Vegan in Vegas

My husband and I took our first vacation since becoming plant based eaters.  I was very curious before the trip as to whether it would be quite easy or possibly quite difficult.  We were in Las Vegas for five days.

Since we were flying, we did not have the option to take some food with us.  I would have loved to have had that option.  I would say that overall it was quite difficult to find plant based foods in Vegas.  I really expected to have more options available.  Some of our meals we changed to a vegetarian rather than plant based diet, because it was hard to get around the dairy used in the food preparation.


 One day we bought two slices of some great looking pizza with a pesto sauce and some veggies.  We took the pizza to our hotel room,  (okay, it was lunch time and we had been walking in the Vegas heat all morning, so we just wanted to retire to our room for lunch and then take a nap).   The pizza had a small amount of cheese on it, which we decided we could live with, but when we took a closer look, it had chicken on
it. We just picked the small amount of chicken off the pizza, and all was not lost.

We were definitely using the "progress, not perfection" motto that blogger Lindsay Nixon advocates.  We decided we would do the best we could, without running all over town, eating up our vacation time, (pun intended). 

We definitely had more veggie burgers during that week than I have had in the last month.   Of course, I just happened to serve veggie burgers at home the night before we left.  We were able to enjoy the differences offered in the various veggie burgers, and they were actually all very good.  I know some or all of them may have had egg in them. 


I was thinking we would find lots of soups to choose from, but I had not taken into account that the weather was hovering around 90 degrees there.  Most people were probably not yearning for a nice cup of hot soup.  We did find a couple of vegetarian soups in a French restaurant in the Paris hotel.  We had a salad on the side, and it was probably our tastiest meal.  



French Market Buffet in The Orleans Hotel/Casino

We decided before we left for Vegas that we would not participate in any buffets.   Maybe we were afraid that we would be tempted to eat meat products.  On our last night there, we went to a much smaller hotel to see a show.  We had to arrive early to pick up our show tickets, and this hotel was not close to the other hotels, so we needed to find
dinner there.   The options were abysmal.  We came upon the hotel buffet and decided to go ahead and eat there.

Greens, fried okra, Cesar salad, shaved beats, potato cake

It turned out to be a fairly good decision.  I knew they wouldn't prepare the food in a healthy way, as we try to do at home.  However,  we were able to find many vegetable dishes and a big salad bar.   Neither of us were the least bit tempted to try any meat dishes. 
They had a huge barbecue "bar", and I was afraid that might be my husband's downfall.  He didn't blink an eye.  He simply picked up a piece of cornbread and some collard greens and moved on.  Yeah, plant strong!