Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

If you read nothing else that I've ever posted, please take time to this article by Mark Bittman at New York Times:  Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?  Really, I beg you.. read the article.. change your life.  This isn't about not eating meat, or just eating fish, or any fancy diets.  This is about eating real food AND saving yourself money.   It's so simple.  No tricks, no gimmicks, no lies.. real food, that is inexpensive and better for you than anything handed out a window to your car.

I know many of you won't take the time to read this, so if nothing else, review the below (info)graphic.  The following graphic is also included in this article. I came across this graphic today on a post from Ellen Jaffe Jones (author of Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day: A Game Plan for the Budget Conscious Cook) and I'm so glad that she shared it. 

click to enlarge

Also, as a reminder, feel free to come over and follow me on Google+.  I've been continuing to share quick tips, resources and other articles that you might find interesting over there.  I'll been sharing other random things from real life.  Stop by.. say hi... after you read the article!!

Caramel Apple Frosty™ Parfait

We have a Wendy's restaurant within walking distance from our house.  It's tempting but I've been pretty good about not visiting over the last several months.  In my previous life (ha!), we would be there almost once a week, sometimes more often.  Dan still stops here on a sort of regular basis, about once a week, and today was one of those days.  He swung by the drive through on his way home from work this afternoon.  I withheld from partaking but will admit that I stole a few fries.

His bounty from Wendy's included  a spicy chicken sandwich, large french fry, large original Frosty, large chili, and a new Caramel Apple Frosty Parfait.  When he first arrived through the door, he mentioned this parfait as just "caramel apple parfait" and I assumed that it was yogurt (similar to what McDonald's offers).  Dan offered it to me and I passed (he also offered me the chili and I think he keeps forgetting that I'm still refraining from consuming beef).  I then put together my own fruit and yogurt snack for lunch.

Mixed Berry Yogurt with Honey

Mixed Berry Yogurt with Honey

• 1 cup fat-free, reduced sugar vanilla yogurt
• 1/4 cup blueberries
• 1/4 cup raspberries
• 1/4 cup blackberries
• 1 tsp honey

Add all ingredients to a bowl and mix well.  Feel free to adjust berry measurements to your liking.  (I just added the berries that I had on hand but this is also wonderful with other fruits as well.  I also enjoy strawberries in mine!).  Total calories on this are about 220-250 with no fat, but could vary depending on the type of yogurt and fruits you use.  You can also skip the honey to save about 50 calories.


As I enjoyed my homemade lunch/snack, I did some research on what my husband was ingesting just at the other end of the couch.  He wouldn't let me tell him the total calorie count.  It is astonishing and I'll just leave it at: It was over 10 times the amount of calories in my berry yogurt lunch

Here's the kicker for me... The Caramel Apple Frosty Parfait.

I didn't realize it was a 'Frosty' parfait until I got to the company's nutritional information and was unable to find it under the categories I had assumed it would be located (sides or value menu).  So I checked the Frosty category and low and behold... it's a frosty with apples, granola and caramel sauce.   Of course, my first thought was that Wendy's appears to be trying to make their sugary milk-shake type treat into something more 'healthy'.  Blasphemy.  I browsed around the web to see if there was any info about this product yet.  I didn't find too much except a couple reviews about the taste (of this as well as the other flavors available.. Berry and Oreo).  Then I went back to the Wendy's website and found their own description of the product:  "It’s our creamy, classic Frosty swirled with brown sugar granola, fresh red and green apple slices, and real caramel. It’s a tasty, feel-good treat."  And there it was... the two words that I was looking to find.  I couldn't imagine that a fast-food chain could add fruit to something full of sugar and chemicals without trying to make it sound like something that is good for you.  It's BS, honestly.  BS.  Wendy's must think we are idiots and sadly, maybe they are right.

I did try a bite of this product.  The granola was tasty and the apples crisp.  The frosty (vanilla flavored) was soupy and messy and for this being Ghirardelli Caramel, I wasn't impressed.  These pack 400 calories, 9 grams of fat and a whopping 57 grams of sugar.  Interestingly, the Oreo option has the same amount of calories with one less gram of sugar and one more gram of fat.  Amazing!  If you HAVE to get one of these, I would opt for the Berry option (320 calories, 48 sugars and 7 fat), but really it would be best if you skipped this all together.

Post-Vacation Wrap up and more

We're back from a wonderful vacation in Orlando.  Dan and I had a great time with our friends and it was an awesome experience.  Our main reason for going was that Dan competed in a gaming tournament for various fighting games.  He played Mortal Kombat 9 and there were also matches in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Super Street Fighter 4 AE, Tekken 6, and a few others.  He's been a big gamer as long as I have know him (going on 11 years!) and my first introduction to competitive video game competitions was awesome!  We've already got another in our sights for later this year and I think I might actually give it a try this time, too.

So how did I do on the food part you ask?  Well, I think OK.  I packed on about 4 lbs but have already shed two of them since being back on Wednesday.  I stuck completely to vegetarian and pescetarian meals (with the exceptions of two small tasting bites: Greek gyro meat at local place we've wanted to try (I love Greek food) and chicken at Three Broomsticks in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios).  Where did we eat you ask?  Not half as many places as I had hoped!

Our first planned stop got cancelled.  We had a late breakfast on the road and were all still too full to have lunch.  This was a bit of a bummer as I had hoped to get in a meal at the Ethos Vegan Kitchen in Orlando.  Next time...  So we moved right ahead to our second planned stop at the Raphsodic Cooperative Vegan Bakery.  I ended up here because I had purchased a Groupon (it might have been living social) deal a few weeks in advance.  Completely worth it!  This is a quaint little shop in an odd little place in downtown Orlando, but it was awesome.  The staff was super friendly and let us him and haw over our random sampling.  We each chose a treat or two and then headed to our hotel to check-in.  We got a handful of vegan cupcakes, a few cookies and a brownie.  Each item was so yummy and they kept well too.  We did not have a refrigerator in our hotel room so the items we didn't eat right away were just stored in the bakery box. On day three, they were still pretty good.  The brownie even made it back home (with part travel in a cooler) and was amazingly tasty almost a week later.  I couldn't imagine how good it would have been if I was able to eat it the same day!  Here's our goody box:

The rest of the weekend included stops at Giordano's for deep dish pizza (another Groupon deal and it was right across the street from our hotel.. we walked! I got mushroom and broccoli!), Whole Foods for random samplings (I love their hot bar for lunch or dinner.  Gives a great chance to try many foods that you don't usually eat... and so good!), and found a Sweet Tomatoes down the road (if you have one of these in your area GO! Salad Bar Buffet with soups and other yummy food.. such a good deal!).

Giordano's

Salad at Sweet Tomatoes

We landed at a few other stops as well over the five days we were in Orlando.  I'll post more about some of them in a separate post (World's Largest McDonald's and food at Universal Studios).  Overall, again, had a GREAT time!  We ate a ton and really enjoyed ourselves.  I did not get in the exercise that I had hoped, but we did a lot of walking while we were there so I felt that made up for some of it.  I feel like my food choices were for sure those of a girl on vacation, but I was still conscious of what I was putting in my mouth.  The stop at Sweet Tomatoes was awesome and definitely helped flush out all that cheese from the night before at Giordano's.  Hoping to get back to Ethos in the future and will for sure be stopping at Raphsodic next time we're in town... and I didn't stop at just one cupcake... I went for two!

I've got a new fitness / weight-loss / food plan in the works for the next two moths and will keep on my mission of getting healthy.  Which leads me to mention that I think I need to change the title of this blog.  While I was hoping to keep my focus on pescetarianism, things change and so has my life over the last 6 months.  As you've noticed, while my posts still include my pescetarian diet, I seem to have moved forward.  I'm enjoying sharing health, fitness, travel and overall life info with you and I hope you feel the same.

Diet Dining-Out and Vacation time!

We've been eating out less and less in the last few months and last week, Dan and I stopped by our favorite breakfast spot.  We hadn't been since September of last year.  Since then, not only have I adopted my pescetarian diet, but I've been on this mission to lose 15 lbs (down 14.8 and 3 days to go to reach my goal!!).  I went ahead and decided to splurge and treat myself to a vegetarian omelet with a side of pancakes.  I will fully admit that I at all three of those, what I would call medium-sized, pancakes, but I used half as much syrup and butter than I would have previously.  Also, I only ate half, or less, of the omelet.  The thing was sooo big that I think if I would have polished it off I would have been instantly sick.  As it was, the amount that I ate was still way too much.

Next week, we will be on vacation.  We're spending a week in Florida with another couple and between the four of us, our favorite past-time is eating.  We've got some spots already picked out for pizza, dim sum, greek, sushi, breakfast spots and a few others. But, we've also got a couple vegan stops planned and will be just across the street from a Whole Foods market.  My plan is to eat fun but eat smart.  I'm really looking forward to trying some new eateries.  I'm hoping to stick to my pescetarianism and stay on a healthy track... but I won't be fooling myself - it is vacation! Will I have a vegan cupcake? Yes!  Will I have six of them? Probably not... unless they are THAT good!  I've got my arsenal of iPhone apps (fitness and healthy eating), a wealth of knowledge and the understanding of what my body needs to feel good.  I've also got some good will-power and serious determination to continue to become more and more healthy!

Here's a great infographic that I ran across today.  Gives us a little bit to think about, especially when ordering out.



Learn more about Healthy Meals

Friday Night Pizza!

Dan and I were both in the mood for some pizza for dinner on Friday night.  It was great night for us to have a nice evening together and enjoy a movie (old, married folks do date night in-house sometimes).  So instead of forking over $20-$30 for a take-out pizza from whatever major chain or even a local pizza establishment, I decided to see what options were available to us at the local Fresh Market.

As I have mentioned before, I would probably almost kill to have a Whole Foods that is close to us, but unfortunately the nearest one is about 100 miles away.  We do, however, have a Fresh Market that is right near my office.  While Fresh Market does not have the variety that Whole Foods does, they still carry a quality of product that, to me, is a bit improved over most of the other big box grocery stores.  We've also tried a handful of other freezer to over pizzas, and while some of them were good, none were overwhelming.  There was always that residual freezer flavor at the end.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple options at Fresh Market and decided to go with their in-house brand.  I picked up the Fresh Market Margherita Pizza and the White Pizza flavors - which happen to be the only two varieties of their brand available that did not include meat (two other flavors available are Pepperoni and BBQ Style Chicken).  BONUS! Pizzas were on sale - Two for $9.00!  We decided on the Margherita to have first and it came out great.  The instructions are to bake directly on the rack so the crust did get crispy and nice and brown.  The flavors were great and although, yes, it was clearly a frozen pizza, I was quite impressed with the flavor.  The most notable for me was that when I opened the oven to remove the pizza, the entire kitchen filled with the wonderful aroma of fresh basil. 

The pizza was enough to feed us both without us actually gorging ourselves.  Nice thin crust and, as mentioned, wonderful flavor (for a frozen pizza).  Well worth the $4.50.

Dining Out - A Learning Experience

I found out this weekend that dining out on a restricted diet isn't always easy, and definitely is not as fun.  A friend and I traveled from our home in Bluffton, SC up to Charleston, SC for a bit of a 'girl's weekend', well a girl's overnighter.  We drove up Friday afternoon just after lunch time and came back again Saturday.

So Friday night, after we checked into our lodging, we walked to the restaurant next-door to just grab a quick dinner before we headed to our planned event in Downtown Charleston.  The restaurant that was next to our hotel was Sticky Fingers which happens to be a BBQ-themed chain restaurant. My friend had asked me before we decided on this place to eat if there would be anything on the menu that I would be able to order that did not contain meat.  I assured her that I would find something and was actually very much in the mood for salad (rare).  I have been to this restaurant previously but was not completely aware of what meat-free or fish options they might have available.

To my surprise, the pickings seemed to be slim - well no, they seemed to be slimmer than I expected.  When I look back on it, really, why would the BBQ restaurant try to cater at all for a vegetarian?  All of the main dishes included some type of pork, chicken or beef and there were no available fish dishes.  My original plan was to get some potato skins without the bacon, but they also came with some other type of meat and I wasn't in the mood to pay that much for potatoes and cheese.  Ultimately, I decided on a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette and an order of spinach & artichoke dip (Savannah Dip it was called).  Not the best choices, but it worked.

Saturday, we decided on lunch at a local place in downtown Charleston called Poogan's Porch. My traveling companion had previously visited this restaurant and suggested it be a great place for breakfast.  We ended up there for brunch.  I had previewed the menu and before our arrival I had decided on the French Toast, but once we arrived and I reviewed the menu again, went with the below pictured Carolina Crabcake Benedict. It was excellent and an easy decision. 

The difference between these two dining out experiences made me really think of how difficult it must be for people on restricted diets to dine out.  I'm not just talking about vegetarians or vegans, but also people with food allergies (which I forgot to mention - my friend is allergic to shellfish so dining in the Low Country gets tricky), or health issues that keep them away from certain foods, etc.  I realized that in order to continue to stay on track with our vegetarianism/pescetarianism and enjoy eating out, there will have to be some real pre-planning.  No more BBQ restaurants and no more steakhouses.

So today was Dan's birthday and we decided to have a nice evening out at our favorite sushi spot in town (to be honest, we tried to go to a new place, but it is apparently closed until next month - the downfalls of living in a seasonal tourist area).  I'm very glad that we have decided to keep fish, shellfish and crustaceans in our diet.  I enjoyed a nice bowl of miso soup, a few sushi rolls and a couple tamago sashimi,  Dan had an assortment of things including the below Double Tuna Roll.

So now that I have bored you with the longest post ever!  Just want to wrap it up with:
Two weeks in and no meat so far.  Three days with fish (or similar) dishes, still learning as we are going and still very much looking forward to continuing our meat-free adventure.