Well, since my last update, the on that consisted primarily of French fries and soda pop (and starvation) over the course of several days, things have been quite a bit better. On Friday, after I picked up my partner at the Milwaukee airport, we went out to Olive Garden in Madison.
Now now, I know the Olive Garden may sound a bit bland, but I’ve lived near one (and the commercials) for my entire life and never had the pleasure of venturing inside. We showed up pretty late (about 10:30 pm), so we were the only ones around, but we still got great service. The waitress completely understood the vegan thing and let me bug her about things like the garlic breadsticks ingredients and went out of her way to check about things that even I hadn’t thought to ask about (sometimes I forget to say no dressing on salads, but she came out and asked me beforehand!).
Anyway, the olive garden gets a thumbs up from me for their service and their linguine with tomato basil sauce, and it wasn’t too expensive either.
Saturday was just as tasty, but only included one quasi-meal and one huge snack after starving all day long. I spent my day manning a booth and giving a horrible talk at hybridfest (you can read a bit about it here), and forgetting to either buy food or eat. That night I was invited out to a blue grass thing down on the University of Wisconsin campus, so I got to take a nighttime spin on my bike, a first ever for me in a bike friendly city like Madison. The point of this story is to comment on my midnight stop at a nameless grocery story, where I was able to pick up some Peanut Butter Zig-Zag, Amy’s burritoish complete meal thing, and some sort of vegan buffalo wings.
You’ll have to excuse my descriptions, but I was too caught up in the deliciousness to take pictures or remember what I was eating. What I do remember, however, is the great vegan meal that Eric, the HybridFest coordinator, had made of up more. Mushroom quinoa, they said. Best $10 meal I’ve ever had (and I still need to pay him for that!).
Anyway, sorry for the endless ranting. Now that I’m on the farm for a bit, I’ll git some good recipes or say something meaningful to actually keep ya’ll interested, 
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Be careful! Olive Garden lists egg ingredients in all of their pastas!
Yep, found this out afterwards, troublesomely. The breadsticks are still good though.