Buffets - Food everywhere but nothing good to eat!

We went out to a buffet last night for dinner. It’s been a REAL long time since we’ve done that. As a matter of fact, the last time we did that was when we evacuated for the hurricanes in 2004. And now I remember WHY it has been so long since we’ve gone out to a buffet. Last night we abandoned the camper in freezing weather for the comfort of a heated hotel room. Since it was a little difficult to cook in a hotel room, we decided (on the advice of the friendly hotel clerk) to try a buffet for our dinner meal. We thought it would be fast, easy and convenient and would give us a good selection of fruits, vegetables and salads. Boy – were we ever wrong. There was indeed a wide variety of salad items and cooked vegetables – but nothing was what I would call good. All of the salad toppings were loaded with fat and cholesterol. And, after sampling most of the vegetable selection I now know why most people can’t understand how I can base my entire diet around fruits, vegetables and grains. All of the vegetables were completely overcooked and soggy – and if there was any flavoring added it was in the form of chopped meat or cheese products. Although my dinner was really quite horrible – I am very grateful for the experience for several reasons. It really opened my eyes to the struggles that most people face when making the transition to a plant-based diet. I can’t imagine eating a plant-based diet if it tasted like the foods I tried on the buffet. But there is hope! Vegetables don’t really taste like that! A few quick recipes, seasonings, and proper techniques and a plant-based, whole food diet is WONDERFUL! That is what my website is all about – empowering people to eat and truly ENJOY whole foods. Sampling the foods at the buffet also helped me see how easy it is for most people to inadvertently overeat. When we are hungry, what our body really wants is some high quality nutrients it can use for fuel. We will continue to eat and eat and eat to find those high nutrient dense foods. If none are available and all we have available is low nutrient, highly processed foods, our bodies will continue to search for a good fuel source. Junk foods and processed foods may be satisfying to our mouths, but not to our bodies. I sampled so many foods at the buffet trying desperately to find something satisfying that I felt totally stuffed when I left – yet not satisfied at all. That is also what my website is about. Whole foods are INCREDIBLY satisfying and appealing to our tastebuds and mouth – if we just give them a proper try.

Camping - at a Hampton Inn?

Another camping blog – sort of….I am actually sitting in a Hampton Inn right now enjoying a warm room, soft bed, my own bathroom and wi-fi. Why you might ask. Well, a cold front came through and it is supposed to be near freezing tonight. We bailed! We woke up this morning to 38 degree weather, a stiff wind from the northwest and a son coming down with a bad cold. It was time to break camp and move on to another state park for the next 4 days. We were moving south, but not as fast as the cold front. The thought of another frigid night and day was a little too much for all of us. So, we packed up, drove to the next state park, dropped off the camper and went to the closest hotel for the night. Tomorrow we are planning on going back and finishing the camping trip as the warming trend sets in. It’s going to be hard to leave this great room with all of its amenities – but the call of the wild remains strong. We still have salamanders left to hunt and woods left to explore.

Hot fresh pears - campfire dessert!

Camping and outdoor living are one of the things we like best. Sometimes our eating habits suffer when our routines are changed or we feel we are on vacation. They don’t have to though. This week we’ve managed to be fairly creative with our menu while still enjoying the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. We have had our share of roasted marshmallows, but they weren’t the only sweet and hot desert item on our camping menu. I had brought along some nice pears to enjoy – ripe and sweet right off the core. However, the weather turned pretty chilly and I was really craving a nice hot dessert. Pears! All I did was chop the pears, with the skins on, and slightly cook them with a tiny bit of Earth Balance and a little brown sugar. We were all hooked! Sweet and warm and just what we needed around the campfire on a cold evening. Oftentimes I have overpacked for camping trips and not allowed my imagination and creativity to run wild with the foods I did bring. I’m still learning – and enjoying the process. Sometimes my creativity results in a miss and sometimes it results in a glorious hit. Basic foods with a minimum of preparation always seem to taste the best – even if you aren’t enjoying them out of doors.

Whole Grain bread - or not?

They fooled me – didn’t think it was possible – but they did! Who? The bread manufacturers and labelers did. I couldn’t believe it!!!! What am I talking about? Well, last week, right before we left on an eight night camping trip, I taught a cooking class. One of the topics I covered was how to select whole grain breads and how easy it is to be fooled – especially if you believe what it says on the front label of the bread. For the class, I bought 8 loaves of bread – 7 of which were really whole grain or whole wheat and one was not. Without reading the ingredient labels and by going only by the front label, I had them try to discern which loaf was NOT whole grain. A few of them got it right, but most of them didn’t. The one loaf which wasn’t whole grain was labeled 7 Grain bread – all of which were seeds or berries sprinkled on the top of a healthy looking loaf of white bread. Boy, was everyone surprised. The least healthy looking loaf of bread, and the softest one, was probably the best. It contained whole wheat flour and NO high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – only brown sugar. I would much rather feed my family good old fashioned brown sugar than HFCS any day of the week. Brown sugar does not interfere with one of the body’s hormones called leptin. Leptin is the hormone which signals the brain that you’ve had enough to eat and are satiated. HFCS is one of the ingredients that block that hormone from reaching the brain – causing us to eat and eat and eat – without seeming to ever get full. Does that sound familiar? I certainly have struggled with that in the past, but switching to a whole food, plant-based diet with minimally processed foods has cured me – and it will you too. However, back to how I was fooled!!!! Getting ready for an 8 night camping trip in the same week I held a cooking class caused me to cut a few corners. Normally I bake a couple of loaves of bread a day or two before we leave- but not this last week. I decided that was one area that I could sacrifice home made – after all, I had just taught a room full of people how to select a loaf of healthy bread – certainly I could do the same. So, off I went to gather a few items at our local discount club – some apples, potatoes, grapes, maple syrup and bread. The store had two loaves of bread packaged into one bag, so the ingredient label was nearly impossible to read. So, I went on someone else’s recommendation, the labels on the front of the loaves and the healthy grains sprinkled all over the top of the lovely bread. I felt the bread and it felt a little stiffer than the soft whole wheat bread setting next to it. It looked healthier with all of those seeds on top. Someone had recommended it as a nice whole grain bread. The front label read like an honor roll of whole grain goodness – “low fat”, “heart healthy”, “American Heart Association recommended as part of a heart healthy diet”, “a diet high in whole grains can lower your risk of heart disease and certain cancers” and a plethora of other wonderful sounding, health enhancing goodness. WOW! Taking that short cut and not preparing homemade sounded great. What a better choice this stiff bread was than the Whole Wheat soft bread sitting beside it with no glowing endorsements on the front. WRONG!!!!!!! On the first day of our trip, as we sat at the table fixing our sandwiches, I read the ingredient label! OH MY! The number one ingredient was “enriched wheat flour”!!!! No Whole anything in the ingredient label. Boy did I feel rather schnookered that day. I had fallen for the oldest tricks in the book. Thank goodness noone but family was around to see it. Needless to say, the first trip we made to the grocers, I replaced that bread with a REAL whole grain bread. We are happy and so are the fish and turtles who are getting quite a nice handout of that “healthy bread”.

On the way to camping in Georgia

Camping is so much fun for our family. There is just something about being outdoors in the beautiful weather that we all love. This is the time of year when we begin enjoying the great outdoors. In the summer, it’s a little too hot and humid to want to be outside all day. The fall, winter and spring are great times to soak in the glory and splendor of the day and night. Normally we stay in Florida but this year we decided to venture into Georgia – partly to see if we could see any leaves change before the weather got too cold to camp. We left on Saturday and enjoyed our 6 hour drive into the interior of Georgia. We were playing games in the car and got to laughing so hard at the unintentional humor of our soon to be 7 year old son. We were playing Brainquest as a type of trivia challenge – with homeschooling everything becomes a teachable moment. The question was if boots is the plural of boot – what is the plural of foot. I guess I worded it a little differently in an attempt to explain plural. I posed the question as if you have one boot it’s b-o-o-t, if you have two boots, its spelled b-o-o-t-s. So, if you have one foot it is spelled f-o-o-t, so if you had two, what would it be? In an attempt to answer before his sister, our son yells out shoes, s-h-o-e-s! He might not have given the answer we all expected, but he was right on track! We thought that started our trip out well – we haven’t stopped chuckling and enjoying our time together since. It’s wonderful to spend the time enjoying being a family – even when things aren’t quite what we expect. Often, the unexpected is much better than what we expected.