Vacation Food
I love summer vacation food – hot dogs, chips, cookies, cake, pasta salad, potato salad, bean salad, fruit*, waffles, pancakes… and what else did I eat last weekend?
Oh yes. Onion rings.
My mom has been on the quest for the perfect onion ring mix for awhile now**. I saw a new mix at a store near our house, so of course, I brought a few boxes.
The onion rings turned out okay, but do you know what is even better fried? Cauliflower! My sister was craving some fried cauliflower, so she drove in to town just to buy some, and boy, was it good. So good, we ate it too fast to take a picture. And my mom made a brilliant mix to dip our fried goodies in – BBQ sauce and vegenaise (mayo). YUM!
So what else could we cover in batter and fry? Am I the only one who comes back from nearly every vacation feeling like I need to go on a detox diet?
Seriously, one year, I ate so much carnival food (parts of funnel cake, deep fried twinkie and snickers bars… maybe some other stuff?) and pizza that I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to barf. That didn’t happen this year, but I think we all felt a bit greasy the day after our fried food extravaganza.
I almost always overdo it with food when I am on vacation. I’m no good with the whole “moderation” thing. I don’t really beat myself up about it, but does anyone have any good tips on not going crazy with food while on vacation?
I think I should note, we brought some lettuce from our garden with all intentions to eat it. Oops. How could we have forgotten about it?
*Had to put something healthy on there!
**Hey mom, notice I didn’t mention how you went all apeshit a few years ago when the fryer wouldn’t work?!
Themocracy
I tend to eat healthy on vacation except for treats…for example, down the shore I will eat ice cream or waffles with ice cream pretty much every night.
Ugh – I always have a hard time with eating on vacation. One thing I do is bring my own breakfast (aka oatmeal packets – easy to pack and delicious, assuming you like oatmeal – not so much if you don’t). Let’s see. Um. Yep, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll be interested in reading other peoples’ tips!
It depends on the vacation. I went on a cruise to Mexico and actually lost weight while I was there. Eating food from the buffet most days helped since I could just sample things and not go overboard. When I go to the beach, all bets are off that I will eat healthy. That’s one of the highlights of vacation for me!
If you are ever down in Muscatine, you have to go to the Cheri-Top Drive In Diner. Best onion rings and breaded pork tenderloins around. YUM.
Whenever I go back to Iowa, I crave all that fried, delicious food that is not around here. Soooo bad!
I’m awful on vacation when it comes to food. But honestly, I don’t worry too much about it (within reason of course- I still try to make semi-healthy choices) because I’m moving around so much more on a trip than I am during my regular weeks. No worries!
Fried foods always give me a stomach ache so I never tried the deep fried twinkies even though I wanted to so bad at the fair a few years ago. I LOVE onions rings and eat them anyway and I’d probably love the cauliflower (that word never looks spelled right so it may or may not be right in my comment). I tend to do the opposite and eat less/more healthy on vacation because normally I am the one who has to plan what/when everyone eats so I am more conscious of trying to not make us all sick. I do it more for my kids than for me but since I do I end up eating better than I normally do when we are away. At my inlaws house though we eat like crazy…his family is Italian…and I think that says it all.
I think vacations are meant to be relaxed. You should relax from your normal routine, including being regimented about what you eat.
For me, I probably eat better when I visit my parents than when I eat at home. My mom is an amazing cook and has always had her eye on healthfulness of recipes. I can’t tell you the last time she fried something. And since we’ll be visiting them at the beach this year, it means lots of seafood and fish. Yummmm!
I definitely wanted to detox when I got home from two weeks in Virginia. I didn’t eat really unhealthy stuff, but I think just being off of one’s normal diet (not meaning a lose-weight-diet, but a everyday-eating-habits-diet) just makes you feel “off.”
Vacation always throws me off. I get to feeling really gross really fast if I eat junk stuff, so that’s a motivator to make better choices. My rule of thumb is to try to minimize the number of meals eaten out. I for sure let myself have snack foods and dessert, but try to limit them. Also exercising keeps me from overdoing it. Keeps things in balance.
My mom makes the best onion rings around! Maybe I should convince her to bring the fryer to family vacation this year!!!! In other news, when I got home from Texas, all I wanted was vegetables, fruit and water for days. Serious.
Honestly? I think the secret is vacationing with people who eat healthily. For example, my mom is very conscious of what and how much she eats so when we were on vacation we ate really well. Only had ice cream once! Because she didn’t want to eat that stuff I didn’t want to either.
Of course, too much fried stuff also makes me feel gross so I know to limit my consumption of it. Although I have always wanted to go to a fair and try one of everything that’s fried.
Totally with you on the detoxing thing. But it’s oh so yummy, how can you eat healthy during vacation? Otherwise it’s not a proper vacation, right??
I don’t really have any tips for not going crazy on vacation. I see vacation as a food adventure. I love eating things I don’t normally eat, going out for way more meals than I normally would, etc. I would feel deprived otherwise. I don’t vacation that often. If I did, I suppose I would have to worry about it more, but I know it all evens out. I tend to eat my usual healthy stuff when I get back and fall back in love with my routines. That’s the beauty of vacation 🙂
I actually never really have that issue because I eat pretty much the same all the time even if I go on vacation. The thing is, I never deprive myself of anything – if I want it, I eat it. I just make sure not to go overboard. This works for me because when I’m on vacation, the food isn’t like an indulgence to me. Then again, the foods that people usually need to detox from are foods that don’t appeal to me at all.
Wait, did you say Pancakes? Oh my goodness I’m so in the mood for pancakes right now. Ok, tonight’s dinner will be a veritable pancake-o-rama. My mouth is already watering.
ONION RINGS! GAH!
Seriously, they are my food loves. There is a restaurant called Clementine’s in South Haven, MI that has the best ones ever. 🙂
Oh, how I love onion rings! Fried fish and chips is one of my favorite things. Unfortunately, my stomach can not tolerate anything fried. So sad 🙁
I hope your leg is healing. I’m sure I would have slipped too. Sounds like me 🙂
Oh man, I was just talking about deep fried twinkies about 2 hours ago. There is a street fair about a block from me this weekend and I am praying they have some good carnival food there … I’ll take a twinkie or a snickers bar as long as its deep fried 🙂
I love onion rings! And fried chicken! A few years ago my in-laws got a huge deep-fryer and we had fried turkey for Thanksgiving – o.m.g. couldn’t stop eating it!! I’ve not tried deep-fried twinkies or those other novelty items, tho I bet I’ll like ’em.
But my gut has become less and less forgiving about the amount of grease I consume … now I stay away from the fried stuff unless I am willing to risk a day of #7s of the Bristol Stool Chart. French fries seem fine, but onion rings are already pushing it, ditto KFC. I think I can trace the beginning of my grease intolerance to a night a TGIFriday’s where I took it upon myself to make a huge dent in an Awesome Blossom, and suffered for it :p
I’m supposed to be all raw food-ing this month… haven’t started yet, I gave myself ‘off’ for the first week of the month / weekend, and just haven’t gotten revved up yet. ugh :p
When I’m on vacation I try to spend less time thinking about food (It takes some severe distraction for me to not think about food, lol) and more time out doing stuff, being active, etc, so that when I do have something to eat, I don’t feel bad since I haven’t been a couch potato. This summer I’ve spent lots of time at the cottage, most of the day I play with the dog and swim and walk about; lunch rolls around and I don’t even realise that I’m hungry because I’m out having fun.
And it’s been really uber hot here the past few weeks, so I’m not feeling the heavy food or the cooking…all I want is cold crunchy vegetables and popsicles….so that helps too, lol.
have a great weekend!
OMG those look so tasty!!!!
I WISH I had some tips to eat well while on vaca, but usually I just end up eating my way to a nice little food baby. 🙂 Enjoy it!!
BTW – how goes the foot/legs? Both your battle scars and sfx
I think I might end up with a permanent food baby from this last trip.
I was feeling all fine and dandy until I wiped out. Now my left knee is bugging me again. It’s swollen, but I cannot tell if that pain is from that or the sfx. I am not a happy camper. Thanks for asking though! 🙂
I think naturally, I would eat healthy on vacation…but the hard thing is that everyone else doesn’t plan on doing that! So you’re stuck going to places/being surrounded by people eating junk and you kind of end up going with the flow
You mean that poor bunch of lettuce went to waste??
Onion rings are the best in the world–however I eat them maybe once a year if that. I’m an all or nothing kind of girl so I’m no help at all on how to moderate.
I think it did go to waste, unless my mom took it home and I did not know. For some reason, I thought it was in our cooler.
Never fear… come back tomorrow and see what we actually DID eat from our garden!
I’m all or nothing too 🙁
I hear you, Kim! I have the hardest time not going into full “vacation mode” on vacation which means I often come home a couple of pounds heavier than I when I left for a trip…like last month. I have three more trips planned between now and Labor Day weekend and I’m trying to come up with a strategy for maintaining my healthy lifestyle while away.
Let me know if you figure out anything that works well for you! 🙂
thanks for getting me in the mood for onion rings!