Light Travel Packing

After a long day in the air yesterday, we made it to Florida finally! It was a little sad leaving the Sac area on such a beautiful morning.

But what a weather difference here. I’m actually wearing a tank top and saturated myself in sweat on a run this morning! Oh yeah, that’s what humidity feels like! :-) It was nice to be able to run in light shorts and a shirt without ear warmers and gloves in December though.

Traveling as a vegan and staying with non-vegan family can be tough, the last thing I want is be a pain with special food demands or come across as a picky eater. So this time I tried to pack as much as I could without breaking the 50 lb. luggage rule – not easy! I wanted to pack almond milk and fresh fruit, but those are a weighty problem when I’m trying to live out of one suitcase for a week.

Instead I opted to pack hearty vegan protein bars that weren’t too heavy, pricey, or caloric for breakfast, inflight snacks/meals, and in the event that the only vegan options available at restaurants in this small Florida town are side salads.

After a lot of searching on Amazon, I ordered a box of Odwalla Super Protein bars.

For 210 calories per bar, they’re about twice the size of a Larabar with less calories and pack more protein at 14 grams. And they cost less at just over a $1 per bar, great to stash in my purse or carry-on bag since Southwest doesn’t have a meal service.

The texture of the bar is a little dry and chewy, I felt like I needed to drink a little water with it. But it still had a sweet flavor and nice texture with visible chunks of carrots, veggies, oats, and other whole ingredients in it. And I liked that it’s fortified with more vitamins a traveling vegan night need, like 25% of B12.

Traveling is stressful for me, especially when my eating is out-of-whack with jet lag and I’m eating lots of new foods with family. Getting sick and dealing with unhappy insides makes it even more stressful! I took Gena’s advice and packed probiotics for this trip to hopefully prevent any, uh, problems. Since Jarrow Jarro-Dophilus EPS was on sale at Whole Foods an doesn’t need refrigeration, I went with it.

I packed just enough tablets for the week to pack light and so far so good, they have not disagreed with me. :-)

And since I wasn’t sure how much protein I’d be getting out and about during the day, I packed a heartier travel protein to start the day with in a smoothie, Olympian Labs Vanilla Pea Protein in single serving travel packets.

While it’s not raw like hemp protein, it’s cheaper and packs over twice the protein per serving – 35 grams per small packet. And it’s in a fine enough powder form to shake in a Blender Ball with some fruit juice if no blender is available.

Perhaps the amount of food and supplements I packed seems a little nuts and/or is evidence that I’m getting older.

But I wanted to be prepared to enjoy time with family with little diet fretting.

What foods and supplements do you pack for traveling?