photos courtesy of flickr
When travelling, I seem to have an enormous appetite that isn't satiated by a tiny $6 side salad. My typical lunch is 2 pounds of greens with fresh raw dressing, and dinner includes two perfectly ripe avocados with an assortment of veggies or non-sweet fruit. I recently visited Chicago, and was lucky enough to have access to fairly good produce stores and a (non-raw) kitchen at my family's house. However, the selection of organic produce was very limited, stores did not predictably carry organic spring mix or organic lettuce, and at times I was shopping at stores with a very poor selection of produce in downtown Chicago. In addition, the avocados I bought were disgusting. How did I make do?
I called several stores before visiting them, to ask if they carried organic spring mix. That way I only had to visit one store, instead of wasting gasoline and time.
Breakfast was bananas and fruit, blended. That was easy enough. Lunch and dinner were the challenge. Since I didn't have equipment or ingredients to make raw dressings, I opted for Annie's organic salad dressings. Occasionally I put a little bit of cooked food on the salad as a 'dressing', at times when i couldn't stand the lack of variety. Too much cooked food makes my stomach ill, so I had to carefully limit the amount I ate each day.
In airports, selection is even more limited, but I got creative! I brought a raw fruit/nut mix with me. I bought bananas. At the mexican stand in the airport, i ordered a large side of guacamole. I then found a salad at another vender, and popped the guac right onto the salad!
I finished the meal off with a raspberry freeze - basically raspberries, honey, and ice. But be careful when you ask for a smoothie - I ask the man what was in it, he said raspberries and ice. But then he proceeded to load it with honey till it was saccharine sweet, and then scooped COOKED raspberry jam into the blender!!! Ask smoothie sellers to physically show you the product prior to ordering your smoothie. I learned my lesson the hard way, as I drank 22 ounces of pure sugar that my body didn't need. Hah!
The biggest challenge was eating fairly low glycemic while travelling. It's easy to eat fruit, but I was limiting my fruit intake to <5 pieces per day, as that's how my body feels best. So I pretty much ate an unvarying diet of salad, salad, and salad with the occasional fruit. Which isn't much different from how i eat at home, EXCEPT that I normally eat avocados and raw chocolate to actually feel full!!! So I was struck by gnawing hunger on the trip, which led me to eat a little bit of cooked food (which was fine, i'm not strictly raw) but i certainly paid for it later, as I was more tired and had poor digestion from the cooked food.
Be prepared for the difficulty of finding vegan food in restaurants - ignorantly, i visited a traditional breakfast place, and asked them to make lots of changes to the one item that could conceivably be eaten vegan - a vegetable panini sandwich. It was tasty, but certainly a pain to explain everything to the waitress. In Illinois, call ahead to check if the restaurant serves vegan food - many restaurants don't even know what 'vegan' means!!! Or cannot accomodate.
While you're in a new city, take advantage of any produce you can't get at home. Lychees were a favorite fruit I sampled in Chicago. They're not available in small towns.
I hope this helps you plan your next trip!!
