D.C. VegFest is back, and it’s bigger and better than ever. (Andrea Sachs/The Washington Post) If your meal plan starts with the three letters “v-e-g,” you probably already have a red circle around Sept. 22, the date of D.C. VegFest.

You know its organizers (Compassion Over Killing and Vegetarian Society of D.C.), hours (11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and location (Yards Park). You won’t make the mistake of going back to the George Washington University venue —that was so third annual. In fact, you probably already have your bike tires pumped and your alarm clock set so that you can be among the first 1,000 attendees to score a goodie bag packed with products and coupons. You are probably still snacking on the swag you snagged last year.

Simply put, you don’t need our assistance as much as, well, some others who will remain nameless except that they share the suffix of “vore.” So go fix yourselves a Daiya grilled cheese. We won’t take long. Come back in five.

Okay, it’s just us. We can speak freely. We know that on Saturday you have a table at Ruth’s Chris Steak House and a shopping excursion to Nordstrom to replace the leather belt that your dog chewed like a rawhide toy last weekend. But consider for a moment jettisoning your plans to drop by VegFest.

Capital City Oktoberfest, one of many beer drinking events coming soon.The outdoor festival season begins in earnest this weekend with dueling Oktoberfests.

Das Best Oktoberfest unfolds this Saturday and Sunday at National Harbor. The tentative drinks menu lists more than 60 beers, including a few newcomers like the limited-edition Gordon Biersch Imperial Pilsner Brau and Duckpin Pale Ale as well as the Balt Altbier from the recently opened Union Craft Brewing Co. in Baltimore.

Mad Fox Brewing Co. in Falls Church celebrates the harvest with a biergarten at Market Square on Sunday. Executive brewer/owner Bill Madden will tap casks of his Hitzig Frau Oktoberfest and Kellerbier, served via the traditional gravity-dispense method, but otherwise the celebration will feature an IPA-centric lineup with hoppy ales from about a half-dozen area breweries. Among the selections will be Mad Fox’s Orange Whip IPA, with its distinctive tangerinelike flavor from Citra hops, and Dingo IPA, hopped with Galaxy, Citra’s Australian cousin.

“We wanted to do a stand-alone IPA festival,” said brewer Charlie Buettner, “but with all of our beer dinners, it kind of worked out in collaboration with our Oktoberfest.”

Boiled Cider (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post) With apple season underway, that can only mean one thing. (Actually, many things: Pie! Applesauce! More pie!) But a companion product I love this time of year is apple cider.

Lots of Washington area farms and orchards make cider. Some use a mix of apples, while others are single-variety. Pick up a jug at today’s FreshFarm Market by the White House, Saturday’s Columbia Heights Community Marketplace, Saturday’s FreshFarm Market in Silver Spring, Saturday’s H Street NE FreshFarm Market and Sunday’s Bloomingdale Farmers Market. Find the details about these and other markets via the link to our map below.

If you go a little too crazy buying cider, consider turning it into Boiled Cider, a traditional New England syrup.When saved in sterilized jars, boiled cider will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator.

INTERACTIVE: Click the image above to view our interactive farmers market map.

Also available this week:

At today’s Ballston FreshFarm Market:

This just in

Banner Bee: creamed and flavored honeys.

Gunpowder Bison and Trading: all cuts of bison; bison chili; bison sloppy Joes.

Evergrain Bread: small miche loaves.

Savvy Pops: coffee ice cream and black cherry-yogurt ice pops.

Westmoreland Berry Farm: raspberries; winter squash; apples.

Post archive photo from 2000: An agronomic research manager with Monsanto examines a test plot of corn genetically engineered to combat the destructive rootworm pest in the Shenandoah Valley. (Marc Kaufman/The Washington Post) A controversial new French study claims that rats fed a diet of Monsanto’s genetically modified maize and/or exposed to the company’s top-selling weedkiller were more likely to die prematurely and develop tumors and organ damage.

The two-year, peer-reviewed study, allegedly the first to look at the long-term effects of genetically engineered corn on animals, was published today in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal. It was backed by the Committee of Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRII-GEN), a French nonprofit known for its opposition to GM foods.

In a telephone conference call with U.S. reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Gilles-Eric Seralini, a biologist at Caen University and the study’s lead author, noted that GM animal studies typically conclude after three months, likely because companies behind genetically modified foods don’t want to know the long-term consequences of their products.

“After four months” Seralini said about his own long-term study on 200 rats, “the tumors began.”

“After one year, there was a . . . high increase in the number of tumors,” continued Seralini, who is also the president of CRII-GEN’s scientific board. He said that most of the female rats had two or three tumors.

Tom Helscher, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto, sent a statement that noted more than a 100 peer-reviewed animal studies have confirmed the safety of biotech crops, but added that the company would review the French study ”thoroughly, as we do all studies that relate to our products and technologies.”

Helscher also pointed out that Seralini and his colleagues have made similarly faulty conclusions in the past, notably in 2007 when they analyzed a previously published 90-day animal study about Monsanto maize. The European Food Safety Authority, which reviewed the paper at the request of the European Union, found no merit in Seralini’s report, concluding:

Morning, all. Let’s get right to it: Today’s Food is packed with great stuff. Jim Shahin writes about Andrew Evans , fine-dining-chef-turned-barbecue-guru. Jane Black writes about one man’s dream to see modular planter box gardens installed at schools across the country. And we introduce our 2012 cooking class list, bigger than ever, with close to 160 great options for expanding your culinary expertise.

And, of course, there’s today’s Free Range chat at noon sharp, our weekly session of give and take. Bring yourself and your questions, and we’ll do our best to answer. You can even target your questions to specific Food folks, like this leftover question from last week’s chat:

This question is for Jason. I know that, like me, you enjoy coming up with new cocktails. Have you ever “invented” a drink, only to discover that you’ve actually just come up with something that’s pretty common? My most embarrassing example of this: When I came up with a vodka-based dessert cocktail, my friends pointed out that I had really just made a white Russian. But even for lesser-known drinks, how can you know if a cocktail you’ve created is really original? It seems unlikely that someone else hasn’t already had my idea, but short of exhaustive Googling, it’s hard to know whether that’s true.