vegan

i’ve been vegan for eight years and Maximus decided to be fully vegan several months ago. We love this way of eating and generally don’t have too many problems finding food to eat when we’re away from home. We travel a lot, including internationally, and we’ve learned how to navigate restaurants and buffets to fit our needs.

Usually we’re the only “weird ones” but this morning i ran into a fellow vegan at the buffet who was having some difficulty finding breakfast items as a first time Desire guest. i shared some tips with her and thought it might be a good topic to blog about in case there are others.

• First of all, we’re traveling, there’s somewhat of a language barrier, we’re guests in someone else’s country, and not completely in control of how our food is being prepared.  So we do the best we can, don’t want to be rude or pushy, and we totally understand and accept that we may end up eating something that’s not vegan. It’s ok, it’s not going to kill us.
• When we travel abroad, i make little cards in the language of the country(ies) we are visiting explaining what things we like to avoid eating. You can google them to download and print. V-cards is one, Select Wisely is another. We can simply hand that to a waiter for guidance or they can take it to the kitchen for the chef. We use these at the restaurants at Desire.
• At breakfast, there is always an amazing array of fresh fruit. I love the papaya and guava! There is an omelette station and i fill a plate of fresh veggies and ask Matildè to sauté them with “no heuvos, no queso” and she’s happy to do that. i do not worry that she’s been cooking eggs and meat on that same grill. You can get warmed corn or flour tortillas to go with it. i also include cooked diced hash brown potatoes from the buffet if they have them. And there’s salsa and hot chili sauce to add that i think is to die for!! (Not for Maximus though!) There are fruit juices, cereals you can have dry or with water/juice, breads, coffee, tea, and jams. They used to have a big pot of cooked oatmeal but it was made with milk. They added a menu item of oatmeal but we haven’t ordered it as we are assuming it’s con leche as well. If we want our typical oatmeal, we always travel with instant oatmeal packets and could ask for hot water to make our own and add toppings from the granola bar.
• Lunch buffet. There’s always chips and guacamole, steamed veggies, rice, salads. Often there are roasted veggies, pesto, and hummus to make a sandwich with, potatoes, home fries. There is always a salad bar and if you want some of their yummy pizza, simply grab a slice and peel off the cheese and meat toppings.
• The dinner buffet can be hit or miss sometimes. Usually there is some type of vegan-friendly entree. However there have been times where the pickin’s were slim. In that case we’ve made do with scraping cheese off some veggie dish or picking veggies out of another dish. Usually there are potatoes or rice.
• The restaurants are great. At the sushi restaurant we’ve had veggie sushi that’s been great. At the Italian restaurant there’s always been a veggie dish we’ve had veganized. Both places we’ve presented the card and they’ve accommodated us beautifully.
• The post-sex late night bar works too! We order a no-carne, no queso pizza–we usually have to repeat our request multiple times as they are so confused someone would order a pizza without cheese! It comes with sauce and sliced tomatoes and is wonderful! We could get a pineapple only one too, i’m sure, just have not tried ordering that combo.
• Worst case scenario, we ALWAYS travel with food. We bring Lära bars, Dr. McDougall dry soup mixes in ziplock bags, instant oatmeal, and powdered coconut milk so we always have some food. We take that with us whenever we travel by air.

Fact of the matter–we’ve never starved! Being vegan should not deter anyone from experiencing Desire!