Sundays are for lovers. Festival lovers, that is. A good one will make you want to peel yourself from your favorite loafing spot and yank on some elastic-waist pants so you can roam from booth to booth inhaling foods wrapped in wax paper or served in cardboard boats fit for floating across Lake Okeechobee. Soon it'll be too hot to go outside without sweat pooling in even the shallowest crevices of your body, so this weekend hit two of the city's most delicious fetes. Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden's Food and Garden Festival is a celebration of fresh vittles and the gardens that produce them. Beginning Saturday and continuing today, the fest features a cornucopia of produce its the farmers' market, or pop into a cooking demo to finally find out the best way to cook that pesky rutabaga. Or you can just bring ol' Ruty to the gardens and enter her in the Fruit and Vegetable Contest for ugliest, largest, or prettiest piece of produce.
Since man can't live on roughage alone, make the Deering Seafood Festival your second stop. Today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., the freshest seaborne foodstuffs from local markets and restaurants will be yours for the taking. The Bay Roots Reggae Band will provide the soundtrack; you just bring the family and your belly.
Sun., March 29, 9:30 a.m., 2009