Tags: vegetarian restaurants, vegetarian travelers, healthy eating on the road, Rancho La Puerta, Tecate, Baja California, farm stays in the US, farm stays on Kauai
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The Traveling Vegetarian: Homework First
By Jenna Blumenfeld of Ovenzest.blogspot.com
Being a vegetarian can be hard enough in the United States. But eating can be even more daunting when traveling if your diet excludes meat. But fear not. With little effort, vegetarianism does not have to end when vacationing begins.
The most important step to ensure you will be able to not only find something to eat, but to enjoy it, is to do your research prior to departing for a trip. Countless websites handled by devoted vegetarians compile directories of tried-and-true meat-free restaurants. Below are some of my favorites.
Happy Cow
A social network for vegetarians, Happy Cow tops my list. Traveler reviews, Google-pinpointed maps and even photographs are included in restaurant searches, so you can plan out your culinary trail prior to leaving home. Advertisements are kept to a minimum, keeping the website streamlined and headache-free to navigate. And if reading about these restaurants gets you hungry, Happy Cow has a recipe page as well.
Veggie Places
A clean, easy-to-read and navigate site, Veggie Places is impressively comprehensive. Detailed descriptions of meatless eateries are depicted clearly, complete with mile distances, reviews, addresses and yes, even telephone numbers. What is more, the site contains a page devoted to useful vegetarian links, articles and blogs, all the more to inspire you during a holiday.
Vegetarian USA
Although the site itself is very busy with advertisements and it focuses only on the United States, Vegetarian USA provides very helpful and accurate content. Searches for restaurants are conducted by location, either by state or major city. Extra nice is that not only restaurants, but co-ops, local vegetarian publications, natural gift shops, and even regional spa and retreat companies come up on a search.
So do your homework, plan ahead, make reservations. And your vacation will not be ruined by a growling stomach.
Rancho La Puerta: We Hike to Eat
By Cara Greenberg of casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit
Rancho La Puerta is different things to different people.
For some, the main draw of this Baja destination is the early-morning trail hiking, from the gentle (Woodlands, Quail) to the challenging (Professor, Pilgrim) and the brutal (seven miles up Mt. Kuchumaa). Others come to work out all day in classes you won’t find at your local Y (Cardio Drumming, Wave Running, Aerobics with Soul), and/or embrace the challenge of seeing how many spa treatments they can squeeze into a week. Not to mention bird walks, make-your-own-jewelry workshops, and a zillion other options, from crystal bowl sound healing to the ever-popular popcorn bingo.
But for everyone, without exception, Rancho La Puerta is about good eating. It can’t not be, after all that exercise – you’re ravenous, and they don’t let you go hungry. The portions are calorie-controlled, but seconds and thirds are cheerfully provided. This is not a weight-loss place, although the correct answer, I’m told, to that annoying question when you get home (“How much weight did you lose?”) is “Seven pounds.”
Ha. My jeans seem no looser than they did four days ago. But who cares? The food here is too good. From the lavish-but-healthy buffet breakfast by the villa pools to outdoor lunches around the fountain on the tiled terrace to sit-down four-course dinners in the magnificent high-ceilinged di ning hall, it’s mostly vegetarian, elegantly presented, totally delicious, and authentically Baja — never heavy rice-and-beans, but nouvelle Mexican, masterminded by Cordon Bleu-trained chef Gonzalo Mendoza.
Sixty percent of the produce comes from Rancho’s own organic farm, Tres Estrellas. The 4-mile hike there and back is such a highlight they run it three times a week to accommodate demand. Upon arrival, there’s a legendary breakfast spread at La Cocina que Canta (The Kitchen that Sings), Rancho La Puerta’s cooking school and culinary center. There’s a professional kitchen for cooking classes and an expansive dining room with French doors overlooking the farm, where rows of luminous lettuces prove that vegetables, too, can be ornamental. Many of the flowers, including calendula, violas, and nasturtium, are grown as edibles and used to pretty up salads and desserts.
Yesterday I was at Tres Estrellas/La Cocina que Canta not once, but twice — in the morning, for the hike, breakfast, and head gardener Salvatore’s tour (now I know what really good soil looks like and how to pick a turnip), and again in the evening, when I returned by van with a group of about 20 people for a hands-on cooking lesson with guest chef Alisa Barry, now based in Atlanta and owner of a food-products company called Bella Cucina Artful Food, in her own Tuscan-by-way-of-California style.
After which, of course, we ate the scrumptious results — baked goat cheese three ways, cilantro corn cakes with roasted pepper sauce, shrimp grilled on rosemary skewers, and more — a meal made up of antipasti, essentially, which is exactly the way I like to eat.
I’ll diet when I get home.
Farm Stay on Kauai
By Ann Shepphird of GardenstoTables.com
ISay you’re a “locavore” (i.e., you try to eat locally grown food) and you’re traveling. You can stay at a hotel that tries to buy from the local  farmers. You can stay at one that maybe has its own herb garden – or even one that grows some of its own produce. OR, you can go a step further and actually stay on a farm.
Long popular in Europe, farm stays have increased in popularity in recent years in the U.S. and it’s easy to see why: What can be better than staying in a place in, say, Kauai where you can pick a papaya from a tree right outside your door? A farm stay is also a good way to try out the idea of what it would be like to chuck it all and start your own organic farm.
That’s what Lee Roversi of North Country Farms did. Once a typical harried New Yorker, in 1986, she and her then-husband packed up their kids, found some land on the north shore of Kauai and built North Country Farms, which provides a variety of produce that’s sold directly to local families. Also on the four-acre property--which is near the town of Kilauea and many of the north shore's most famous beaches--are two guesthouses that are rented out as bed-and-breakfast cottages. Guests literally look out their front porches at the beautifully manicured rows of crops and are encouraged to pick their evening’s produce from the farm and orchards. The cottages run $150/night and also include a welcome basket filled with local goodies for breakfast (coffee, tea, granola, muffins, fruit).
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