Wednesday was the first day the expo (Natural Products Expo West) opened, but the hall we wanted to see didn’t open until noon so that meant we had a bit of free time in the morning.

I woke up just before 6:00 (I didn’t get much sleep) and spent some time working on blog posts and Instagram, and we left around 9:00 am to get vegan donuts.

I randomly found The Donuttery in Huntington Beach on the Fake Meats Instagram and I am so glad I did. Look at all these vegan options! Ahh!

Normally when I go to a place that has vegan options, it just one or two, sometimes up to six. It was amazing to pick from so many! We went with raspberry jelly filled, cake donut with peanuts on top, yeast donut with coconut on top, a fritter, a glazed yeast donut, and a long john with vegan bacon on top.

I also got a chai that was really good.

Since we were so close to the beach (Huntington Beach) we drove there to enjoy our donuts. It was Steven’s first time seeing the Pacific Ocean! We walked out and admired it a bit, then opened the back of the car and sat there eating our donuts and enjoying the ocean view.

I am so glad we went this day when it was sunny! We went again before the end of our trip but the weather was rainy.

It was kind of funny to be eating donuts while everyone else worked out. Ha.

All of the donuts were really good. My favorite was the raspberry filled and Steven’s was the glazed. (We ended up finishing them all by the end of the day, except the bacon one. We both took one bite of it but that was each of ours least favorite.)

We made our way to the expo after that. We had read to park in a certain garage to get close to the hall we were going to today but realized it was full and absolutely chaotic when we got there, so we ended up going to the remote lot (free! yay!) at the Angels Stadium and taking the shuttle back to the expo (which took a lot of time, oops…).

The Anaheim Convention Center is massive. It has five halls in it, and a few other buildings, and we were only trying to go to two floors (with new products) in the north building on Wednesday so we could meet some long-time Fake Meats business partners in person for the first time, and check out the new products.

This photo below gives you an idea of how crowded the floors were, and that is just a tiny sliver of the show.

It was basically a penguin walk to get from booth to booth, but we were able to meet everyone we wanted to, and try the new products we wanted to as well! We walked up and down each row, since it was the new product area.

Surprisingly, the favorite thing we sampled was Meati fake meat, which is made from mushroom root. I say surprising, because we both don’t care for mushrooms. But it tasted amazing – probably the most realistic fake meat I’ve had.

I took home a few samples of other things to try, but mostly focused on the fake meats and plant based items since we were there for work.

After the expo we drove to the Blue Bell Foundation for Cats, where my friend Instagram-friend Matt volunteers. Blue Bell takes in senior cats whose owners can’t care for them anymore (typically because they’ve passed away, or are unwell). So all of the cats there are chiller senior cats.

We loved seeing the place, meeting all the cats, and hanging out with Matt. Wednesday is not his normal volunteer day and our schedule was a bit wonky and I really appreciate him taking the time to meet with us!

I met Matt in person for the first time at Cat Con in October and was sad Blue Bell did not work with our schedule then, so I am really grateful we got to go this time!

Matt gave me the sweetest drawing of Apollo (I now have sketches of all our cats from him!) and another volunteer that follows me on Instagram had given him a gift for me as well! People are so kind!

Since Blue Bell is so close to Laguna Beach we drove down to the ocean and on Highway 1 a bit. Then we headed to the vegan sushi place our Airbnb host owns. She sent me a gift card to use there and I was super curious about it!

Um… let’s just say sushi is not for me. And the restaurant was super odd. Ha. I felt bad I made us go there.

We actually got back at a decent time Wednesday night – 9:00 pm. Steven worked while I tried to catch up a bit on socials then we were in bed at a decent time – just after 10:00.