Traveling the World, Eating the Food, and Recreating It At Home
I’ve been making shepherd’s pie for a long time, but I decided to try to play by the new Weight Watcher rules and lighten it up with turkey and cauliflower. Don’t worry, there’s still beef gravy and potatoes in it, all is not lost.
I just got back to the East Coast, and even though it will be in the mid-80’s this weekend, wishful thinking tells me it’s almost fall and I need to start making soups, stews, and chilis. Since I recently rejoined Weight Watchers, I resurrected a recipe I used to make all the time! They’ve tweaked their program, I’ve tweaked my recipe, so keep reading for your new fall classic.
Those of you who have followed my personal FB for awhile know that I meal prep multiple meals at once, and generally in bulk. Tonight, while my dinner was in the oven, I made up a couple overnight oats jars for breakfast the rest of the week. Can’t go wrong with these ingredients!
Part of this blog is supposed to be recreating the food I love when I travel once I get home…but I’ve been a little busy moving Stoli and me back across the country. So this morning, I had groceries delivered, and made the simplest thing I could think of while I planned the rest of my day. This is a five minute meal is great for any time of the day, and it’s suitable for many diet plans such as WW, Paleo, Whole30 and Keto….yeah, not kidding, all of them!
The time has come to figure out how to fit three months of sprawl into the back of Sassy the Disco and drive home to the East Coast.
So, let’s talk about packing cubes…These are hands down the best way to organize for a long trip, seconded only by compression bags. You can sort clothing by type, by day, by person (if you’re packing for more than one). I typically pack by type, let me show you what I mean.
I’ve been here in San Diego for three months and I feel like I’ve Happy Hour’ed my way through town. On my last weekend, I decided to eat a real meal. I chose Donovan’s Steak and Chophouse in La Jolla. Donovan’s is one of those dimly lit, fine dining establishments with a lot of staff and prices that clearly reflect all those people milling around (as well as the quality of the food). Join me for dinner!
It’s Friday, I’m still living in a hotel, and a herd of toddler aged elephants has apparently moved into the room above me. I could have poured myself a simple glass of wine, but I decided to go the “I don’t have to get up early and go to work tomorrow” route and shake myself up a martini.
It’s no surprise that I love to travel, at some points in my life spending up to 10 months a year on the road between work and personal travel. After awhile, you develop a packing routine, an airport routine, a hotel routine, and all of these are aided with the help of a couple things that you always have on you. Here are mine-
The area’s best dim sum restaurant isn’t in Chinatown, it isn’t a gigantic palace near Eden Center, it’s actually tucked away on a side street in Annandale. A&J Restaurant is a small, cash only (yes, seriously, bring cash!) Taiwanese-style restaurant.
Day 5: Morning brings another form of transportation to the old town and the Sukhothai Historical Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage site, where I’ll spend the next couple days exploring by bike.