On the Road

Whew, the last few days have been a whirlwind! But not bad and filled with interesting eats. I’m in the bay area for a few days attending a tech conference for work with a co-worker and it’s been an interesting experience so far! I’ll back up to lunch yesterday before we left because it was an fun creation. I’m not huge on vegan burgers or the whole burger food format, I guess that’s the girly salad side of me. But burgers always seem so huge and caloric for one item. Of course a vegan burger can be the only vegan option when eating out sometimes and I’ll make an exception then. But some vegan patties can be a great protein-loaded addition to a salad or a lettuce wrap. I grabbed a package of Sweet Earth Vegan patties at Target recently to try and ended up chopping them up and crisping in a skillet to use as high-protein croutons in a meal salad.

And they were a hearty and filling addition to the salad with a crisp, but meaty texture.

Later we left work early to hit the road for the bay area and beat the traffic since I’m the lucky driver for this trip. And checked into our hotel which isn’t bad for an older place, the rooms have fully functional kitchens which is awesome for a traveling vegan!

I’ve got the fridge loaded with apples, protein bars for breakfast, almond milk for coffee, and water. And hubby sweetly surprised me with raw vegan treats for the trip, so not hurting for emergency food!

But turns out the vegan selection is pretty awesome here because Blossom Vegan Restaurant is not far from our hotel and thankfully my non-vegan co-worker was on board with trying this place out for dinner. Or she didn’t want to protest since I’m driving this trip, lol.

Inside is very clean, classy, and zen like. The menu has a lot of Thai and Indian inspired cuisine with tofu curries, noodle dishes, salads, etc.

And the spicy eggplant sesame tofu just spoke to me.

It came on a communal serving dish with rice to assemble on your own plate and the texture on the brown rice was hearty, nutty, and tasty!

It had a daring level of spice, but wasn’t too hot and didn’t overpower the flavor. Service and prices were also great, dishes were around $7-12 which is not bad! I will definitely stop by again if I’m in the area.

Both our hotel and the conference serves free breakfast and I was very impressed with the soy milk options at the hotel.

And almond milk and soy creamer options at the conference. But wait, this is the bay area. :-)

I was super impressed with the lunch we had at the conference today, I made a huge place of vegan dishes to sample that included salad, curry tofu, wild rice, and roasted veggies with purple cauliflower – classy!

And the daily wrap up reception served vegan tofu appetizers to go with the wine and beer.

But we didn’t stick around the reception too long since it was a long day of sitting and learning. We moved onto Mix & Eats Bobs House for a light veggie tofu bowl dinner after rich eating.

It wasn’t an all vegan place, but easy to create a custom vegan tofu bowl and it was filling for the price.

So far not a bad trip and I’m trying to enjoy having my own hotel room for a few days reading and relaxing, but I still miss hubby and pets. :-)