On the Road...Raw

Bob and I are often asked what we do when we go on the road. We are on the road about three days almost every week. The places we stay (lately the Residence Inn in Boardman, Ohio) have kitchens which feature a full sized refrigerator. We don't use the stove or microwave (unless the call of the free popcorn is too great... but that is extremely rare). But the fridge is a great thing!

We have two options, we can either shlep all the ingredients to the hotel and drag our blender along to make it all into smoothies, or we can make it all ahead (and by we, I mean me) and just take the finished product.

Now before you start preaching to me about the hazards of plastic leaching into my food, let me just say...I know. However, glass is not an option when we are packing for a trip, due to possible breakage and thus meal loss. We have replaced the bowls with nalgene, so that is much better, and we will eventually get smoothie containers made out of the same substance.

I make a breakfast whole fruit smoothie for each of us for the day we leave. Then there is a green smoothie for lunch and a dinner sized salad for that evening. The dinner salad features raw seeds and nuts, or avocado... this week we had both. We have lunch sized salads for the second day, too. I try to vary some of the ingredients in the dinner and lunch salads just for variety, and I have different dressings in each. Both salads are made from a variety of salad greens and spinach. Then they are dressed up with cubed red, yellow and orange bell peppers, grape tomatoes, shredded carrot, broccoli slaw, green beans, sometimes mushrooms, and sprouts of some sort. Finally, on the day we leave we have a green smoothie ready for us to drink in the car for our lunch as we wheel our way home!!! We also have a grocery store right down the street in case we feel the need to get some raw veggies or such to snack on. However, I always pack and usually end up taking back home, a couple of raw snack bars of some sort.

Generally we treat ourselves the second night and go out to the local vegan restaurant, The Flaming Ice Cube Cafe, for dinner. On the second and third day we get our breakfast from the hotel. They have a full breakfast bar and it always includes at least three varieties of fresh fruit. They also have a fruit salad, usually made with varieties of melon.

During the day on the one full day that we are in the hotel, while Bob is slaving away holding hearings, I am taking full advantage of the hotel "down time"! I exercise in the pool for at least one hour, then I hop over into the hot tub for 15 to 20 minutes and just soak my tired muscles and joints. After I relax on a lounge chair for around a half hour (so I'm dry enough to put my sweats on over my suit) I head up to the room for a shower and shampoo to rid myself of the evil pool chemicals. [grin] Then I generally do something girly like give myself a manicure and put myself together so I look nice when we go out that night. I spend any free time and travel time knitting scarves and hats for this year's Christmas presents!!!