Well, my first vegan camping trip was a success. I left the boiling city with some friends and went up the coast of Maine, where it rained all weekend and only stopped the morning we left. Ha. But it was still a great time! I have amazing friends. So, here I am, one vegan (with one vegetarian) and a half dozen meat eaters. It was my first camping trip as a vegan, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to go down. When the emails went round asking what food everyone would bring, I separated myself from the pack by telling my good friend (who lives elsewhere and I had not seen in many months) that I was now vegan and therefore the vegetarian and I would bring our own food.
That made it easy. There was no longer any expectation that I would cook the same food with the group, so I was free to bring all of the things that I wanted. As this made things extremely easy for me, I would suggest the same route, just tell friend/group that you will bring your own food to cook – that way they don’t have to purchase things they don’t want to eat and vice versa. I didn’t want to participate in the purchasing of animal products.
Many of the things that I brought were packaged food. I got the same things that I always have for camping – burgers, hot dogs, sausages, cheese, etc. – but better, because it was all vegan. As a result, many of the things I brought were processed foods when at home we usually eat a ton of vegetables. That said, it made things a lot easier when you don’t have the kitchen to prepare a whole meal (like I typically would). And I did it how I did it when I was younger, just animal free.
I additionally made a few things ahead of time, such as guacamole and potato salad, which I just threw in the cooler with everything else. As I am still relatively new to this, I just picked the brands that I have tried and knew I liked. The complete-ish list of things that I bought to bring along is at the end of this post.
I also have a small grill I got years ago. If you have a grill that you acquired when you still ate meat, I would suggest a good scrub down. I am definitely glad I thought to pop open the lid and take a peek, because I would have never cooked on it without scrubbing every inch of it. So gross. Bringing a grill made my life a bit easier since I didn’t want to cook on the same fire as those who were eating meat and once I was there it was pretty clear we would share one fire at one of the campsites and we would all hang tight at that one spot.
It easy to do the burgers, sausages, hashbrowns, buns on the little grill. And if you bring a skillet (old one please, as you probably don’t want to bring one you really like camping) you can sauté up some onions and peppers for your sausage. Just throw the corn on the cob onto the fire grate still in its husk and it will cook itself!
And can I just say how amazing the Sweet & Sara Marshmallows were over the fire! Wow. Every marshmallow came up toasty brown – an amazing carmalization. They were perfectly warm to melt the chocolate I brought. While I originally hard a hard time finding graham crackers that were vegan, I found a list of accidentally vegan items on the PETA website … savior!! I wish we didn’t make the s'mores at night so I could have gotten a photo!
And naturally, vegan beer also made the list. Easy to find with the Barnivore website!
It was “easy peasy” as one of my professors would have said!
The grocery list looked like this:
- apples
- bananas
- oranges
- corn
- pepper
- onion
- tomato
- hash browns
- onion burger buns
- bread
- hotdog rolls
- Field Roast products – apple and sage sausage (for breakfast), Italian sausage (for dinner) and smoked tomato slices (first time trying them, very good - for lunch)
- Gardenburger Veggie Medley burgers
- Daiya mozzarella style shreds
- chips – organice blue corn and salt & vinegar
- Sweet & Sara Marshmallow
- ketchup
- mustard
- guacamole (ingredients for)
- potato salad (ingredients for)
I was very happy about my choices! It was just the same way I had always camped (which was important to me this time). I made sure to bring enough so that others could try as well!! Everything they tried, they liked! Not that that is a shocker! It was a synch, it was fun and it was within my values!! Perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment