Note to our readership:  There have been numerous comments on this post indicating illness after consuming this product.   We did not experience this issue, and it seems that the problem does not affect everyone.  However, in good conscience, we cannot recommend these products with so many of you commenting that you are having problems.  The Vega corp has commented below.  If you have gotten ill after trying the Vega product, please contact Victoria[at]sequelnaturals[dot]com.  They are working to identify the problem.

Recently we had the opportunity to try some of the Vega line of products.

Specifically, we tried the Whole Food Health Optimizer, the Whole Food Smoothie Infusion, and the Antioxidant EFA (essential fatty acid) Oil Blend.

The Whole Food Smoothie Infusion is a high quality protein powder that also provides fiber and Omega 3 EFAs.  I added it to my morning shake, in place of the protein powder I usually use.  It had a pleasant taste and the added benefit of the fiber and EFAs which I wasn't getting in the hemp powder I've been using.  So, as soon as I finish my stash, this is my new protein powder.

The Whole Food Smoothie Infusion is a great product to take on the road with you.  All you need to do is add water and you have a vegan meal replacement.  Personally, I thought they were a bit on the sweet side, but Jane loved them.  She especially liked the chai flavor blended with ice to make a nice summer concoction.  You can also add the smoothie infusion to the fruit based smoothie of your choice.  They also provide you with a few recipes.

The Antioxidant EFA Oil blend makes a good salad dressing.  We found it to have a slightly nutty taste which is a nice change from the extra virgin olive oil Jane usually uses.

Overall, we feel these are high quality products that are a welcome addition to our pantry.

Traveling as a vegan can be a challenge, as most of you are aware.  Of course, if you are traveling to a vegan friendly area, such as Portland, OR, you probably don't have to do anything in advance!  But we all know that it can be difficult to find good vegan food on the road.  Jane and I have put together a strategy that we find works pretty well for us.  I thought I'd share it with you today.  (We don't do all these things, all the time.)  Feel free to chime in with any thoughts or ideas you have, because there is always room for improvement.

Before travel research your destination:

• Contact your Hotel or B&B to find out if they can accommodate your dietary restrictions.  Be specific!
• Find out which restaurants are vegan-friendly in the area.
• Scope out the local health food stores, food co-ops, and farmer's markets.  Note the addresses.  You may even want to print out maps to help you, as the maps that you get from the car rental places can be lacking.
• Find your emergency food.  For us, it tends to be Taco Bell.  We know we can always get a bean burrito without cheese to tide us over.
• If you are traveling outside the country, do research on local cuisines.  Many cultures are not as meat and dairy-centric as we are and you can find dishes based on lentils or beans...

Prepare some food to take along with you.  Lets face it, airport food leave a lot to be desired, and delays are pretty commonplace.  So it's always a good idea to be prepared.  We usually bring along some combination of the following:

• Sandwiches we've prepared in advance.  We usually bring a total of three to share.
• Fruit (if necessary, peeled and sliced).
• Nuts and seeds.
• Trail mix - we usually just throw together some combination of the dried fruits and nuts we have on hand.
• Protein bars.
• Primal Strips -- we just encountered this vegan jerky on our last trips; now a staple in our home.
• Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer -- this meal replacement powder needs only water.  Great for travel!  (Product review coming soon.)
• Jane usually brings along some powdered miso soup.  Just add hot water.  (When getting miso, make sure there are no bonito flakes.  This is a dried fish powder.)

Strategies while you are on the road:

• Bring protein sources (bars, jerky, meal replacement powders).  You can usually get a salad, veggies, and pasta eating out.  Vegan protein can often be a challenge.  If you have your own stash, you can supplement later.
• The coffee maker in your hotel room is your friend.   You can boil water to reconstitute a number of different things.  And you can use the pot to heat up soups -- just be considerate of the next guests and don't put anything but coffee grounds in the basket -- and clean out the pot well.
• Ask your hotel to empty out the mini bar so you can use the fridge for your food.  We've had some success with this.  Some hotels just won't do it.  But they may be willing to provide you with a mini fridge if they have one on hand.
• Consider staying someplace with a kitchen for at least part of your trip.  Being able to prepare your own food can be quite helpful.
• You can find food at any grocery store --  salad, along with a vinaigrette dressing that doesn't require refrigeration, are easily purchased.  You can supplement that with some hummus and a loaf of bread and some fruit and you have a delicious meal.
• Bring a can opener with you.  If you can't find anything else, you can always buy cans of beans or chickpeas at a local grocery store (and salad...) and you've got a reasonable meal.
• We also like to buy tortillas to make wraps.  If you can't find vegan mock meats, you can usually get grilled veggies at the supermarket salad bar, and hummus, or canned beans.  Jane often makes a wrap as follows:  tortilla, lettuce, black beans, roasted red pepper, avocado slices.  It's delicious and you can find the ingredients anywhere.
• Prepare food in advance.  Jane often makes granola bars, and chickpea cutlets to bring along.  Once she even made muffins.  She put them in a tin and we had them for a few days.

Traveling with a car.  This opens up a wide range of options.  Jane's finally convinced me that you can just throw stuff in the trunk for "just in case."

• Bring a cooler with some large size ziploc bags. You can get ice easily...  fill the ziplocs and you can store things in the car for awhile.
• We have brought a blender with us (not often) since I really like to have my shake for breakfast in the morning.  It's also allowed us to make a variety of hummus and bean spreads.
• Bring your favorite snacks and easily portable foods.  If you wind up finding suitable alternatives on the road, you can always bring these things back home with you.  And it's great to have something you're willing to eat on hand.

When staying with non-vegan family/friends:

• Discuss in advance what you eat.  Most people can handle rice and beans easily.
• Offer to bring something to share.  Or offer to cook something (make sure you can get your hands on the required ingredients).
• Regardless of  how well-meaning your hosts are, always assume you will need to supplement your meal, and bring a stash of protein bars, or jerky, or other meal replacement.  If it turns out you don't need it, you can always bring it home again.  But far better to be prepared.

One final note, we had our hummus confiscated at the Bozeman airport.  It was sealed.  The security dude told me if the hummus was on a sandwhich it would have been okay.  Go figure!  We've never had a problem at LAX, but each airport is different, and we've always found the security at the smaller airports to be far more stringent than elsewhere.  So, if you are bringing food items with you, bear in mind the creamy stuff might be problematic.

Shojin's Caterpillar Roll

Jane and I are off to Montana for a week.  Since it looks like vegan dining will be Taco Bell and The Pita Pit, we figured we'd get a quick fix from our favorite vegan restaurant, Shojin.

As always, dinner was fantastic.  We started our dinner with our all time favorite, the Caterpillar Roll.  When we first went vegan the idea of "vegan sushi" was a bit of a joke to us.  Sushi was fish, and we had loved it.  But let me assure you, we are converts.  This roll starts with a base of Shojin's barbequed seitan and is topped with sliced avocado.  YUM!  We've tried other vegan sushi, but this is our absolute favorite.

Our next course was the Barbequed Seitan.  It's sliced seitan with some kind of light barbeque sauce.  In our opinion, Kimiko (Shojin's master chef) makes the best seitan.  It's far and away better than any other we've ever eaten.

Shojin's Seitan Pepper Steak

One of the reasons we enjoy Shojin so much is that they are constantly changing their menu.  They keep the core items, but add things as certain foods become seasonally available.  Our main course was the Seitan Pepper Steak, which is one of those new things.  It was delicious.  If you haven't tried Shojin, and can get to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, go... you won't be sorry.

So we're sated, and hopefully our expectations of our food options in Montana will be exceeded.

Click here for Shojin's website.

We received a comment from one of our readers (hi Addie) questioning the validity of  PETAs list of  "I Can't Believe It's Vegan."  She says she used to use that site as a reference tool, but has since learned that sugar is absolutely not vegan, and since it is in many of the products on their website, she feels that the list does not give an accurate portrayal of vegan products.  "I researched the heck out of sugar to save those white Oreos for myself (an item listed on the site as Vegan), but finally had to just let them go ." Well Addie, you can put your Oreos back on your shopping list.

Most refined white sugar is processed over bone char and that rules it out as a vegan product.  However, there are sugars that are not.  These are the brands of sugar we know to be vegan:

• Wholesome Foods
• Florida Crystals
• Hain Organic Powdered Sugar
• Jack Frost
• Country Cane
• Supreme
• Southern Bell
• 365 (the Whole Foods house brand).

You can use these tidbits to help you navigate through the sugar aisle:  Beet sugar is vegan. Raw sugars or turbinado are also vegan.  Other acceptable vegan sweetners include:

• date sugar
• rice syrup
• fructose
• corn syrup
• succanat
• barley malt
• molasses
• maple syrup
• agave nectar.

C&H refines their sugar over bone char, so they are definitely not a vegan option.  And supermarkets buy their private label sugars from a variety of refineries, so it is likely they are not vegan.  Brown sugar is usually made from refined white sugar with molasses added.  So if you know the manufacturer to use bone char in refining their white sugar, you can bet the brown sugar will not be vegan either.

Since the processing methods are not indicated on the packaging, it is very difficult for consumers to know which sugar is indeed vegan.  And it becomes much more difficult to make that determination when buying packaged foods. If the ingredient list contains beet sugar or evaporated cane juice instead of "sugar", you're good to go.  If the list says sugar, you have to decide for yourself. You can do the legwork and contact the individual manufacturer, but it's unlikely that you will get an honest answer. Most manufacturers  source out sugar that is cheapest at the time, and so they don't even know how it was processed, also the sugar used may  vary from batch to batch.

I trust Peta to have actually contacted the manufacturer and done the legwork.  If they give a product their seal of approval, that is good enough for me.  But then again, I'm not all that concerned with by-products (I do my best to avoid them, but don't make myself crazy about them.  I do however strictly avoid milk byproducts especially caseine).  Bone char is a cheap throw away.  Once animals are no longer slaughtered for food, I would expect the refining of sugar to be done in some other manner.  No one is going to raise animals for their bones.  It wouldn't be economically viable.

This year the Animal Rights National Conference will be held right here in Los Angeles.   (It was in Alexandria, VA last year.)  The conference runs July 16 - 20, 2009 and will be held at the Westin LAX Hotel: 5400 West Century Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

Here is what you can expect:

• 100 sessions, including keynote plenaries, workshops, raps/discussions & reports
• 90 speakers representing 60 animal protection groups in seven countries
• 90 free exhibits with compassionate shopping & social justice organizations
• Sessions on personal skills development, activism, organizing & outreach
• Eyewitness report on the Sea Shepherd whale wars and CA Prop 2 campaign
• Presentations & networking with leaders of other social justice movements
• Celebrity, Activist, and Campaign Awards at Saturday Banquet
• 80 videos including premieres
• Networking Receptions
• Delicious vegan cuisine

The conference itself is not cheap, $160 for the full session, or $65 for one day. They do offer low income discounts. But if you don't qualify for one of those, there is still a reason to drop by if you can. From the Animal Rights National Conference website:

Visitors are encouraged to drop by Friday, Saturday and Sunday (9am-6pm) to enjoy our 90+ free exhibits, including compassionate shopping, delicious snacks & desserts, and amazing social justice organizations. One free session is also included, so bring your friends, stay for a meal, and make a day out of it!

If you are in the area and can swing by, this is defiitely a worthwhile event.  Don't forget to pass this info along to any of your friends or family who may be interested in the topic.