multicultural food fest #3

Yesterday, I went to one of my favourite events in Canberra – the Multicultural Food Festival. It was crazy busy and in comparison to previous years, the fest was more spaced and there were more and a different range of stalls. Seemed like there were new stalls – for example Croatian, a wider variety of Indian, cider stalls etc. Or maybe these stalls were always at the food fest but they were in more prominent locations or this was the first time I acknowledged them. I realised that there weren’t as many Asian food stalls as previous years – my theory is that Sunday (today) is Chinese/Lunar New Year. I guess families who own Asian restaurants and normally would host a stall were busy with festivities and their own families.

A lot of the festival was a haze – I was parched and quickly drunk ½ a cider and a cocktail before I ate anything. I went to cider stall hosted by ‘The Apple Thief’ – I don’t think I’ve seen this brand before so was excited with the possibility of something new. There were three types of cider – pink lady (sweet), granny smith (dry) and pear (in between). As I usually over consume on sweet foods, I got the granny smith one… regrettably though… it was like light beer – a light taste while you’re drinking it and a dry aftertaste. I ended up handing it over to a guy. The cocktail from Digress (Italian and Indian restaurant) was refreshing – probably one of the better things I’ve had from the restaurant in my experiences.

I made an effort to avoid eating one large meal and feeling completely full so opted to have small bites from different stalls… This was difficult because all I could find was deep fried stuff and Chinese stuff that I didn’t want to eat (my family makes better). I ended up getting ‘Aloo Tikka’ balls from the Digress stall (curry potato balls) that were very salty (best served with a dry alcoholic drink). I also got a chicken kebab stick from the Samoan stall, which tasted like plain barbequed meat. If you are like me and like trying lots of different foods, it’s definitely best to go with a group with the same mindset and share.

In my experiences of the food festival, I normally ‘over-consume’ on food/drinks. However, today I feel more gross/bloated than I normally do post-festival. My flatmate reminded me that I’ve been pretty good with my diet in the past few months (including not eating a whole piece of cake by myself) so the food’s probably not reacting well with my body. To balance out my excess calorie intake, I have an urge to exercise… but today so far, the weather has been very temperamental (rain, shine, rain, shine), so it’s been very difficult to exercise outdoors. DETOX STARTS NOW.