Hello again!
I hope that you enjoyed Part One of my Woodstock Fruit Festival recap! Now onto part two!
Today I am going to show you what you most likely were looking for in the first post... The FOOD!
So like I mentioned in my last post, due to a mishap with a produce truck, we had to bum food from the Camp Walden staff, who graciously allowed us to munch on their fruit. I was really grateful because I was very, very hungry:
We stole this stuff
By the second night of volunteering, we had some food. I dined on oranges:
I never knew how much I loved these until this night
Then, for the entire rest of the festival, I ate all the longans and lychees. Pretty much all of my dinners looked like this:
I essentially subsisted on these 4 things - Longan, Lychee, and fun with Megan and Kristina
I just love those little guys. I may be boring, but for everyone else who wasn't there was a million options. Grapes, plums, pluots, asian pears, dates, bananas, oranges, mandarines, tangerines, dragon fruits, banana ice cream, peaches, mangoes and so on. There was abundance.
I also partook in the amazing salad bar that happened every night! Each night had a different theme, and I was pretty surprised by how delicious all the low fat raw vegan salad dressings were - mostly because as it turns out my own salad dressing imagination is just super limited. They blended many fruits and veggies together in different combinations. This here was marinara that contained tomatoes and mangoes:
Nooooooddddlllleeeessss
The star of the whole festival for me was this mango, ginger, lime, celery dressing. People were literally drinking it like a smoothie it was so good:
It blew my mind
There was always a plethora of greens, chopped veggies, limes, lemons and herbs so you could construct your own salad if you didn't want the dressing or whatever else was being served:
We all did this, don't judge me.
And of course, because we are all bloggers/instagramers/facebookers/youtubers meal time was really just a giant photoshoot. But that is ok because since we were all doing it, no one was judging eachother. Except Marcus. He was judging all of us.
What I would like you to take note of in this salad is the tomatoes.
They were by far the best tomatoes I had ever eaten and both Marcus and I enjoyed them nightly. He had never had a tomato he felt he could just eat before, so this was an enlightening experience for him. The only downside is now in real life all we want is tomatoes. Ah. Life.
This one actually looks pretty!
This salad was on Mediterranean night and it included a cauliflower couscous that I LOVED. It had a cauliflower base and lots of dill, mint, lime and, of course, tomatoes.
This one was surprisingly good
On Mexican night they served us this amazing corn stew. I believe it was just tomatoes, leeks, bell peppers, zucchini, lemon, lime, corn and cumin. It was soooooo goooooood. I just put the lettuce there for show - I mostly ate the stew.
I never knew that I liked corn before this!
I only managed to get Marcus to take one picture of me WITH the salad - due to his judgement pants being on.
Proof I actually ate them and didn't just photograph them
The best night for Marcus was the burger night. These were totally insane considering they were raw, vegan, low fat and salt free.
wow right?!
The paddies were made with mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, chia seeds and some seasoning. They also had a tomato ketchup and a honey mustard made with mustard seeds, dates, mango and lemon. Out of this world.
Nailin it
All those salads were amazing, but I still think at the end of the day everyone was just there for the abundance of durian. On the night of the talent show they brought all the durian up to the rec hall and after the show we all picked one (or two or five depending on who you were) and GORGED.
Just a few durian
They were all just sitting there, waiting for us.
Just moments before the craziness happened
There was so much durian I almost felt like I was back in Thailand.
mmoooaaaarrr durian
Since I was not working in the kitchen the second week, I did try to get on my computer and do some e-mails and blog stuff during my mornings. I also kept up with my daily coconut habit - of course.
This is how every one should spend their productive hours
Due to the fact that being on Admin was so much more relaxed than being in the kitchen, I actually did a few more activities in the afternoons when I was off. One day I went to acro yoga and had a super fun time being "The flyer" with Ryan:
This is what you do with your afternoons too, right?
There was also lots of late night shenanigans. Both due to the durian highs and not. I really just had such a good time hanging out with everyone at the festival. It felt like a big family. It also felt like I was living with all my friends which actually is pretty addicting. I never thought I was a community living kind of person, but the festival has made me second guess that. There were many nights of movies, many late nights of just talking and pouring our souls out to one another, dancing our butts off, and many nights of playing games and being totally silly. Needless to say, sleep was not high on the priority list at the festival.
Oops. Sawwy Marcus
I also spent a lot of time hanging out in peoples cabins. It was not out of the ordinary to arrive at the cabin to a scene like the one below:
Animals. All of them.
Really. We were animals.
On the last night we all got dressed up pretty to take nice photos, and had a good time hanging out at the closing ceremonies:
sadness ensued
I spent most of the last night chatting with Jon, and then it was off to bed!
Early on Sunday morning I woke up, collected my things and headed to the bus that was headed to New York.
We all just didn't know what to do with ourselves.
I spent my last few Woodstock Hours hanging out with Kristina:
We were smiling, but in our hearts we cried.
And Jon and Amy. We slept, chatted, slept, chatted and generally cried and were gnashing our teeth with sadness.
Me and Amy = what you are supposed to look like when you travel. Jon = a freeking model. jeeze Jon
I had spent the whole second week of the festival worrying about how I was going to navigate my way from Grand Central Station - where the bus was dropping us off - to Penn Station where the train would be taking me to the airport. Since I was sans Marcus and sans any natural sense of direction. Again, immanent death. When we arrived in New York, we literally pulled up in front of this bus:
well aint that handy?
So I took that 😉 From there I went to the air port, had another wheat grass shot and a tea. Marcus thought that my laptop had been stollen because the airport Wifi kept cutting in and out and making it so that I could not see or respond to his messages on Skype. We really need to get a phone.
I then boarded the plane and sat that the VERY back in between a family who were not excited about flying. Needless to say I was pretty much done with the whole travelling thing by the time the flight was over:
So done with it I could not even take a non-blurry photo.
Marcus met me at the airport and we took a cab home because I am pretty sure I would have died on transit and I am fully sure I would have died trying to get home on my own.
Yup. Doin great here.
And that was that! Woodstock done 🙂 I was happy to get home and get back to my life, but I must admit, I really really miss all my Woodstock friends, the abundance of fruit that I don't have to shop for and the general energy of the festival. Which is why I am SO excited that there is going to be another Festival in April in Hawaii! If you are interested, be sure to keep your eyes peeled to the Woodstock fruit fest page for details to come!
Are you gunna check out Woodstock next year? If you are thinking about it, stop thinking about it and just do it. It will change your life in the best way possible. There is so much amazing community, amazing lectures to learn about health and wellness, amazing activities and of course, amazing food. Yes. You will be AMAZED. Plus, I want to meet you, so you should come and hang out.
<3
