Traveling Tips

C and I just got back from a long weekend visiting family and friends in Michigan.  While I enjoy traveling, it's definitely more difficult to stay healthy when your schedule is different and you can't always cook for yourself.  And while there's nothing wrong than taking a break from your normal routine, here are a few tips to stay on track even when you're not at home.

Keep it consistent -
Consistency makes things easier for you and your body.  Breakfast is generally the easiest meal to replicate on the road, and this weekend we bought some oats, apples, almond milk, yogurt, and oranges so that we could make muesli for breakfast.

Muesli is easy because you can make a big batch and it will last a couple days in the refrigerator.  You can also double or triple the recipe depending on how many people you're serving, so it's a great breakfast dish to make for the group of people you're with.

Have a back-up plan -
Sometimes planes get delayed and you're stuck in an airport (or in a plane) for much longer than you expected.  Sometimes you end up at an event that is serving food that you normally wouldn't eat.  You need to eat something.  I like to bring a back-up snack on trips for moments when you're hungry but can't find a healthy meal.

For our trip I made Carrot Granola Bars with Dried Cranberries and Pecans.  I think I used walnuts and sunflower seeds instead of the pecans and added some orange zest to the mixture, but in any case, granola bars were our back-up snack.

I made the granola bars a few days before we left on the trip, wrapped each one individually, and put them all in a big freezer bag.

Then I kept the bag of granola bars in the freezer until we left for the airport, so they were fresh all weekend.  Even though we had plenty of good meals over the long weekend, the granola bars came in handy and the whole batch had disappeared by the time we arrived back in D.C.

Hope these tips help the next time you're packing up to head out of town!