The morals can wait until the end of the post.
I fueled up on Friday morning with a delicious (and nutritious!) yog mess of love…
1 cup organic plain yog
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 tbsp. sucanat
cinnamon
1 smashed banana
1/2 cup Special K Lowfat Granola
1 tbsp. PB
Then I worked.
Later that night (a.k.a. last night), I had the most hilarious pleasure of seeing one of my favorite chef/TV peeps in the world speak : ANTHONY BOURDAIN! Here are some reasons why I love T-Bone…
(1) He hates Sandra Lee (who I also think is the WORST Food Network personality by far – anyone can take a cake boxed mix, throw in some almond extract, make frosting and call it a recipe).
(2) He has the best job in the world (a.k.a. getting paid to travel the world and eat).
(3) The man is hilarious. I was on the verge of peeing myself the entire show.
Gah, I love him.
The love didn’t stop there, however. As we were walking out of the show, I saw the best thing in the world (besides Bourdain, of course): a 5-foot tall, orange tank top-wearing, portly, mullet-sporting, unshaven country bumpkin of a man.
It takes somebody great like T-Bone to really bring together such an diverse array of people.
Post-show, we obviously had to (a) drink it up Bourdain-style, (b) eat up Bourdain-style and (c) live it up Bourdain-style. In honor of Mr. No Reservations himself, we did (d) all of the above.
It started with two Liquid Sun brews…
…then progressed to eating huge Bavarian pretzels with spicy cheese dip…
…and ended with a Shrimp and Crab Relleno.
For dessert, I had a peaceful 1 1/2 hour car ride home from Milwaukee. Peaceful, because I think I was asleep for at least 1/3 of it. Two beers (or glasses of wine for that matter) + Holly = sleepytime.
Since yours truly didn’t get to bed until 2am, I happily slept until 10am this morning. I was going to go visit my fam this weekend, but since a potential ice storm is on the way, Daddy + Mama Everythingtarian thought it smart for me to stay put. I was a little disappointed, but it did finally leave me time to read blogs while enjoying a leisurely brekkie…
That would be Special K Lowfat Granola + organic skim milk + an orange (and multiple cups of unpictured coffee).
I ran a couple errands (including Whole Foods!) before I headed to the gym. On my way to getting up in the gym and working on my fitness, I snacked on this $0.69 wonder from WF…
…before I planted myself on the treadmill (speed 3.2, incline 12) and watched the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships while incline walking my heart out for 75 minutes. Cross your fingers for Sasha Cohen – my homegirl needs to take home the gold in the U.S. and at the Olympics in Vancouver!
I came home, ate lunch and tried to figure out how to hook up my television. Yes, before today, I did not have a working TV. However, that has been fixed by yours truly with a lil’ help from Google.
I wasn’t that hungry for dinner, so first I made a delicious Jess recipe…
That would be 1 cup apple sauce + 1 tbsp. almond butter heated in the microwave for a minute. Add cinnamon + whole wheat graham crackers, and you have yourself a MIGHTY DELICIOUS snack. Loved every lick of it.
Then I grabbed a fluffy pita + my WF baba ghanoush and went to town…
Now, I am blogging before figure skating comes back on in 23 minutes. Gotta hustle!
However, before I go, I wanted to bring up a couple things from my last post. To catch you all up to speed, I received some free Special K products from Foodbuzz, which unfortunately contain some not so good preservatives. I wanted to try them both, but my moral strings were tugging at me, especially since one of the preservatives – TBHQ – is also used in rat poison!
There was some great conversation with people falling on both sides of the issue. I think these two lovely comments sum up exactly what my moral dilemma was…
Cindy: “why does it EVEN need to be in there…why. even in miniscule amts. what possible good could it do? make it last on the shelves a tad longer? it’s crazy what we buy and eat. me included. xo”
Sophia: “Well, my dear Holly, you ARE the Healthy EVERYTHINGtarian, and that includes a tiny bit of rat poison and HFCS. A little dose here and there will not result in you instantly keeling over to die. lol. I think you ARE playing well to your morals….You eat mostly healthy, but hey, when free food is involved, a little deviation is ok, too!”
With all the great feedback, I’ve been debating how I feel about all of this. I kept going back and forth until this morning.
When I walked into Whole Foods, the moral of this entire story hit me. Literally. As some act of divine intervention, I physically bumped into this sign…
I’m not a perfect eater. While I don’t strive to make high fructose corn syrup or preservatives a daily part of my diet, I KNOW a little bit will not kill me. The key is AWARENESS. Know what’s in your food. Know what you are eating.
I am an Everythingtarian for a reason – I am not going to freak out over eating small amounts of these. However, I think everyone has a line, and my line is rat poison. I can’t consciously put something like that in my body when I have other options of things to eat. HFCS, preservatives, saturated fat – I’m less worried about those. TBHQ (5 grams can kill!)…well, I draw the line there.
But that’s just me. Ingesting a little bit of this will not kill you, otherwise Special K would have a huge lawsuit on their hands. And quite frankly, I am pretty sure they want to avoid that at all costs.
So there. That’s me. That’s the moral of this story: AWARENESS.
With that, I’m off to cheer Ms. Cohen to a gold medal.
How do you feel about this issue? Do you avoid all things with HFCS or preservatives? Do you eat these in moderation? Do these not bother you? Sharing is caring.
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