I confess I hate Las Vegas. It is not the town for the pragmatic or the vegetarian, so there are two strikes against me right there. However, after recently seeking out Veggie House, I now have a reason to look forward to refueling in the (cultural) desert.
In the ancient tradition of vegetarian Chinese cooking, Veggie House serves some of the best mock meat for miles. Veggie House offers an extensive menu of cruelty-free seafood, beef, and chicken. Enjoy the crispy “beef” and save the sweetfaced cow. 
Veggie House is truly a vegetarian oasis in one of the world’s most unrelentingly carnivorous cities. Located in Chinatown, it will also get your uncultured ass off that gawd awful soul-less strip.
What’s with the quiet talkers? Am I just listening to my music too loud, or are bitches basically whispering? There’s a mediocre vegetarian restaurant nearby staffed by limp, greasy hipsters. The tribe Deschanel waitresses speak in such hushed and dulcet tones you’d think they were confessing they’ve contracted the latest hipster herp and not taking a routine drink order in a packed restaurant. 
I’m not fan of loud talkers. I will actually urge my companions to keep it down in public if they get overly amped, but I also think this whispering trend is just another way of lessening oneself. Would it kill a bitch to speak clearly and directly? 
Besides, making me respond “what?” to everything you say is tedious for us both. Own your power and speak up bitch. Dampening yourself to seem cool is pathetic and antiquated. 
I’m not going to pretend that Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato Tortilla Chips are any healthier than regular corn chips, but I will say they are quite scrumptiously munchy.
Personally, the sweet-salty oblong chip stands alone in its deliciousness. Some may prefer some sort of salsa or dip. I trust you can navigate this profound choice on your own. 
Prepare to take down an entire (somewhat diminutive) bag of Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato Tortilla Chips. Just don’t let the packaging, propaganda, or rhetoric convince you doing so is a healthy decision. 
So you’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating, traveling on the Hawaiian Islands is fucking astronomically expensive. Know what else is surprising? The food is consistently mediocre and totally overpriced (You were so RIGHT Annabella!), even for vegetarians.
After navigating three different islands over the last 9 days, I’ve picked up a few strategies for cutting culinary costs. In preparing for this trip, I came across a lot of advice. Most of it was useless. My aim here is to offer up some helpful non-obvious information.
For instance, one of the most common recommendations I read on the internet before coming to Hawaii is to hit up the COSTCO. If you are rolling a week deep with a family of four, perhaps that is a smart move for you. However, think about whether or not you can really get through COSTCO-size servings before you return home. The tendency is to overbuy and end up wasting. Not a good look. Buy only the essentials in quantities you can use during your trip. You aren’t really saving money if you throw half of it away.
Remember as a general rule, in Hawaii nothing comes with anything. Order a veggie burger for $8; don’t expect fries. Realistically expect to pay another $5 for fries. First, decided if you MUST have fries. If the answer is yes, then decide if you need a whole order to yourself. If not, share. Sharing is caring.
They also really love “wraps” here, so expect a lot of burrito-shaped foods. Grab a wrap and then buy extras like chips and a drink at a convenience store to avoid the deli-style markup.
Make this a vegetarian vacation. You’ll pay more for vegetarian food here than on the mainland – which by the way makes no fucking sense since many of the veggies are grown locally – but vegetarian dishes are still less expensive than anything else on the menu. (Why not try some taro?) Plus, sticking with veggies will keep you looking good in your swimwear and ward off pesky travel constipation. Don’t act like you don’t get backed up bitch.
Generally speaking, the exploitative resorts have pretty crappy food served in the least interesting environment. What you are essentially paying for here is a premium on convenience. If the timing or circumstances of your travel require a meal on the property, skirt the ridiculous up-charge on room service by walking your lazy ass down and picking up carry-out from the bar. Skip the “fanciest” restaurant on the property and just stick to the bar and cafe – almost always the food is all coming out of the same kitchen anyway.
Let me caution you on the hyperbole-laced shaved ice. I was standing in the grocery store in Waimea looking at postcards when I heard the check-out girl exclaim “Oh No!” A customer passed the fuck out in the check out line. I pulled her up on my lap, got her some water, called her friends, and waited with her until the paramedics arrived. What took her down? Shaved Ice. Poor girl had too much sugar, too much heat, and not enough quality nutrition. After that bad churro took me down at Coachella, I learned my lesson about the overly sweet snacking, especially in the heat. While that $5 shaved ice looks tempting, skip it for a low-glycemic, substantive option.
By the way, don’t ever be the dork at the luau. So Fucking Lame. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can be friends if you attend a rude pig-sacrificing luau.
You guys juice? I go back and forth. I definitely feel more energized and hydrated after a good juice. To clarify, when I say “juice,” I mean self-squeezed from my home juicer. Juicing is an efficient way to include a variety of produce. When done at home it can be relatively cost-effective. Some claim juicing has profound health benefits. I would like to believe that is true, but I’m not aware of anything more than anecdotal evidence to back this claim. 
Juicing has its drawbacks too. When done at home, it’s annoyingly messy. When done at juice bars, it’s annoyingly expensive. Juicing requires work, preparation, and clean-up. Just gathering and cleaning the fruit and veg can feel like a pretty daunting task. 
I know some super hardcore everyday juicers. I don’t have the devotion for all that, but occasionally getting some fresh juice in the system can do a body good. By the way, you can juice a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and the taste can be rather bland. Include ginger for spice and digestion, and add some lime without the peel for zest. 
I confess I loathe the supermarket. It is too bright. I feel like the florescent lights are sucking my soul away. Lately while I troll the aisles, I wonder what the fuck I am supposed to put in my cart outside the produce section? 
Canned section? Maybe a bean. Cento. Boxed aisle? In a moment of weakness mac-n-cheese. Dry lentils. Veggie stock. Most cereals are garbage, as are most cookies, crackers, and shelf-stable prepared foods. The freezer section isn’t any better. Waffles, frozen dinners, pizza – all crap, right? I pass up 95% of the product because we are learning it is mostly poison. Eating healthy is hard. 
Hey ya’ll, I hope you had a fantastic weekend. I took a little trip to Atlanta this weekend for Music Midtown, a huge music festival held in Piedmont Park. Who played? All these mutherfuckers…..
Before entering the show, we decided to have lunch at The Flying Biscuit, a southern chain know for it’s vegetarian-friendly options. After a 20 minute wait, we were shown to our table. I ordered tofu scramble. 
It arrived with an infection of tiny shards of turkey bacon. I asked my waiter, “is this meat?” I couldn’t exactly tell what the small pink strips were. He scooped up my plate and not long after the manager came over to our table. 
She slid down the wall behind her into a deferential squat and said “Words cannot describe how appalled I am that errant pieces of turkey bacon somehow ended up in your tofu scramble. I understand that when you adopt a commitment to a certain lifestyle, that the commitment is important. Your lunch is on the house. Is there anything else I can get you.” Take note, mistakes happen, but it is the way these mistakes are addressed that matters. The manager handled the situation with the utmost of professionalism. She acknowledged the error, expressed an understanding of why a vegetarian would be appalled at discovering turkey bacon in a tofu scramble, and immediately rectified the situation. This scenario could have resulted in a death-blowing Yelp review, but instead I must take time to create a pocket of praise for the Flying Biscuit and their top notch manager. 
After our free lunch, we walked over to the park. Attendees covered the shady hills blanket to blanket by the time we arrived. We headed down to the sunny field and sat for a bit of Adam Ant. Working an OG Captain Jack Sparrow look, Adam played a decent, if expected, set to a half-interested crowd. After Ant, we shuffled over to the mainstage for Ludacris. 
Who hates crowd participation? I do! Ludacris spent most of the set trying to coax his “true fans” (approximately 10%, though he erroneously believed that percentage to be much, much, higher) to sing along with his catalog of hits and flip the bird at one another. Most absurd? He tried to pretend that the show was spontaneous and that he was just pulling tracks out of his hat. To maintain that illusion, he probably shouldn’t have presented prepared background visuals and lighting to accompany his supposedly unplanned set. Don’t insult us Luda. To add further insult, three-quarters of the way into the set his DJ played Smells Like Teen Spirit. Yup, you absolutely read that shit correctly. Mutherfucking Nirvana. It was as if he and his people looked at each other and said, “What do white people like?” The completely irrelevant foray into mid 90′s grunge felt absolutely pandering and gross. Much like Snoop and Dre at Coachella, I felt intense 3rd person embarrassment and shame for the washed-up rapper. 
Next came Florence + the Machine, a band that has impressed me live in the past. Florence flubbed her intro; it was not noticeable to the general crowd, but she must have referenced the mistake at least 4 times in the 75 minute set. It wasn’t a big deal, but she belabored it to the point of annoyance, comparing the experience to arriving at school naked. An absolute PLAZA QUEEN set up next to us with his cheesy Bob Marley backpack and bracelets and proceeded to sing every single song at the top of his lungs completely off-key. It was so loud, disruptive, and pitchy that I unapologetically and continuously laughed out loud through the Coachella-similar set. He was so enthusiastic, I couldn’t bring myself to remind him that it was not his American Idol audition. It wasn’t just that his singing was bad, it was also the intensity and mood he was bringing to it – like he was at a Slayer show or something. At one point the kid threw up the sign of the beast – AT A FUCKING FLORENCE + THE MACHINE SHOW! Blanche, you’ve been dethroned; there is a new PLAZA QUEEN clawing at your crown, and he has a soundtrack child!
We secured such a favorable position for Florence at the mainstage, we couldn’t bring ourselves to give up our spots to navigate across the crowded field to hear Girltalk. Girltalk is super fun live, but we remained focused on the reason we came – Pearl Jam. When Florence finished, and the crowd began to shift, we gained another 30 feet towards the stage.
One major difference between Midtown and Coachella is that Coachella has way more geographical space with the polo grounds and all. By the end of the night Piedmont Park was asses to elbows everywhere we looked in every direction as far as the eye could see. I know Leah Love, your greatest fear right? The uncontrollable mass crowd could easily become a riot or stampede at any moment and there isn’t shit law enforcement, Jesus, or Eddie Vedder can do to stop it.
The dense crowd had more than its fair share of rude pushy assholes. Or maybe I was just in a mood, I’m not sure. I made some friends and I made some enemies. So we’re all standing around waiting for 60 minutes for PJ to start. The natives are getting restless. We’re staring at an empty stage. 
The crowd thickens and two girls roll up. Late twenties-early thirties, taller, one blonde with tats, the other dark brown overgrown frizzy curls. Brown-haired girl has shorts on and some sort of white doily top. At first all is chill. We’re all respecting each other’s personal space. 
But soon brown-haired girl gets a little sloppy, a little loud, a little big. And by big I mean her big ass is continuing to bump into me. In a crowd like this, people bump into each other, no big deal, I blew it off. After the third or fourth relatively firm contact, I gently guided her back to her spot and sweetly said “Mama I’m going to move you back over where you were.” All is calm. Girl is moved. The waiting continues. Her ass hit me again and this time in a wedge-in-front type of manner. Again, I say “could you please stop hitting me?” a little firmer this time. I stood my ground. 
This is the part where half of you will lose respect for me and the other will throw a fist in the air. Let me be perfectly clear: I’m not proud of what I’m about to confess. 
I overhear the girl saying to her blonde tatted friend I’m just going to stick my ass into this girl (meaning me obviously). The audacity! I was appalled. Anger surged through my body like steroids. So against all logic and common decency that’s when I hip checked the girl – hard. When she turned around surprised I sarcastically said excuse me in my best bitchy. 
She responded by saying she knew it wasn’t an accident. To which I respond, “You wanna tussle in this crowd?” She had a beer can in one hand and began to raise her other hand. I doubt seriously she was going to hit me, but this is where I would claim self-defense in a court of law. 
I reached up and I snatched a handful of hair and took the bitch down. Right there in front of everybody, to her knees, one hand. I really wasn’t trying to hurt her. If I were trying to hurt her I very easily could have taken out her front two teeth with my unicorn ring which I always wear to rock shows just for this very reason. 
Blonde friend freaked and started to go for a handful of my hair when my brave companion stepped in and pushed everyone apart. I threw up the fist, unicorn gleaming and said next time it’ll be this. (My very best “you wanna knuckle sandwich?”) That’s when the verbal bitch slap began. Blonde tatty kept shrieking “why?, why?, why?!” over and over again. “Why do you have to get ghetto?” (Which I found fucking hilarious, because really how else can you be in a fight but ghetto?). I said, “I asked you twice to stop touching me. You continued to stick your fat ass in my face, and I will not continue to be assaulted by you for the rest of the night.” Then brown-haired girl says, “My boyfriend loves my fat ass.” And I said, “I bet he does when he’s got you bent over fucking you up the ass and you’re screaming and you love it. I know your kind. (insert slow head to toe bitch scan) Yeah, I know your kind. I know your kind. (3X slow for effect) You are trash.” 
Look it wasn’t ladylike, smart, mature, or classy, but in the immortal word Steven Hyde, Where Zen ends ass-kicking begins. 
If you are still reading, when those two bitches left we had a great time. As an added bonus, the fight cleared quite a bit of space so we had a little breathing room. Plus, we made friends with everyone around us because 1) they wanted to know the fight gossip firsthand, and 2) they wanted to stay on the good side of the unstable hair-pulling psycho girl. 
Pearl Jam absolutely rocked our asses off with a killer set list including: Rearview Mirror, Crazy Mary, + the obligatory Black, Alive, Elderly Woman, Nothingman, and Betterman. 
Don’t forget about the Marshmallow Fluff. It’s a great alternative to using marshmallows which contain gelatin. 
Use marshmallow creme to make vegetarian-friendly rice treats and s’mores. Ricemellow for the vegans. 
After a delightful stay in Vancouver, I headed over to Victoria, B.C. and chowed on the best vegetarian Chinese ever at Lotus Pond. This 100% cruelty-free joint blew my mind with their extensive menu of mock meat and use of unusual vegetable varieties. Ever had a lotus root? Me either. Fake seafood, check. Faux duck, quack, quack. Food is served hot, quick, authentic, and delicious. The service is kind, attentive, and unobtrusive. Overall grade = a solid A.
From Victoria, we took a little ferry ride to Port Angeles. This is where we inadvertently got sucked into a vortex of Twilight tourism. Rather than fight it, we decided to embrace the fromage, so we dined at Bella Italia. This is the restaurant where Bella and Edward supposedly had their first date. We avoided the overpriced “mushroom ravioli special,” opting instead for a decent bowl of minestrone and a mediocre Margherita pizza. I asked the waitress if the place gets overrun with crazy-ass Twilight bitches, and she said for awhile it got so bad fans would steal the restaurant’s fancy leather-bound menus – which is such a profoundly dorky and pathetic move. 
After dinner, we hopped in the car and drove a little over an hour to Forks, Washington where we stayed at the hilarious Three Rivers Resort. This “resort” obviously used to cater mostly to fisherman, but has wisely shifted its marketing focus to appeal to the voracious and insatiable Twilight fans.
Even though our cabin smelled like a mean girl’s pussy, the owners were super nice, and the little cabin was an interesting departure from the standard hotel scene. That said, I’m glad we only stayed one night. 
Taking the advice of the kind proprietors of Three Rivers, we ventured down to the La Push reservation to Second Beach. The elders blessed us with a sunny day, so we strolled the immaculately clean sand, snapped photos of the offshore rock formations, and spotted starfish in the tide pools. Second Beach = trip highlight. 
Heading down the 101, we explored an enchantingly surreal hike through the mossy Hoh Rainforest. Within this dense green wilderness lives some of the few undisturbed ancient trees protected from the logging industry. As one of the few remaining unmolested areas of its kind, Hoh absolutely warrants protection from human destruction. After our 6 mile hike, we turned back on the 101, and saw an extremely auspicious double rainbow over head.
We had dinner in Aberdeen, the birthplace of the band Nirvana. From Cobainland, we traveled a little further and crossed the border into Oregon by way of Astoria where we settled in for the night. Tomorrow begins the second half of our journey where we will investigate The Goonies, Dita von Teese and the Redwoods. Keep your tray tables stowed bitches, we ain’t done yet. 