I’ve gone through periods of my life where I haven’t had the best or most reliable access to a kitchen. Sometimes — like when I was climbing Mount Chirripo in Costa Rica — I had no kitchen at all. Other times I may be staying with a friend for a few weeks and don’t have access to my full array of kitchen supplies.

Likewise, I’m always thinking about how to do vegan on the cheap, and it’s especially helpful when I’m traveling.

So I’ve had to adapt and come up with a few easy, go-to meals that I can rely on. Meals that are easy to shop for, easy to prep, and are tasty and healthy!

Here are three that I rely on regularly:

Bean Burritos

This is the best one for traveling. I brought this meal on my hike up the mountain because it packed a lot of calories in a small package, required no cooking, and was delicious and nutritious!

Here’s what you need:

Whole Wheat Tortillas

Can of Refried Beans (I like black beans)

Hot Sauce

Potatoes (optional)

I roast up the potatoes in little cubes and find that their addition adds some nice texture to the burrito, but if you are traveling or don’t have access to an oven obviously you can leave those out. Otherwise just combine some of the refried beans in a tortilla with some hot sauce and it’s a satisfying meal on the go!

Whole Wheat Pasta with Kale

This one requires some cooking. Essentially it just requires boiling water.

What you need:

Whole Wheat Pasta

Marinara

Nutritional Yeast

Kale

Just chop up the kale, cook the pasta, add the kale at the last minute, strain, and combine with the marinara and nutritional yeast. I make this meal a lot actually, even when I do have my full kitchen. It’s just so darn easy, is tasty, and takes almost zero thought to prepare. It’s a nice option to have in my pantry on nights when I don’t feel like cooking.

Chickpeas and Rice with Carrots and Kale

This is another go-to meal even when I am home, and it’s so cheap and easy to make ahead of time in big batches that it’s great when you are crashing on a friend’s couch or traveling the world.

What you need:

Brown Rice

Cans of Chickpeas

Carrots

Kale

Nutritional Yeast

Soy Sauce (optional)

Just cook the rice first. Make a big batch and you can keep leftovers in the fridge for easy meals. Chop carrots and kale, cook, add chickpeas, combine with rice, add nutritional yeast, and, if you want, low-sodium soy sauce. The nutritional yeast-soy sauce combo gives it a cheesy taste. It’s uber healthy, ridiculously cheap, and pretty easy. The longest step is cooking the rice so just cook a big batch ahead of time!

So there you have it — three super easy, delicious, healthy vegan meals you can have in your arsenal for traveling or couch surfing. What are your go-to easy vegan meals?

Bonus: When I hiked Chirripo I also brought a jar of peanut butter and some jelly and used the tortillas to make quick PB&J while on the mountain! It gave me variety that was sorely needed!

What I brought on my hike up Chirripo in Costa Rica!

This last weekend, me and a few friends piled into a car and took a road trip to Chicago. The trip itself was tons of fun, but I wanted to write specifically about what it’s like to be on the road as a vegan.

I think there is a common misconception that vegans are all only friends with other vegans, only do vegan activities and only eat at organic-crunchy-raw-vegan-kale-filled restaurants.

And while I enjoy my trips to those types of restaurants, the reality is the vast majority of my friends are not vegan, nor even vegetarian. A few have joined me on this journey, and that is wonderful! But most, while definitely eating more plant-based than before, are still very typical eaters by and large.

That’s ok with me.

So the stereotype that if you go vegan you have to change up your entire lifestyle and find all new friends is simply not true. In fact, apart from a very select few occasions, it has not impacted my day to day life at all.

It’s 2015, and finding a vegan option on a menu has never been easier.

There is, however, a seemingly barren final frontier — the open road.

Passing Wendy’s and Culver’s and McDonald’s and A&W’s and rest stop after rest stop full of junk food, it can be tough on the road to eat healthy.

Tough, but not impossible.

So here’s how I did. I started the trip with a bunch of bananas and a 3 lb bag of clementines. I didn’t bring any other snacks as I knew we’d be stopping.

I should have brought more fruit, because I immediately lost 3 of my 6 bananas to my friends, and nearly half the clementines.

Being a health coach, though, I didn’t mind. I was pretty happy actually to have provided some quality nutrition to my friends. I knew it would get worse as the day went on, after all.

We stopped at rest stops and most the snacks are not only not vegan but utter junk. I did grab some peanuts at one stop and some baked Lays chips at another — not exactly healthy, but vegan and some energy. Gas stations are tough…

The big stop was lunch — hard to find good vegan food on the road. I opened up my Happy Cow app, but it only found vegan-friendly restaurants several miles off the highway in Madison, WI. Too far a detour, we were on a schedule. And it’d be a tough sell for my meat-eating friends anyway.

We debated and I googled and we drove.

Then, we passed a sign for Taco John’s.

“Can you eat anything at Taco John’s, Devin?” said my friend Nick.

And after a 2 second google search I said, “yup. Super easy.”

Gotta love the internet and smartphones. Makes being vegan so much easier, because lo and behold, someone else had posed this question in a forum and the answer was right there.

I got myself 2 bean burritos, no cheese. Were they outstanding? Nah, not really. But tasty nonetheless, and 100% vegan!

Making it work.

Taco John’s isn’t the only place we could have gone. I suggested Chipotle, but those are often not right off the highway. Subway is super easy to get a veggie delite sub with just vegetables on toasted bread with a good vegan dressing. Or they now have a veggie patty that is vegan!

Taco Bell just made their menu super easy to make vegan. Just say “make it fresco” and it instantly means it’s vegan! Pretty outstanding and progressive for the chain my friends and I grew up believing that they served meat just above dog food standards.

And if you’re desperate and with friends who insist on a place like Wendy’s, you can get a baked potato with no cheese or sour cream!

After spending two full days in the car with my meat-eating friends, road tripping and having a great time, I can safely say that my dietary choices did not affect my enjoyment in the slightest. They weren’t even the smallest hindrance. It’s SO easy to be vegan, why aren’t you yet?!

For the past 3+ years I have been working out at home with resistance bands. I spent a good while trying to find a workout system that worked for me.

In my early and mid-twenties I joined and stopped going to countless gyms.

It always worked the same way. I’d get inspired to get in better shape, find a good local gym, and sign-up with enthusiasm.

For the first couple weeks I’d go religiously, and start to feel better, seeing progress in my workouts.

Then, something would happen.

The process got stale and time consuming. I hated the fact that if I did an hour workout in the gym, it really took like 2 hours — an hour to workout, 30 minutes getting to and from, 15 minutes to shower, 15 minutes to get ready and cool down.

Can you guess what the single most cited reason is for not exercising?

Lack of time.

So this just always felt unsustainable to me.

That’s when I finally found Bodylastics and LiveExercise. Both changed my life. I finally found a workout system that worked for me! I could do a new workout broadcast live every day and do it all in my bedroom in like 45 minutes — no commute necessary.

Protein

But another story has gone hand in hand with this experience: what to have post-workout.

After a good strength workout, your muscles need protein to recover. Let me be quick to point out that they don’t need 50 grams administered intravenously within seconds of dropping the last weight.

The amount needed is likely way overblown, mostly by people selling protein supplements (think about who wrote and/or paid for the next protein article you read).

But the fact remains that you do need some nutrition after a workout to help your muscles recover well and grow — the whole point of the workout in the first place!

Vegan Protein Powders

If you are interested, they do make vegan/plant-based protein powders, and they are something I used for quite awhile.

Periodically I’d read an article about one that was recommended and I’d go with that for awhile (remember who pays for protein articles!).

It was soy at first, hemp for awhile, then pea protein, they a blend of several that was not cheap.

But the whole time it felt a little disingenuous. Here I was trying to follow (and promote) a whole foods plant-based diet and yet after every workout I was downing isolated protein powders — definitely not a whole food.

Isolated macronutrients are never good for you

Think about it — isolated carbohydrates are pure white sugar, isolated fats are butter, margarine, and oil, and both are not health foods. Can they be used in some recipes, sure, but they are not whole foods and they are not healthy.

Why are we so forgiving to isolated protein? Anytime you strip a nutrient from the whole food you lose nearly all of what made it worth eating.

A solution

A year and a half ago I finally swore off protein powders for good. It wasn’t worth the nearly $50 per tub I was paying for a food that I didn’t need and was arguably not good for me.

And it’s been a year and a half of tweaking, but I finally have found my entirely whole foods, vegan, plant-based protein smoothie of choice.

Banana-Pea-Protein Smoothie

Two Bananas

1 Cup Frozen Peas

1 Cup Frozen Spinach

1-2 TBSP Ground Flax Seed

Pinch of Amla

Water to cover

Nutrition Facts: 400 calories, 14 grams of protein, 88 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams fat, 19 grams fiber

That’s it, just blend and enjoy! An entirely whole-foods protein smoothie! No need for expensive protein powders! No need to pay someone to isolate the protein from the green peas when you can just eat them whole, where you’ll get the fiber and antioxidants you’d otherwise miss!

If you’re interested in learning more about building muscle on a vegan and plant-based diet I can’t recommend any higher the work of Robert Cheeke and his community at http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/

Also the guy who runs Bodylastics and LiveExercise happens to be vegan as well

Not true.

Here’s a quick little video of everything I made, and everything I ate, on Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vegan Pumpkin Pie: http://plantpoweredkitchen.com/pumpkin-pie-vegan-soy-free-gluten-free/
Maple-Miso Brussels Sprouts: http://kitchentonirvana.com/2014/01/16/roasted-brussel-sprouts-in-a-maple-miso-glaze/

I always grew up loving Thanksgiving. I think I was a foodie before that was ever a “thing.”

So for me it was an easy choice to have Thanksgiving as a favorite holiday.

I think I liked the simplicity of it. You knew what it was about. A meal and people you love. Simple.

And even as I went vegetarian, my love for this holiday persisted. I didn’t have the turkey anymore, that’s ok! Minor change really.

There were still plenty of other dishes on the table for me to get excited about. In fact since turkey is generally the only meat at the meal, I was left with everything else! No complaints here (I never was crazy about the turkey anyway).

Vegan Thanksgiving

Loving Thanksgiving as a vegetarian is one thing, but it seems crazy to have my love endure even as I went vegan. Without any planning the available options shrink considerably as a vegan. You’re basically left with rolls and cranberry sauce…

But that’s why you plan! If you’re vegan, never show up to someone else’s event without a main, a side, and a dessert that is vegan friendly!

At the end of the day, Thanksgiving is about a celebration of food friends and family. And every single vegan I’ve met loves food just as much as anyone else, if not more! So the spirit of Thanksgiving has never changed for me.

In fact, being vegan and plant-based forces you to think outside the box and be more creative, bringing dishes most would never have at their gathering. I love that! I love the celebration of the bounty of seasonal plant foods, like squashes and apples and pumpkins and cranberries. It’s wonderful.

My Vegan Thanksgiving Menu

Appetizer: Maple-Miso Brussels Sprouts (I omit the oil)

Main: Winter Vegetable Hominy Hash En Croute (From Thug Kitchen. Warning: Language)

Sides: Mashed Potatoes & Cranberry Sauce

Dessert: Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you enjoy the holiday with your loved ones. Celebrate all the bounty that nature has to offer by enjoying delicious satisfying vegan fare. Get out of your comfort zone and make one or all of these dishes! Going plant-based for Thanksgiving has never been easier

COWSPIRACY: http://www.cowspiracy.com/
EARTHLINGS: http://www.nationearth.com/
FORKS OVER KNIVES: http://www.forksoverknives.com/

Note: This video contains some footage from each of these documentaries. I do not own this footage, but use it to urge others to see these life-changing documentaries! Please watch them! Cowspiracy and Forks Over Knives are NOW STREAMING on NETFLIX! Earthlings can be purchased through their website linked above!

Following up on last week’s post Vegan How To: Eating Out, let’s take a look at how to read labels and what to look for.

For me there are a few things I look for quickly: certified vegan and the list of allergens.

Thankfully many products now will say “vegan” somewhere on the packaging, and some even advertise it on the front, using some type of logo. There is no one standard, however the “certified vegan” black logo is quite common, as is the picture of the rabbit. Below are many different examples, and each product may vary, but you can rest assured if any of them grace your food’s package.

That’s the easiest way to tell and requires very little thought.

Then, it gets harder.

Next thing I look for if I don’t see vegan somewhere on the package is the list of allergens. Thankfully for us vegans, dairy and eggs are somewhat common allergens, and products are now required to label if they contain these items. Here is an example:

This information is always in bold and all caps at the end of the ingredients list. This makes scanning labels relatively easy if you are trying to avoid milk and eggs. You will often see “soy” and “wheat” listed as well, useful if you have allergies to those items.

It gets a little more confusing when the label says “May contain milk” or “produced in a facility that processes milk” or “may contain traces of dairy.”

In these situations here is what I do. If it is made in a facility that processes milk or it says “may contain traces of milk” I don’t sweat it. This information is on the label to protect the manufacturer in the small chance that someone with a severe dairy allergy comes into contact with their product. It essentially means that they cannot 100% guarantee that their product does not contain even a trace of milk. It does not mean it was made with milk or that there was any intention for milk to be in the product. If we are talking about a couple molecules, I’m alright.

The trickier situation is when it says “may contain milk.” That is a bit more ambiguous and to me signals that there, for whatever reason, may be significant quantities of milk in the product. I’ve only seen this come up in the context of chocolate, and in those situations I did not purchase the product. I simply moved down the aisle and found a chocolate that was certified vegan. Makes my life simpler.

Beyond these concerns, there are literally hundreds of ingredients that are animal derived that you could potentially need to scour your label for. A few obvious ones I avoid are gelatin (made from skin, tendons, ligaments, etc), glycerin (made from animal fat when it doesn’t say “vegetable” glycerin), casein, and whey (both milk proteins).

A complete list can be found in your Happy Cow app, which after last week’s post you all should have

Here is Happy Cow’s list: http://www.happycow.net/health-animal-ingredients.html

(SIDE NOTE: Happy Cow totally saved me this week! I went hiking with friends and in the middle of nowhere Virginia was able to find a restaurant with abundant vegan options including an excellent vegan chili!)

But here’s the real deal. Instead of memorizing the hundreds of ingredients derived from animal products, if you are following a whole-foods plant-based diet, you shouldn’t be buying too many things with labels anyway.

The bulk of your diet should be whole fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds. If any of those products do have labels, they should be one ingredient long.

Beyond that, for the few more processed items in your pantry and fridge, and the times when you crave an indulgence, stick to products that are either certified vegan or do not list eggs or dairy on their allergen list and you should be alright.

Check for cheese in your pasta sauce, whey on your chips, eggs or milk in your breads, and generally stick to as minimally processed foods as you possibly can. And, don’t sweat it if you accidentally ate something that had an ingredient that was derived from an animal. Unfortunately I’ve found an animal-based ingredient in dried mango before. They slip em into everything, and chances are good you’ll slip up from time to time.

The real motto is progress not perfection. Don’t expect perfection. And if you do, only buy whole foods! They can’t fool you

For more on this subject, check out this video by Jeff Novick: https://youtu.be/X6ogG1wEcXo

Are you a glass half full kinda person or do you see it as half empty? If you are like me, you see it half full.

That is the approach I take to eating out as a vegan. There are certainly times when it is more difficult than others, but my experience in 90% of cases is very positive and easy.

That is, if you live in a big city.

But we’ll get to that. My glass half full experience eating out goes like this: when you are vegan, the menu shrinks considerably.

For many people it can be frustrating to have so few options, and I will admit when I go to a vegan restaurant where the full menu is available to me, I am almost overwhelmed and also overjoyed to have so many choices.

But there’s a catch — sometimes choice isn’t a good thing.

The Paradox of Choice

Have you ever heard of the paradox of choice? There is an excellent TED talk on the subject by psychologist Barry Schwartz (watch).

In it he discusses how more is not always better when it comes to choice. I won’t spoil his talk for you, but one example he uses is salad dressings in the grocery store.

If you go to a full supermarket in the United States and stand in front of the salad dressings you may be alarmed to find tens if not hundreds of choices. Twenty different brands offering ten different dressings each — how do you possibly choose?

Some may say, “this is amazing! God bless America for giving us 200 salad dressings to choose from!”

But the research paints a very different picture. The research suggests that you will be far less happy with your choice than if you only had just a handful of dressings to choose from.

With 200 options, you have a 1 in 200 chance of selecting the “optimal” dressing. When you get home and try it out, you will likely be thinking about the other 199 you passed up and wondering if you made the right selection. This likely won’t be a conscious thought, but it will influence how satisfied you are with your decision.

If you only had a handful of choices however, you will feel more confident that you selected the right dressing, and you will feel happier about it. So say the respondents of surveys.

Enter Vegan Eating

Is it just me or have menus in America ballooned from one or two columns to six or seven pages of two to three columns each? There are simply too many items to choose from!

If you are an omnivore and you are reading this, when was the last time you sat down at a restaurant, looked over the menu, selected something to order and immediately closed the menu without second guessing it? I’d wager it doesn’t happen too often.

The reality is you are likely to select something, then have a friend tell you what they are thinking about ordering, then you reconsider yours, then you ask yourself the impossible question of “what do I really want right now,” then you have to scan the menu with your nebulous answer to this question loosely held in your mind, only to find now you have three or four items you are choosing between, and then the waiter comes and your friends are ready and you say “oh just start and by the time they get to me I’ll have decided,” thinking that the pressure of a time deadline will force a moment of clarity, only to discover you are no closer to making a decision than you were a moment ago, because your foolproof strategy only really bought you about 10 seconds, so now, feeling the pressure from your friends, the waiter, and every other patron in the establishment you blurt out almost at random one of the three dishes you have narrowed down from the 97 choices, hoping and praying, dear god, did I make the right choice…then you sit there in the agonizing twenty minutes before your food comes, convincing yourself that you are absolutely sure that you chose wrong and were really craving the soup and salad and by the time your food comes you are disappointed because you know it isn’t what you wanted and you sit with the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you could have been that much happier had you ordered something different, and now you pin your hopes on dessert where the menu is much shorter, only 12 options, and the cycle repeats itself until you go insane and swear off all future dining out excursions and decide to make your own meals from scratch from now on and so you head to the grocery store ready to make that darn salad you were craving only to find there are 200 salad dressings waiting on a shelf for you that you have to choose from.

Ever been there before?

Well for better or worse, it’s not like this as a vegan.

Our menu gets instantly shrunk the second we sit down to look at it. Depending on the restaurant and style of food, it may get shortened to literally one item, or zero if you forgot to read the menu before arriving at the restaurant (#ProTip). Most of the time, in a city, at a restaurant that isn’t a steakhouse, you are likely left with somewhere between three and ten options. There’s always a salad, that’s your fall back. Oddly, you almost always have to say “no cheese, no meat please.”

But at Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, etc, there are usually several options that are vegan or can be easily made vegan. Indian cooking can definitely have ghee (clarified butter) or cheese or yogurt, so always ask the waiter how your food is prepared (#ProTip).

Some restaurants will “finish” their dishes with butter, which just means they douse it with melted butter right before serving you. — gross!

Always ask.

Mexican is also relatively easy, as you can usually order rice and beans a la carte, with some salsa, guacamole, tortillas, etc. Again, always ask, as some refried beans have lard in them, and occasionally tortillas do as well.

Nearly every Mexican place will have veggie fajitas as well, which you can get without sour cream and cheese. Remember, the vegetables may be cooked in butter, so ASK!

Pizza places are almost always more than happy to make you a cheese-less pie, as they are used to people with dairy allergies. So ask!

Sushi is great, just get veggie rolls Some miso soup is made with a seafood broth, though I think it’s rare, but ask anyway. Also some Asian-style sauces use fish sauce, ask.

Another #ProTip: download the Happy Cow app. It is incredible, especially when traveling, as it will tell you all the vegan friendly restaurants in the area!

When eating out is hard

I recently took a weekend trip to Cape Cod, MA, a place known for their seafood. I struggled.

Eating out in cities as a vegan is incredibly easy. In rural parts of America it’s near impossible at times. I ended up ordering a loaf of bread at breakfast, a cheese-less pizza for lunch (delicious!), and a side order of grilled potatoes and grilled mixed vegetables for dinner.

I swore to my friends “it’s not usually this hard.” But it happens, and you have to take your lumps. If you believe in what you are doing, it isn’t so hard. And the more restaurants encounter vegans who are willing to assert their needs, the more it will get easier. In fact the day after I got back I read a headline about dozens of Cape restaurants that were trying out new vegan entrees in October — ah just missed it!!

Eating out as a vegan in 2015 is easier than it ever has been, and all signs point to this trend continuing. For now, enjoy the small menu that affords you the luxury of not being paralyzed by too many choices! Read the menu ahead of time, always ask how your food is being prepared, and don’t be afraid to order off menu if need be. It will only get easier next year

For more on foods you don’t have to give up as a vegan, check out my video!: 5 Foods You Don’t Have To Give Up As A Vegan!

And stay tuned next week for the second part of the Vegan How To series, where we will discuss what to look for on labels.

It is often said that giving up the use of animal products for food and otherwise has three major benefits — for the animals, for the environment, and for your health.

To many, however, this may feel a bit abstract.

We can theorize a benefit for the animals, that is relatively obvious, but we still may not feel it’s necessity. We may be able to grasp some benefit for the environment, though we are already getting more abstract. And the health detriments of animal-based foods is nearly completely obscured from the mainstream dialogue (SEE: Paleo Diet Fad).

Therefore, allow me to issue a challenge, a challenge that will not only make these issues much clearer for you, but may just inspire you to ditch the animal products entirely as well and go vegan!!

I am calling this challenge “The Vegan Maker.”

All I need is 4 hours and 41 minutes of your time and in that time I believe I can turn you into a vegan. Don’t believe me? Perfect! You are an ideal candidate for this challenge!

In this allotted time all I am going to ask you to do is watch movies. Three movies in particular. Sounds like a pretty simple challenge doesn’t it? A few other quick rules and then I will reveal the movies and the order in which to watch them.

Rules:

1. Everything is more fun with a friend, so enlist a buddy

2. Eat your meal beforehand, not during..

That’s it! Just two rules.

Final note: If you are brave you can choose to watch these documentaries back to back to back. Or alternatively, watch one per night for three nights. It’s up to you.

Ok drumroll please. Here are the three movies I want you to watch, in order:

The Vegan Maker:

1. Earthlings (1:35) (Free on YouTube, or for HD visit their website)

2. Cowspiracy (1:30) (Starting TODAY this amazing documentary is streaming on Netflix!)

3. Forks Over Knives (1:36) (Streaming FREE on Netflix!)

If you have YouTube and Netflix this is a totally free date night!

So, are you up to it?!

Let me know in the comments, and be sure to report back once you have finished! Regardless of the outcome I assure you, you will never look at food the same.