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November 2, 2006
CR Road Food For Those Who Work A Lot
Carolyn asks a question that I was planning to write about anyway: how do you eat when you're on the road and working a lot? I deal with that question all the time, for as you know, I work a lot.
I try to avoid most of those pre-fab snack bars because a) they usually have low quality protein b) they usually have a lot of soy c) they are often higher calorie than they're worth. The world's greatest road food is the megamuffin. Be it sweet or savory or even the brownie variation, the parcel of on-the-go nutrition, at 10% of the RDA of everything per every 100 calories, is a steal. It's worth the trouble to make them, or you can order them from Miss Tenacity at The Food Part. I'll post the recipe later, don't have it in front of me now but it's on the CR Society webpage under recipes somewhere. The beauty of the megamuffins, in addition to their exquisite taste and excellent nutrition, is that you can pop a frozen one in your purse, carry it all day, and by lunch it will be thawed. Voila! Perfect nutrition in a 280 cal package. I find them so filling that we made my new batch of savory ones smaller: 209 instead of 280. That way I can finish one in one sitting. They're just so dense!
Fruit is a good snack, but choose carefully: bananas are super high calorie and not really worth it IMO. Kiwis are nice, citris is good but messy, I love apples even though they're not the world's best nutritional bargain. Just a caution about fruit, or any high carb, quick release blood sugar spiking food: carry a bag of nuts and count out an amount you know the calories for (or weigh it in advance) and eat the nuts before eating the fruit to keep your blood sugar from going into the stratosphere. Fat also helps you absorb the nutrients from almost any food, so it's good to have a little unsaturated fat with every meal, even if it's a snack.
Today I had a meeting on the road and was gone for lunch, so I packed a megamuffin. Then what to my wandering eye did appear: a Subway! So I popped into Subway, ate a Subway Club salad (150 calories, tons of protein in turkey meat, and lots of veggies) plus my 209 cal savory megamuffin with some mustard on top. Fantastic! It's almost dinner and I'm still feeling rather satisfied from my 369 calorie 1 pm lunch!
Now home to my orange kitchen, complete with cat who will insist, inspite of visible evidence to the contrary, that he has not been fed in weeks. MEOW MEOW MEOW! Then onward to packing... we leave in the morning for Boston, for the first ever Mprize core volunteers' meeting! It's about time to have a beer with Aubrey de Grey.
Posted by april at November 2, 2006 5:52 PM
Comments
April - thanks so much for posting the link for the pre-made brownies and muffins. I've looked at the (evolving) recipes for these items and recall an explosive blender incident from your blog and decided that making these might be too daunting despite their great nutritional value.
Posted by: Ali at November 2, 2006 6:12 PM
how is it that you make the color orange now so appealing?
Posted by: sheila at November 2, 2006 8:27 PM
Hi Ali,
I recently posted a comment asking about a MegaMuffin recipe that wasn't quite so daunting or expensive.
Since then I've been working on a recipe for a protein bar-type MegaMuffin that's appropriate for "mere mortals" like myself, who don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen. You can try it too! Just take the "simple to make" approach of the bodybuilders: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=346329 and combine it with the optimal nutrition of the MegaMuffin. For example, I've taken a bunch of dry ingredients (such as Vanilla Whey Protein Powder, Oat Bran, Rice Bran, Brewer's Yeast, Psyllium Husk, Cinnamon, Splenda, etc.), slowly added water while stirring till it gets gooey, smushed it flat into a cooking-sprayed pan, and threw it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I cut it into bars and individually ziplock 'em for the freezer. And boy they were tasty! Oh, and don't forget to use software to analyze your ingredients so you know the cals and nutrients per bar. Anyway, it's certainly no MegaMuffin in terms of nutrition, but it's quite adequate (and only getting better with adjustments)! More importantly, it's much more realistic for me to make a batch of these than all that buying, blending, and baking!
Best of luck!
- Sally
Posted by: Sally at November 2, 2006 9:14 PM
Hey, I live in Boston! Maybe I'll run into you around town. I'll just look for skinny orange people.
Are there a lot of CR folks in Boston? I never have any sense of where all these people online actually live. It would be great to have some sort of CR meetup for locals!
Posted by: Robin at November 3, 2006 8:46 AM
As Samuel Beckett once stated in a play: "Laziness is the greatest and the most irresistable of human passions."
So, what are you suggestions for us lazy kind my darling aprilitamu?
Posted by: istanbulwitchy at November 3, 2006 5:58 PM
I've come to the conclusion that in general fruit is too high calorie and too high sugar to work for me from a CRON standpoint. I definitly have berries on my good list though. Much less sugar.
April, you might check out Larabars for a carry with snack bar. They are a combo of fruit and nuts. Not for regular eating but good to keep in a desk or car for the times you need something now. About 250 cals each.
Jerry
Posted by: Jerry at November 4, 2006 9:35 AM
Hi April
I've gotten into the habit of ordering a big batch of megamuffins from Andrea about once a month, and making Dean's variation on the megamuffin - the dehydrated MegaLeather - every two weeks. I use a round dehydrator and the cut each sheet into pie slices. I put about 2 slices in a sandwich bag - enough for a high energy, nutritious snack while working. Some people might feel daunted by making it, but once you've done the groceries, the preparation takes two hours, and the dehydration 12 hours. The preparation is simple - wash the ingredients and chop them in the food processor. Mix the veggies and fruit with the wet ingredients and place in dehydrating sheets. The recipe for this is in the CR society's "bestofcr" webpage.
Cheers, Arturo
Posted by: Arturo at November 5, 2006 4:28 PM
Anyone taking orders for megamuffins in the UK ? lol
Posted by: matt - uk at November 6, 2006 3:35 PM
on portables, I've tried larabars, and a lot of the bars, but most of them are either way off on ratios (larabar is too high in sugar, and almost no protein) or, the bars with balanced macro ratios end up having too many artificial ingredients on the list
in terms of ratios and quality of ingredients, the best available SO FAR on the market:
greens plus protein bars
http://greensplus.com/index.php/cPath/21_65?osCsid=00f246344735365ef437998299da43a9
these are some of the best bars available, BUT their texture tends to change a bit, important to get fresh boxes (might want to specifiy that too when you order)
ideally, they would change the whey protein to rice protein, and the peanut butter to almond butter, to make it even better
another company, (the BEST) company with meal replacements is The Ultimate Life, which makes the Ultimate Meal
they used to make Ultimate Bars, which are out of production right now, but I imagine those would be even better than the greens plus bars
Posted by: A at November 7, 2006 1:01 AM