Shoes and lip gloss, ferrets and yoga - the 23rd Vegetarian Food Fair was more diverse than ever. The title “food fair” may even become a misnomer in future years, and they may have to change it to “Veg and Eco Vendor and Charity Booth Fair.” For now, the overarching term encompasses 3 days of things to buy, petitions to sign, cooking demos, lectures, and plenty of food.

The Food Fair kicked off at 4PM last Friday to worrying weather. It began raining four minutes before the cooking demo for the evening started, so Gill Deacon and Howard Dubrovsky had a fairly large audience for “Haute Cuisine Goes Green.” The two bantered back and forth like the TV hosts that they are, disdaining the 100-mile diet and the “medium-low” setting on stoves. Howard one-upped Gill in the “haute” department with his instruction on preserved lemons. “I have never heard of this,” she admitted.

Saturday was a much nicer day, and packed full of events. From vegan body-building to a live podcast, it seemed nigh-impossible to attend the lectures and still have time left over for soy jerky samples. Luckily, the demos had free samples at the end as well. Breakfast was French toast and lunch was cinnamon doughnut holes. Cookies from the New Moon Kitchen booth, cake from the Sweets From the Earth booth, and ice cream from the Tofutti booth sustained my vegan junk food bender between breakfast and lunch. Saturated with sugar (but not saturated fats,) I made some dazed purchases. Nutrition bars and necklaces, flower tea and even an eco-friendly undergarment found their way into my hands. Similarly intoxicated, others wandered about with the newfound joy of temporarily being able to – get this – actually eat what was in front of them. As a loosely associated group, we collectively chowed down on burritos, pitas, pakoras and summer rolls.

The nonprofit tent was full of representatives in repose, keen on whichever issue they had brought to the forefront of their mind and their table. Activists from across North America offered stickers, hand lotion, and even cupcakes in exchange for a signature or a donation. Among like-minded masses, they restrained their rhetoric and simply smiled and chatted amicably. Although focused on different issues, it seemed that there was a consensus that all were working toward similar ends, and so competitive urgency was replaced with a temporary camaraderie.

The most popular talk was “From Animal Farmer to Animal Advocate: The Story of Farmer Brown.” The star of the Farm Sanctuary video Peacable Kingdom, began with how to castrate a calf, and ended with the importance of never saying “I don’t care.” In between were a few jokes, but mostly Harold Brown spoke starkly, with an emotional honesty that brought an air of gravity to those of us who had spent most of the morning stuffing our faces for cheap. As awesome as it was to just keep going back to the King’s Cafe booth for dollar fake drumsticks, the whole event did have a point – it was a convergence of those usually shunted into the periphery of dinner menus, where abstainers could relax into an atmosphere of shared concern and optimism for themselves, for animals, and for the environment. At this year’s food fair, it was clear that vegetarianism is not just a diet, it is a lifestyle, and that people with very little in common can still become a group for a weekend, united under simple practices and ideas.