I’ll be honest.
As much as I love handmade, lovingly prepared artisanal products, I generally opt out of the giant twice-a-year One Of A Kind Show And Sale, for a variety of reasons.
1) The shows can get really cramped and uncomfortable and I despise that slow, laboured crawl that it takes to navigate them
2) People can get really rude and pushy over this kind of original stuff
3) I find a lot of what’s on offer to be prohibitively expensive
Yesterday, after surprisingly little prodding, I managed to successfully coerce the Everyman into joining me for an afternoon at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
As far as I can recall I don’t think I’ve ever visited “The Royal” before, but if I did, it was probably during some grade school field trip or something nearly 20 years ago. I can vividly recount visits to the Winnipeg version of The Royal, if for no other reason than the presence of Bonhomme (du neige). Bonhomme is the mascot of the Quebec winter carnival, but there’s a surprisingly large French population in Winnipeg, so for some reason he makes an appearance there, too. The toboggan slaloms were pretty awesome as well, which unfortunately isn’t something we’d ever see in Ontario, I imagine.
Up until a few weeks ago I really had no yearning to go to the Ontario Royal. But, when I met my editor Sheryl at Pantry for lunch a few weeks ago (aside from having an utterly scrumptious mushroom and oxtail tart) she made an off-the-cuff remark that made me wonder how much of a foodie destination The Royal might be.
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Good Food Revelation Blog
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Sausage Debauchery
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