A Taste of Colorado

That's the festival that has been up and running all weekend long in downtown Denver, and today my friend Kim and I went. It's exactly what it sounds like - a festival of local and non-local restaurants and eateries, food and drink companies, and other entities sampling their products. There were also booths selling clothes, art, jewelry, etc., as well as two stages with live music. It was free to attend, but you have to buy tickets which are used to purchase food and drinks. Kim and I each bought 32 tickets, which wasn't that many considering one Blue Moon cost 12 tickets. Kim also managed to win 8 extra tickets by spinning a wheel and landing on one of two spaces to win. Of course I didn't win; I rarely win anything.

With drink in hand, we started wandering the fair and sampling the food. We had free samples of a taco-type thing on a Mission tortilla shell, a new Kraft mac & cheese product with bread crumb topping, a simplified version of bruchetta, some flavored olive oil mixtures for dipping bread, a variety of flavored spreads that were gluten-free, an orange-pomegranate margarita, and water (we really just wanted that because we were thirsty). We also took a few free samples of Cascadian Farms organic granola products to take home. When buying food, you had the option to purchase a 'taste' of the food for 2 or 3 tickets in order to just get a sample, or you could buy the whole serving of a food for 7-13 tickets. Except for a corn on the cob, which we each got a whole one, we just bought tastings of different foods and shared them. We tried an apple fritter; cinnamon roasted almonds; falafel; a seafood mixture hush puppy type thing from the local restaurant, Bubba-Gump Shrimp; a buffalo beer bratwurst from Colorado Buffalo Grill; a cream puff drizzled in white and milk chocolate; and the two most interesting foods of the day, cactus and fried alligator. The cactus tasted like a combination of green peppers and green beans, but with an added tanginess; and the alligator was chewy. Honestly, it didn't have much flavor besides the breading and grease from being fried. We also shared a full-sized margarita and a fruit kabob, which was banana slices and strawberries on a stick that were drizzled with white and milk chocolate. It was delicious! We left the festival absolutely stuffed, but very satisfied.