz album of 2006 for national retailer HMV.

This summer, Larra, just finished a music album this summer, which has kept her busy for a while now and will keep her busy until she releases the album in February! Aside from that, and songwriting, she loves to cook and bake, jog, bike and read (mainly modern fiction). She tries to check out all the vegan restaurants and cafés that are opening up in the city. Her favourite right now is Tori’s in the Beaches. She took a meditation course in the spring and is doing some painting in the fall. She loves Toronto for its beaches, never-ending events, live music, people, and communities.

Listen to Larra Skype perform at the festival on September 8^th at 4:00 pm on the Redpath Stage

Vegan Meal Time is a duo of herbivorian hams aka Justin Elchakieh and Ben Gilgan who intent on spreading good-will and giggles in equal measure. They have become a YouTube sensation and have approximately 1,400,000 million views!

As an infant, Justin remembers choosing a very big lifestyle decision: whether or not he was going to accept his mother’s breast milk. It was the most challenging moral quandary he faced in his formative infantile years, but turning it down was the best decision he ever made, for both his health and sense of superiority.

For this ‘epic’ duo, it is important to them that the rights of bacterium are properly represented. Vegan Meal Time runs one of the most prosperous Bacterium Sanctuaries in the entire county, having rescued quadrillions of microbes that lives most of their lives in completely abhorrent living condition, with very little respect being given to their complex individuality.

They are looking forward to checking out Sweets From the Earth, New Moon Kitchen, and the live show being put on by the Vegan Meal Time Bacterium Sanctuary’s theatre troupe! They are a very talented group of microbes, and this year they will be putting on a performance of the quintessential musical, “Cats”.

So what can you expect from Vegan Meal time at the festival? “Let’s just say, a whole lot of Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips & Seaweed Strips.”

To see what all this craziness is all about, check out Vegan Meal Time on September 8^th at 1:30 pm on the Redpath Stage.

Featured Exhibitor- The Simply Bar

The Simply Bar was designed for people with digestive issues, with a top Canadian gastroenterologist and a food technology center. It was designed to:

• Be high in protein (to be filling) but low in fat and sugars
• Be free of the usual things that would trigger digestive upset; it had to be free of gluten, milk, refined sugars, additives/preservatives and bad fats
• It needed to be natural
• And it had to taste good!

The simply bar is also low glycemic which helps provide constant energy throughout the day. Low glycemic diets may also help people lose weight, reduce inflammation and promote hormonal well-being. It is a healthy and enjoyable high protein bar suitable for a wide range of diets and lifestyles.

At the festival, the audience can expect to find a new product, called Pea Protein Chips, which have been flying off the shelves!

Be sure to check out The Simply Bar all weekend at Festival in the International Marketplace. 

Featured Presenter – Victoria Moran

Victoria Moran has been a Main Street Vegan for almost 30 years and is the bestselling author of eleven books, including Creating a Charmed Life (available in 30 languages around the world) and the plant-based weight loss classic, The Love-Powered Diet. She started Main Street Vegan Academy because it was the ‘next indicated thing’, what she knew she was supposed to do next. She says the title of her book, Main Street Vegan, was given to her, almost like a revelation, but the publisher didn’t like ‘Main Street’ and insisted she change it. A near miracle ensued: Michael Moore, the filmmaker, spent 45 minutes on the phone with her editor convincing her that it was the right title! Once she had her title back, other ideas started flowing and she soon established holistic health coaching practice into Main Street Vegan Coaching and starting the Academy to train other Vegan Lifestyle Coaches.

Victoria is passionate about spiritual adventuring. As a kid she wanted to be a mystic when she grew up, and she still does! She adores her adopted hometown of New York City. She likes films, especially documentaries and indies and live theatre—from the funky, out-of-the-way stuff to broadway. She also enjoys a lot of fun with vegan fashion and beauty, and being one those ‘health nuts’ she used to think were weird. She finds it fun to lift weights, do yoga, make juice and green smoothies and eat salads so big that her husband teases her by saying even after fifteen years!—‘You’re not going to eat all that, are you?”

When asked about an interesting fact that many do not know about her, she replied,  “I like country music. That’s such an incongruous part of myself, except that I’m a word person and a lot of those lyrics are priceless. Oh: and I don’t care for camping and hiking and the outdoors. I know vegans are supposed to be nature people, but that part passed me by. I’m at home in cities.”

Being at the festival, she is most looking forward to experiencing an event that has such a great reputation. As she put it, “It’ll be like meeting a major celebrity, or seeing the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China.”

Her talk titled, “Main Street Vegan”, will be happening on September 9^th at 1:30 pm in the Studio Theatre.

Featured Exhibitor – Green Zebra

Green Zebra Kitchen meal delivery service, started by two brothers, Gregg and Dan provides:

• Vegetarian meals delivered to your door once a week
• A menu that changes weekly
• Organic, local and seasonal food
• Unprocessed, gluten & dairy free ingredients

At the festival, Green Zebra will making some of their most popular dishes including their Mac & ‘Cheese’ and Kale Salad. You can expect healthy comfort food made with fresh organic ingredients. They are excited to make Lavender Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches, which is otherwise too challenging to pull off with their meal delivery business.

This will be their first year participating at the Festival and they are very excited to introduce their food to a wide range of people and show that vegan and gluten-free food can be delicious, creative, and fun.

In their free time, Dan being a new father spends most of his free time trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to make his daughter laugh, and Gregg spends his days playing with his dogs and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to make his wife laugh. They are both softball amateurs and you can spot them at your local park running laps and hitting home runs.

An interesting fact that many do not know about them is that four out of five staff members are graduates of the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, which is unique in being a mostly vegetarian program focused on health-supportive cooking.

Find Green Zebra Kitchen at the Festival all weekend long at World Café

John Pierre is a nutrition and fitness consultant who has devoted more than a quarter century to helping and improving the lives of others through his expertise in the areas of geriatrics, nutrition, fitness, women’s empowerment, green living, and cognitive retainment and improvement.

He is looking forward to sharing information that is life changing to those interested or curious about exploring the benefit of a plant diet. For those who are venturing into embracing more whole plant foods or who have already started on the journey, he would love to serve as the additional inspiration that helps them to continue and expand their knowledge and ideas.

At this year’s Food Festival, he is really excited about sharing the benefits of a plant based diet and the effect it has on the thousands of clients he has worked with all over the world. He has been witnessing miracles that this way of eating has had on people and the results have been consistent and sustainable. With 30 years of experience, it has allowed John to really see where the challenges are in shifting to this lifestyle and how to best address them. He will discuss the common concerns and questions most people are interested in knowing as well as the trials they may encounter.

His talk, titled “The Power of a Plant Based Diet” will be happening on September 8th at 3:00 pm in the Studio Theatre.

Featured Cooking Demonstrator – Terry Hope Romero

Terry Hope Romero, is the author and co-author of bestselling vegan cookbooks Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, and Viva Vegan!: Authentic Vegan Latina American Recipes. Terry became a vegetarian at 16  and progressed slowly into vegan through her 20’s. When she started out, there were far fewer resources than today such as social media and great restaurants. She did initially find the change to be challenging, but much less later on. She says that adjusting to a veggie lifestyle is a lifelong and highly personal process.

In her spare time, she finds herself spending too much time on the Internet. Beyond that, she does a lot of social gaming, cooking (for fun), working out, reading comic books and travelling all over to visit friends.

This will be her 4th year at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival! Though she has attended many veg fests in North America and beyond, this one is of her top festivals to present at. Her description of the festival: “Fun, friendly people, such a diverse offering of vendors and events in a beautiful venue, and all in one of my favorite North American cities to boot!”

Her demo, “Opa! Homemade Seitan Gyros & Cashew Tzatziki” will take place on September 8th at 6:00pm at the Lakeside Terrace. She also has a demo with Isa Chandra Moskowitz at 2pm on September 9th at 2:00pm.

She will also be one of the Judges at the Vegan Cupcakes take over Toronto Challenge, which will take place on September 9th at 4:00pm at the Lakeside Terrace.

Featured Exhibitor – Kupcakes Bakeshop

Starting out as a small web-based bakery, Kupcakes Bakeshop, offers creative new twists on classic desserts that taste even better than the desserts you grew up with! They love providing others with an incredible tasting dessert, using highest quality ingredients, which are also cruelty-free.

For Kaitlyn, making the switch to a vegan lifestyle was a no brainer! However, the major change was to learning how to cook again. She discovered many new foods that she had never tried before and her kitchen became her new haven to play and try new ideas. Experimenting with new foods is one of the best parts of being vegan! Her goal is to create decadent vegan baked goods that you would be proud to serve to friends, family and skeptics alike!

Find Kupcakes Bakeshop at the Festival all weekend long in the International Marketplace and try those fantastic desserts with a creative twist!

Featured Musician – Ken Whiteley

Ken Whiteley is a Canadian roots music legend. He makes a living as a full time musician, songwriter, producer of recording by other artists and performers. He loves food and enjoys shopping for it at the local organic farmer’s markets. He has had a daily yoga practice for the past 20 years and as of last year, is a certified yoga teacher.

Ken has been familiar with vegetarian eating since he was a teenager and was sympathetic to eating a non-meat centric diet all his adult life. However, the big change occurred once he started a daily meditation practice. Within 6 months, he has stopped drinking alcohol, stopped eating meat and started a yoga asana practice. The reasons he made this transition is because “it’s better for him on a physical, social, mental and spiritual level and it’s better for the planet on an environmental and karmic level.”

At the festival, Ken will be performing a big, family friendly mixture of musical styles including folk, blue, jazz, gospel and more. He loves to get the audience singing along and will even get some people up to join him on stage. His son, Ben Whitely on string bass, will accompany him while Ken plans to play a number of instruments including ukulele, banjo, guitars, autoharp, mandolin and jug. They will be featuring material from a number of his award winning CDs as well as new songs, many of which are based on a “food” theme.

You can listen to them play on September 7^th at 6:00pm on the Redpath Stage.

See you next Friday!

Michael Greger, M.D., is a physician, author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues. A founding member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. Greger is licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. Currently, he proudly serves as the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States. Dr. Greger is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Dr. Greger’s biggest influence for becoming a vegetarian was his grandmother! You can check out his video about his decision. He also uploads a new video every day to NutritionFacts.org, which scours the world of nutrition related research and summarizes information in short, easy to understand video segments.

His talk, Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death (Part 1) will take place at the Studio Theatre at 7:00 pm on Friday, September 7^th. Part 2 of the presentation will take place at 12:00 pm on Saturday, September 8^th.

Click here for a sneak preview!

Featured Cooking Demonstrator – Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Isa Chandra Moskowitz is an American author, magazine columnist, and former host of the community access cooking show Post Punk Kitchen. She has authored several best-selling cookbooks, including Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Veganomicon, Vegan Brunch, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, and Appetite for Reduction. In her spare time, Isa loves gardening and photography. But luckily, her work and passion are all the same thing: cooking!

She has always loved animals and once she figured out exactly what happened to animals in the food industry, going vegetarian and then vegan was the obvious decision for her. Although changing her diet was a major change, she found that some things were fun and easy, like learning how to cook vegan. However, some changes were more stressful, like learning to navigate a wedding buffet as a vegan. Nevertheless, she remembered that if you go at your own pace and remember your reasons for doing it, it is always a positive experience.

Isa has not been in Toronto in 20 years and is very excited about exploring the city and being able to connect with other vegans.

Her demo, “Know Your Roots” will take place on Saturday, September 8^th at 4:00pm at the Lakeside Terrace. You will never wonder what to do with a root vegetable ever again!

She will also be one of the judges for the Vegan Cupcakes take over Toronto challenge, which will take place on September 9^th at 4:00pm at the Lakeside Terrace.

Featured Exhibitor – Sweets from the Earth

Ilana Kadanoff decided to become a vegetarian when she was 7 years old and learned where meat came from. When she became a vegetarian as a kid, it was her parents who had to make the adjustments and were not sure what steps they should take. Twenty years later, she trained to become a pastry chef and then decided to become a vegan. There were no vegan desserts out there at the time, and thus, Sweets From The Earth was born out of necessity. What was initially supposed to be a little side business grew into something so much more!

Ilana likes to spend time with her family, her husband, two daughters and her dog. She is passionate about cooking and baking! When she is not at the bakery, she can usually be found in her kitchen at home. Aside from all the cooking, she is a word game geek who loves crosswords and board games.

Today, Sweets From The Earth makes a full line of original recipes, egg and dairy-free baked goods, all natural, 100% plant-based and GMO-free ingredients. All the products are made in two separate facilities: one dedicated nut-free, the other gluten-free.

At the festival, you can expect to see lots of cakes, cookies, cupcakes, tarts, muffins and bars & squares. In addition, they have many new products coming out this fall and the audience may get to experience it at the festival. Not to give away all the surprises, let’s just say one of them rhymes with “vegan droissants”!

Find Sweets From The Earth in the International Marketplace for the entire weekend of the Food Festival.

Featured Musician – lightsweetcrude

lightsweetcrude consists of Jason Steidman, Alexei Orechin, Michael Kaler and Mark Segger. Allof lighsweetcrude’s music is based on different ragas, which are the basis for North Indian Classical Music. Every raga has its own distinct mood and character, and they have fused each raga with a different Western genre and style.

lightsweetcrude is very excited to return to this festival after two years and will be delivering a set of instrumental music. They look forward to being joined by sitar maestro Ram Vakkalanka for a few songs. Having played at many different festivals, they found performing on The Redpath Stage at Harbourfront an amazing experience. They were bowled over last time by the amazing scenery, the awesome crowd dancing, lounging and hula-hooping. They promise another very danceable ear-opening and mind expanding musical experience.

Not only are they excited to perform, but also to try the awesome Indian food at the festival!

You can listen to lightsweetcrude playing on the Redpath Stage on September 9^th at 4:30 pm.

Listen to their music here.

See you in less than two weeks!

We will be updating this site every day as we have more and more content scheduled for the best three days of the year – September 7th, 8th and 9th, 2012! There are many more improvements coming, but we wanted to make sure you have access to all the speaker information as soon as possible before the festival.

We hope you’re excited for the biggest, best Vegetarian Food Festival yet! I know everyone at the Toronto Vegetarian Association is too.