Chef Paul: We are back!
May 02 2011
As much as I enjoyed our trip visiting friends and family, I am very happy to be back home. Our 10 day vacation had us sleeping at 5 different houses, not an easy thing to do even when you don’t have a three year old with you.
The hardest part of traveling, as I said before, is eating. Organizing family dinners or eating out a lot can place a toll on the metabolism. While we did our best to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and we did manage to eat fish for dinner three times, I still find that breakfast while traveling is really hard.
We had some wonderful meals on our trip: a fantastic big turkey dinner for Easter supper; an excellent rainy day barbecued chicken and pork skewer meal; a great baked trout with roasted potatoes; a fabulous restaurant meal of wild leeks, duck egg scramble and pan seared sea bream; a delicious roast chicken and roasted vegetable dinner, all lovingly prepared by friends.
I am a creature of habit when it comes to breakfasts. I have a variation of: steel cut oats, half a grapefruit, granola with fruit, whole wheat toast, yogourt, juice and coffee almost every morning. On weekends I usually make a big batch of waffles and freeze them for my daughter’s weekday breakfasts. But I’m not about to cart around a container of oats in my luggage, therefore we’re at the mercy of our hosts. And while I love bacon, I really don’t need to eat it three mornings in a row as was the case this past week…when someone goes out of their way to make you breakfast, you can’t really say no.
With hardier than usual breakfasts and fairly sedentary days (although I did manage to run twice and we did do a fair bit of walking) it was really easy to put on a few extra pounds. Much like you can wean yourself off of large portions, it’s really easy to do just the opposite. Often, the heavy breakfasts lead to bigger lunches lead to larger portions at dinner…the never ending vicious circle. Don’t get me wrong, I was very happy to have a large selection of fruit every morning for breakfast and I am glad to see all my friends and family doing their best to eat right. And, I really didn’t have to eat that much but…
Now that we’re back, we can return to our daily routines. I can get back to running 5 days a week. I can return to cycling to work and back every day and I can get back to my more reasonably sized breakfasts. I’ll also be able to get back to eating smaller portions and drinking a lot less beer and wine…oh vacations.
