Vegan BBQ in Ecuador

(I hope this fits this community. The food communities are all about recipes, but this is more about an experience. Please let me know if I did a mistake by posting it here.)

My girlfriend and I went on a Glamping-Vacation a little while ago, to treat us to something special and relaxing after a hard year. Both our kids were out, so we took advantage of that and had a wonderful weekend in the middle of nowhere, Ecuador.

We took the cheapest option possible, so we had to cook for ourselves, or I had to cook for ourselves since my girlfriend doesn't like to cook (she recently learned how to prepare artichokes, though). I went a little crazy in the local supermarket that does carry Beyond Meat products - something that is usually a) not available around here and b) way out of my budget and only regarded as a treat.

I got 4 italian links and a package of hamburgers, plus a bag of Portobello mushrooms. I also brought some pretzel buns from my bakery, since those are just the best to make burgers.

$14 for the links, $8 for the burger patties - that's steep for Ecuador, where the minimum wage is $2,95 per hour (but exploitation is common, some people work for $1,25 or $1,50. To be fair, low work quality is also common, so "fair" is somewhere in the middle). A treat, once or twice a year, no more.

After a wonderful coffee in the morning (everything tastes better on vacation), I prepared the veggies by marinating them. One with a Tandoori-Spice-Blend that I make, the other with a Cajún-Style blend, lemon juice, oil, and a bit of freshly cracked black pepper.

We ate in the late afternoon. Since the weather was very damp, it took us a while to get the grill going - the coal had been sitting in the air too long. But with a lot of effort that didn't fall short of a work-out, we got it started, and the results were most satisfying.

My girlfriend still refers to it as the best BBQ she ever had - and that says a lot, since she's an omnivore and her parents own one of the best grill/bbq restaurants in town, so she knows what she's talking about. And, the Beyond Meat italian spicy links were better than meat links, according to her - and we have a very famous butchery around here, too.

I had prepared way too much, as always. But it served us as a late breakfast the next morning, and I'm pretty sure that Peregrin Took would be quite proud of us.

It was a great weekend, very necessary for both of us, as a couple as well as individuals. Batteries recharged, goodbye Misty Mountains, back to the real world!

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Any feedback is always welcome, so are questions.

More about me: My introduction post