Tag: Local Food

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Weight Loss Exercise

Tips for Healthy Travel





Healthy travel seems like a crazy and oppressive way to not have fun when on the road and that is that last thing I want to tell someone to do. Travel is a time for changing lifestyle and exploring what you haven’t seen. I find myself that the trouble with all of this is at we also have a problem staying in shape and staying healthy.

It all comes with our priorities and how we plan.

When you travel the planning needs to happen before you leave home and will finish when you get home so here are 10 tips to help you stay in shape and arrive home in even better shape then you left

Eating tips for Healthy Travel

1. Pack snacks for the road – whether I am traveling in a car or in a plane I am never sure where my next snack will come from so I always pack my backpack with some fruit. I have always worried about this when going through security at the airport but fact is I have never been stopped so it seems to be ok to bring some fruit.

Healthy Travel Tips

Healthy Travel Tips

2. Water not Soda – It is very easy to drink some soda or juice and I know that this will happen when I travel so I always stop at a grocery store in my destination and buy bottles of water. I don’t tend to pack water before as it is not allowed past airport security but it is always handy to have a bottle or two in the car for healthy travel outside of airports.

3. Eat local food – One of the great things about travel is the fact that you get a chance to eat locally grown produce as well as the local cuisine from an area. The sooner that you can eat fresh fruits and veggies after they are picked the better they are for you, so try to find out what grows locally and eat away!

4. Morning and Night Water – Because schedules are such a mess when traveling it is really hard to keep to a normal plan, and you probably don’t want to anyway. What I do is as soon as I wake up in the morning I drink a big glass or two of water or if in a sketchy area just a big bottle of water and again at night when back to the hotel I do the same.

Elevations, different temperatures and lots of different exercise and eating plans will mess you up so try to have a good hydration plan starting and finishing with water to be sure.

5. Watch the Restaurant Meals – I am a big fan of going out for meals but recognize that what I eat is not always that good for me. When we travel as a family we always get a kitchenette in the hotel room so that we can make the majority of our meals with food we know and then have one meal out a day.

6. Order Responsibly – One of the biggest problems we all run into besides scheduling eating times when we are on the road is the bad ways that we order. Healthy travel in a restaurant starts with ordering with discernment and making sure your choices are good.

When you are ordering at a restaurant watch how they cook your meal. In most places, just like at home the chef will cook for taste not for nutrition. Stay away from sauces and deep fried food and instead get grilled meat and salad or veggies instead of fries

Exercise Tips for Healthy Travel

1. Book Hotels with Amenities – when booking a hotel for your travels make sure there is some kind of gym, google the hotel if need be. the fact is that a little exercise will make your travel more comfortable and give you the energy to make the most of your days and if you don’t set yourself up for success you will fail to exercise.

2. Plan your exercise and activities – even though you probably do not know when you are going where on your travels everyone seems to plan the next day at least. In the evening before decide how much exercise you will be getting, a hike maybe? Surfing all day? Sitting by the pool? And plan your exercise around that. If you will be out sightseeing all day then plan to go to the gym for a weight workout in the morning. If you are just by the pool then start the day with cardio. If you do cardio and then walk around all day you might run out of gas before the day is done so plan ahead!

3. Plan Active Activities – Now when travelling on vacation this is easy enough to do but when you are travelling on business it is a lot more difficult. You can perhaps go out in the evening and walk the town, like many people plan a jog around the new city you are in (be careful of unknown neighbourhoods) or even just rent a bike to travel around instead of always taking a car, this gets you active and you also get to meet more people and see more in your journeys.

So there are nine things you can do. This week in my travels across the west I had some trouble keeping all of these intact and ended up suffering. At home there is a fridge and a schedule but on the road that schedule and access to healthy travel was only as good as the way I made it, and sometimes I did not do so well

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General Weight Loss Tips

Yogurt Brownie Sunday

My sweet tooth knows no bounds. As soon as I declare “self, let’s get serious about this whole weight loss business” I start craving sweets. Seeing as how this is the year without refined sugar with a couple exceptions (I’m looking at you Beaches Resort) I’ve had to get a little creative.

And here friends, is a Sunday, just as good as any old ice cream thing you’d find elsewhere. The star is, of course, the brownie. But how?

Meet The Pure Bar (organic, raw, refined sugar free). The main contenders are dates, agave nectar, cashews, cocoa, almonds and a proud “and that’s all!” at the end. I love them and buy them so often that our local grocery store has a hard time meeting my demand.

To me, the taste is very similar to a Little Debbie brownie. My husband would disagree and actually does not understand my love for these bars.

You guys remember the rumor about Lara Bar cherry and pecan pie bars tasting just like the real thing and we all went to the store and some of us (no names mentioned) bought a box on Amazon hoping that somehow someone finally figured out how to make dates and nuts taste like buttery crust and gooey filling? And then, well, it tasted more like fruit and nuts than gooey pies and we all cried? No?

This bar is so good, if you’re not my husband, go buy some and thank me later. Word on the street is that Trader Joe’s has them, Amazon has them and my local Food Lion stocks them just for me (I think).

All you need is 1/2 C whole plain yogurt, one Pure Bar Chocolate Brownie, 1 T all-fruit jam (melted or stirred in with the yogurt) and 1 T shredded coconut (optional).

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General Weight Loss Tips

Token Fat Girl Cook Along: Gyros

Welcome to the second installment of the Token Fat Girl Cook Along! This week we made gyros. And the challenge was to make one ingredient from scratch. The typically gyro consists of meat, such as chicken, beef or lamb, tzatziki sauce (yogurt with cucumbers and dill), and pita. The rest is up to you.

I really cut it close this week with my gyro making them last night and finding myself at the grocery store around 8pm. The gyros were served around 10pm last night so my challenge was making gyros with meat and yogurt sauce from scratch in a limited amount of time.

I couldn’t find a lot of lamb and I am weird about buying ground meat from chain grocery stores so I decided to buy lamb chops and steaks instead. I knew that I would have to puree the meat anyway and figured I could skip having ground meat.

I used this recipe as a base. But skipped all of the refrigeration. I placed the meat (pulled from bone) into the food processor with four slices of thick-cut bacon, 1 medium yellow onlion, marjoram, oregano, salt and pepper. Processed until it became a puree. Which honestly, is kinda gross looking.

I spread the meat puree into a bread dish and baked at 350 degrees for about an hour. During that hour I would take the meat log out and drain the fat. I did that about three times.

Once the log is done, let it sit for about 10 minutes before cutting into thin slices. I then browned these slices on the skillet. I found the slicing part difficult as the meat was falling apart.

On to the tzatziki sauce. This was another area of short cuts for me. I could not find plan unflavored greek yogurt at my local grocery store. Nor could I find plan full fat yogurt. How annoying is that? My local Food Lion has about a million flavors of crap-tastic chemical yogurt, but not one container of full fat yogurt. I remembered that I had some plain full fat yogurt at home, at least a cup left and some cream-top sour cream and decided to make that work.

I didn’t have time to strain the yogurt, so I just left it as is. 1 C full fat yogurt, 3/4 C full fat sour cream, 1/2 t (plus more to taste) garlic powder, 1-2 T lemon juice, fresh dill, chopped english cucumbers and salt and pepper. This came out delicious. I’ve made tzatziki sauce many times before and found this just as refreshing.

Tzatziki sauce.

Store bought flat bread.

Finished gyro! The verdict? Delicious! Josh really liked it a lot too. I am not set on this being the best gyro meat recipe. It was great with everything, but not flavorful enough on it’s own. I liked it though. The process grossed me out a lot. I think I’d like to try this with a rotisserie oven next time.

I’m also pleased with how good it was on less time. I skipped a ton of steps and the results did not suffer. This could easily be made on a regular week night in about an hour.

Thank you so much to those who participated!

Caroline: My Fascinating Life

Rachael: Treadmill Truth

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February 4th Challenge!

Post Date: February 10th 2011

Details: We will have one week to complete the recipe and then post (with photos) our results on the same day.

To make the recipe a little more fun I will post a challenge for the recipe such as: you must use an artichoke in your recipe, or use one local ingredient, or it must be made bento-box style. I encourage us all to make the recipe your own and find ways to make it work individually. For example: making it vegan, gluten-free, made with whole wheat pasta, make it miniature, deconstructed, change the filling, make it low calorie etc.

All you have to do is leave a comment in this post letting me know you’re in and I will link to your blog on reveal day!

Our  assignment begins Thursday January 27th, making the following Thursday (the 3rd) is reveal day! You can make the recipe at any time during the week, just make sure you schedule your post for Thursday.

Here is this week’s recipe:

This recipe (and photo) comes from Best Recipes Evar.

Challenge: Make 1/2 or 1/4 of the recipe as is and use the rest of the dough in an inventive way. Make pizza crust, cinnamon rolls, calzones…you name it! Make it your own.

Time to fire up those ovens!

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