The Not-so-Good Food Festival

Well, that was a disappointment.
Yesterday marked our fifth visit to the Good Food Festival. It was probably also our last.
Quite simply, this Festival is a shadow of its former self. Every year it has declined a little: vendors either downsize their displays, cut the value of their coupons in half, or disappear entirely. But at least until this year, we felt the $12 admission fee was more than worth it. Besides the swag-bag you get as you enter, containing twenty bucks worth of free merchandise and about that much in coupons, there are deals to be had all over. The highlight for us has always been the Reynolds kiosk: three for $5, mix 'n' match...but then they'd always throw in freebies. In our first visit we discovered Reynolds Release non-stick aluminum foil, which found a place on the Breadner grocery list right quick. Last year they introduced their Slow Cooker Liners to the Canadian marketplace at the Festival. I quickly fell in love with these things--cleaning the inside of a crockpot has never been one of my life's great joys--only to have to wait more than six months before they were to be found on a store shelf.
We knew before we even got in this year that things had deteriorated. A great yawning space greeted us where once there had been vendors galore. I don't know whether it's because fewer vendors are willing to bear the costs of giving out thousands of free samples, or some other reason, but perennial favourites were nowhere to be found. There used to be a giant Strub's pickle waving at you as you entered; he and has company had vanished. Kozy Shak gave out full-sized samples of pudding every year: the Shak was gone. Renee's disappeared a few years back and hadn't returned.
And Reynolds? Released.
If Eva was the sort of person who cared to watch cooking demonstrations, we might have stayed longer. But it's doubtful anybody there has anything to teach her: besides, if she ever gets that urge, that's what the Food Network's for.

All was not in vain: we got some sugar-free chocolate and caramel syrups and some Himalayan salt--supposedly infinitely better for you than your regular run-of-the-mill salt. Oh, and a book on small-batch preserving that should serve us well when food prices become completely unreasonable, say, next week. I found some Lipton's White Raspberry Tea I quite liked. And two consecutive days off with my wife is a prize to be treasured, no matter where we go or what we do.
But given that we were in line to get in for fifty minutes and actually inside for 46...given that gas up here in the Great White North is retailing at $1.226 a litre, or almost $4.71 USD/gallon at current exchange rates (and that'll only go up)...I think, like an ever-increasing number of vendors, we'll give this a pass.