Ecospired

If you think that following a Plant-Based Diet or being vegan means you cannot fully experience a culture or place, especially one so known for its food as Paris, then think again!

How, you might ask, can Vegans possibly survive a trip to somewhere like Paris, with all its pastry shops, cheese covered delicacies and avoid temptation?

Well, in this post here are a few ways you can have your authentic French (vegan) cake and eat it!

To me, the very best way to travel vegan anywhere in the world is to use Happy Cow!

Happy Cow is not just for Vegans. They have a library of well-reviewed eateries all around the world for most dietary requirements, but I find their Vegan selection a life saver for wherever we travel.

They have a website and an app avalible on both Googleplay and the App Store, super handy for spur of the moment cravings!

Using this app will help you with the three tips below.

Tip #1: If you want pastries,

you can have them!

I'm a baker at heart which is fueled by my sweet tooth. It's not a rare occurrence for me to have the craving for baking well after midnight or for cakes to fill the kitchen at the weekends. So you can imagine that walking through the streets of Paris set my sweet tooth into overdrive and Chris had to hold me back from being the crazy person pressed up against the glass of a bakery, window shopping all the delicate, and flaky delights within!

So what's a poor Vegan with a craving for cakes to do?

Find a vegan patisserie!

We found Cloud Cafe Pastries on our adventures using Happy Cow and it was delicious!

Image result for cloud cafe pastries paris

Photo credits - Top left: veggiemagnifique, Top right: Happycow, Bottom: tastefulpantry

We walked into this cafe and I was bouncing off the walls with joy (and that's before the sugar!)

There is something about being vegan for a while which really makes you appreciate food in a whole new way. Depending on where you live, being able to walk into a shop and know you can eat everything in it guilt free isn't an everyday thing. But when it happens... it's like Christmas. Chris recently found out he could eat Gingernut biscuits and it made his day!

And we made the most of it, grabbing snacks for the rest of the day, along with breakfast for the morning, which even after carrying them up and down the Arc de Triumph, was so worth it in the morning!

We choose to stay outside of the city in a wooden caravan camp with a lovely forest view and cozy kitchen. It was both cheap and relaxing after all the walking we did around the city the day before.

Tip #2: Still want to try some French classic's,

just look it up!

Having only been to France as a teenager and being very squeamish about snails and frogs legs, I still wanted to try some French classic's, unfortunately, cheese and meat are a generous part of those classics.

Lucky for us, some wonderful souls have veganised french cuisine and with a quick Happy cow search, we were on our way to Brasserie Lola!

Photo credits - Top left: herbivoresheaven, Top right: peacockplume, Bottom: cherryvegzombie

Here we went to town on ordering all the classics from Croque Monsieur to a fully loaded Tartine, and finished off with a grand Banana Split (Which is not French, but I'm a sucker for whipped cream!)

Tip #3: Make it yourself!

When traveling on a budget, going to restaurants and cafe's for every meal is just not feasible, but experiencing Paris doesn't have to cost the earth!

What is more French than a simple freshly baked Baguette? Not very much for under €10.

(Please note that shopping for fresh bread is a morning activity in France and that finding it after lunch, may turn into quite the adventure as we found out!)

So, if like us you have somewhere to prepare food, make a picnic for the day and soak in the culture while saving money!

Our favorite sandwich combination is avocado with cherry tomatoes

on fresh bread with a little sea salt, yum! :)

So there are my top 3 tips for traveling as a vegan, I hope they help you on your next adventure!

Where are your favorite places to travel in the world and what tips would you recommend in tricky situations? :)

Note: I know we are already more than halfway through July when I posted this but I still wanted to get it up for anyone wanting to know my thoughts for next year!

Its that time of year when we can spread the word about becoming plastic free and challenge everyone else to give it a go! To let everyone else try it for themselves and see that it isn't nearly as hard as it sounds! But is it?

To me, it really depends on two things: where you live and how much dedication you can put into it.

I've been moving towards a plastic-free life for two years now and while we have reduced our waste and plastic by about 70%, we still seem unable to reduce that last 30%! Gurrrr...

What are we still stuck on I hear you ask?

We foster Guinea pigs for the RSPCA. The perfect vegan pets for busy people, but unfortunately they need fresh salad every day! My goal this July is to get my Veg garden truly up and running so we can feed our piggies plastic free!
Online deliveries - Most of our online deliveries (apart from food) come in those awful plastic jiffy bags, so my goal is to try to go to local shops more to buy what I need, and if I can't then ask for every order to be in paper envelopes as much as possible. Does anyone know of how else we could avoid plastic bag deliveries?
Junk mail - I've signed up to all the mailing lists to stop junk mail and even put up a sign on the door, and still we get all kinds of junk mail. The worst? Plastic charity bags! Still figuring this out... Any suggestions?

Don't get me wrong, 70% is a massive saving and if everyone could save just 50% of their waste every month, the planet would be a lot better off!

So why can't I tell you that its an easy change to make and that where you live can make it easier or harder for you to go green?

Three reasons:

Convenience

Advertising

Energy

Convenience has made getting food or products easier and quicker than ever and for anyone who has read the book No Impact Man, know's that while convenience is meant to give us more time to do what we want in our busy lives, it actually just gives us more time to be busy. Which is why when, in our busy, busy lives, we are given the choice between some slightly inconvenient but green product over a none green (and often cheaper version) it makes our lives harder... Becuase the busy-ness doesn't go away until we choose to make room for a few inconveniences in our lives to save the planet and something that can help with that is where you live! if you live in London, Cornwall or Devon, lucky you! You have Englands first bulk plastic free stores on your doorstep! Otherwise, like me up north, we have to rely on Amazon and online bulk orders which take a few days to come, making shopping a little less convenient than popping to the corner shop when you are out of milk.

Advertisers are paid a lot of money to make posters, video's, banners, etc that very very hard for you to say no to. They place them in spots to catch you at your weakest and bombard you with colourful tempting images to wear you down. That super creamy coffee, with extra vanilla flavourings and all the toppings at 7am on your way to work, may look glorious at the time and you may even really deserve it after the week you've had! But with it comes a whole load of decisions that could catch you out this July. Did you remember your reusable coffee cup? Are you trying to reduce your dairy and do they have an alternative with that super special coffee? And if the company say they are reducing their waste, are they really? or are they just Greenwashing? All this to think about but you really just want the damn coffee! With all that advertising drawing you in, you are more likely to make a snap decision and get the plastic cup, the cows milk and look away from all the plastic being used behind the counter. But don't be hard on yourself, it is literally a mind game and all we can do is be strong and remember our reusable cup tomorrow.

And finally the energy it costs you to both make good decisions and plan ahead for them is sometimes hard to find. When you are faced with a missing ingredient for a dinner you are making, you need to think about how to replace it or where you can get it plastic free; If you really want that coffee with all the toppings, but forgot your reusable cup, it takes effort to turn away from that advertising; and when a company you are used to using is not as green as you'd like, it takes effort to work your way through the blogs and websites to find something just as good for you.

So what can you do?

Find your reason for doing all of this, and make it good.

Whether it be a poor turtle struggling to breathe with a plastic straw stuck up its nose, the video of the vast amounts of rubbish washing up on our coastlines, the new Blue Planet 2 documentary which begs us to save our oceans from toxic waste or something even more personal; make sure your reason for ditching plastic this summer is good enough to walk away from plastic ridden temptations and feel great doing it.

What is your reason for ditching plastic this summer? And is there any plastic in your life that you are stuck trying to get rid of?

If you shop anywhere, you will know all about plastic.

This durable, easily moldable and cheap-to-make material not only protects the products we buy but has made it possible for all kinds of new and convenient products to be available to the mass market. Plastic helped in some incredible social revolutions and allowed going into space to happen well before it could’ve had plastic not been invented. Sounds awesome!... right?

But, sorry plastic, it’s time to move on...

My transition to veganism in 2016 was for both the ethical and environmental issues pointed out in the emotional documentary Cowspiracy.

Before that, I ate and bought what I wanted with little thought for the planet or how it was produced, as my parents did. I thought 'everyone' does it, so it must be the 'right' thing to do. I occasionally decided to eat 'healthily' but that usually meant just eating the plastic wrapped salad that came as a side order with my take away food wrapped in styrofoam...

But veganism for many people is not just boycotting animal products, getting dreadlocks and refusing to shave our legs ever again (although I can't say I was particularly regular with shaving before...), it can be a one way ticket into conscious living; a way to think about what we buy and produce with a niggling little question in our minds:

“What impact is that having on the world?”

For instance, going on a walk and buying a bottle of water because you get thirsty. It's just a bottle of water, how bad can that be?

Well, when you take into account the oil required to be drilled from the earth to produce the bottle, the damage to the springs the water comes from, the CO2 produced to transport it to the shop you bought it from and the fact that your bottle of water may only be used for a few minutes before it goes to a landfill where it will sit for possibly up to 1000 years to properly decompose...and, you get the idea!

Just a bit of research into this new conscious way of living tipped my world upside down and threw me into the rabbit hole of discovering not only what happens in the production of what I buy, but what happens to it after the bin men take it away from my house! Not a whole lot apparently...

This touched a nerve I didn't know had been exposed...

I realized how what I was consuming as a customer in our consumerist society was not only eating into my pocket and turning me into a not so secret hoarder of things I never used, but it was impacting the planet to the point of destruction. The more I read, the more horrified I became; Any plastic created now could last over 1000 years so any pollution I had blindly bought today would continue to haunt the planet long after my great, great, great, great, great, grandkids died. And with the toxic waste seeping from the plastic into our water and causing all kinds of health issues, you could probably knock a few greats off that family tree!

Image by alliance/photoshot

Well, that was that! Plastic had to go!!!

Cue the realistic side of my brain. A.K.A the Boyfriend:

The conversation went along the line of: "Maybe before we throw everything which is made of plastic out of the window and spend a whole load of money on new shiny things, let's make a plan!” Annoyingly, the first question he asked was also the hardest: “Most of our food comes in plastic, so how will we eat?!"

We agreed that throwing out all our plastic items while they were still usable just added to the throwaway plastic situation and Chris wasn't prepared to make our lives super difficult to just survive on the scraps of none packaged food we could find in our area, because we work full time with little access to food shops which weren't Aldi or Waitrose.

I hate when he's right...

*grumble*

But the good news is that food was the first of many plastics free swaps we successfully worked out together for our home, and over the last 2 years, we have developed a strategy for switching out our cheap plastic go-to’s for their ultra sustainable and eco-friendly versions. A strategy which I’m working on to share with all of you, to make your plastic free transition as easy as possible.

And the great news is, saving the world has actually saved us money and in some ways, has made our lives even more convenient! Brilliant!

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