Hey guys! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! This post is going to be a double whammy because I am going to tell you about my eats this past weekend in the Hamptons, and I am ALSO going to tell you about how I travel as a plant-based vegan when I am staying in a house for the weekend with 20 (!!!) non-vegans.
I have written posts about traveling as a health-a-holic before, and those posts mainly centered around the extreme anxiety I felt when going to a place that didn’t have Whole Foods, Juice Press and Integral Yoga Market within walking distance. (Refresher: me traveling to Cabo with a bag of food the size of my body… My tiny body might I add, since this was in the days when I was seriously panicked to eat anything but fruit, veggies, or nuts. I’ve come a long way, guys!)
Now I am evolving from a total health-a-holic into a “I do things in moderation because I’m healthy but also want to enjoy my life to the fullest and not make my friend’s/family’s lives super hard when they’re with me” kind of gal. Baby steps, but I am getting there. This weekend I tried my very best to roll with the punches (umm, did you see yesterday’s post on alcohol?!) and although I did bring a cooler of food the size of Montana, it was just because I have learned what it takes to come prepared.
I should add that (other than Clare! My trusty vegan BFF / fellow Blonde Vegan) everyone in the house was living off of burgers, hotdogs and beer for the weekend. Not super conducive to the way I do things. So here are a few things I picked up to snack on over the weekend:
Kind bars (honey Nazis, come at me if you must… read this if you want to see what I have to say about eating honey!), Suja juices (obsession and a half. These saved my hung over booty three mornings in a row this weekend), Kombucha (this is becoming a daily thing for me), Larabars (the ultimate between-meal sustenance!), berries and apples (nothing beats totally fresh fruit) and dried apple rings (YUM).
I also brought a bag of gluten-free steel cut oats, which served as the BEST breakfast each morning. It was perfect because it filled me up, gave me lots of energy (to party and swim and play tennis and hang at the beach all day, duh), tasted delish and it was super easy to make. And, truth be told, almost every single person in the house said they were jealous of my oats throughout the weekend! I tried to share… and then my bowl face planted in the ground (true story) which was probs a sign that I needed to keep it all to myself. 😉
On top of the food I crammed into my lovely Trader Joe’s portable cooler bag, I also hopped in the car with the boys to head to the store the moment we arrived. I stocked up on lettuce, cherry tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, avocado, beets, green beans, limes, lemons, tofu, sweet potatoes and black beans. Perfect ingredients for yummy salads and simple dinners. Here was one dinner, from our Mexican food night:
And here were the salads I made for Clare and I just about every day. They consisted of mixed greens, tofu, cherry tomatoes, carrots, avocado, green beans, beets and fresh lime juice:
By Monday, I think everyone was wishing they were lunching on big green salads instead of leftover burgers, hotdogs and burritos. And I swear that maintaining a healthy diet made my hangovers more manageable than some of my non-veggie eating counterparts.
Plus, the adorable coffee shop in town had green smoothies, which was the hugest and best surprise of all time! I actually didn’t order one, since I already had my Suja in tow, but I was thrilled for my hung over friends to be able to drink yummy greens and was of course beyond happy to see green smoothies at a small town coffee shop. (Modeling the lovely LIMES below… to be paired with tequila shots…)
All in all, the weekend food-wise was a major success, and I definitely attribute that to A) being freakishly prepared and B) knowing that simple is best when it comes to meal prep on the go.
It’s amazing to see how much more sense the food I bring with me on vacation makes now than it did a year and a half ago. Steel cut oats, juices, fruit, bars and salad supplies make WAY more sense than trying to smuggle fresh veggies and Trader Joes veggie burgers across the border… ayi yi yi.
And, I have to admit, it was reeeal nice coming back to my original green smoothie yesterday morning. Hit. The. Spot.
