DIY Trail Mix

I was traveling for work last week and really trying not to use energy bars as a crutch in place of real food. The seemingly best shelf-stable option was trail mix but for some reason it comes in gigantic bags with anywhere from 3 to 8 servings. At 130 – 170 calories per serving that’s a half-day’s worth of calories!! Rather than be at the mercy of the airport news-stand I took a cue from the new Whole Foods trail mix bar and decided to make my own. I added the following into a single-serve tupperware container:

• One single-serve packs of almonds I had lying around 
• Half a (single-serve) box of organic raisins
• 10 g of organic dried cranberries

(I looked everywhere for dried cranberries that didn’t have added sugar but haven’t found any yet so I had to settle for a small amount of the sugared ones.)

The whole thing works out to 5 points which seems a bit high, but it’s the same as an energy bar, has the same sweet/crunch combo, and is made from real food instead of the typical “soy protein isolate” (whatever the heck that is!).

I’m going to throw one of these DIY trail mix packs into my bag on my next business trip and see how well it tides me over. If it works I’ll invest in some reuseable single-serve baggies and make this a regular part of my travel ritual.

What’s your favorite on-the-go snack made from real food?

A day at the beach with picnic fare

My friends and I went to the beach today to kick off the unofficial start of summer. It was the perfect day! But it’s a bit of a food challenge, too. I knew we’d be there all day – 8:30 am until about 4 pm – so I needed enough food to keep me satisfied without resorting to food from the snack bar. The challenge was finding food that was shelf-stable enough to withstand the heat. I had a cooler, but don’t like to chance sandwich meat on a 90 degree day. Here’s what I packed:

• 100 calorie packs of natural almonds (3 PTS+ per bag)
• Baggies of pre-washed grapes and cherries (0 PTS+!)
• 1 container prepared quinoa salad (5 PTS+ for the whole thing)
• 1 can  prepared lemon pepper tuna salad (3 PTS+ per serving, 2 servings per can)
• 1 baggie baby carrots (0 PTS+)
• 1 box Kashi’s new pita crackers (3 PTS+ per 11 crisps)
• 2 Odwala Berries GoMega bars (6 PTS+)
• 1 canister SunSweet Ones single-serve prunes (2 PTS+ per 4 prunes)

Obviously I was NOT planning to eat all of this food! But I was there with 3 friends and wanted to have enough to share if they wanted any. I ended up only eating the grapes, cherries, 4 prunes, and the quinoa salad for a total of 7 PTS+. That’s good because I had a little more for breakfast than I should have. And we went for a Dairy Queen Blizzard at the end of the day to make it really summer. Luckily I had enough PTS+ for it, and had walked for more than 90 minutes on the beach as well so I was able to enjoy it without worry.

I’m going to save the crackers for a future pot luck party, put the bars in my stash for snacks when I travel, and put the tuna in my desk as an emergency lunch or snack for days when I don’t have time to pack but still want something nutritious.

So that was the start of my summer. What do you bring to the beach when you picnic?

A whirlwind travel day makes for so-so choices

I made a day trip to Washington, D.C. today for work, and unfortunately it did not make for the best eating day.  I had to get up at 3:30 am and eat breakfast at 4 am in order to catch a 6:20 am flight. Obviously that threw my whole schedule off, which compounded the problem that I did not have very good food options available all day.

I’d had my fruit and yogurt smoothie and 2 turkey sausage links for breakfast, but by the time I arrived at Dulles at 8 am I was hungry for lunch. My meeting didn’t start until 9 am, lunch was going to be at noon, so I knew I needed something else to tide me over. I didn’t know if they’d have food at the meeting so I grabbed the best option I could find – a Zone Dark Chocolate Almond protein bar. It turned out to have 5 PTS+ when I figured it out later, which is way more than I wanted for a snack but it was literally the best option there.

I was proud of myself for resisting a hot chocolate at the airport, instead using the heat from my laptop to warm up. And at the meeting I resisted bagels opting for a cup of the fruit salad instead.

Come lunch I had a 1/2 turkey sandwich with mustard on rye and some (rather sad) salad. I did succumb to a bag of potato chips for 6 PTS+, but honestly they weren’t very good and just reminded me why I never eat that crap. Plus now I feel bloated and puffy with no desire to eat junk food any time soon, so I guess it’s a mixed blessing.

I skipped the afternoon gigando-cookies at the meeting as well, although I did succumb to one Lindor truffle for 2 PTS+. I knew I was probably over for the day (and the week) but tomorrow is weigh in, fresh start so I decided to just try to make good decisions for the rest of the day and hit reset in the morning. By this point in the day it was all about making it through to my flight home without falling apart. Carb cravings were no surprise.

When I got to the airport I was dismayed to find absolutely no place to get food. I don’t just mean no good options. I mean no options, period. There was a smoothie stand, duty free shops, and a wine bar but no actual food places. I got a banana from Starbucks, but looked at their calorie-laden sweets and thought “no thanks”.

Sadly, I ended up with another Zone Bar, this time Dark Chocolate Caramel (they didn’t have almond at this shop). This one was also 5 PTS+, and ended up being dinner. I suppose it evens out for the day. Here’s a run down of my PTS+ intake, a first step at getting back to the journaling habit.

Breakfast: Smoothie (5), turkey sausage (2)
Snack: Zone Bar (5), Diet Coke (0)
Lunch: 1 slice rye bread (2), 4 – 5 oz turkey breast (3), mustard, potato chips (6), salad (0)
Snack: Lindor Truffle (2)
Dinner: Zone Bar (5), Banana (0)
Evening Snack: Yogurt (3)

Wow. I really, really can’t believe that I was only over by 4 PTS+ today! I felt like it was a bad day, but writing it all down I see it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Definitely NOT a nutritionally sound day, but it could have been much, much worse.

This actually buoys me for starting a fresh new week tomorrow.  TGIF!!

Gnu Baked Bars

I just returned from a business trip to Minneapolis, and in the airport I came across a new type of snack bar I’d never heard of – Gnu Bars.** These bars are good sized, tasty, look and feel like real food, and are surprisingly good on the old traditional PTS scale. I bought two flavors – Banana Walnut (140/4/12) and Orange Cranberry Walnut (130/3/12) – and both were only two PTS.

I’m trying very hard to break my reliance on bars, especially when I travel, but the reality is that they are an easy to carry, shelf stable snack option. To mitigate the fact that these aren’t Filling Foods I’m trying to at least choose ones that are made from real food, not soy protein crumbles or things of that ilk. I think these fit the bill, so I plan to pick up some more. They seem to be available at many Whole Foods in this area as well as Vitamin World and The Vitamin Shoppe. They have a nice store locator on the site you can use to find a location near you.

Note: Both flavor of bars are 5 PTS on the new PointsPlus system, but I’m not sure what that means yet since I get more of those new PTS per day. I can’t tell if it’s a good “price” or not, but I suspect it’s not the bargain it once was. Each bar went from 10% of my PTS allowance per day to 17%.)

** Side note – the otptions for healthy snacks and foods in the Minneapolis airport were surprisingly good. Kudos to the folks at MSP!

The way the cookie crumbles…

I was traveling this week and made the mistake of letting myself get too hungry. I ended up eating the Biscoff cookies given to me by the Delta Airlines flight attendant, AND the amazing warm chocolate chip and walnut cookie given to me at the hotel as a welcome (I had no idea they do this, but it is apparently a Doubletree Hotel tradition).

I knew I shouldn’t be eating these cookies, but I did, so it was time to write down the damage – knowledge is power.

I only found an estimate of the hotel cookie nutrition information. At 270 calories, 16 grams of fat, and 1.5 it weighs in at 6 PTS!! It was warm, gooey, and hit the spot but I’m not sure it was worth 6 PTS.

Nutrition information for the Delta cookie pack is actually online, so I knew that was 3 PTS.

So half of my daily PTS today were eaten in cookies. Not my finest hour. But knowledge is power, and next time I will be able to make different choices either in what I eat or in how I plan around  a treat if I really want it.  Luckily, this hotel has a gym. Time to go lace up my sneakers and burn off some of that cookie goodness!