One of the most classic happy hour items I see in bars that I miss after changing to a vegan diet are chicken strips and buffalo wings. I'm realizing now that it wasn't so much the chicken part that I missed as it was the crispy fried outside drenched in your favorite BBQ sauce or hot wing sauce. The inside of the delicious little morsels could be just about any vegetable or vegan meat replacement. Its all about the crispy outside and a quality sauce.
The inaugural post for Vegan Happy Hour is inspired by a recent excursion to a well known Chinese restaurant chain for some drinks in celebration of receiving a sparkling annual performance review at work. I had just spent a week in Virginia on business getting up at unholy hours of the morning (a.k.a. midnight! have you ever started working at midnight?!) and the first thing I wanted to do when I got back was to grab some drinks with the wife-unit and get some decent, clean, vegan food. It was extremely hard to find vegan food while on travel. Airport food just wasn't available outside of nuts and raisins and the area I was staying in was a shrine to the fast food empires. I needed something tasty to nom on and drinks to reset my system.
