——-11/02/2012——-
Across the body bag so it doesn’t get in the way of eating- check
Camera for photos- check
A bright moo moo so people can spot me and it won’t matter how much I eat- check
I think I’m ready for the Multicultural festival!
The Multicultural festival runs over three days with cultural displays, food and dancing from around the world but the day where most things are open for display/eating is Saturday!
So after 8.5 hours of participating in one of the highly anticipated events of the year, what did I eat? Well I usually meet up with different friends throughout the day so no one really knows how much I really eat but I’ll share my secret with you guys. 
I started off my day at Lithuanian dumplings stand- pork and veal dumplings topped with sour cream and bacon. Oh so good! Too bad they had sold out of dumplings during my third time around the world. This definitely filled a void for me as I usually love Russian dumplings, where they have tiny pork dumplings topped with sour cream and soy sauce but the Russians didn’t sell dumplings this year! *sad face*
Next up- Macedonian Community ACT with kebabs! Nice hot meat on a stick! Timmy nicknames the festival ‘meat on a stick day’, he isn’t wrong.
My friend kindly gave me half of her fish ball from the Sri Lankan stand, it was rather spicy but in a good way- yum!
A fruit salad drink from the Vietnamese stand– by the time we got there the taro drink and rainbow drink had sold out. Fruit salad, jellies and shaved ice topped with syrup and coconut cream was really refreshing.
Tibetan Momos- the ratio of dumpling wrapper to meat was a bit off so I left most of the wrapper uneaten, this girl had more things to eat!
All this food was making me thirsty so I washed it all down with something from the Australian Native cuisine stand- Wild Rosella with pineapple punch. It tasted like a diluted punch with too much ice.
The country with the most numerous stalls this year was the Turkish selling gozleme but apparently there still wasn’t enough because each stall had a really long line.
Chips on a stick! Their first appearance at the Multicultural food festival and it proved to be VERY popular by the looks of their very long line up but I think it was worth the wait (especially if your friends were lining up for you- Thanks Anita and Lis!). They have a variety of salt mixtures that you could choose from, their ‘special salt mix‘ and ‘chilli‘ were really good.
Sicilian desserts– it’s hard to believe with so many stalls that I came back here four times! The cream cheese cannolis were soooooo good! The chocolate cannoli fillings looked really glossy and I thought it would be very chocolatey but it was more chocolate flavoured custard. I didn’t dare try the doughnut looking one or rum babas as they looked really filling but when there cream cheese cannolis sold out, we tried a rum baba and wow! They were really really good, the doughy outside was really soft as it was soaked in rum, typing about it now makes me want to have another one. 
We paused our eating for the cultural parade! All the costumes and dancing were beautiful.
Peruvian pancakes- I asked the guy, what makes it Peruvian? He said that the guy making them is Peruvian 
and he added that the sauce that has orange and spices is a traditional Peruvian sauce and they coupled it with pancakes this year and it went really well together. It wasn’t particularly ‘orangey’ and the pancake batter seemed heavier than a normal pancake like it was made from buckwheat or something but it was still very nice.
It was starting to get hot, which is great considering it was supposed to rain, so we cooled down with a grape and raspberry slushie but even the slushies were melting fast.
ACT Chinese Australian Association Inc– Chinese pan fried pork dumplings! It doesn’t matter how many dumplings I eat throughout the year, I still come and eat these at the Multicultural festival! There were a lot less Chinese stalls this year, so there weren’t too many choices, but this stand had good dumplings but their zucchini pancake wasn’t too special. My friend bought pineapple tarts but he found them very powdery and slightly dry.
For me, this festival is like eating dumplings from around the world. The Taiwanese dumplings (left) were more fried wrapper than anything but the Thai dumplings (right) were nicer with their pork and cabbage filling.
Washing everything down with a mango lassi.
Hungarian stand– oh how I need to meet Hungarian people who can cook! The longest line I had to wait at (yes even including Greek donuts and Dutch pancakes) was the ‘langos’ line- Hungarian deep fried puffy bread brushed with minced garlic topped with sour cream and shredded cheese… *starts to drool* So worth the wait!
One of my ‘to do’s of the day was to eat at least one sausage (the only exception to my rule of ‘no bread’ during the festival) and although the German sausages were very popular, I’m not the biggest fan of sauerkraut but I do love cheese! The Hungarians win! It was soooooo good!
German sausages are a big highlight for some and my friend was nice enough to let me take a photo of her Bratwurst from the Harmonie German club tent.
The ACT government were handing out free drink bottles where you could fill them up at these funky tap water stations so everyone stayed well dehydrated during the event.
Dutch Pancakes, a Multicultural Festival long time favourite! The lines were long as usual but they were going through the crowd very fast. Maple syrup and ice-cream and lemon juice and icing sugar.
Italian gingerbread men! He is so cute!
The Spanish tent– The churros were a bit disappointing because of the supposed dipping sauce which was more like a hot chocolate, but I did like the prawn skewers! YUM!
Australia-Nepal friendship society Canberra– they had a variety of food but I had to try their Momo (with a home-made sesame and tomato chutney) and their ‘sel roti’ traditional Nepalese doughnut. The sauce was really nice and made it one of the nicest dumplings I had eaten that day. The doughnuts weren’t really sweet but were really dense and I don’t recommend eating it towards the end of the day when you’re getting full.
The line was long but it went through fast, these Greek women knew what they were doing! Loukoumades– light fluffy doughnuts drizzled with honey, they tasted like honey prawns without the prawn.
While we were at the Greek stalls, you can go past their lamb skewers! If any can cook lamb well, it’s the Greeks!
Fried banana pie– I had to come back three times before they actually had any and I was slowly getting full but I was happy to come back as they were really friendly at the ‘Learning Filopino Together’ stand.
While I was waiting at the Filipino stand, my friends wandered over to the Indonesian tent for some ‘meat on a stick’, they said that they satay sauce was really good.
Some people eat their way around the world and then there are those who drink their way around the world. The Multicultural festival brings in imported beers that you don’t usually get and I love all their interesting cans and and impressed with their bigger can sizes.
Something that I really wanted to try was the African village curries and Sri Lankan hoppers but I couldn’t dedicated so much of my stomach to one thing, but there’s always next year!
I’m going to have Hungarian sausage and bread/Sicilian dessert/Greek donuts withdrawals for a full year but I can’t wait to do it all over again in 2013!
I’ll be hunting down: Taiwanese gua bao. I hope they have them today!
Interesting suggestion: One of my favourite food bloggers 
TALES OF A CONFECTIONIST 