Last weekend was blissfully Au Naturale for me. A very lazy weekend with my best man involved dinners of jasmine rice and sustainable fish on Friday; range-raised meat with a mint pesto sauce on Saturday; and homemade chili and red velvet cupcakes at a friend's house for Superbowl Sunday. The hosting couple keeps a kosher household, which means that the meat must be raised and killed humanely and often involves cooking with the good ingredients, so I felt pretty confident that their offerings met my goals. Breakfast and lunch were up to par, too: organic granola and yougurt; humanely-and-free-range raised eggs served with my heavenly wheat bread; freshly ground peanut butter; cheese and crackers. Ahhh. I was proud of my meals and happily stuffed.
In the midst of all of that goodness, we killed the last of my summer farmer's market wheat bread so decided it was time to bake my own. I found a recipe with about 500 good reviews... and then proceeded to mildly screw it up. The bread's not bad, it just didn't rise quite the way it should have and we're pretty sure that we know what we did wrong. Take 2 is set for this weekend.
Unfortunately, the joyous weekend was followed by another few days on the road for work, this time down to Kentucky. I had plans to bring some fruit and homemade snacks with me, but long story short: I didn't. Not that it mattered. I landed in Kentucky just in time for a few days of snowstorms (and I say that liberally- for Kentucky a snowstorm is 3 inches) which screwed up my schedule royally, giving me time for things like decent lunches and no excuses to gobble down gas station snacks.
The trip was not without it's hiccups, though. Because my exhausted body ran out the door at 5:30am to make my flight and I forgot the apple, an airport breakfast would have to suffice. However, my choices were limited as the nearest coffee stop had just the nastiest looking bananas as the only natural option. I couldn't go without food, though, so I grabbed a pre-packaged muffin. When I got to my gate, I stopped to read the ingredient label and almost wished I hadn't. We'll just leave it at that.
I was able to make do for the rest of the trip considering I spent most of my time in small towns in rural western Kentucky. I lunched at Subway, where I had some foresight to grab a bag of Mrs. Vick's jalapeno chips to snack on in the car. While not truly organic, it had none of the added preservatives of the other chips on the rack. Dinner was a steak at a chain restaurant, with just some spices and plain grilled asparagus. Again, not perfect as I'm sure the cow was raised in a feedlot with a corn diet, but probably the best I could do considering I was staying in Paducah, KY-- yes, Paducah, look it up-- and all the "real" restaurants in town had shut down early because of the snow. All 3 inches. Which had been plowed by then. Okay, okay, moving on....
For the most part, the rest of the trip ran that way. Not 100% Au Naturale, but avoiding at least the prepackaged and preservative-filled foods, as far as I could tell. Eggs, fruit, and salad filled my day. One client I visited graciously offered to buy me lunch in the school cafeteria. I ordered a chef's salad, as it looked to be the safest thing on the menu. Unfortunately, this small cafe's version involved iceberg lettuce, pickles (pickles in a salad?), and a couple of other random things. It was... interesting.
I was very proud of my ability to resist the McDonald's drive-through, if you remember how that went on my last trip, until I was headed back to the airport to come home. It had begun to snow again, the roads were slow, and I was running late for my last meeting. When I finally got out, it was 4:15 and all I had to eat that day was breakfast. I had precious little time to get back to the airport- I had budgeted for the one hour trip but knew because of the weather I would need some buffer time- and considered not eating, but decided that would have been a bad idea so through the drive-thru I went. In the end, though, I forgave myself this indescrection: the 1 hour drive turned into a 4.5 hour nightmare, causing me to miss 2 flights and have to spend an extra night in Nashville. If I had gone until 10pm (when I finally arrived at the hotel) without lunch, it would have been very, very bad. Needless to say, dinner was room service: chicken quesadillas and a big glass of wine. I earned it.
So the challenge of eating on the road continues. I hope the next trip fares as a better read, my loyal 3 or 4 readers. I quickly made up for the week at a sake tasting last night-- a super Au Naturale liquor, as I learned-- and look forward to another blissful weekend with some baking and cooking adventures to get me back in the groove.
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