Vegan Road Trip Essentials

Hello everyone! Today's prompt is "What would you bring on a vegan road trip?" My motto for road trips (and life, lol!) is "A vegan is always prepared!" Depending on the length of the road trip, I usually have at least one reusable grocery bag full of snacks and easy-to-prepare foods. Zach likes to tease me about how much food I bring along, but even though we stop along the way to eat and I can almost always find something veganizable, I still like to munch on snacks during the drive. So, if I pack them, then that's less stopping and more road tripping awesomeness!

I like to have these veggie chips on road trips.

Granola bars are always a good idea.

And some nuts & raisins are key.

Apples are nice to have, too. I pack cereal, orange juice, and soy milk for breakfasts, and bring along soup cups as just-in-case lunches.

Finally, I make sure to take my trusty water bottle, plus I always have mints, hand sanitizer spray, chap stick, extra napkins/tissues, and a plastic fork in my bag. 

And while this isn't a Veganlist post, I think it definitely contains some good suggestions for snacks that Red and Liz might enjoy while they are on the run...

P.S. Be sure to check out the giveaway for Vegan Bowls!

Here are Daisy, Cringer, Buttons, and Leela...

Peace. :)

Oatmeal

Hello on the 13th day of the Vegan Month of Food! Today is the final day of my dollar store vegan week, so this morning, I used three items from the dollar store – oats, soy milk, and raisins – to make my super simple breakfast.

Quick to prepare; just combine 1/2 cup oats with 1 cup soy milk, heat in microwave, and add a handful of raisins and any other toppings you'd enjoy (my additional toppings were cinnamon and chia seeds).

A warm, filling breakfast; can't complain.

Overall, I didn't notice much difference in taste with this soy milk, but comparing it nutritionally to the soy milk I normally get, this one isn't as great. While it does have the same amount of calcium, more vitamin A, less fat, and less sodium, it also has less vitamin D, less protein, less potassium, less iron, less riboflavin, and no B12. So, I think I'll stick with my usual soy milk.

During the day, I had a variety of snacks: A banana, some trail mix, hummus with pita, and chips. And then dinner was a quick quesadilla with tortilla chips and salsa.

Bonus pic of the cute squash from my mom:

Tomorrow begins my health food store vegan theme, so stick around to see what fun foods I discover in the third week of Vegan MoFo!

This morning, Leela enjoyed snuggling into the shallow box I set out for the kitties to try.

"Thank you, human; this will do just fine..."

"...much better than that silly bed you bought me."

And Buttons was very leery of the bird puppet Zach brought home later today...

*sniff sniff* “What's this?”

“Oh **** no!” *backpeddles*

Peace. :)

Snack Time!

Hello on the 12th day of the Vegan Month of Food! Tonight's post showcases just three of the many vegan snacks you can find at the dollar store: Soft pretzels, trail mix, and wheat crackers.

I gave the soft pretzels a try last night.

I'm used to the Super Pretzels kind, so I noticed that compared to them, the dollar store soft pretzels are a bit thinner, as well as being more of an oval shape than they appear on the box, haha. I had my soft pretzel with a bit of mustard to dip it in, and I enjoyed it.

Apparently Buttons was interested as well...

Maybe I'm just not that picky, but I don't really find much of a difference between these and the Super Pretzels (other than their outward appearance), so I'll probably start going with these instead and save a bit (of course, that will be after I try out these two pretzel recipes from fellow Vegan MoFo bloggers at KZ Cakes and AfroVeganChick).

The next dollar store snack is the fruit & nut trail mix.

It's pretty good, a nice combo of salty & sweet, but nothing overly exciting.

The last of my dollar store snack items, the wheat crackers, are ones I've had before (my mom was the first to find them), so I already knew of their awesome tastiness.

You can snack on them plain, have them with soup & dunk them, or even try out various toppings if that's your thing (like adding little pieces of vegan cheese on top, perhaps?).

Lunch today was a repeat of yesterday's, burrito with leftover brown rice & black beans, with tortilla chips and salsa.

Dinner was chicken (TVP) noodle soup (featuring the dollar store items of pasta, salt free seasoning, and wheat crackers on the side).

Here's a silly sleepy Leela, who thinks cat beds are great in theory, but that nothing really beats the floor when it comes to napping surfaces.

Peace. :)