Wednesday's "What We Ate April 8-14, 2013"

We were on the road again this week, this time getting to go to Duluth. John had a 3-day work training up there, so he stowed Ruby & I away so that we could spend some time up there with family & friends. It's always such a treat to get to go back to Duluth. It's such a profoundly gorgeous place & a piece of my heart will definitely always be there.

Something that's not so wonderful about traveling can be the food situation. As we were leaving town, it was nearing dinner time, which when we're traveling, can be a dangerous time between me & the Mr. We are both very budget-conscious, but at the same time, we both enjoy killer food. I'll admit that we both even kinda enjoy all of the junk food available when we travel, but we decided (& neither one of us regretted it!) to do our best on this trip to not eat tons of junk. Well, I decided & John supported me.

For example, we chose to eat at Panera instead of another fast food restaurant. Sure, it's still Panera & not the healthiest thing ever. I suppose I could have made dinner ahead of time & brought it with, but I was already overwhelmed with packing & cleaning before we left. But we didn't eat at McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, or Taco Bell. Sure, we paid 4 times as much for our dinner, but we didn't have the fast food mumbly jumblies. 

Panera's kids meals come with this tube of organic yogurt. Sure there's still a bit of sugar in it, but not much else besides organic yogurt & blueberries. It was a pleasant surprise!

We had a fridge in our hotel room, so I was able to pack us healthy snacks like yogurt, string cheese, turkey, cut up vegetables, & apples, as well non-fridge food like bananas, bread, raisins, pistachios, almonds, homemade crackers, & a bit of chocolate for when we needed a snack during HGTV (omygoodness, I'm so glad we don't have cable).

We tried, as best as we could, to make healthy choices while we dined out. This was really hard & we definitely didn't eat well at every meal, but we tried more than we usually do, so that was a success in my book.

Ruby & I ate lunch with her auntie Keri at the Duluth Grill for lunch one day. She could hardly wait to get her little grubbies on that gorgeous fruit!

And if you weren't glued to the weather channel/facebook, you might not know that Duluth had a few days of massive snowstorms while we were there (& another storm as we were leaving). On Thursday & Friday, there was over 14 inches of snow & another 4 inches over the weekend. Surprise, surprise. I was disappointed because I was going to take John out for his birthday on Thursday (my mom was even going to watch Ruby!) but we were snowed in at the hotel. There were scary death-wish messages on TV & the radio, pleading with people to not be on the roads. We mostly listened.

 Thursday's dinner: Osaka's sushi. Happy birthday John!

And here's where things take a turn for the worse- we went to a new brew pub. John had fish & chips & I had mac 'n' beer cheese. It was pretty good, but I think I'll always be partial to Fitger's Brewhouse. It's just in my blood.

 Friday's dinner: Canal Park Brewing Company's mac 'n' beer cheese. Yep, that's kielbasa.

We stayed with another one of Ruby's token auntie's apartments on Friday & Saturday nights. On Saturday morning, Stacy shared her dad's out-of-this-world bloody Mary recipe with us. None of us had bloodies before, so this was quite the adventure, but a downright delicious one! I can't wait to whip up some more in the (very near) future.

Our first bloodies!

While we mostly held it together during the trip, we got lost (emotionally) on the way home. We chowed down a bunch of peanut m&m's & diet coke, but for me it was totally stress eating. It was snowing hard, then freezing rain, & finally just raining. I was in the back with Ruby for awhile, but got pretty carsick, so I ended up driving, which put me more on edge (but at least I held in my lunch, which was at the Northern Waters Smokehaus, by the way). It ended up taking us over 6 hours (usually 4) to get back home & man, was I white-knuckled & tense! But it's all over now & we're back to our normal routine of trying to eat 80% of our food from real healthy sources.

How do you stick to your healthy convictions while traveling?

What We Ate April 8-14, 2013

Monday: Lentil soup with sausage, chard, & garlic with a side salad
Tuesday: We ate at Panera on the way out of town
Wednesday: My mom fixed us chicken enchiladas with "yumyum" for dessert (this famous pistachio dessert my mom makes)
Thursday: We ate sushi from Osaka to celebrate John's 30th
Friday: We ate at the Canal Park Brewing Company
Saturday: My step mom fixed us Chicken Marsala (out of the Duluth Grill cookbook) with carrots, asparagus, rolls, a side salad, & cheesecake for dessert
Sunday: We snacked a bunch in the car, so we really didn't eat an official dinner (translation: we ate m&m's for dinner)

There are now 14 week's worth of meals up, so check them out if you're needing a little dinner planning inspiration!