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Mushroom-tourism, vegan eats around the world, and avoiding food waste while on vacation.
Travels With Vegans
Eunice Reyes searches Southern California — and the world — for the best vegan restaurants and shares her discoveries with her hungry social media followers.
Plant-based travel and food content creator Eunice Reyes could find only one vegan-friendly restaurant when she first visited Valencia, Spain.
A year later, when she accepted an English teaching position in Spain, the irony wasn’t lost on her when she was placed in Valencia. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is hilarious. The one place where I thought it sucked to be plant-based is where I am now,’” she says.
Moving to a country that’s known for foods like jamón, seafood paella, and croquettes, Eunice expected the worst. But what she found instead was that in Valencia — and in cities like Barcelona and Madrid — plant-based eaters had plenty of options.
It’s not uncommon for vegan travelers like Eunice to assume that certain destinations like Spain can be inaccessible. But through Rated V for Vegan, Eunice’s Youtube and Instagram account, she highlights vegan food spots around the world and aims to show her audience that they can travel anywhere.
“I wanted to show people how exciting plant-based food can be, and that it shouldn’t be as intimidating,” she says. “I just want to tell people, it’s not as hard as you think.”
– Tess Kazenoff
Mushrooms Are Having a Moment
Mycotourism in Quebec is serving up delicious morsels from the forest with a side of ecological appreciation.
It’s September. A sign stuck in the lawn next to the walkway up to Côté Est, a restaurant in rural Quebec, reads, “Le Mois du Champignon.” It’s Mushroom Month inside this grand, four-story ranch house with five dormers and a wraparound veranda overlooking the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.
As I make my way to the entrance, I see a second sign hung with a length of string beside the door, which illustrates a self-guided touring route with 17 locations and 25 participating restaurants called “Circuit du Mois du Champignon.”
The month-long celebration of everything fungi in the region is just one of hundreds of mycotourism activities across Quebec ranging from seasonal dishes at restaurants to foraging outings. And it’s part of a worldwide trend.
Walking in, I find a boutique with locally brewed and distilled beverages, specialized cookbooks dedicated to mushroom gastronomy, fungi-themed T-shirts, and unusual foods. One such product is particularly difficult to imagine consuming — maple syrup with lobster mushrooms. (What does that even taste like, I wonder. Would I pour it on my pancakes?)
The benefits of mycotourism are numerous and varied. Restaurants like Côté Est can expand their businesses away from the kitchen and dining room into the wider community. Other restaurants support a network of foragers. Patrons — from those who simply dine on wild mushroom dishes to the more adventurous who head out on foraging missions — are recipients of environmental education.
– Darcy Rhyno
Vacation Donations
Diane Daniel founded this nonprofit to give vacationers a place to put their leftover food (and everything else) other than the trash.
Unlike the minutiae of our everyday lives, waste isn’t something we can escape with a nice vacation. In fact, waste generated by vacationers is an increasing issue as the short-term rental market continues to grow, driven by traveler demand for square footage and a proper kitchen over the simple check-in/check-out convenience of a hotel room.
Frustrated by the amount of goods she saw going to waste in her cozy community along Florida’s Gulf Coast every year, Diane founded Vacation Donations in early 2022. “After a stay, give it away” is the organization’s tagline, encouraging vacationers to donate leftover food and recreational items rather than discarding or abandoning them.
“No one’s going to say, ‘I like to waste things. I like to throw things away,’ but any barrier to donating is huge, especially on vacation,” Diane says.
She distributes fliers and fridge magnets to other short-term rental owners to display in their properties, which puts useful information right in vacationers’ line of vision. Food can be donated to the local food pantry, children’s items can go to a take-a-toy/leave-a-toy bin, towels and bedding can be donated to an animal shelter, and books can go to the local library.
– Summer Rylander
