Staying Veggie on Vacay

Faced with my first real challenge of sticking to veggies on vacation this week.  The good thing - California is extremely veggie friendly because they have a lot of celebrity activists.  I have never been more grateful for celebrity activists.  I did realize that most veggie peeps around here are lacto-ovo vegetarians (i.e. they don't eat meat, but they do eat dairy and eggs).  So I have had to compromise a little bit.  We are staying in a condo so I have utter control over my eating about 66% of the day.  I brought the vitamix and there is a ghetto grocery store nearby (seriously - quite ghetto) that has a sprinkling of organic greens.  That's pretty much all I need because they have big bottles of naked juice so that has been the basis of the green smoothies this week to make it easier on me.  

Oh, come on.  You didn't really think I was going to be THAT fanatic, did you?  Anyway, for lunch I have been mostly having salads with beans and quinoa (I brought my steamer, too, because I'm THAT fanatic) and salsa for dressing.  I love me some mango salsa from Costco.  

Dinner has been another story due to the above mentioned problem.  The first night we went to Tortilla Jo's, where I had a spinach burrito, but it had a bit of cheese in it and on top of it was queso fresco.  I ate about half of the burrito because it was excessively large (my husband and I should have split it, but he had the vegetarian tostada) and then ate a lot of chips and salsa, because it rocks.

Tonight we went to the Cheesecake Factory, which I knew would be a challenge because I love (emphasize love) their Tex-Mex Eggrolls.  I compromised with myself and had the mushroom wraps on their skinnylicious menu, and a flatbread margherita pizza, which had mozzarella.  

So really, staying 100% vegan on vacation is a problem for me, but staying vegetarian and only including cheese when eating out, is not.  Also, my aunt and uncle got a vegan pizza for my husband and me the other night and it had pesto sauce on it instead of cheese and it.was.to.die.for.  I am growing basil in my window at home and you can bet we will be trying it - pesto pizza with sundried tomatoes, artichokes, and chopped onions.  I'll let you know how that goes when we try it ourselves.