Vegan Breakfast & Lunch on a Carnival Cruise

I'm finally back from my Carnival cruise from New Orleans to Cozumel, Mexico. Though I was a little worried about finding vegan food on the ship, I barely touched the Larabars, Artisana nut butter go-packs, and rice cakes that I brought for back-up. Veggie food was everywhere!! The breakfast buffet offered plenty of early mornin' options. Several on-board restaurants catered to vegetarians, and the chef in the Paris Dining Room whipped me up special vegan meals every night. I even found delicious (and very carb-tastic) vegan food in Mexico!

Needless to say, I'll be breaking my trip photos up into several Vegan Mofo posts. I hope these posts over the next few days can be a resource to any other vegans researching food options on Carnival cruise lines. I know other people's blogs (and the PPK, especially from Great Garbonzo!) were a great help to me! I'll start tonight with a post on breakfast and lunch options on the Carnival Triumph (that was the name of our ship).

But first, here's a view from the top deck of the Triumph on day one before we set sail from New Orleans. You can see the skyline in the background (and yes, that is a waterslide in the foreground):

We set sail around 5 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. I had a lovely dinner in the Paris Dining Room that night, but more on that in a later post. By bedtime Thursday night, we were still in the Mississippi River. But I woke up on Friday morning to see this view from our cabin balcony. No land in sight!

My parents and I headed down to the Lido Deck for breakfast buffet. I wasn't sure if I'd find anything to eat, but I managed to pile plenty onto my plate — fried potatoes, grits and salsa, and whole wheat bread with peanut butter and jelly:

The Triumph has several little food counters for lunch options, and on Friday, I opted to try the Hong Kong Noodle Company. They were offering this Fried Tofu with Hearts of Palm and rice. The dish was delicious, but they were a little skimpy on the tofu. The food server guy only gave me three pieces!

Luckily, there was a giant salad bar on Lido Deck, so I filled my belly with this "everything salad":

I'll tell y'all all about Friday's dinner in tomorrow's post. But here's a shot of Saturday's breakfast from the buffet — thinly sliced fried potatoes (better than the ones on Friday), fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, oats with PB and jelly, and a bowl of melon. FYI: That's my dad's milk and my mom's eggs in the background.

Amazingly, I was still hungry in time for Saturday's lunch in Mexico. But I'll share my Mexican eats in a later post. I really want this one to focus on breakfast and lunch options on the boat.

We decided to forgo the breakfast buffet on Sunday in favor of a mornin' meal in the Paris Dining Room. You order off a menu in the dining room, so I picked orange and grapefruit sections (not pictured), tomato juice (not pictured), and hash browns:

I also ordered a bagel with guava jelly:

Since my meal wasn't as large as the buffet breakfast, I was hungry again by 11 a.m. My parents and I went through the line at the Coney Island Grille counter on Lido Deck, where I found this delicious Garden Burger with Fries:

You got to choose your own toppings, so I piled my patty with sauteed mushrooms and onions, ketchup, mustard, and relish.

Later on Saturday afternoon, I was hungry again. Something about having unlimited access to food makes me hungry all the time! So I stopped by the sushi bar for a Spinach Roll with Green Apple Sauce, Cucumber Salad, and the fixins:

We ate at the buffet again on Sunday morning, but my plate looked pretty similar to Friday morning's plate, so I didn't take a picture.

Well, that's it for breakfast and lunch. Not bad, huh? Granted, I didn't inquire as to the vegan-ness of the burger (I call those "don't ask, don't tell" burgers....horrible military policy but good policy for eating out as a vegan) or the breakfast potatoes. I believe one should be pretty adaptable when eating out. You don't want to turn people off of veganism by making it look hard. But that's just me. A more militant vegan might have had to ask a few more questions.

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow night with a full report on eating vegan dinner on a Carnival cruise ship.