What Vegans Eat – Day 989, Travel Edition

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Breakfast: I was so stuffed from my two giant bowls of soup last night I had no interest in eating. I made a thermos of Teeccino and Soy Milk to bring to Gary. We were having a morning meeting in San Jose with the production staff for the musical we are directing. Gary had bought a bag of Teeccino a week ago, after being without it a couple of weeks and he left it with me in Walnut Creek. Poor thing! I made myself some Oolong Tea and brought some mixed Raw Nuts and a Banana to eat on the ride down that took about 100 minutes in rush hour traffic.
 
Lunch:
After the meeting I met my friend Ann for lunch. We went to a vegan place called The Happy Hooligan, vegan comfort food. I had never been there and love trying new vegan places. The menu is comfort food, vegan-style with lots of burger and fries options. I probably would have enjoyed one of the salads a lot more but I wanted to try a burger. I really wanted a burger with mushrooms and sautéed onions but none of them had mushrooms. Their burgers are soy-based. I chose the Chili Burger because it came with a homemade vegan cheese sauce rather than the vegan cheese slices. When asked, they told me they used Follow Your Heart cheese. I like this company a lot, but I don’t like their cheese slices. I thought the Chili would have beans in it, but I was wrong. Gary explained to me later that some Chili is just meat and sauce without beans and this was likely a vegan version of that. I ordered it with Pesto Fries. I am sure many folks who are used to conventional fast food would love this. For me it was way too salty. I used to love the soy-based burgers, like Boca Burgers, but my palate has really changed and most overly processed foods don’t appeal to me any more.
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Ann got the Dream Burger.
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What we really wanted were a few Onion Rings. I noticed there were onion rings offered on a few of the burgers but they were not listed available to be purchased as a side. It’s a rare treat to find a place that serves vegan onion rings. We chatted a bit with the servers, Rachel and Shannon who were both very nice. We learned that they don’t make a lot of onion rings, just enough to garnish a few of the burgers. We couldn’t get a basket of them but we got a plate of two. That was perfect, one for each of us. A basket of them would have been too much, too oily and greasy. But one – a great treat. It was perfect.
26oct2017-onion-rings
 
Dinner: Afterwards I drove over to Gary’s sister’s house and we took a walk around the Rose Garden. I needed it after my heavy meal. Afterwards I went to the home of some people in our upcoming cast of The Music Man to give one of them a voice lesson. It was in San Jose, near where Gary is staying. After the lesson I went back to see Gary. He had made a beautiful dinner of his famous Baked No-Egg French Omelette Soufflé with Kale and Onions (as seen published in Living the Farm Sanctuary Life) and Baked Fries. These fries were so much better than the ones I had for lunch, baked, not fried and no salt. Just the flavor of quality, organic potatoes.
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Evening: After dinner, I drove to Walnut Creek to Gary’s niece’s house where I am cat-sitting. I made myself a cup of Cocoa Spice Tea.
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