day #6: traveling and eating out

Today i experienced some of the difficulties of being a vegan: not having your own kitchen all of the time. Haha. For the last 5 days, I've had my kitchen available all the time, and have had a whole refrigerator of ingredients to sift through and combine to make mine or one of alicia's vegan recipes, but today took some planning.

- breakfast: I had a work meeting from 9am-2pm, so i bought steel-cut jamba juice oatmeal for breakfast. super healthy and extremely filling as long as you avoid the brown sugar ;) bananas are the best.

- lunch: my work meeting served lunch, but, of course, it was white bread with a deli-meat-tray, cheese and potato chips. Not to mention candy bars for desert. Sure, the bread and chips and starbursts were "no animal products", but were going for the Superhero Vegan here!! Not processed sugar and simple carbs. It's easy to give-in when its free and infront of you, but it's much more rewarding if you can hold off and make the right choices. I did my own lunch afterwards, and although it wasn't anything special, a mixture of veggies, nuts and water felt so much more satisfying.

- dinner: spent from 2-7pm on the roading driving north, and as soon as i arrived, i knew i would be dining out with my grandad. I read up on the section about eating out in "the kind diet" and i felt good about tackling a restaurant menu. We ate at a beautiful restaurant on the ocean in Carmel, CA, but it certainly wasn't vegan friendly. Almost every menu item had meat, and those that didn't had cheese. It took some working around, but I finally ordered a house salad with extras veggies on top & no cheese ;) Then i ordered a spinach and potato dish. Alicia's great advice is that you can always mix/match appetizers and sides to create a substantial and vegan-friendly dish! Be proud to be vegan and don't be embarrassed about having to change around the menu and asking for special items. It's either that or cheese-mashed potatoes on top of steak with a side of butter :) So go for the healthy body and order what you want...it's worth it!

Well, nothing food-wise was worthing taking a picture of today...the oatmeal was probably my favorite though ;) Also, while I'm working on my health-habits, I've been trying to improve other aspects of my life as well--patience, for one. We had an hour wait at the restaurant, and sat patiently the entire time. It paid off because they took us early & gave us the best seat in the house!! So here's the view from the restaurant in Carmel: Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch.