Pancakes in the Jungle

Another breakfast in the Ecaudorian jungle, but not pancakes

When I went to Ecuador last year, the tour company warned me that the jungle homestay may be challenging for a vegan. They make the food, and there are no restaurants for miles around, so I was a little worried. I brought extra food with me, as I always do, in case I was stuck in the middle of nowhere watching everyone else eat hot food while I finished my plate of fruit and stared forlornly at the kitchen.
Instead, the homestay family fed me like royalty. I even had pancakes. Vegan pancakes in a shack in rural Ecuador, can you believe it?? Sadly I did not get a picture of the most surprising pancakes I ever had--I was still in shock after our tour guide brought down another plate of pancakes and put them down in front of me saying, "No an-ee-mal." And I may also have eaten them too quickly to take a picture.
I still have a lot of travelling to do, and I hope I am never held back because of what I can or can't eat--and I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Breakfast is 'Snice

In my experience, the trickiest meal for a vegan is breakfast, while travelling or not. I have spent many a morning thankful I packed peanut butter to go along with my toast and orange juice and hope it would keep me full until lunch. While I whole-heartedly recommend packing a little jar of peanut butter for your travels (or another nut butter of your choice), I also make every effort to seek out vegan breakfasts wherever I am.
Both times I was in New York, I was fortunate enough to be staying within walking distance of 'Snice, a cafe that catered to the latte-and-laptop crowd that happened to have delicious vegan options for all three meals. I hear it has closed, but it made all the difference for my stays in NYC. There is something about starting your day with actual options in your breakfast menu, and setting off with warm food in your belly.
If there isn't such a lovely vegan-friendly cafe near wherever you are staying, it helps if you have use of a fridge. Find a market or grocery store and pick up a few small things that make your morning easier and your stomach happy, like bread with hummus and olives, and some fruit. It is not only cheaper than whatever you could get in a restaurant, it will make your entire day just a little bit more fulfilled. And if you do find a place with an amazing vegan breakfast, be sure to go at least once, even it costs a little bit more than your market finds, and profusely thank them for helping out a travelling vegan.

Airplanes and airports

As vegans, we know there are some times in our life and in our travels when it will be more difficult to find food that is vegan and also satisfying. For example: wedding are never good (please leave me a comment if you've been to a wedding and have been served something other than plain vegetables with or without rice).
It was on my vacation last year that I got the delicious airplane treats pictured here. I was never so happy to see plain chips and Oreo cookies! Some airplane treats can be vegan, but with labels often in a foreign language I admint I have spent more than few minutes staring at a list of ingredients trying to remember how to translate both "egg" and "milk".
I always bring snacks with me, but it can be disheartening to see everyone around you eating hot food (even if it is airplane food, it's still hot!). Flight attendants have sometimes taken pity on me and brought two breakfast trays so I could at least get two buns and two tiny bowls of fruit. There's nothing like being hungry  while dashing across a terminal to your flight or, worse, stuck a few thousand feet above ground. Sympathetic flight attendants, I salute you!

Questing in Munich: Happy Cow and panacotta

A sculpture, or me after a long day of questing?

This post is partially The Trew and Faithfull Storie of a Maiden on a Queste to Find Awesome Vegan Foode and partly an homage to Happy Cow, that website/app that helpeth the lonelie travelling vegan to findeth a vegan restaurant. (Yes, I do like the Olde-Tyme spelling too much. I'll try to stop.)
Since my first trip abroad as a vegan when I went to Italy, I've always looked up veg restos on Happy Cow. It's a very helpful resource because it has its own review system, so you can look up restaurant without even leaving the site and 2: it's in English, so I don't have to Google Translate a website to read a menu in garbled Babelfish-speak.
So on the one day I was exploring Munich by myself while my Mom was day-tripping outside the city, I decided to voyage forthe and finde a vegane restaurant. So I looked up the vegan restos on the Happy Cow app and decided I would go to the art gallery and then get a late lunch at Max Pett, only a 15-minute walk or so from my hotel.

Interior, Pinakotek der Moderne, Munich

Excellent plan! I walked to the art gallery, taking gorgeous photos on the way, and thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the gallery itself. When I was done, I plotted my course to the resto via a major thoroughfare and coincidentally passed a vegan clothing and accessories shop-which I would have if I bothered to look up stores on Happy Cow and not just food establishment, and which I would have gladly stopped in if it had been open. It turns out quite a few places close on Sunday in Munich!

 Vegan panacotta: worth questing for

Eventually I got to the university street that Max Pett was located on, despite my lingering frustration with overly long German street names (which pale in comparison to overly long and really similar Dutch street names) and then I couldn't the restaurant.
Okay, I thought, sometimes universities are quirky and roundabout and they hide entrances in the back of a building, or through a quad, or in the basement of a building that you have to walk through a music hall to find. So I looked--peering through fences, looking for signs, even walking into the foyer of what I think was a dorm, unharassed by dorm security probably because I was carrying a tourism guide and it would be too much trouble to ask me what I wanted if I don't speak German. I looked and looked and just when I thought I would faint from hunger pangs--since we know vegan breakfasts are often too light to sustain a traveller's miles of walking--I looked some more, adn realized I had to give up. I backtracked on this cute university street and as I approached the street I entered on, I saw the restaurant. It was cute and charming and not a quirky university resto at all. Problem was, it wasn't on the bock the map said it was. I would have found it if I had even glanced before turning right to follow the map. Ah, the challenges of exploring on your own! If I had been with my mother, she would undoubtedly turned left instead of right despite my clear navigation and I wouldn't have wandered loste and hungrie amongst the universitie's faire bildings.
But it was worth the quest: Max Pett serves up delicious vegan fare. The restaurant is a little hipster-precious, but when you serve the only vegan panacotta I've ever seen on a menu and it happens to be amazing, you can get away with a little 'tude. Even after a very long queste.

World-changing avocado

My first trip to New York was awesome. Firstly, it's like vegan mecca. I hear a lot of places are like this;
Portland, for example, is supposed to be filled with delicious vegan food. And I suspect my hoemtown, Toronto, would impress many a vegan who came to visit, with our many delicious vegan restos. But way back in 2010, I was delighted to find a city with so many delicious vegan and vegetarian places to eat, including the breakfast joint of my dreams, 'Snice.
This delicious breakfast was in the restaurant in the main floor of the hotel I stayed at. The hotel is The Jane, and the restaurant is called Cafe Gitane. It is vaguely retro-Moroccan-themed, and I read a review recently that called it overpriced. But I was really impressed--it had all the breakfast staples an mnivore expected, so my friend could enjoy herself as well, and I had a solid 4 or 5 breakfast options, way up from usual choice of, um, dry toast.
The dish that really blew me away was the, um, toast. Avocado on toast, actually, which I was so impressed with that I actually took a photo. It was beautifully presented, of course--much better than the green smudge I normally make myself--and served on whole-grain bread with fresh lime juice, a drizzle of olive oil and chili pepper flakes.
I now make this dish ALL THE TIME. If I can find ripe avocados I snatch them up and and devour them, guilt-free, for as many meals as I can before losing my ripe avocados to the Brown Spots of Doom. I recommend you do, before the Brown Spots set in and wreck your delicious travel-nostalgia breakfast.