The amazing new vegan goodies from Natural Products Expo West! »

Alternative title: How the West Was Won

I don’t even know where to start. I spent my entire weekend at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, CA (for a good time, search #vegansatexpo on Twitter and Instagram). It was like being at summer camp! I met so many people I follow online, or vice versa, and I ATE ALL THE FREE (!!!!!) FOOD (mostly ice cream, which you wouldn’t be able to tell by these photos, but it’s true). Rather than going into extreme details about each and every thing I tried (that’s what follow-up posts are for!), I figured I’d give y'all what you really want: FOOD PORN.

In all my excitement about Mr. Dewie’s, I forgot to take a photo (thanks for sending one, guys!) The owners were so generous, and let me try EVERY FLAVOR. They were all good, but this caramel almond was my fave! The cashew milk is so delectably rich! There are also a few flavors made from almond milk, which totally ruled.

Gardein’s new Fishless Filets were a definite star of the Expo. Flaky, “fishy,” crispy… NAILED IT! And the cute little samples they passed out were served with Follow Your Heart’s Tarter Sauce. It was a match made in vegan heaven!

I’m embarrassed to say how many samples I had at The Piping Gourmets booth, but let’s just say I did EXTRA research and the results were unanimous: their gluten-free, whoopie pies are AMAZEBALLS. My top picks were the chocolate with mint and the chocolate with raspberry.

This is one of FOUR new flavors of Phoney Baloney’s Coconut Bacon. They were all stupendous!!! This “apple fennel” flavor really stood out to me. I’ll be throwing this in tofu scrambles, fo’ sho’!

Do you know who the Spork Foods sisters are? They’re about as cute as can be, and man can they make some tasty pancakes! Jenny and Heather are the official ambassadors for GO Veggie! Foods, and made blueberry cream cheese pancakes with the GO Veggie! plain cream cheese. Delish!

Edward & Son’s Native Forest has SO many awesome new products coming out. This is the first ever organic jackfruit! A few other new items I’m excited about are the organic coconut milk powder, and organic sweet potato flour! I can’t wait to play around with those.

The Sophie’s Kitchen “vegantoona” was another Expo fave of many of the vegans I talked to. Made from pea protein and konjac root, this “toona” has a really unique taste and nails the catfood-esque consistency of the “real thing.” Plus, it’s shelf-stable, so guess what’s going in my earthquake kit?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Beyond Meat’s "Taco Beyond" booth. I already raved about their new Beef-Free Crumbles in a previous post, but this was just SO RAD! And why isn’t it a real thing??!!

As I said, there is NO way I could cover every product I saw there (and, sadly, I didn’t see everything!), but these are some of my favorites. I will definitely write more in-depth about some of these, and others that I left out. ESPECIALLY MORE ICE CREAM!