Avocado red velvet cupcake

In Boston and out of money? What’s a broke grad student to do?? Eat expo hall samples for lunch, obviously.

Starting with an avocado cupcake was unwise because I’m feeling overly sweeted this weekend. This led me to run straight for the first savory item I could find and usually wouldn’t eat.

Gardein fake meat

Meaty

Fake meat isn’t so much my thing because it’s heavily processed aaaand I don’t eat meat for a reason so I’m not really looking to recreate its taste/texture. Nevertheless, for people just transitioning to a vegetarian diet and still craving animals, this would be a good stepping stone. It’s totally good and the texture is more like tofu.

Cherry salad from Sargento

Sorry, Sargento. I skipped the cheese.

Speaking of cheese... pizza.

Follow Your Heart vegan cheesy toast

This was a pretty exciting moment for me. Perhaps you’ve heard that I hate, hate, hate vegan cheese. My experience was with Daiya, and my experience was terrible. I gag just thinking about it. I didn’t even want to try this mess again but I figured an expo hall was as good a place as any to throw up in front of a group. Wait… that’d be bad. But guess what… I loved it. Vegan cheese success! I never thought I’d see the day.

Soup taste test

I also sampled three soups from Kettle Kitchen. The veggie (in the middle) was pretty mmmeh, but the other two were good as far as prepared soups go.

Finally, dessert…

Peanut butter chocolate mousse pie

That mousse pie was outrageous.

So there you have it: a relatively substantial meal on the FREE train. Hop on it.