Today was a very long travel day, and I did some good work on restoring my good eating habits.
All good road trips start with breakfast tacos and plenty of coffee. Ours started around 6 a.m., and we ate in the car. These were not authentic TexMex tacos --- Tio Dan's and El Jefe weren't open that early on Saturday --- but they are pretty darn good barbecue tacos, and they lasted me until 1 p.m!
When we do long road trips, we pack a lunch. Smoked trout, crudites, a little bit of good cheese, bread, something sweet.
We stopped off at a rest stop in Arkansas and enjoyed our picnic. I skipped the veggie chips and had a small piece of bread, and filled up on veggies, hummus, smoked trout, with just a little bit of cheese. I was pleased that I kept portions under control and ate more of the healthy stuff than the fattening stuff.
We made it all the way to Jackson, TN tonight. I had hoped to stop in Memphis, where there'd be better dinner options, but we weren't ready to stop when we hit Memphis. So, we went on to Jackson, where there isn't a lot except chain restaurants. You know how I feel about chain restaurants! We ended up going to a steakhouse. Completely mediocre, overseasoned food. The one thing that looked really good was the hot rolls, and mindful that I'd already had a lot of bread today, I skipped those. Ordered a salad and veggies with my steak, scraped the nasty cheese off the salad, didn't drink my margarita because it had no flavor, skipped dessert.
I was annoyed during dinner. We'd been in the car for 12 hours, I was exhausted, and I just wanted a decent hot meal. Afterwards, all I could think was that I wanted some ice cream or some other decadent dessert, and even thought about stopping someplace else to get some. Never mind that I wasn't hungry and had already had dessert at lunch, and too many carbs today already. I just wanted to console myself with food.
Road trips sometimes trigger these feelings in me, because of my patterns in the past. When I first started my career, I drove to all my gigs, and I would often break up the boredom of driving by eating too much, and too much of the wrong thing. Today, I managed not to give in to those feelings of frustration and those bad old habits. It's been a long time since I felt them so strongly, or at least was so aware of them. And now, I suppose I realize they'll never really go away; they will always have to be dealt with. Well, that I can work with, tiresome as it may be.
Future road trips require a plan, or at least a better plan that the one I had today. But I'm glad I had these reminders to help me as I work to get back on track.
Oh, yeah. Breakfast tacos are amazing. I like the migas best--- scrambled eggs with pico de gallo, tortilla chips, and cheese.
Posted by: Cindy | October 24, 2011 at 10:16 PM
Breakfast tacos? O_o Those sound like ten levels of yum.
Posted by: Karen | October 24, 2011 at 07:35 PM