2014-06-23
in
5 min read
Wednesday, June 18, 2014–It is no surprise that being Paleo at home is far easier than eating Paleo out. When you have to travel, especially with air travel, you have to take things to another level however.
Our flight out to California left at 9:30 am. That gives us plenty of time to get started without having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn. It still isn’t late enough to let us dawdle through the morning. I had laid all my stuff out the night before so that there wasn’t a mad rush in the morning. After a quick shower and packing up we were ready to go way ahead of schedule. Among the things that I packed were also the meals I was going to eat for the day.
Our flight is a non-stop flight from DC to LA. That is six hours in the air. I figured I’d be able to get a good helping of bacon and eggs from the diner in the airport and then pack something for the plane. What is the best thing to pack? It had to be something non-perishable. It had to be compact but also reasonably healthy. In previous years this would have taken the form of various health bars. Maybe I’d get a collection of Kashi GoLean bars, Cliff bars and Nature Valley Fruit and Nut bars. None of those are options of course, so instead I made a heaping bag full of mixed nuts and dried fruits. These really are perfect traveling meals. When I was fixated on the vision of hiking the Appalachian Trail a few weeks ago, one of the things I wondered was if you could do it by substantially living on such a mix when you were on the trail. As I slowly ate the mix over the flight, I continued to imagine would it would be like if this was the staple of my diet. I think I’d end up having to tweak it quite a bit, but for a flight it more than did the trick. What I’d be getting for the trip back, I still have no idea.
The first part of the plan however was to get a filling breakfast. Unfortunately the diner was way backed up. Even with our relatively early arrival there was no way that was going to be an option. I had tried the Chipotle Breakfast Burrito Bowl before, but most of the options in that aren’t Paleo compliant. I really just needed some eggs and bacon. I ended up finding some at one of those Market Fresh cafe places. Alongside their sandwiches and salads was their breakfast bar. I could have four of whatever I want. I just got a double serving of eggs and bacon. These were not the worst option, but they weren’t particularly great either. They were passable, and enough to fill me up so that I didn’t have to gorge on my fruit and nut mix too early.
The fruit and nut mix actually outlasted the flight. We landed around 1 pm but we didn’t have dinner plans with my friends until 6:30 pm, and it was out in Burbank area not down in LA or by LAX. Rather than try to fight traffic at 4 pm and hope we left early enough, we instead drove up to Burbank right away. It was actually ideal because we ended up getting a lot of walking done along CityWalk, which is just outside of Universal Studios. Along with buying some trinkets for home we killed some time bowling, playing some air hockey and spending a lot of time watching people practice sky diving maneuvers in a wind tunnel contraption.
We met our friends for dinner at a sushi restaurant called SugarFish. I was expecting a more traditional sushi experience, by American tradition anyway, where I could easily create a Paleo compliant version. This would of course be one of my rice indulgences though. Unfortunately this is more like a traditional Japanese style sushi place, so I was at the mercy of the restaurant when it came to the soy products. All told the meal was mostly fish, nori paper, with maybe a cup of rice total. Some of the fish had been coated in soy sauce. I used a little extra too, maybe a grand total of a tablespoon of soy sauce in all. This was traditional soy sauce so should have been gluten free. I’m assuming it was traditional since they went through all the trouble of having actual wasabi at the table too. Throughout dinner we sipped on some white wine too, which accompanied the sushi perfectly. Again, they only had a small selection of wines that they specifically picked out because it would go with their food. The food and ambiance was spectacular and for those local to Burbank I highly recommend trying it out.
By the time all of that was done, as well as getting a tour of their new house, it was already 10 pm. After a long day of travel and still being on east coast time that was way past our bedtime, so we hightailed it to the hotel and called it a night rather quickly.