Reporting For Ashlee's Blog, From Austin TX; How to Stay Healthy on Travel

My husband Paul, holding our third child, Megan, a few days after she was born. Right now he is on travel at a conference in Austin, Texas, experiencing what it's like to eat whole foods away from home.


I wasn't going to blog today.

I had a goal to not blog today.

I'm weird. But we've already established this.

I came home from a very full and busy day. Opened my email.

How totally sweet is this?



Dear Ashlee,

Do you take guest writers on your blog? If so, please consider posting the following little experience that I’d like to share.

Love,
Paul


How can you eat a plant-based whole foods diet while on travel?

I’m currently on travel at GEC 2012 in Austin, Texas learning more about plasma and atomic physics, but was unable to take my lovely wife, Ashlee, and our three energetic children on this trip. So I have to fend for myself as far as food goes.

As you’re likely aware, my wife is an outstanding chef, and very health conscious. But without her help, I’m stuck living off of the local restaurants and the spotty fare provided by the workshop.

The complementary workshop snacks are actually remarkably good for breakfast: fresh fruit bar, steel cut oatmeal, fruit juices, and breads. But what to do for lunch and dinner?

So far, I’ve tried several of the local restaurants, with mixed results. I started off with Veggie Heaven, veggieheavenaustin.com, and was happy, but not overly thrilled. I find that they, like most vegetarian or vegan restaurants, offer too much oil and not enough fresh vegetables.

I also tried a Vietnamese restaurant next door, phothaison.com, with which I wasn’t very impressed. For dinner yesterday, I walked into one of the hotel restaurants downstairs, but they appeared more interested in serving alcohol than their guests, so I walked out and tried schlotzskys.com, which wasn’t bad for fast food, but didn’t feel all that healthy either.

Today for lunch, I decided to try to assauge my craving for salad by trying out a local Mexican grill. I’ve been impressed with Café Rio, and Chipotle’s (chipotle.com) looked similar, so I decided to check it out. I was very impressed! I ordered a salad with lots of Romaine, cilantro-lime brown rice, fajita vegetables, black beans, guacamole, corn, tomatoes, and WOW was it delicious. I feel so good after eating this way that I decided I needed to write a special guest entry on Ashlee’s blog!

So here are some of my conclusions:

1) Careful selections at vegetarian-friendly restaurants like Chipotle’s can beat exclusively vegetarian/vegan restaurants like Veggie Heaven in terms of delicious and healthy fresh vegetables, beans and rice. You don’t even have to like tofu!

2) Restaurants that are at least aware of special diets, but perhaps not exclusive to those special diets, are usually the best. Chipotle’s has a nice special diets page.

3) We’re very blessed here in the U.S.A. with lots of restaurant choices, many of which offer abundant delicious plant-based foods. In my experience traveling abroad, plant-based diet restaurant diners outside the U.S.A. will have a somewhat harder time finding fresh fruits and veggies on the menus. I had a real struggle with this when I traveled to Japan recently.

4) We need to find good Mexican grills in Albuquerque! Café Rio hasn’t arrived in NM yet, but I just found a Chipotle’s in Albuquerque: 6810 Menaul Blvd NE. We must try it out, and find other similar restaurants!

That's all for now. Off I go to learn more atomic physics.

Hasta entonces,

Paul




Made my day! Love you, Paul!