Travelling and Clean Eating: Fail

Last week we decided to go visit my parents, who live across the province. Literally. We drove all the way across the province. With an infant. Yes we are crazy.

Normally, road trips are fuelled with gas station grub including, but not limited to, beef jerky (read: sodium overload), chocolate bars, chips, candy, and pop.  I decided to try and make our trip a little healthier.

The night before we left I cut up a couple carrots into match sticks, created my own trail mix using dark, organic chocolate chips, peanuts, almonds and walnuts. I had my two Brita water bottles filled and chilled, ready to go for the morning.

I forgot the water in the fridge when we left, despite being beside the rest of the food I had packed. The carrots were gone by 10:00am (about 4 hours into our journey), but my husband really enjoyed the trail mix. The nuts really gave him that extra energy needed before we stopped for lunch.

About half way into our journey we really needed to stop to stretch our legs and get the baby some time out of the car seat. It was about 6 hours in and I’m sure it was time to feed him. (My breasts were huge and starting to leak!)

Thats where my clean eating took a nose dive. Not that I went for McDonald’s but it probably wasn’t the cleanest of eating either. We stopped for lunch at a popular sandwich shop that I am not going to name (Hint: it has been said that their bread contains the same ingredients as yoga mats??).

My husband and I shared a larger sandwich of spicy italian deli meats, probably loaded with preservatives and salt.

Once we got to my parents house it was pretty late and my mom had ordered pizza. I cant turn down my gracious host’s offering, so I ate pizza. Four slices of pepperoni goodness.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t much better. I went out with friends for some lunch to catch up. While I did order a spinach salad, I also ordered a cranberry juice which I am pretty sure was cranberry cocktail (i.e., sugar water with flavour).

We went out for a fancy prime rib (not so lean) dinner loaded with homemade spatzle and steamed veggies. I ordered the 10oz cut.

Mom made spaghetti with white (gasp) pasta, and before that we stopped for appetizers and snacked on pulled pork sliders and a margarita flatbread washed down with a caesar.

We did have one good clean meal with BBQ chicken, grilled shrimp and a garden salad.

On the trip home we loaded up on the pop, candy and chocolate bars at the gas stations, Tim Horton’s for breakfast and ended the day with a pizza, because by the time we got home, I was not cooking. Plus we had no food in our fridge.

So not the greatest time to write up a blog post on clean eating. Road Trip: Fail.

However, when I weighed in the next morning I remained at 125.6 lbs. But I didn’t feel good about it, mentally and physically. I know when your on vacation you should let loose and not worry about what you eat. But by the end of the trip, I am back to feeling exhausted, my son is irritable, and I am losing the motivation to keep eating clean and healthy.

My cravings for the sweet and sinful are returning. I must get back on track. We have been back for 4 days now and it’s time to get my (our) butts in gear. I feel like I haven’t exercised in months. I am going to start walking everyday now, eventually leading up to running.

Starting tomorrow.

Meatball Problems

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with ground chicken but it’s not normal. You know that rumor that a certain fast food chain’s chicken nuggets are made out of pink goop?

Photo courtesy of http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2551238/McDonalds-reveal-EXACTLY-chicken-nuggets-note-not-pink-goop.html

It’s not goop, that’s fricken ground chicken!

I tried to make these chicken meatballs stuffed with goat cheese. Key word: “tried”. I used ground up rolled oats in place of breadcrumbs and added 1/8 cup of almond milk instead of 1/4 cup of regular, but otherwise followed the recipe to a T. The mixture was very wet and sticky and I knew there was no way of forming little balls out of this goop!

I ground up extra oats to, hopefully, dry the mixture out a bit, but it still wasn’t forming balls. I dumped all the oats in my cupboard into the blender and ground them up but still ended up with a giant bowl of pink goop that would not form.

Ready to give up and order a pizza, my chef husband jumps in to save the day.

He threw the large glob in a large skillet and scramble fried it until it resembled crumbled sausage.

Meanwhile I made a basic tomato sauce:
In olive oil, sauté one medium, diced white onion and two minced cloves of garlic in a large pot on medium for 3 minutes. Add one diced red pepper and continue to sauté until softened. Add a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, 1 tbsp Italian seasoning, one bay leaf, pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper and simmer for half an hour.

I asked my Facebook friends for help picking a delicious alternative to white pasta and, thankfully, my good friends Jax and Brooke pointed me in the direction of brown rice pasta. I tossed the brown rice linguini with the chicken, the sauce, and the goat cheese, topped with fresh parsley and grated Grana Padano.

It was fantastic! Thank you Jax and Brooke! The brown rice pasta tastes like the white wheat pasta! And if you use the gluten free rolled oats instead of breadcrumbs you have yourself a delicious gluten free meal.

You can feel good about going in for seconds of this clean eating pasta dish.

Do you have a favourite gluten free, go to? Leave me a comment!

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2 Month Mark

I was so excited to see this on the scale this morning! Especially after the Blizzards we splurged on last night! If you remember, I started this clean eating experiment at 135.6 and am now down 10lbs in just 2 months while remaining quite sedentary.

I also have a TON of energy today. Here’s how the day went:

7:30am           Get up early and eat my strawberry overnight oats for breakfast.

8:00am          Half-ass watch Rachel Ray while contemplating my new blog post.

9:00am          Enter a few invoices, print off a couple cheques for suppliers and gather the necessary paperwork for a trip to the office.

10:00am        Pack baby in carseat, grab diaper bag and laptop bag and head out the door.

10:01am         Lock the door

10:01:30am   Baby loudly expels his breakfast into his diaper.

10:02:45am   Unlock door and go inside to change baby.

10:45am          Arrive at the office and let co-workers coo over the baby while casually talking about dropping our children on their heads (by accident) and the different types of poopy diapers.

11:15am           Said baby starts fussing and boss is no where to be found to touch base with before the long weekend, so I pack him up to leave (the baby, not my boss).

11:16am           Boss arrives. Unpack baby.

11:45am           Finish touching base with my boss before the long weekend then head home where I completed some more work, getting statements out to all of our customers.

1:15pm              Realize I haven’t had lunch yet so I make fried eggs on whole grain toast with grilled tomatoes, spinach and hummus.

1:20pm             Sit down to eat said lunch.

1:21pm              Baby decides he’s hungry. Feed said baby.

1:35pm              Eat cold lunch. It’s still good.

1:50pm             Get some house work done. Cleaned the kitchen, cleaned both bathrooms, tidied the living room and bedroom, and did a load of laundry.

2:30pm             Enjoy nice play shesh with the little guy.

2:45pm              Monster wants to eat again.

3:00pm              Said monster finally falls asleep.

4:45pm              Fold laundry. Child still sleeping.

4:57pm              Realise I forgot to send out some important work emails before the long weekend. Quickly start up the computer and fire them off. Baby still sleeping

5:00pm              Tired, starving husband arrives home from work. My little angel is STILL sleeping.

5:15pm               Make vegetarian black bean chilli from the clean eating challenge.

6:00pm               Serve up said chilli.

6:01pm               Child wants to feed again.

6:30pm               Finally wolf down dinner. Husband goes in for seconds.

7:30pm               Husband baths the baby while I clean up the kitchen and watch Jeopardy (it’s my guilty pleasure).

8:00pm              Husband wants to retire early but I still have so much energy so I decide to write this post.

8:05pm               The monster wants the boob again.

 

It is now almost 9:00pm and I am just completing this post. The terror is driving my husband nuts, as he is trying to relax and fall asleep, so I better sign off for today.

By the way, I accomplished all of this without any coffee!

 

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