Traveling THM: Alaskan Cruise

I’m sitting here in the colorful international terminal at Chicago O’Hare, preparing to transition from 10 days in Alaska to three weeks in Israel. It is going to be a 40-degree temperature swing, so that should be interesting.

This post is going to talk about Alaska, and more specifically, navigating the food on a cruise ship with minimal cheats.

If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you know that food - and lots of it - is generally available to you 24/7. But with a little determination, you can disembark without lugging 5 or 10 extra pounds home with you. And you won’t feel deprived!

For me, the biggest challenge was getting those E meals in. So several mornings, I enjoyed oatmeal, along with fresh fruit and smoked whitefish for protein. I also had a pineapple and cottage cheese plate one afternoon for a snack. That same night, I enjoyed an E meal of wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, and rice.  Here are a few photos:

E dinner:  Poached wild cod over warm lentils.  Confession:
I gave away the potatoes and ordered a second plate.  Yum!

E dinner of salmon, veggies, and rice.  The sauce was an
herb butter sauce but I only ate a little bit of it.

Afternoon E snack.  I couldn't find any protein for this one.

Another afternoon E snack.  Found the protein!
Cottage cheese and salmon, to accompany the
pineapple and roasted sweet potatoes. Yes, it was a big snack.
 I was hungry after kayaking on the ocean.

E breakfast:  oatmeal, veggies, fruit, yogurt, and
smoked whitefish with capers.

But honestly, most of my other meals ended up as S meals. There were salads galore, and every kind of protein you can imagine. My S breakfasts included things like made-to-order omelets, smoked salmon, veggies, and breakfast meats. S lunches and dinners included lots of delicious salads and proteins. 

S buffet dinner with a lamb chop, cheese, brussels sprouts
(from the kid's section - LOL, what kid loves brussels sprouts??)
 and the ship's amazing Caesar salad.

A light S meal of fish, beef, veggies, and salad

By the end of the week, my S buffet plates all starting looking the same.

A common denominator the whole time in Alaska as wild caught salmon. What a superfood! I tried it in so many different ways, each more delicious than the next!

A fuel pull meal of wild smoked king Alaskan salmon.
The accompanying plate of veggies did not make the photo.

The hazelnut crust on the salmon made this into a crossover.
However, my rice-loving hubby was happy to take most of my rice.

A shore excursion with a wilderness chef had us enjoying wild salmon
and wild halibut many different ways.  

There were two things missing on the cruise that surprised me. Berries (boohoo, how I missed them!), and stevia. Fortunately, my hubby found me some Truvia packets at our first stop in the tiny town of Hoonah, which had one grocery store.  The ship had every other form of sugar and chemical sweetener, but not stevia.  My evaluation at the end pointed out this fact to them.  

Finding stevia was a lifesaver.

On the boat, I allowed myself 1-2 small desserts per day. To counteract them, I climbed the five floors up to the restaurant buffet deck and back down instead of using the elevators. I went on excursions that kept me moving (biking, hiking, and kayaking). And I made good use of the walking track around the ship on the Promenade deck. I tried to stay as active as possible, because I know I ate a much larger quantity of food than I normally do. (Someday soon I will wrote a post on the other E - exercise!)

Once we left the ship, my hubby and friends enjoyed two nights in an Airbnb and a trip to Denali. A quick grocery store run equipped us with all my THM favorites - veggies, Greek yogurt, cheese, smoked salmon, meat, and BERRIES, lots of them!

I didn’t weigh myself before I left, and I am not weighing myself between trips. I know where my weight was a few weeks ago, and I hope to be somewhere around the same after returning from the Middle East.  Thankfully, my clothes feel pretty much the same.

My next post will explore the vast THM possibilities of the Middle East. Mediterranean cuisine, here I come!

Frugal Kitchen: Save Those Leftovers

I hate wasting food. At my house, I try to salvage everything, as long as it has not become a fuzzy science project or hazardous waste.

Today's post will hopefully give you a few hacks that can help you save money.

We are getting ready to take a trip in a few days, so my first order of business is to take stock of the fridge and deal with what is there.

My last post featured chicken soup, and I still had chicken stock and chicken meat in the fridge. So I started there.  You always want to be aware of what proteins you have in the fridge, since they are generally the most expensive and also the first to go bad.

Last night we had chicken soup again, but I changed it up and came up with Chicken Bacon Ranch Soup with broccoli. 

The recipe started the same way as the Provençal soup in my last post.  Instead of laughing cow cheese, I added reduced fat cream cheese to the stock and cauliflower in the blender, and a handful of cooked bacon bits from the freezer to the pot. I changed the herbs to more of a ranch flavor with dill, thyme, black pepper, and garlic. I topped this S soup with shredded cheddar.

Moving on... I have a couple more proteins in the fridge: egg whites in the carton and cottage cheese. I will probably use them up before we leave, but if I don’t, I will pop them both into the freezer when we depart.

Now, on to my perishable vegetables. I generally buy lots of them, so I really have to make an effort to use them up. 

We were invited to a friend’s house for dinner tonight, so I looked at my giant bag of fresh broccoli spears and offered to bring the salad... Broccoli and Bacon Salad. Remember the bacon I cooked and froze a few posts back? It came in handy today.

I like to steam my broccoli briefly, and then chill it right away under cold water. It brightens it up and softens it a bit. To the drained broccoli, I added chopped onion, chopped yellow pepper, grape tomatoes, and cooked diced bacon. For the dressing, I started with mayonnaise and added fresh lime juice and stevia.  Normally I add nonfat Greek yogurt to my dressing, but I was out. So to cut out fat elsewhere, I eliminated the shredded cheddar and the nuts from the salad. It turned out quite delicious! To avoid a crossover, I didn't add any dried fruit to this S salad.

What’s next? Ok, limes. I buy them at Costco in 5 pound bags. Almost every day, I make this drink with them: fresh lime juice, stevia, and plain or bubbly water. That’s it! It is so refreshing, and chock full of vitamin C.

When the limes in the bag start looking like they have seen better days, I use my handy beloved kitchen tool, the citrus squeezer. I cut the limes in half and squeeze the juice into a glass bottle, where it will keep for a long time in the fridge.

I have other veggies on hand that will need to get eaten over the next couple days: lettuce, peppers, mushrooms, and green beans. These should not be a problem. I foresee a pepper and mushroom sauté in my near future. And a batch of green bean fries from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook.

The only veggies I won’t worry too much about are my carrots and onions, which last a long time.

Next, I will look at things in jars.  Oops, I discovered some applesauce hiding behind the pickles from my granddaughter’s last visit. Too old - out it went. It’s okay though; I have about 6 million jars of it down in my root cellar.

Here is another handy trick that will keep your food fresher much longer: move it into smaller containers as you use it up. This gets rid of the extra oxygen that will cause your food to oxidize and spoil faster. This goes for most everything: soups, casseroles, pickles, half and half, or whatever. You will be amazed at how much more life you get out of your food this way.

Fermented veggies preparing to move

When I leave for a trip, the one thing I make sure to leave in the fridge is eggs. They are not going to go bad, and it is oh-so-convenient to whip up omelets when we get home and are tired and hungry. Serve your omelets with fermented veggies on the side, and you will get just about every nutrient under the sun.