wow.

with all that food esme is making/has made, i better hope i have my eating hat on during this trip!
so the other day in the mail i received my new toiletry/shower bag thingy. for the past kajillion years i have been using a plastic shopping bag to tote my bathroom stuff around in and i felt that this trip deserved something more. also i figured since we would be living out of the car it would be a nice thing to have my stuff all in one place instead of rolling around in the trunk or mixed in with my dirty boxers. yeah. it's happened before. not cool.
so. back to the bag. it has little compartments for all sorts of things that i don't have or use, a mirror that i can use to shave or shine in grizzly bear eyes and a hook that i can use to hang it in the bathroom or shower or in the car or even on a stunned grizzly bear if i want.
now i just need to get more stuff to put in the silly thing.

we're getting into the single digits. 9 days to go.
mostly, i've been cooking. a lot.
this is what i've made so far:

empanadas from veganomicon


samosas from joanna with mint cilantro chutney and lolo's mango chutney



banana-date scones (also from v-con)


and thin mints from our friend lisa


i still need to make lolo's lemon cranberry muffins and picnic sandwich, cranberry orange muffins, cherry almond muffins, joanna's soft oatmeal cookies, and the eggplant muffalatta from v-con (although i think i will have to change the eggplant to zucchini for gory). and that should be it for food. oh wait. i'm also making some granola and trail mix, but i can throw that together in a couple of minutes. oh and cupcakes for gory's birthday. right. then i'll be done.

9 days to go.

ack!

speaking of food and packing, i bought my half of the food/non-food list this weekend. i am now the proud guardian of three bags of soup, rice, newman o's, tings, a shitload of larabars, toothpaste, cereal, and oatmeal. i've decided that microwaveable rice completely freaks me out. therefore, i bought about 800 bags of the stuff. neat!

i also cleaned my car out. it really didn't even take that long. i just had to rearrange the glovebox, get rid of some random papers, and vaccuum out the pringles bits. sometime this week i need to pick up some new windshield wipers and some batteries for a couple of flashlights and i should be good to go.








a couple of new things:
we nomainated ourselves for best travel blog
(hee!). click the button over on the right and vote for us. c'mon. you know you want to. so far, we're the only vegan travel blog. if you don't vote for us, you hate veganism.

a donation button! we're poor. and i'm quitting my job to go on this trip, so i'm super poor. we would like to get home without having to get jobs at scary random truck stop bars, so, if you feel like it, drop us some cash. in order to guilt you into sending us more money, we'll give half of it to charity. we haven't decided which yet (gory mentioned something about the human fund...), but one of us will post as soon as we figure it out. it'll most likely be farm sanctuary or something similar.

keep track of us over at herbivore! you need a subscription for access to the article(s) we'll be posting, so if you don't subscribe, go do that now.

packing.

how to pack, what to pack, what not to pack. these questions have been going through my head for the past couple of weeks as the trip has been inching closer and ever closer. most of my recent packing has been for weekend visits, just a few clothes in a bag and off i go. prior to that it was a bicycle camping trip. that packing involved getting the most amount of stuff into two pannier bags and a rack attached to my bicycle. whatever i could carry on the bike i could bring, if it didn't fit, leave it at home.
packing for a month-long car trip from one side of north america to the other and back again is a whole different kind of packing. i have so much more room to bring things! books! video games! kites! my bowling ball even! i could even bring a video projector if i wanted to!
so now, with all this extra room at hand, i almost have too much space. i only own 2 or 3 pants, a couple shorts and lots of shirts. how often do i want to do laundry? how often do i do laundry now? not that often. i found a nice little packing list and it even comes with check boxes to mark off what i have packed so i don't forget anything. check boxes are very important. i tend to be in the habit of packing things i don't need and forgetting to pack things that i do need.

yo-yo's are much more important than maps anyway.

17 days to go!

My car has been given the go-ahead for cross country travel. So if it breaks down, I’m calling the dealership and telling them to come get us. And then telling them to pay for whatever’s broken. And then making them get us a rental car so that we can finish up. Or something.

AND I got my passport. Good god. I know everyone talks about their passport picture, but seriously, this is the worst picture I have ever seen of myself. I look beyond dead. I look dead, buried, dug up and then kicked a few times. Scary.

Ok, so with only one food shopping trip left before leaving, I need to figure out what kinds of food we’re taking with us. Because we’re vegan. If we don’t bring our own food we will, in fact, starve to death. I know that I get very very cranky when I get hungry. I don’t know if Gory does, but I’m guessing yes.

Our buddies on the ppk gave us some ideas for road trip food.
So far we’ve got:
lots of fruit.
easy veggies like baby carrots.
nuts
dried fruits
trail mix
tings and other crappy stuff that we'll eat within an hour and will make us feel crappy.
pita
stuff for making hummus.
pre-made hummus since I won't have the patience to wait for homemade hummus.
lots o water.
soymilk.
tofutti cream cheese.
bagels.
crackers.
peanut butter
marshmallow fluff (yes, relax, the vegan kind)
bread.
cans of baked beans
Luna bars
granola
cereal
newman-o's
vegan marshmellows
instant coffee
clif bars
instant soup
instant oatmeal
pretzels
tortilla chips
muffins and scones
rice and quinoa mixes in a microwave bag
any kind of “pocket” food: samosas, calzone-y type things
cans of soup and chili
cans of beans

I plan on making muffins and some scones and then the pocket type food, but I don’t want to make too much. I don’t really think we’d have a hard time eating it all before it goes bad, but I worry about stuff like that.

We’re bringing my mini food processor so that we can make hummus and we have a hot plate so we can cook at night.

We got the book Apocalypse Chow by Jon Robertson. Everything in it looks good (and vegan), so hopefully we’ll use that. I’m freaked out by canned vegetables, though, so I guess we can sub some fresh veggies for canned ones.

This weekend is supposed to be beautiful in Jersey, so I’m going to be cleaning out my car. Yay!

26 days until we leave!

I can't believe it is coming up so fast now. getting a little nervous now, only due to the fact that I have never done anything like this before. But i am so excited more than anything else. So many new things/places/people/animals/landscapes/trees/everything to see! i can't wait.

it is going to be so wicked awesome.