2014-06-02
in
4 min read
I originally wasn’t expecting to be driving on the road for my first Paleo day. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be also finishing up digesting a very heavy and luxurious dinner meal from the night before while doing that either. That, however, was my first world problems tribulation of the day.
After waking up relatively late after a birthday night on the town I got on the road to head up to visit some family two hours away. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have a day mostly in the car so I started off with a late morning Virgin Diet Shake, with an extra dose of blueberries added to it. As a snack for much later in the day I also took along a pound of grape tomatoes. For me they are the perfect snack food since they are compact but also some of the most flavorful tomatoes you can try.
Unfortunately I must have been a bit parched or hungry from the night before, either the few beers and glasses of wine or the overstretched stomach playing a number on my brain. I therefore ended up wolfing down the pound of tomatoes within the first hour of driving. Luckily about that time I was stopping for gas at a place that has a very large market attached to it. Surely in there I would find the things I was looking for: some seltzer water, some jerky, maybe some vegetables to snack on. Whiff! Whiff! And one more, whiff!
Despite being surrounded by farm country and having “farm” in the name, the closest thing I could come to vegetables were the potato chips. That was out. Sadly they also didn’t have seltzer or mineral water so I was left to buy some Fiji spring water. They did have bags of nuts and trail mixes. Unfortunately all but one of them had peanuts in them. All the jerky had some combination of soy sauce, sugar or corn syrup on it. So scraping the bottom of the barrel I grabbed the bag of raw almonds and a container of three hard boiled eggs.
Driving down the road I started into the eggs first. I had gotten used to eating these in a pinch for driving. Usually I have it accompany some carrots or tomatoes that I brought along. I try to grab the first one and it is wobbly in my hand. That isn’t exactly right, now is it? As I try to lift it the wobbly white turns more gelatinous and it falls apart in my hand. Must be water logged, I was guessing, but I’ll eat it anyway. I’m part of the way through when I’m really not liking the flavor. It was bad! It wasn’t bad as in “rotten” it was more bad as in the only songs you can find on the radio station are by Justin Bieber. Actually that was my exact scenario since the only reason I bought these eggs in the first place was for that exact reason, I had no choice! I tried the second one but half way through it was clear we were in the same boat so I just gave up on the eggs. I tried to cover the flavor with some of the almonds, but it was of no use.
Throughout the rest of my drive and visit with family the thought of and taste of these vile eggs just kept entering in my mind. I actually was getting a little queasy from the thought of it. I was also getting a little bit of a headache. It was only at that point that I realized my overindulgence in caffeinated sodas the past couple months will probably come to bite me in the butt for the beginning of this phase.
As I drove home I stopped off at another convenience store trying to get my fix for some vegetables or fruit and some seltzer water. Again I was coming up very empty handed. I wasn’t driving through a food desert. There is no reason why these places don’t have something. This store, to it’s credit, technically had some of these products. Unfortunately they looked so water logged or wilted that the thought of eating them made me sicker to my stomach than I already was. I ended up grabbing a package of sliced carrots, celery, peapods and another package of sliced carrots. I also bought another bottle of Fiji water to help wash it down.
By the time I got home it was already 8 pm. Luckily my partner has gotten quite good at making steak and sweet potatoes. That made for a nice hearty end of the day meal. By the time were done eating I was pretty much wiped out. I don’t want to use a caffeine perk up at all until I’m over the withdraw phase. I earned whatever pain I get for relapsing the way I did. I still managed to stay up to watch Game of Thrones, but shortly thereafter I was zonked out for the night.