My swag bag: VVC report #3

At Vida Vegan Con, we were all given not one, but two swag bags. A mega huge one with all sorts of goodies like Vegan Queso by Food for Lovers, Hannah Kamminsky's My Sweet Vegan, Biscoff cookies, Dandies, a spice mill, a coconut meat scraper, two extra bags within the bag, and oh God--the list goes on and on.

In our smaller brown bag of swag we had a number of other goodies: Toms of Maine toothpaste, some homemade soap, condoms-(what are those for?), Mary's Gone Quackers GF snacks, and a "chocolate" raw food bar by Vega.

Fat Gay Vegan -(I wish I had more time to talk to him at the conference) made a tweet the other day-(oh BTW I'm on twitter now! @thatPITAvegan) asking if it was okay for one vegan to be critical of another vegan. I milled this one over in my frontal lobe for a while. There are two ways one can deliver honesty, it can be delivered like a gentle embrace or you can club someone over the head with it. If I had a product that was displeasing to the vegan community, I would want to know about it, but I wouldn't want the person to be really douchey about it, either. I've been on both ends of the spectrum, being a critic and the criticized-- I'm not a fan of being called out in front of others in a particular obnoxious way. Given that, I'll refrain from any lengthy discourse about how it lacked in chocolate and taste. My rating is one turntable. I will give some positives:

• Totally filling. Normally, I'm all nommy mc nom-nom by the time I get home and need a snack. Today I didn't need one.
• It was free. Free is a good price.
• The flavor reminded me of Fig Newton innards.
• I'm thinking post workout snack or good to bring along for a hike. I would accompany it with some fresh fruit though.

Questions, questions, and questions:

• What is your favorite food in bar form?
• Have you ever had to offer feedback on a product or an event and struggled with positive blogging?
• Do you believe in positive blogging?
• What would you make for a vegetarian or omnivore that needed food in bar form?