#(but sometimes my heart only wants mustard pickled eggs)

[antisisyphus]

having another pickle 🤤

#semi relatedly i somehow lucked into having (imo) a healthy mindset on cravings #where i WANT to service/fulfill them #like so much abt cravings is how to defeat/oversome them or psuedoscience on what it means abt ur emotions #(which im not doubtful of. but mostly its like. if u have cravings ur IGNORING ur heart) #(but sometimes my heart only wants mustard pickled eggs) #and now i generally shop to have a (tailored to me) craving fulfilling pantry #chocolate / butter on toast / pickled anything / rice w siracha or soysauce / hot chocolate / chocolate milk #crunchy chips too #i dont always have rice cakes or cake bc those arent as common #anyways

[themurphyzone]

PatB Nova Ch 8

Ch 8: Radiant

It’s been a long time since I updated this fic. Thanks for your patience!

FFN Link, AO3 Link

Brain scrambled off Pinky as soon as he was able to move. Though part of Pinky wished the moment had lasted longer, he was happy that his best friend was okay after that mean ol’ Mr. Lamont squished him.

Brushing off the dust from his favorite pair of denim shorts, Pinky hopped to his feet like a piece of fresh popcorn. Next to him, Brain wiped the lens of his sunglasses on the inside of his shirt and slipped them over his eyes. He ran his fingers over his antennae to get the kinks out.

“Are your hands okay?” Pinky asked, grabbing Brain’s hands to make sure there was no bleeding or bruising or barbecuing. “Your elbows? Kidneys? Crookedy tail?”

“I’m fine. In case your addled mind can’t tell, no extremities are out of place and my internal organs have remained internal,” Brain grumbled. He turned his attention to the frightened worker, who was scrambling to pick up the scattered items Mr. Lamont had rudely thrown to the floor. “As for you, your inaction almost cost me my guide! Have you no shame?”

The worker, whose name was Conner according to the spiffy name tag on his chest, glared at Brain and angrily threw a baseball cap into the box. “And risk my job here? No thank you! What were you thinking, talking to Mr. Lamont like that? You trying to get us all in trouble?”

Brain scowled and folded his arms. “I will speak to Mr. Lamont however I desire. He’s hardly different from any other inhabitant.”

“If you want his lawyers ripping every cent out of your body, that’s on you,” Conner snorted. He stood up and nudged the box behind the podium with his foot. “But leave the rest of us out of it. Just what rock have you been living under if you’ve never heard of him anyway?”

Brain’s fur started to bristle, and Pinky nudged him aside. “Sorry about my friend,” he said to the worker. “He’s new here. Poit! They don’t even have blueberry bagels where he’s from, you know.”

“Yes, truly scandalous,” Brain scoffed. Though Pinky figured he really did wish he’d been introduced to the joys of bagels sooner.

For a moment, Conner was silent, but he accepted the explanation with a sigh. “Well, guess I can cut you some slack then,” he muttered. Brain tapped his foot impatiently, and Conner plopped into his chair behind the podium. “You just backtalked the guy who owns a good chunk of the city, including the mall. Displease him in any way and he goes complaining to the boss, then it’s a reprimand or a firing, and nobody here can afford that.”

Come to think of it, he might’ve seen Mr. Lamont’s face on the local news while channel surfing, but it could’ve easily been a large dust bunny or a mustard stain as well. He wasn’t sure which.

Oh well.

Then Pinky noticed a glint of light on Conner’s right hand. Conner ran his hand down his face, revealing a simple silvery band on his ring finger.

“I like your ring!” Pinky exclaimed. “Very pretty!”

Conner smiled sheepishly, a light blush over his cheeks. “Heh, thanks. Got married a month ago. Not really on the expensive side, but-”

“-but I bet you love each other very much!” Pinky said, giving Brain a nudge. “What do you think, Brain? Isn’t it just lovely?”

“Very,” Brain grunted, slapping Pinky’s hand off his shoulder.

Very extremely completely romantic indeed! Exchanging vows, slipping the rings on, the kissing and the cheering and the I do’s! Mounds of flowers and lots of food and dancing! And he couldn’t forget the bouquet toss! How could he forget the bouquet toss?

A sharp tug of his wrist brought him back to reality.

“This has been most enlightening,” Brain said, turning his back on Conner. “However, you have your objectives and we have ours. We’ll be on our way. Come, Pinky.”

As Brain led him back to the crowded parts of the mall, Pinky turned and waved to Conner. “Bye!” he called. “Have a nice day!”

Conner waved back, then he looked down and rifled through a stack of paper on the podium. “Hold on a sec!” he shouted, snatching up two small papers and running towards them. He had a much longer stride than them, so it only took seconds to catch up before they could rejoin the main walkway.

Pinky stopped in his tracks. Brain’s grumpy stomps came to a halt, but he wasn’t happy about the delay. His fingers tensed around Pinky’s wrist.

“I was saving these promotional coupons for some other time, but I figured I owed you for the trouble,” Conner explained, handing the coupons to Pinky. “Besides, it’s Free Burger Day. Might as well get the full American experience with your friend there.”

Reading through the info on both coupons, Pinky practically felt his eyeballs pop out of their sockets Looney Tunes style. Free cheeseburgers with a side of French fries? His tummy rumbled with hunger, and oh, where were his manners?

“Thanks so much!” Pinky exclaimed, hooking his arm around Brain’s, who made a surprised noise as he tried to read the coupons himself. He didn’t have the same excited reaction though. “Bye, Conner!”

With the coupons and Brain in hand, Pinky took off, darting around people’s feet, shopping bags, and the occasional stroller.  

Brain never had fast food before either! Sure, it could be unhealthy, but it was so delicious all the same! Besides, the wheel would help get rid of all the bad cholesterol anyway.

“Wait ‘til you see the food court, Brain! They’ve got all sorts of things there! I wish you could try them all, but we need money for that and Conner was so very nice to give us coupons for free burgers!” Pinky shouted above all the noise. “Oh, watch out for that gumball machine!”

“What?” Brain yelled back. He was looking down, short legs trying to match Pinky’s speed, and not watching where he was going. He slammed into the base of a gumball machine, wobbling back and forth as if he was following the movement of the pretty swirling stars that appeared whenever one was dizzy. Mumbling something in Selenian, he nearly wobbled into the path of a kid’s sneaker.

Pinky tucked the coupons under one arm and dragged Brain away before he was accidentally squashed again.

“Sorry, Brain,” Pinky said once Brain shook enough of the dizziness away to level a glare at him. Even with the sunglasses’ dark tint, Pinky felt those pink eyes boring into him. “I’ll slow down a bit?”

“See that you do,” Brain replied, shoving his hands into his denim pockets. “And no more hand-holding. As one of the future rulers of this world, I refuse to allow the public to see me being carted around like a dead weight.”

“How can a weight be dead if it wasn’t alive to begin with?” Pinky asked.

Brain shrugged. “I don’t know, Pinky. You seem to lug the one inside your head around just fine.”

Pinky rocked back and forth on his heels, preening at the praise. Oh, it was so nice for Brain to take notice of all the weightlifting he did with his batteries!

Brain didn’t comment, gaze fixed on a nearby giant map of the mall. Pinky couldn’t help but wonder what color Brain liked most on the map. He liked the light blue himself, and the green and pink and yellow too. He couldn’t leave out any of the colors. They were all so pretty.

“We’ll have to figure out a different way to obtain money. Not to mention contacting Snowball,” Brain said. “I hope you have ideas, Pinky. Though I reserve the right to take that statement back any time.”

Pinky held up the coupons. In truth, he really couldn’t think about anything but lunch. His stomach growled at the very thought of yummy burgers and fries!

“Food court?” he said hopefully. “This is your first time at a mall, Brain. What mall visit is complete without eating at the food court?”

Brain rubbed his temples, ears falling slightly in annoyance. “If we go, will you stop thinking with your stomach?”

“Nope!” Pinky said proudly. How could he possibly turn down a free burger? “ C’mon, food court’s on the second floor! Last one there’s a purple pickled egg!”

o-o-o-o-o

They took the elevator up, since it was much safer than the escalator and they wouldn’t have to scramble up a flight of stairs. Besides, the elevator was next to a pretty wishing fountain. The water was a beautiful light blue, a stone dolphin spewing water several feet into the air so that anyone nearby was showered with a fine mist.

The mice tucked themselves into a back corner, where the large glass window provided a clear view of people tossing their pennies into the fountain. They kept their tails close so that a stroller’s back wheels didn’t run them over in the tight space.

A young girl tossed a penny into a high arc, and it splashed down near the dolphin centerpiece.

“Narf! What a throw! Whatever she wishes for, it’s gonna come true for sure!” Pinky exclaimed as the elevator started to move. The family they shared the elevator with chatted among themselves, the adults facing forward while the boy lifted the cover of the stroller and made funny faces to the baby inside.

They seemed happy.

Like Mom and Papa when they chased each other around the cage. He hadn’t heard from Sis in a while either. He really oughta write back sometime.

“Pinky,” Brain said, cutting into his thoughts. He seemed uncomfortable, though Pinky wasn’t sure why. Maybe Brain just wasn’t used to elevators. “I don’t see how tossing something into a body of water can result in a wish coming true.”

“It can if you wish all your heart,” Pinky said. “That’s how you go to Dragon Land.”

“Satellite scans have revealed no such country named Dragon Land on this planet.” Brain looked away as the elevator came to a stop. The doors opened, and the humans piled out first. He and Brain followed, and the empty space behind them was quickly filled with other mallgoers. “Assuming we’re at our destination, it’s probably best for you to think with your stomach for a while.”

The scents of delicious food filled the air, and the scent trail of an extra cheesy pizza slice was especially strong. Pinky inhaled deeply, his stomach grumbling just like Brain.

“But you said-“

Brain watched somebody throw away a styrofoam container. “Only until we’re finished with the food court. Anyway, you’ve…um, well you’ve got a leak on your face.”

“Oh, not sure how that happened. I don’t remember eating leeks. Poit,” Pinky said, wiping away the leeks with the back of his hand. The skin was a little damp when he looked again.

Oh. Not leeks then. They were tears.

Thinking about his family usually did that to him.  

Just say narf.

He took a deep breath.

“We should procure ourselves a place to sit,” Brain suggested. He didn’t seem too keen on the lunch crowd. “Preferably a secluded area away from all this noise pollution.”

“Narf! I think there’s a few tables over there.” Pinky pointed to a chair that stuck out from behind a sub sandwich shop.

Surely enough, the tables were unoccupied when they went over to investigate.

A brief smile flitted across Brain’s face as he climbed onto the table. “Good work, Pinky,” he said as he sat down, feet swinging over the edge. “With my current observations, you have to exchange those coupons for our meals, correct?”

Pinky nodded.

“In that case, you grab our food and I’ll remain here.”

“It’s gonna take a little time, Brain,” Pinky admitted. The line for the burger place was at least ten people. Or one hundred. It was hard to tell from this distance. “You sure you don’t wanna stand in line with me?”

“I’ve been trampled once and had many near-misses today.” Brain crossed his arms. “I’m long overdue for some peace so I may ponder quietly to myself.”

The coupons crinkled slightly in Pinky’s hands. Brain couldn’t move with squished antennae, and his accidental crash into the gumball machine probably didn’t do him any favors. And of course there was the crash landing from just a few days ago.

Being alone again was…well, after meeting Brain he just couldn’t imagine it anymore. Pharfignewton was lovely and kind and fast, but she couldn’t live in the lab and he couldn’t live in the stables.

“If you say so.” Pinky turned to leave, then looked over his shoulder at Brain, who was lying on his back with his sunglasses still in position. He didn’t think they’d be very comfortable though. “Brain?”

“What?” Brain snapped.

“You’ll…you’ll still be here when I get back, right?” Pinky asked.

“I already told you, Pinky. I’m staying put. Now kindly allow me time to plan our next move.”

Pinky’s tail perked, and with a little more confidence and a skip in his step, he joined the burger line. Though the line was long, he didn’t mind. The long wait would just make the burgers tastier. He could already taste the melted cheese and sweet tomatoes.  

o-o-o-o-o

Ten minutes later, Pinky was only halfway to the counter. He tried to make small talk with the woman behind him, but she was too busy playing Candy Crush on her phone to hold a conversation. Then he tried to talk to the guy in front of him, but he had a headset on, the volume loud enough for everyone in earshot.

While Pinky wasn’t familiar with the punk rock scene, he thought the beat was pretty good, and his foot tapped along to the music.  

Another five minutes passed. Pinky was fifth in line, a gap between him and Headset Guy open so people could pass through easily.

He was close enough to the counter that he could easily hear the cashier explaining to a customer that one of the grills had gone out and they could only cook so much at a time. Was that all? Pinky didn’t see why she had to apologize for something she couldn’t help.

Pinky hummed quietly, lost in the music, occasionally glancing at the area where Brain said he’d be. Though he’d hoped Brain would keep him company in line, he knew Brain needed his rest too. It would do wonders for his dark bags and stress lines.

A high-pitched thwap-thwap-thwap made his ear flick. At first, he thought it was just an odd beat in Headset Guy’s music, but he turned it down so he could place his order. The noise continued, even when Pinky batted his ear like he was trying to clear water from his head. Something tiny and dark flitted around in the corner of his vision. Pinky looked up.

Next to the burger shop’s sign, a small black camera hovered with spinny propellors. It looked a lot like the camera that had bopped him in the head when he first met Brain. Maybe it was the same brand?

It had a silver ‘NS’ emblazoned on its side. Pinky couldn’t think of any logo that used NS.  

Oh, what if it was taking pictures? He wanted to look his best! Quickly, he adjusted the hem of his lavender blouse and posed like a supermodel walking down the red carpet. His blouse was a lovely piece of clothing after all.

The lens focused once, twice, then quickly zoomed towards the high ceiling and out of sight.

Maybe he should’ve worn a matching necklace.

“Next,” the cashier said as Headset Guy picked up his order and walked away.

His turn now! Pinky rolled up the coupons and tucked them under his arm, then climbed up a pole and onto the counter surface.

“Two burgers and fries please,” Pinky said to the cashier, whose smile didn’t reach her eyes. He slid the coupons over, and she tossed them onto a pile from previous customers. “And two waters as well. Oh, could I get those both in the kiddie cups? I really like the colors on those.”

The kiddie cups were a lovely shade of sunshine yellow with happy kiddos on them. He thought they looked nice.  

The cashier moved away without a word, mechanically filling up two colorful cups with ice and water and covering them with bright red lids. She left them by the water machine and went into the back, coming out with an almost bursting paper bag. Then she loaded it onto a paper-lined tray and pushed it towards Pinky, tossing two straws, a few ketchup packets, and a set of brown napkins onto the tray.

“Enjoy,” she mumbled.  

“Thanks!” Pinky grinned. “Oh, the waters are by the machine thingy. Troz!”

The cashier marched over to the cups, snatching them up and slamming them onto the tray with a loud bang that Pinky nearly fell off the counter in surprise. “Sorry…” she whispered, eyes downcast to the floor.

“It happens! Don’t worry. Thanks for your help!” Pinky said, but his reassurance didn’t seem to mean anything to her. She just stood there, ignoring the line’s shouts to get a move on. The woman behind Pinky didn’t seem to notice anything, her thumbs tapping away on her phone.

Pinky dragged the tray to the edge, only to run into a new problem. If he pushed the tray off, he would spill everything. And he didn’t want to drag the tray to the table either. That was just unsanitary.

“Oh…um…could you help me with the tray please?” Pinky asked. The cashier didn’t seem to notice. Pinky rubbed his neck, scuffing his foot against a taped down paper menu on the counter. “Sorry. Poit.”

Maybe one of the other mallgoers would help out? Pinky called for help to the people behind him, but nobody wanted to give up their place in line or just hadn’t heard him at all.

“Kelsey! What’s going on out there?” Another worker stomped up to the front, but when Kelsey didn’t reply, her stormy expression was quickly replaced with concern. She was an older woman with hair in a tight bun, and she struck Pinky as someone that shouldn’t be messed with. “Oh. You need a moment?”

Kelsey shook her head, staring vacantly at the wall. “Just one of those days, Paula. I’ll be fine.”  

She was definitely not okay though.

“You can take a moment if you want to. I don’t mind,” Pinky chimed in.

“What the little guy said,” Paula agreed, then shot Pinky a curious glance. “Ya need tray help? Seems a bit heavy for ya.”

Pinky nodded, stepping onto the paper-lined tray. “If you don’t mind.”

“Alright,” Paula clapped her hands, then picked up the tray and put it into Kelsey’s hands. “Kelsey, help this little guy out, then freshen up in the restroom.”

“What?” Kelsey yelped, her eyes widening to an almost comical degree. “Are you crazy? If Derek finds out-“

Paula shrugged. “Derek’s too busy cozying up to the rich jerk to ‘manage’ right now. And if he does turn up, I’ll cover ya.”

With that, she shoved Kelsey out of the workers’ area and took over her place as cashier, handling orders with ruthless efficiency.

“Narrrrf, she’s amazing,” Pinky said in awe.

“Better manager than Derek. Even without it being official,” Kelsey sighed in resignation. “Which way?”

Pinky pointed straight ahead. “Behind the sub shop. This is the first time my friend’s ever eaten a burger. I bet he’s just gonna love these!”

Kelsey didn’t press for details. She just walked ahead, balancing the tray in her hand and trying to not bump into people.

They found Brain curled up on the table, Pinky’s tail wagging on the cute little sight. Brain’s chest rose and fell, but even when Kelsey set the tray down, he didn’t respond.

Pinky was about to scold him for being rude, then he heard a high-pitched whistling sound.

He giggled. Brain was asleep and snoring again.

Though he really needed to learn not to sleep with sunglasses on. His fur would get all smushed.  

“Hey…sorry I snapped at you. And thanks.” Kelsey’s eyes were watery, and she dabbed at them with the back of her hand, trying to smile anyway.

“It’s okay!” Pinky said. “Thanks for the help. Now get yourself cleaned up and treat yourself to something nice later!”

Kelsey gave him a thumbs up and walked away.

Pinky waved goodbye until she was gone, then hopped out of the tray and gently shook Brain’s shoulders.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!” Pinky sang. “Before all the good eggs are gone and we’re just left with a pile of mush, Brain!”

Brain muttered something that could’ve been either ‘go away, Pinky’ or ‘lo mein, Binky’. Lo mein was definitely going on the list of foods Brain had to try. Really, how could Pinky have forgotten Chinese food of all things? It was so obvious now that he thought about it!

Instead of waking up, Brain rolled over and scratched his side.

Pinky put his hands on his hips. He needed to take more drastic measures.  

Crouching on all fours, Pinky slowly crept up to Brain, approaching him from the front to avoid being zapped by the tail orb.

Closer…just a little closer…perfect. Brain was completely unaware.

Pinky tensed his muscles, and on the count of one, two, and narf, he pounced.

“SCRIK!” Brain swore as Pinky’s hands landed on his chest. With a startled gasp, he sat up quickly, the sunglasses pushed up to his large forehead. The sudden motion made Pinky lose his balance, his head landing in Brain’s lap.

“Afternoon, Sleeping Beauty!” Pinky grinned up at his best friend.

Brain’s cheeks reddened. He pushed Pinky off, quickly hiding his eyes behind his sunglasses. He folded his arms grumpily. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was sleep-pondering. There’s a difference.”

“What’s the difference?” Pinky asked. He hopped to his feet and skipped over to the tray.

“It’s too…complicated for your feeble mind to comprehend, I’m afraid,” Brain replied. He didn’t look Pinky in the eye, focusing on the tiny print on a ketchup packet instead. “Yes. Very complicated.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Pinky nodded. He tipped the bag onto its side, dragging the burgers out by their wrappers. “You don’t know what the difference is either, do you?”  

Caught in his little fib, Brain went silent.

He ignored Pinky and unfolded one of the burger wrappers, tearing off a small piece of the bun and sampling it. Then he shrugged. Not bad, but not spectacular either. But it was the inside part of the burger that really counted.

Pinky brought out both cartons of French fries, popping a small one into his mouth. Crunchy and salty, just how fries were supposed to be.

Since the cups were bigger than both of them, Brain unwrapped the straws and punctured the lids with one end while Pinky tilted and held them in place.

Their little dining setup was complete. Though they didn’t have any scented candles, Pinky pretended there was a vanilla-scented one next to the tray, its sweet fragrance wafting in the air.

Licking his lips, Pinky unwrapped his burger and took a large chomp out of it. The taste of cheese, beef, and tomatoes flooded his mouth. “Narrrrf,” he hummed in delight, wiping away a spot of mustard on his chin. “How’s yours, Brain?”

Brain had only eaten part of the top bun so far. Instead, he pulled the contents out one at a time and took small, cautious bites. He didn’t seem to mind the mustard, and most of the ingredients he seemed to like just fine. He was indifferent to the lettuce.

Then he got his first taste of a pickle, and his antennae orbs sparked violently. Pinky laughed at the comically fast speed Brain spat out a pile of green mush. He snatched up a napkin and wiped his tongue on it, sounding very much like a cat hacking up a hairball.

“Drink some water. It’ll get rid of it faster than the napkin. And also cause you’re just gonna wind up eating whatever napkins are made out of. Trust me. You don’t want that,” Pinky suggested.

Brain took his advice, making loud slurping noises with his straw, then finally calmed down.

“Cease your laughter, Pinky,” Brain grumbled as he removed the rest of the pickles from his burger and threw them in Pinky’s direction. They landed next to Pinky’s fries. “And take these disgusting so-called edibles off my hands.”

“Will do!” Pinky tossed two pickles into his mouth. “Hey, so what’s the grossest food they had on New Selene? There’s gotta be something too icky for us poor little Earthlings to understand!”

Brain hesitated. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say. I’d hate to spoil your abnormally large appetite.”

“Never in a million billion eight hundred trozillion years!” Pinky gasped, putting a hand over his heart. He’d always wanted to do that! It was so much fun being dramatically offended.

“If you insist. But I warned you, so don’t try to claim otherwise,” Brain said.  

Pinky tore open a ketchup packet and squirted it onto the burger wrapper, then motioned for Brain to continue. Brain slid his ketchup packets over to Pinky. There were a lot of things that went on French fries, but Brain seemed to like them plain.

“Cuisine on the colony was made to be sustainable for long periods of time. Because survival was more valued, flavors and variability were often lacking. I would describe food on New Selene as more bland than outright disgusting,” Brain explained. “But to humor your question, there’s an aquatic species called dholmuth from the imperial planet which can be caught and used for food. However, it’s only attempted by the foolish or the desperate. No sane being wants to deal with a delicacy that smells like the unholy combination of fuel exhaust and rotting corpses.”

Pinky wrinkled his nose.

Brain shrugged. “I warned you.”

“Alrighty, so what’s the most delicious, positively scrumptious thing you ever ate in space?” Pinky asked.

“Rusuphri,” Brain said without hesitation. “They were in the bag you found with me.”

He looked away, the half-eaten French fry in his hand wilting along with his posture.

Pinky snapped his fingers in recognition. “Right! The blue star candies! They were very sweet. I get why you like them so much!”  

“Actually, they’re seeds, not candy, though I understand how…wait, how do you know they taste sweet?” Brain asked suspiciously. “Did you eat any from the bag?”

There was a dangerous edge in his voice.

“I…well, I ate a few that got scattered around the ship before I found you. It was a bit of a mess, really. But I never touched the bag. Honest!” Pinky held up his hands. “I’m sorry if they were important to you.”

Should he have not done that? There were so many, and they seemed so tasty. And the walk back from seeing Pharfignewton off had left him a little peckish, so he’d given into his hunger. Biting his lip, Pinky waited for the scolding that was sure to come.

Brain pushed his burger away.

It was only half-eaten.

“…Snowball found those rusuphri bags just before our departure from New Selene,” Brain said quietly. “I was going to split the remaining one with him upon our reunion. My apologies for accusing you.”

“You’re excused,” Pinky said, sighing in relief. He wasn’t going to lose his best friend over his own stupid actions. He was just grateful for that.

Pinky finished off his burger, licking the last bits of mustard off his fingers. He started on his remaining fries while Brain cleaned his hands with a napkin.

“Brain, aren’t you gonna eat the rest?” Pinky asked. “I didn’t make your tummy upset with me too, right?”

“Enough with your ridiculous notions, Pinky.” Brain shook his head, reclining against the tray’s raised edge. One hand rested across his pudgy stomach, rubbing a soothing circle into it. “I can’t eat anymore. That’s all. There was simply too much for just one sitting.”

Pinky made a loud slurping noise with his straw as he sipped his drink. “Zort! Really? This was just a small burger! Good thing they weren’t putting the largest ones on the coupon, huh?”

“Small?” Brain’s brow lifted in disbelief. “How does one categorize this meal as small?”  

Pinky pointed to a man eating a burger that was triple the size of what they had. “Ooh, so that’s the triple bacon cheeseburger,” Pinky said. It had been advertised on TV a lot as a new addition to the menu. “Looks tasty.”

Brain’s mouth flopped open, like he’d never seen food that large in his life. “Your portion sizes are messed up.”

“Thanks. It’s an American staple. Just like burgers!” Pinky exclaimed. “If you’re not gonna eat the rest, can I have it?”

Brain made no motion to stop him, so Pinky figured it was okay to take the rest. He squirted ketchup onto the bun of the half-eaten burger and dug in.

“Should I be concerned over the state of your stomach later?” Brain asked.

“Don’t worry, Brain! I can handle it easy-peasy!” he tried to say, but it came out very muffled and with bits of tomato juice spraying from the side of his mouth.

“Clearly, your stomach is not your only vital organ that bears worrying about.”

o-o-o-o-o

Once they recovered from full stomachs, they went back to finding a hat for a snowball—no wait, that wasn’t right—finding a hat for himself and Snowball for Brain. But first, they had to stop in the play area!

It was filled with plastic structures of rocks, boats, fish, and water. There was even a lighthouse and a beach! All right here in the local mall! And of course there were the screaming, playful toddlers and parents who just seemed plain bored and weren’t paying any attention to their charges.

“La-la-la-la! Don’t you wanna play too, Brain? Look, I’m king of the world! Narf!” Pinky stood atop the highest point of a plastic blue tugboat, spreading his arms wide and leaning forward. He could just feel the wind and seaspray in his face!

“Pinky, you’re posing on a child’s imitation of aquatic transport.” Brain seemed just as zoned out as the human adults around him. “And don’t mock my rightful title with your childish playtime.”

“I’m not mocking, Brain,” Pinky said. “King of the world’s just the name of this pose!”

That seemed to get Brain’s attention. He slid off the bench, barely dodging a blonde-haired toddler who seemed intent on escaping the play area altogether.

“Is that a common pose for Terran royalty?” Brain asked. He climbed up the side of the tugboat, slipping a little as he tried to grasp its smooth surface. Pinky hopped down from his perch next to the little red steam whistle and offered his hand to Brain.

After a moment’s hesitation, he took it and Pinky hauled him up.

“Not really, but it’s pretty fun to do!” Pinky said.

Brain stood at Pinky’s former place by the plastic steam whistle, and Pinky balanced in the narrow space behind him.

“It’s protocol to stand in the highest position so that one may assert superiority over the population,” Brain declared.

“Oh, that’s very good, Brain!” Pinky exclaimed. At his praise, Brain’s antennae perked. “Now spread your arms out wide like you’re giving the air a great big hug!”

Slowly, Brain spread his arms out. “And what purpose does this serve?”

“To make you look more royal of course!” Pinky said. “Though you’re more off-white in this lighting than royal blue.”

The corner of Brain’s mouth quirked up. Yes, now he saw the appeal too!

“Behold, I am the Brain! One of the future mighty kings of this world!” the shorter mouse announced, arms held triumphantly out to his sides. Below them, the children paid no mind and continued playing. The adults didn’t care either.

Well, if they didn’t know how awesome his friend was, then he’d just have to show them!

Far beyond the skylight, a cloud moved away from the sun, a beam of light shining down just in front of them. It was perfect timing!

Pinky lifted a startled Brain beneath his outstretched arms, hoisting him as high as he could.  

“IT’S THE CIRRRRRRRCLE OF LIFE!” Pinky belted out.

“UNHAND ME AT ONCE, PINKY!” Brain screamed, his feet kicking out in little circles. He suddenly lunged to the right, and he and Pinky tumbled off the tugboat.

They collided painfully with the ground. Shaking the tingly feeling away from his lower jaw, Pinky cleared the swirling stars from his vision. Brain had landed a few inches away, face-first. He groaned as he lifted his head, the left lens of his sunglasses popping out.

“This pain will surely linger,” Brain muttered. He took off the ruined sunglasses and set it aside, where it was immediately snatched up a young boy, who ran off cackling with the broken frame on the bridge of his nose. “You’ve had your fun, Pinky. It’s time we got back to-“

A faraway melody made Pinky’s ears twitch. It wasn’t coming from the play area. Then a woman started to sing about breaking up with her boyfriend, though Pinky couldn’t place the specific song. There were a lot of boyfriend and breakup songs out there.

“-and we haven’t been to the third floor yet. Perhaps there will be something of value—where’s that horrible racket coming from?” Brain scowled as the woman hit a high note that was far beyond her voice range.

But she sounded like she was having fun, and that was the most important element in karaoke!

“That’s no tennis racket, Brain! That’s karaoke!” Unable to contain himself, Pinky tucked Brain under his arm and shot off like a rocket, following the trail of music to its source, which turned out to be an electronics store.

Upon seeing all the technology behind glass, Brain’s pink eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, and his demands to be released stopped instantly.

“I can’t believe you have all these devices lying around like this…” he murmured. “It pales in comparison to Selenian tech of course, but this is much more advanced than what I was expecting.”  

As much as Pinky loved playing with the apps, they were here for another reason entirely. Namely, the TV screen displaying a karaoke program just a short distance away from the entrance.

The woman who’d been singing earlier set the microphone on its stand and walked away, leaving the area up for grabs. Pinky set Brain down, and he darted away, climbing up a display table. His face scrunched up in pondering mode as he examined a smartphone much larger than he was.

Scrambling up to the microphone, Pinky spotted an open songbook nearby with a ginormous list of songs from just about every decade. Egad, there were a lot of options! How could he choose just one?

Instead of flipping through every page, Pinky closed his eyes and shut the songbook. Then he opened it to a random page, and placed his finger on a spot without peeking.

There. He’d sing whatever song this was.

He opened his eyes.

“AHHHHHH! BRAIN, I GOT A GOOD ONE!” Pinky screamed. Brain’s ears flicked in irritation, but Pinky paid no mind and inputted the matching number onto the microphone buttons. Since the mike was too big for him to hold, he swiveled it down to his level.

Best part was that his hands were free for dancing!

He hit the start button, his hips and tail swaying along to the catchy opening riff.

Ooh, see that girl! Watch that scene!

Diggin’ the dancing queen!

Pinky’s foot tapped in rhythm, and he lost himself to the melody.

He was at prom, and his all his friends were cheering him as he made his debut on the dance floor. Low lighting, a shining disco ball spinning above and creating a swirl of light circles around the venue. Everyone in handsome tuxedos and gorgeous dresses, some dancing, some eating at the buffet, and some were wallflowers shyly seeking out a dance.

He wore a beautiful floor-length pink dress, the skirt sweeping around with every graceful movement he made. A silver necklace rested just above the V-neck, a white corsage around his left wrist. And he felt absolutely beautiful.

He danced, and everyone was mesmerized. Everyone wanted to dance alongside him, and he turned no request down, because prom night was meant to be fun and he wanted to make everyone happy!

There was one wallflower who didn’t join in though. Nobody asked him to dance, and he made no invitations either. Just standing there with his arms folded against his chest. But his tuxedo was nicely pressed, a corsage pinned to his chest.

Pinky wanted to make this night magical for him too.

So he invited Brain to dance.

Brain stared at Pinky’s inviting hand. He blushed, slowly placing his hand in Pinky’s.

And dance they did. They commanded all the attention.

Pinky’s graceful movements contrasted with Brain’s sharper ones. The spotlight was on them. Their audience was captivated.

They were called to the stage. And they were crowned king and queen of the dance.

Brain gave him a genuine smile, and together they danced in celebration.

o-o-o-o-o  

He finished the song to raucous applause. When Pinky opened his eyes, he was surrounded by a crowd of people on all sides. They cheered loudly and started calling for song requests. One man took off his blue baseball cap and set it upside down next to Pinky, and the audience tossed in dollar bills and quarters.

“Egad, a hat for me?” Pinky wiped a happy tear away, flicking his hand down bashfully. “You shouldn’t have! But as my thanks for being such a lovely group, how ‘bout some song requests?”

Over the next fifteen minutes, he performed Footloose, Don’t Stop Believin’, and Accidentally in Love.

He’d drawn Brain’s attention by the end of the third song. With some difficulty, he squeezed through the packed audience and climbed up the stand where Pinky stood.

Oh, maybe they could duet together! That would just be lovely! Pinky flipped through the songbook for any duets, but Brain grabbed his snout and yanked him down before he could decide.  

“Pinky, this isn’t getting us any closer to our goal!” Brain snapped. “We can’t laze about here all afternoon!”

Pinky giggled as his nose pressed against Brain’s face. Brain reeled back in surprise, his antennae sparking when he realized how close they were.

“Narf! I’ve got my hat, Brain. I’m just singing as thanks to everyone!” Pinky said. “So I achieved my goal exactly as you said. And now I finally have a hat so I can properly root for Pharfignetwon!”

“So you did, Pinky,” Brain sighed. “A most unorthodox way of accomplishing your objective, but at least this will put you a step closer to striving towards something much larger. Now we just have to find a way to contact Snowball. Fortunately, this store may have parts that will enable me to create a tracker. The money you’ve earned should be sufficient enough.”

He gestured to the cap, which was now overflowing with cash.

“But I can have the cap?” Pinky asked.

Brain nodded. “Yes, Pinky. You may have the cap. Now, we must take our leave.”

He grabbed the cap by its brim, dragging it to the edge of the table before Pinky stopped him. “Hold on a sec, Brain,” Pinky said, tugging the cap back before Brain could push it off the edge. “Since you’re here, you wanna sing a duet with me? Please? Then we can go find Snowball together!”

Brain’s fingers tightened around the brim. “I don’t sing, Pinky. There was…no need for it on the colony. It served little importance to scientific endeavors. Besides, we came to conquer, not pursue singing careers.”

There was a tinge of…bitterness? No, not bitterness. More like embarrassment.

“Brain? Do you like music?” Pinky asked.

Brain let go of the brim and stared out into the crowd, who waited impatiently for Pinky to begin a new song. Then Brain looked down, his cheeks flushed, and he gave the tiniest of nods.

“I’m not a singer though,” Brain muttered.

“You don’t have to be to just sing,” Pinky said. “You can let loose!”

Brain shook his head. “There’s an audience here, Pinky. I’m not doing it.”

Pinky went to the songbook and flipped the pages until he found the duet he was looking for. He still really wanted to do one, but he didn’t want to make his best friend uncomfortable either. “Well, I still really wanna pick a duet, but you don’t have to sing. Just feel free to join in if you want.”

“I won’t,” Brain said stubbornly. He sat down with his back against the crowd, a short distance away from Pinky and the microphone. “But I suppose your offer is acceptable. One more song, and then we purchase the parts I need for a tracker with that money.”

“Okey-dokey, Brain. Zort!” Pinky typed in the matching number, and the song title appeared onscreen.  The songs he’d picked earlier were all high energy and fun. This one was slower, more tender.

And he really wanted to sing for Pharfignewton so she’d hear him. Horses had excellent hearing after all.

Pinky turned to the audience. “Everyone, you’ve all been great. I have to go after this, but I just wanted to dedicate my last song to my girlfriend Pharfignewton. She’s a marvelous mare who’s dreamed of winning the Triple Crown since she was just a young filly. We love each other a lot, and I miss her so much, but I know she’s gonna do great out there in the Derby!”

The crowd made sympathetic cooing noises. Several people had their phones out to record.

“And I also want to dedicate this song to a missing friend of a friend. We don’t know where he is exactly, but I just know they’re gonna be super happy when they find each other again.”

Brain gave him a surprised look, which melted into one of gratitude.

The opening notes for Somewhere Out There played. Pinky took a deep breath and poured his entire heart into the melody.

Somewhere out there

Beneath the pale moonlight

Someone’s thinking of me

And loving me tonight

Pinky caught Brain’s eye, but the alien quickly returned his gaze to the screen, which displayed a beautiful Hawaiian beach at nighttime.

He hoped Pharfignewton was thinking of him.

Pharfignewton had to be almost to Kentucky now. If she won the Derby, then she would move onto other horse races, photoshoots, and interviews. Not to mention all the eating and sleeping so she could be at her best.

Sometimes, Pinky wished she could’ve stayed. But she had a career ahead of her. And so he let her go.

And when they reunited, they’d make up for lost time.  

He sang the other singer’s part too, watching Brain in case he changed his mind. He seemed content with listening though, so Pinky let him be.  

Somewhere out there

If love can see us through

Then we'll be together

Somewhere out there

Out where dreams come true

Pinky caught his breath as the instrumental began. All this singing was making his throat dry, but he had to finish his song.

He wondered if Brain would ever introduce him to Snowball. Maybe the three of them could be besties!

The refrain started again. Pinky poured his soul into it, hoping they could find Snowball soon.

And the song drew to a close. Pinky’s throat tickled, so the last lyric was quiet rather than loud.

“…out where dreams come true.”

That was Brain’s voice. Deeper, hesitant, and whispering, but he harmonized well with Pinky’s higher vocals. Brain sang beautifully. It felt like being entrusted with a secret only the closest friends shared.

Though everyone clapped for Pinky, none of them heard Brain. The lyric was meant for him and Brain alone.

“Come, Pinky. We must make haste,” Brain said. He stood up, taking Pinky by the wrist and leading him to the table’s edge.  

“Righty-o, Brain! Bye, everyone! Love you all!” Pinky waved goodbye to their captivated audience, then grabbed the cap’s brim, dragging it along behind him.

Brain tensed, ready to leap from the table to the ground. Then a flicker of movement by the store sign caught Pinky’s attention. Was the neon sign broken? They should really fix them.

But it wasn’t a broken, blinking neon sign. The color was too dark for that.

Pinky leaned back, trying to see what the mysterious thing was. It could easily be a bird, a plane, or Superman.

He leaned too far, and instead of a graceful leap, he and Brain tumbled to the ground. All the money spilled out around them, the cap landing on top of them.

“Pinky, I don’t care if you want to fall from moderately elevated platforms, but don’t drag me down with you!“ Brain snapped as he shoved Pinky away. He crawled out from underneath the cap, flipping it upside down and tossing the spilled money inside.

“Sorry, Brain. I was just trying to see where that dark thingy went,” Pinky said, scooping up a handful of coins and dropped them into the cap. Now that their audience was gone, it was much easier to see everything.

Including the flying camera just hovering around the entrance. The mini blades whirled above the main body, which had a silvery ‘NS’ on its side.  

“Oh, that’s what I saw! Hi, Mr. Flying Camera! Narf!” Pinky waved to the flying camera, which shrank the size of its lens, almost like it was glaring at him.

“Mr. Flying Cam-“ Brain’s scoff cut short as he looked up. His pink eyes grew huge and round. “Pinky, that’s…that’s Selenian tech. The NS is a New Selene trademark.”

“A long way from home then, isn’t it?” Pinky asked.

Brain ignored Pinky’s question. Slowly, he walked towards the camera, his hand reaching out, expecting the camera to come to him.

But it flew outside the store instead, dodging any obstacles in its path.

“Come back!” Brain shouted, and he took off after the flying camera. Though he couldn’t fly himself, he dodged every foot and stroller in his dogged pursuit.  

He never noticed Pinky.

“Brain, wait for me! Brain!” Pinky yelled. But the camera and Brain turned a corner and disappeared.

He tried to drag the cap and money behind him, but it only slowed him down. He’d never catch up to them.

Unless…

“Sorry, Pharfignewton,” Pinky whispered. He ran off, leaving the desired objects behind.

Someone would find a cap and lots of money. It would make their day brighter. He found comfort with that.

o-o-o-o-o

He found Brain outside a side entrance. The alien dropped to his knees, looking up into the afternoon sky.

There was no sign of the camera anywhere.

“Brain?” Pinky said. “Where’s the camera?”

Brain’s mouth trembled as he tried to stifle a stream of tears. But they came anyway, spilling down his drooping cheeks like twin waterfalls. His eyes bored through Pinky, like he couldn’t really see him. Pinky pulled him in for a hug, gently stroking the back of his large head.

For once, Brain didn’t protest, and he clung to Pinky like a lifeline.

“Gone,” Brain choked out.

End AN: CHAPTER COMPLETE. WHOO.

Naming minor OCs is surprisingly hard to do.

I used to really love Dragon Tales as a kid so I shouted out to Dragon Land here.

I fully admit to just conveniently declaring a Free Burger Day with a coupon cause the mice don’t have money. I have god powers and I do what I want. And I declare the mice deserve burgers.

The karaoke here is a program called Magic Sing, which is what I grew up with. Trust me, Filipinos adore their karaoke. Basically, you hook the microphone to a TV, and you input a number code into the microphone to bring up a song. For instance, 0001 brings up Elvis Presley’s All Shook Up.  

Pinky has some abandonment issues.

Give them hugs. They need them.

#pinky and the brain #patb nova #patb fanfiction

[healthmedia]

The truth is that yes, you can change your body in 9  Weeks

Naturally, you are unlikely to wake up on day 31 with the bulging biceps of a body builder, nor morph from couch surfer to swimsuit model either.

But after decades working with bodies of all shapes and sizes, what we definitely can advise is that with 30 days of rigorous, dedicated exercise, you will see and feel huge change – physically and mentally – that is highly likely to create a new, lifetime habit.

And if you want to live better for longer, then this is vital. Plus, we’ve seen it time and time again – once you start the challenge, you’ll wonder what you were worried about in the first place.

Here, two of our most experienced trainers, Xtend Barre® and Pilates instructor, Anna Serafinas Luk and yoga supremo, Victor Chau, explain how to stick with a 30-day exercise plan, so you can feel the change once and for all:

Every time you put a morsel of food into your mouth, you're making a decision - about your mind and your body. They are affected by everything you eat, in a way that modern science is making clearer through new research.

What you eat is responsible for making you tired and exhausted, or keeping you energetic, vibrant and ready for action. It's the choice of food you eat that helps keep you calm and clear, and makes you glow with good health, or relish a healthy weight, or stay fit and trim.

How can I transform my body with professional tip's

Increase your protein intake. Many fitness experts tend always to have a protein shake after their workout.

Buy The Fundamentals

Let's face it: The world isn't a fit place. If you're relying on circumstance, gyms, and restaurants to keep you on-track, you're going to face an uphill battle. So before you begin, fortify your home base with the essential food and workout arsenal.

Having good choices always at-hand in your refrigerator and cupboards will make your life much easier. The specifics will definitely vary depending on the diet play you follow, but these are all solid options to have in your pantry in a pinch.

Pantry Items

Brown Rice

Nutritionally, brown rice is recommended for a healthy diet because it contains extra nutrients. Brown rice tends to be a bit more caloric, but it also contains extra protein and fiber that offer these health benefits: Lowers cholesterol. Controls blood sugar levels.06

Quinoa

Rich in fiber, minerals, antioxidants and all nine essential amino acids, quinoa is one of the healthiest and most nutritious foods on the planet. It may improve your blood sugar and cholesterol levels and even aid weight loss

Oats

The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name. While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and oat milk, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed. Oats are associated with lower blood cholesterol when consumed regularly.

But that doesn't mean oatmeal cannot do any harm to you. If you do not take a few things into consideration, even oatmeal can lead to weight gain. It can instantly turn from a slimming breakfast to a blood sugar-spiking food that can be harmful to your waistline.

Sweet Potatoes

Vitamin A. A single sweet potato can contain 769 percent of the amount of Vitamin A you need to consume daily. Vitamin A is great for your vision, bones and skin, and helps strengthen your immune system.

Highly Nutritious. Sweet potatoes are a great source of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. ...

Promote Gut Health. The fiber and antioxidants in sweet potatoes are advantageous to gut health. ...

May Have Cancer-Fighting Properties. ...

Support Healthy Vision. ...

May Enhance Brain Function. ...

May Support Your Immune System.

Whole Grain Cereals

What are wholegrain cereals? Wholegrain cereals include wheat, rice, corn, oats, rye, barley and millet. Wholegrain cereals contain the three layers of the grain. Wholemeal foods are made from wholegrains which have been crushed to a finer texture.

Nuts

You could possibly gain weight.

Eat more than the recommended handful, and you might actually start to gain weight. That's because nuts are calorie-dense, Jones says, meaning they contain more energy per ounce than many other foods (you can thank all the healthy fats for that!

Which nuts are real nuts?

Hazelnuts, acorns and chestnuts are true nuts

Natural Nut Butter

The largest study of its kind, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, finds that people who eat a handful of nuts every day live longer than those who do not eat them at all

Ounce for ounce, macadamia nuts (10 to 12 nuts; 2 grams protein, 21 grams fat) and pecans (18 to 20 halves; 3 grams protein, 20 grams fat) have the most calories - 200 each - along with the lowest amounts of protein and the highest amounts of fats

Sesame Seed

Sprinkle seeds over your favorite veggie and bean side dishes. Sesame seeds add a subtle, satisfying, and healthy crunch to steamed broccoli, sauteed green beans, and a range of other side dishes. Simply sprinkle on raw or toasted sesame seeds right before serving—that way, the seeds will retain their crunch.

Here are health benefits of sesame seeds.

Good Source of Fiber. ...

May Lower Cholesterol and Triglycerides. ...

Nutritious Source of Plant Protein. ...

May Help Lower Blood Pressure. ...

May Support Healthy Bones. ...

May Reduce Inflammation. ...

Good Source of B Vitamins. ...

May Aid Blood Cell Formation.

Olive oil

Olive oil protects against inflammation, a key driver of heart disease (17, 18). Reduces oxidation of LDL (bad) cholesterol. The oil protects LDL particles from oxidative damage, a key factor in the development of heart disease ( 19 ). Improves blood vessel health

Olive Oil Is Not Associated With Weight Gain and Obesity

Eating excessive amounts of fat causes weight gain. However, numerous studies have linked the Mediterranean diet, rich in olive oil, with favorable effects on body weight ( 29 , 30 , 31 ).

Olive oil is a healthy fat that contains anti-inflammatory compounds. Drinking it regularly may benefit your heart, bone, and digestive health and help stabilize your blood sugar levels

Canned tuna

The bottom line. Canned tuna is a nutritious and inexpensive source of protein. Because cans of tuna last for several years, they are excellent for stocking your pantry with easy lunches and snacks. Opt for varieties that are sustainable and low in mercury.

You should never boil or sear canned tuna as this could easily overdo your meat. The most important thing to remember is that canned fish is almost always cooked already, so you're only reheating it. ... So, keep an eye on your canned tuna while it's being heated.

Salmon

Why is salmon so healthy?

The vitamin B12 in salmon keeps blood and nerve cells humming and helps you make DNA. But for your health, the true beauty of salmon is its wealth of omega-3 fatty acids. Most omega-3s are "essential" fatty acids. Your body can't make them, but they play critical roles in your body.

The American Heart Association maintains that eating two servings a week of oily fish (like salmon) can help healthy adults ward off sudden cardiac death, thanks to the protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids.

Spices

India contributes 75% of spice production throughout the world, and world spice market is continuously growing. Food ingredients such as salt, mustard, or pickle that is used to add only taste to the food.

...

Fridge Items

Fresh Fruit and Vegetables

Most fresh fruits and vegetables are picked before they are ripe. ... However, the USDA states that some produce, such as apples and pears, can be stored for up to 12 months under controlled conditions before being sold.

Fresh Fruits

Greek Yogurt

Egg whites

Low-Fat Milk

Turkey

Low-Sodium Soy Sauce

Salsa

Mustard

Chicken or beef broth

Bottled Water

Freezer Items

Frozen Chicken Breasts

Chicken breasts, larger pieces of frozen chicken and whole frozen birds can be cooked in the oven, although it will take around 50% longer than the normal cooking time for thawed chicken. ... Let the chicken stand at room temperature for 20-30 minutes. Set the oven to 150°C as this will gently thaw and cook the chicken.Frozen chicken is a healthy source of protein. If you're looking for a substitute for red meat, consider healthy frozen chicken. ... Frozen chicken vs. fresh chicken is often cheaper and has the added benefit of having longer storage times than fresh chicken does.

Frozen Lean Beef

Frozen Turkey

Frozen Fish

Frozen Vegetables

Frozen Berries

The truth is that yes, you can change your body in 9  Weeks

#health #fitness #health tips #beautiful body #body goals

[leightonshea]

Ancestral Foods on the Family Table

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I am an ex-vegetarian turned ancestral eater. I was a vegetarian for nearly 10 years, with waves of intermitted veganism. My concept of ‘healthy’ had moral roots for me, but terribly muddled with misinformation. I felt as if the food was green it would be the healthiest for me. I felt my body’s cravings and hunger cues were flawed. Fat needed to be strictly monitored. Any smoothie would heal me (especially if it was green). I also felt that dairy was bad. These are just a few assumptions I now realize that I held onto for numerous years, assumptions that ultimately led to my current health complications.

I believe what I most lacked was the concept of nourishment. A nourishing bowl of hot soup, made with a vitamin-rich broth, on a cold day. Of homemade full-fat yogurt with fresh local fruit. Fresh fruit with cream. A slow cooked stew with lots of bones and root vegetables. Butter with sautéed vegetables. Deep-root nourishment. I had muddied my concept of health with an excess of green salads, that my body did not crave, and therefore let to binges on calorie dense foods such as peanut butter (for those of you who know me well), or vegan baked goods. My diet swung between nervous extremes. Extreme ‘health’ to confused binges and cravings.

Upon arriving to Patagonia, my diet radically changed. There was no abundance of kale and greens for giant salads. Breakfast was farm fresh eggs, lunch was salad (yes) with some form of meat, carrots, potatoes, onions, lard, broth, etc. And dinner similar. I was lucky to always have access to fresh whole-wheat bread instead of the white bread Chilean staple. But my diet changed. And as the long-day Patagonia summer began to shorten and leaves were shed in a brilliant array of colors, my body craved…

Nourishment.

Cazuela, as they say here. A soup based on lots of bones, with a little meat, peas, potatoes, carrots, squash. Hot, nourishing. A roast in the oven. A cut of meat with extra fat. I wanted the very extreme I had so long avoided and demonized.

Luckily enough this change in season and diet coincided with my introduction to the Weston A. Price foundation. Therefore I was learning the exact knowledge I needed to support myself and understand why I felt so much better getting these nutrients my body required.

And I haven’t gone back.

And now, as a Patagonia-living-farming-lady-mama, ancestral foods are the center of our home. The heart of our home. I dedicate my time to producing and preserving our fresh produce. My husband is in charge of our animals, or working in exchange for animals so we always have animal products.

I will start with the butchering of the sheep. If it is a lamb, we can catch the blood from the knife wound and made a Chilean delicacy called ñachi. It’s the fresh blood mixed with salt, basil, cilantro, and lemon juice. It has to be eaten within 10 minutes of buttering the animal, and ONLY works with lambs, not sheep.

The animal is skinned, and hung. We open up the rib cage and all of the organs fall out. We always save the kidneys, heart, stomach, fat, and liver. The rest we bury.

We cut up the meat, portion it off, and freeze everything. We always eat the head the same day  the animal is butchered. While Roman prepares the head for cooking in the oven, I start chopping up the extra suet (fat from the internal cavity of the animal) to render, which ultimately we use for cooking and for skin care products for the family (soaps and creams). Sheep fat is the most saturated of all animal fats, meaning that it is extremely stable for cooking. As well this suet if a great source of palmitoleic acid, which is strongly antimicrobial. Thus the first ancestral food home-basic is created. The sheep fat.

Now with the rest of the animal I can elaborate so many different dishes. In the pressure pot I can throw in some t of meat with bones, some fava peas, peas, garlic, carrots, squash potatoes (all from the garden), cook it about 30 minutes, and quala! Dinner. I can also slice up the heart or liver and sauté them in a pan with garlic and onions, perhaps some mustard seeds. I can cook a cut of meat in the oven with lots of vegetables. I will focus on specific recipes in another blog post based on requests from my readers.

The next preparation is the bone broth. I can use the sheep bones, however they are quite small for the amount of broth I like to make. Therefore I take a biweekly trip to the local butcher and ask for ‘los huesos blanco’, which generally correspond to the elbows and knees of the animals. The bones appear to have no meat, and just be tendons and such. But after cooking for 4 hours or so in the pressure pot, they separate into many tiny tiny bones and loose cartilage and collagen. This bone broth is then the basis for soups, used to cook beans and grains, or sipped in mug on cold days. High in protein and fat, and stock full of glycine- an amino acid special for healing our digestive tract. And for that very reason it pairs so well with grains and legumes, because it makes them much more digestible, and nutrient dense.

The organ meats can be prepared in many different forms. For the weak-of-heart, they can be made into ground meat (the liver, kidneys, and heart) with other cuts from the animal. Usually I just soak the organ in water with vinegar in the fridge for a few hours. Then, I slice it up extra fine and cook them up in the pan with sheep lard, lots of garlic, and a mix of whatever vegetables I have. If the flavor is still too strong to pass I add a bit of sauerkraut or carrot pickles to each bite. Recently I had the guts (haha) to start cooking with tripe, which is the edible stomach wall of the animal. This part had to be cleaned very well, and boiled with a bit of baking soda to help with the smell. After about 20 minutes of boiling, the stomach is ready. At this point, I just chop up the tripe super fine and whip up some curry, or bolognaise sauce.

Now I will mention a couple ferments always present in the family home, sauerkraut and fermented-pickles. Both very simple to prepare. Full of probiotics, digestive enzymes, and bio-available vitamins. We consume ferments every day, and our bodies now crave their very flavor. There nothing like a medium-rare steak, topped with mustard-seed sauerkraut and fresh parsley. Mmmm! Or Lentils cooked in bone broth and tomatoes topped with grated pickles ginger-carrots. There is always some lacto-fermented vegetable on the table. Fermenting our vegetables is also a necessary job because the summer months are fleeting and we need to make the harvest last the whole winter ideally. Therefore I produce lots of cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, and garlic. They all preserve well through pickling.

Kefir is the other indispensable food on our family table. As they call it here in Patagonia, ‘yogur de pajaritos’. Also dangerously easy to prepare. This yogurt ferments quickly, so every day I filter the yogurt out of the jar, and feed the kefir grains new milk. This yogurt will either be used for breakfast, made into a smoothie later, a creamy salad dressing, mixed into soups, or eaten with fruit for dessert. I made a liter because I know that between the three (sometimes four) of us, we can consume it daily.

Those are my most essential food-preparations for nourishing the family. There are many other important preparations, but when I think about my journey from vegetarianism to ancestral eating, these were the foods that most healed and nourished me (as well I felt good morally consuming these bits of the animal that normally go to waste). However, my healing journey continues, therefore I am always open to advice and comments. The knowledge is to share! If you are curious about any specific preparations, send me a message and I will try to do a blog post addressing any of those.

Cheers!

#westonaprice #nosetotail #wapf #ancestralfood #integrativenutrition #healthcoach

[lovemesomesurveys]

survey from diggitydoo

Have you ever felt a baby kick? I might have when my mom was pregnant with my brother, but I don’t remember.

What color pants/shorts are you wearing? I’m wearing black leggings. 

When is the last time you did something truly fun, and what was it? My Disneyland trip back in February. It still trips me out that was this year, it feels like forever ago and SO much changed shortly after. It’s wild.

What was the scariest moment of your life? I’ve had more than one, but some were pre-surgery fears. It’s a very scary time and my mind always went to the worst places. My surgeries were long and invasive, too. During one of them my blood pressure dropped really low and my body was just in freakout mode for a few days after the surgery. Like, I had to have a few EKGs and a cardiologist check me out cause my heart rate was high (the EKGs came back fine, though, and the cardiologist couldn’t find anything wrong) and they were worried about my kidneys at one point. I think my body was just under a lot of stress from the type of surgery and the conditions beforehand (I had been sick for one, but also the prep required being totally cleaned out and I think I was dehydrated because of that).

Have you ever heard of Leonard Cohen? Doesn’t ring a bell.

Pancakes or flapjacks? Aren’t they the same thing?

What kind of computer are you on? I’m on my Macbook Air. 

Do you eat Chinese food? If so, what's your favorite dish? I like chow mien, egg rolls, potstickers, and crab rangoon. 

What are you usually doing at midnight? Either scrolling through my social medias, reading, or watching TV.

Have you ever developed feelings for a friend, but you were already with someone? No.

If so, how did it turn out?

Give me your brief definition of love. I don’t wanna.

What is the most beautiful part of the human body, male or female? Hmm. Eyes.

What kind of shoes do you wear? Adidas.

What is the worst thing you've ever done when you were really angry?I just get really frustrated and upset and I shut down and cry. Are there any pills you take on a daily basis? If so, what? My pain medication. And for the next 10 days this antibiotic. It’s bad because I’ve had it since yesterday for an infection I’ve had for at least two weeks that we know of and the reason why I’ve been feeling sick, but I’ve yet to take it. :X I can’t be a normal human who can take pills, I have to crush mine and I’m dreading how horrible that’s going to be. I’m used to my pain medication at this point and it’s not really that bad. But more than that, it has to be spaced apart from my pain medication because it possibly can increase the intensity of my pain med, potentially causing breathing problems, so I’m like oh yay that sounds fun. Sigh. My doctor insists it’s fine, especially with my dosage, but it was scary to find that out. It’ll most likely be fine, but I’ve gotten so paranoid about stuff in recent years that I didn’t used to be about before. I want to start feeling better, but ugh. :/ I’m gonna take the plunge in like an hour. 

Do you like the smell of coconuts? I do. Not the taste, though.

What is the heaviest you think you can lift? 5lbs? haha.

Do you take Tums? Nah, I just take Pepto. I’ve taken them in the past, but they’re chalky and disgusting and sometimes made me gag, so bleh. Apart from their intended purposes, it had been recommended to me by a doctor to take them for increasing calcium cause they have a lot of that, but yeah I didn’t do that much.

Have you ever walked on a pier at the beach? Yes. 

How about under one? No.

At what age do you first remember feeling butterflies in your stomach around someone? I think when I was like 9.

Do you feel that way around anyone now? No. It’s been a few years since I’ve felt that or had feelings for anyone in the romantic sense. What does that feel like again?

Do you ever talk to yourself or think deep thoughts while on the toilet? I think about stuff, sure.

Do you ever sing to yourself? Yeah.

What is a sound that relaxes you? Certain ASMR triggers and ocean sounds.

How hard has it been to reach your main goal in life? I don’t even know what I want to do in life.

Do you remember the song about hoes in different area codes? Yeah.

What is your main heritage? I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know? I get kinda confused with what that is, exactly.

What kind of pickles do you prefer, if you like pickles? Dill pickles. 

What kind of cheese do you prefer, if you like cheese? I love a lot of different cheeses. I just love cheese.

If you could have a sea creature as a pet, what would you want? Nah.

How about a farm animal? Nah.

So, do you have hoes in different area codes? No.

What is the most annoying song you can think of that came out recently? Nothing comes to mind. I haven’t been listening to music lately, though.

What is a song that you hate to admit you like? I don’t hate to admit that I like any song I like.

What inspires you to get off your bum and do something productive? Uhhhh.

Do you ever use Urban Dictionary? I’ve used it, but not regularly.

Do you find the definitions on there to be generally funny or stupid? Both.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word 'transformation'? A big change.

What was something you regularly played with as a child? Barbies.

Have you ever given in to peer pressure? Yes.

What part of your body have you had the most problems with in your life? My back.

Do a lot of people check you out when you're in public? Ha, no. No one does. 

What is a good name for a turtle? *shrug*

Can you imitate any accents well? If so, which one(s)? Nope.

Do you like having your ear nibbled on? I haven’t experienced that.

What makes a good kisser a good kisser? I don’t know. It’s not sloppy? lol. How many times a year do you have a family thing? We haven’t had a big family get together in years.

What are the best things to put in a smoothie? I’m a very simple gal, I just liked strawberries and bananas. Unless I went to Jamba Juice where they add stuff and you can add extras like a protein or caffeine shot or something. 

Do you ever eat with your eyes closed and just focus on the taste? Nah.

What do you dislike most about where you live right now? My city is crappy.

Has anyone ever given you a rose/roses? No.

Are you watching your weight? I need to be gaining weight, I’ve needed to for the past few years now, but I’ve been unsuccessful.

Have you ever become really good friends with someone you found online? Yes. I used to have several close online friends back in the day. Also, I personally love our little survey community on here. We support each other in some way or another and keep up with each other’s lives through our surveys. 

What makes your best friend your best friend? She’s my mom and my rock and has always been there for me. I couldn’t do it without her.

Do you have a drunk uncle? No.

Do you hear weird noises in your house at night? No. I usually have headphones on, though.

What is something you do that is generally more like something the opposite sex does? Uhhh. I don’t know if there is something I do like that. Not that I can think of.

What is the girliest thing you do, if you're a girl? I don’t know. 

What is the coolest tattoo you've ever seen? That’s hard to say. There’s a lot of really cool tattoos. 

Have you ever created anything artistic that you're proud of? If so, what? I’m not crafty, artistic, or creative, sadly.

Do you only eat the middle of the oreo, if you eat oreos? I eat the whole thing, but of course the creme is the best part.

Do you know anyone with a huge ego? Yes.

If so, is there anything else about them you actually like? They’re very intelligent and would do anything for their loved ones.

Do you have any friends who are more like siblings to you? I don’t have any friends.

If so, what about them do you like most?

What do you like on your hotdogs, if you eat hotdogs? Ketchup and mustard. It’s very rare that I’m eating a hotdog at all, though. It’s been years since I’ve had one.

What is everyone else in your house doing right now? My dad is getting ready for work, but my mom and brother are sleeping.

How long do you think it would take you to run a mile? Pfffft. That’s not happening.

Look down. What do you see? My blanket I’m wrapped up in. What is a subject that makes you uncomfortable? Politics. 

What is a subject you can talk on and on about and not get sick of it? I like talking about any of my interests. 

What kind of mood were you in most of today? It’s only 6:37AM.

Has anyone ever walked in on you naked? Nooo.

Tell me an inside joke you have with someone. Nah.

What is the worst thing you've ever done to someone emotionally? Ghosting those I was close to. :/

How do you feel now about the first person you ever dated? I don’t feel anything towards them anymore. I don’t have any bad feelings or anything, it’s just been almost 15 years since then and we haven’t even been in each other’s lives in a decade now and I’ve long since moved on. 

How about the last person (your last ex)? I don’t have any bad feelings towards him either. I’ve moved on years ago as well.

What is the best invention ever invented? There’s been so many.

What is something that needs to be invented? I’m too tired to think of something.

What always makes you burp? It just happens. 

What are you doing tomorrow? Same stuff, different day.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[imagineclaireandjamie]

When discussing what they missed about the 20th century with Brianna Claire mentioned messy cheeseburgers with all the fixings. Can we get a scene of Claire and Bree enjoying the previously mentioned meal together in Boston?

Missing moment in 4x10.

Claire tried like hell not to think of what she had left behind in the twentieth century.

Her daughter. Their daughter.

Plumbing.

Motor vehicles.

Radios.

Cinemas.

Electric kettles.

Furnaces.

Toilet roll.

Tampons and sanitary napkins.

Diner food.

Well-constructed undergarments.

But she could not help her mind from drafting a litany of these things when faced with some ordinary task or another.  

As they attempted to slice a piece of roast pork, she could not help but call to mind the ease with which modern cutlery or an electric knife could accomplish the task.  But she would never say it aloud.

Catching Ian’s curious eye when she unconsciously reached for the tap on a faucet that did not exist over the bowl of dishes at the end of a meal, she smiled, shrugged, concentrated on the washing up.  She never provided an explanation.  

As she doubled over in pain, melting into Jamie’s thumbs as they massaged away cramps, she mumbled a plea for a heating pad and an aspirin.  He made a sound, low but sweet, and continued kneading the muscles.

It had been easy to set aside these conveniences on her first trip to the eighteenth century.  

Adrenaline had coursed through her then as she engaged in a series of machinations to maintain her lie (my-husband-he-is-dead-and-I-am-traveling-to-France-please-pass-the-potatoes), and endeavored to stay alive.  For her safety (her brush with a Scottish witch trial had been more than enough incentive to think fast) and Jamie’s, she had tended to keep outward indicia of her modernity under cover.

However, on her second trip to the eighteenth century, her lips were infinitely looser.  With age, isolation on the Ridge, and the sheer boundlessness of the space around them and from others, she let slip seemingly harmless perks of modern life.  Ian’s fascinated, though sometimes doubtful looks, spurred her on.  Emboldened by her nephew’s thousand mile stare, she described such fantastic things as:

Ice cubes in freezers right in the kitchen, produced with abundance.

Matches, their easy strike along the pad and the tangy, elemental burn of them in the sinuses.

Fans on hot days, maintaining an artificial breeze that could wick sweat from the skin.

Stores with everything imaginable in profane volume – meats and cheeses, pickled vegetables and fresh produce, cans of food for family pets (eyes going wide at the thought of Rollo eating dog food from a tin).

Deodorant in pre-formed sticks or aerosol cans.

Showers with seemingly infinite hot water and soap that smelled like springtime or the ocean or tropical fruits.

Produce all year long.

However, Claire again became more circumspect in her mentioning of these things over time.  

The last thing she wanted was for Jamie to think that she prioritized things and stuff and modern conveniences over her connection with him. After all, he was the bedrock of the epic kind of love that she had returned through time to find. She saw the periodic twitch in his upper lip as he fought the inclination to ask if she wanted to return to her time when they argued, woke cross with one another over some misdemeanor or another, or she cursed hotly about this or that being a bother.

But when Bree appeared on the Ridge, Claire felt a certain freeness in letting slip these small things.  At least to their daughter’s ears.  She was particularly loose about the future and their past when she saw distance unfurl in her daughter’s eyes. All that had happened was an extinguishing Bree’s very life. She could see it in her daughter’s eyes (her husband’s eyes). A pain that had gone bone deep, that she had cause to know intimately. Bree’s mind was meandering on a path far, far away.  

One chilly afternoon shortly after Bree arrived at the Ridge, when the air was not quite crisp enough to make their cheeks sting and go pink, mother and daughter folded linens outdoors.  Then, Claire saw it plain as day in Bree.  The way her daughter’s eyes were weighted, pulled as if by gravity to the task of folding instead of up and into a study of the world around them. After observing her for a series of long moments, Claire made a choice.

To indulge in talk of the home that they had known together.

“Hamburgers,” Claire said plainly, lining the edges of a sheet.  “Messy cheeseburgers. With all the fixings. From Carmie’s.”

Bree looked wistful for a moment before offering, “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

Their game went on for only a minute, but the change in Bree at Claire’s acknowledgment of her longing for home was palpable. 

That night as their dinner wound down (candles close to the nub, bellies full, the glow of intoxication apparent in the apples of Jamie’s cheeks), Bree speared one of the fragrant, bulbous canned tomatoes left on her plate. Closing one eye, she held it up to the low, flickering light.  

“This,” she declared. “Only sliced and fresh.  Grilled mushrooms.  Swiss cheese so thick you really have to chew it or it’ll be all down the front of your blouse.”

A breath, closing the other eye then.  

“And caramelized onions that are almost too sweet.” She hummed, low and content. “Mayonnaise. A thick glob right from the giant, mass-produced jar of it.  And a pickle spear. Two of them. I’ll have yours, mom, you always leave it anyway.”

Tilting her head, she opened her eyes and surveyed her audience. 

“French fries. Lots of ketchup with black pepper shaken into it, stirred with the tip of my fork.”

Claire made an ecstatic sound, sinking back into her chair with her mug of water.  “Keep the Swiss and mushrooms, add lettuce and cheddar.”

“The good white cheddar?” Bree inquired. 

Claire grimaced, rolled her eyes. “Of course. Nothing but. And the chips must be extra crispy. I hate soggy fries.”

“Cheeseburgers,” Bree sighed, eyes almost cloudy with food lust.

Jamie looked between his wife and daughter, brow furrowed, before shaking his head.

That night, Jamie took his wife by the waist as she stripped down to her shift, fingers insistent at her hipbones.

“Cheese burr-gurrs?” he asked, voice halting with unfamiliarity at the words being joined together.

Snorting, Claire turned in his arms. She smoothed the ditch of a furrow from between his brows, carefully gathering her encyclopedic explanation. “Ground meat, either seared on a flat top or grilled over a flame.  Bread.  Melted cheese. Ketchup.  Mustard. Mayonnaise…”

(He had tasted mustard. He had heard of course of mayonnaise – cream and eggs, tangy on the finish - but never tasted it. He let slide Bree’s mention of “ketchup” without a request for further elaboration.  He had seen enough of his daughter to know when lightness was acting as a barrier for some other pit of emotion.  He had been there intimately enough to know the purpose of diverting oneself from what really laid beneath meaningless banter over this or that.)

“Eating that kind of diner food… it’s a nostalgia thing for Bree.”

Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Oh, aye?”

“Every time she got a good report card from school with good marks, the two of us would go to a diner down the street from our house.  We would sit at the counter and order cheeseburgers, chips, and ice cream sundaes.”

Claire’s heart skipped a beat before she said what she said next, but she had to say it to put the experience into context for him.

“Frank never came along.  It was our time. We bonded.”

Jamie pushed aside the curls that were acting as a veil over her neck and nestled his face close to her throat. It was as if by absorbing with his lips the vibration of his wife’s words, he would have the memory for himself, feel the nostalgia bubble in his veins at the mention of cheeseburgers.

“Bree would tell me about school, what she wanted to be when she grew up.  It varied significantly over time, of course, as young children are wont to change their young minds.  A pediatrician.  A veterinarian.  A violinist.  A race car driver.  A physicist.  A historian.  When she was older, we talked about her plans for university.”

“Ye think fondly of those times.”  

“I do.” A pause, a breath, her pulse flickering under his mouth. “She talked about boys only once. I told her about the birds and the bees.  She grumbled and rolled her eyes and hissed, insisting she already knew all of it.”

Claire faded away for a moment before Jamie took her chin.  “Those moments are dear to ye, are they no’? Ye’ll no’ ever forget the times with her at the diner with the… cheese-bur-gers.”

Claire could almost taste hot fudge and whipped cream, the cherry on top. She could sense her teeth breaking through the light char of the meat and tongue absorb the grease exploding across her tongue. She could see Bree clutching the yellow slip of paper on which a series of A’s were listed with comments about her meaningful contributions in Social Studies and her thoughtful commentary on a Robert Frost poem in English Literature.  She could feel the chrome of the counter against her bare knees and smell the hot oil.  She could picture Bree.  Her toothy grin, locked down in a cage of orthodontia, and a pimple quietly growing under concealer filched from Claire’s cosmetics bag.

Claire turned and carded her hands into Jamie’s hair, drawing his face close.  She studied him for a time, the blue earnestness in his eyes.  He wanted to know, even if it meant that he would never have those moments.  

“I’ll never forget.”

#Anonymous #;mod kate #featuring: brianna #featuring: ridge life #Episode 4x10

[leopardwrangling101]

There’s a leopard in the fridge

Leopards get into everything.

You would think it was impossible because a leopard is a very big thing and some of these spaces are super small, but they manage.

Leopards however seem to like the fridge.

When leopards arrive they mess with food.

Can’t eat, don’t want to eat, over eat, eat only junk food, only eat take out.

Can’t walk through the grocery store without disassociating

Can’t place an on-line grocery order because everything just seems to be closing in and the thought of trying is just TOO MUCH

Can’t chose something off a menu to save a life.

Disassociate in the fast food parking lot (if you’re lucky, the drive through like if you’re not)

Time for preplanning.

If you’ve read anything in this tumblr you should know that my leopards are pseudo controllable with preplanning. Organization, structure, lists, kits…these things seem to befuddle my leopards and give me a little breathing room.

Keeping leopards out of the fridge requires three to four lists.

List one- typical meals or types of meals that you eat each week, - breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. If you are a hobbit, fill in the other meals, no judgement here.

Example:

Breakfast schedule

Monday - yoghurt and cereal

Tuesday - eggs

Wednesday - yoghurt and cereal

Thursday - eggs

Friday - yoghurt and cereal

Saturday - something easy

Sunday - something special

Lunch schedule

Monday - themed lunch (make it special)

Tuesday - vegetarian plough man’s lunch

Wednesday - afternoon tea

Thursday - salad

Friday - tuna sandwich

Saturday - picnic (even if indoors)

Sunday - popcorn and a movie

Evening Meal schedule

Monday - vegetarian

Tuesday - Fish

Wednesday - new recipe

Thursday - dinner with friend (after work, going out to eat)

Friday - Ethnic option - self-made, take out or frozen

Saturday - Soup and Grilled Cheese

Sunday - Something special

List two - core foods in the fridge and freezer that you typically eat.

I keep to a pescatarian diet and my core list looks like this:

Dairy

Eggs

Heavy cream

Cheese (shredded, chunk, sliced)

Butter (stick and spread)

Yoghurt (Greek or French)

Horseradish

Sour cream

Cottage cheese

Hummus

Cream cheese

Milk (nut and/or small amount regular)

Produce

Salad materials:

Lettuce

Spinach

Tomatoes

Peppers

Cucumber

Radish

Carrots

Celery

Sprouts

Cooking vegetables:

Ginger

Garlic

Shallots

Mushrooms

Peas

Bok Choy

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Kale

Leeks

Fennel

Zucchini

Asparagus

Beets

Swiss chard

Yellow squash

Onions

Potatoes

Small eggplant

Corn

Green beans

Fruit in season

Lemons

Apples

Berries

Oranges

Clementines

Blood oranges

Plums

Peaches

Grapes

Avocado

Fish

Shrimp

Squid

Snapper

Perch

Scallops

Swordfish

Cod

Trout

Other fish/shellfish when on sale, in season

Frozen

Appetizers

Quick entrees - vegetarian and pescatarian

Veggie sausage

Veggie burgers

Frozen vegetables

List three - typical core pantry items

This is my list:

Pantry Items

Pasta

Pasta sauce (pesto, marinara, vodka, Alfredo)

Rice (jasmine, long grain wild)

Soup (jarred preferably)

Olives

Artichoke hearts

Roasted red peppers

Salsa (red and green)

Tea

Flour

Chocolate chips

Cocoa

Corn meal

Pickles

Vegetable stocks

Fish stock

Yeast

Mustard

Mayonnaise

Sugar

Herbs

Spices

Popcorn

Cereal

Bread

Crackers

Canned fish

Canned vegetables

Canned beans/lentils

Nuts

Specialty items

Salad dressing

Oils

Vinegars

List four is for specific leopard foods, either foods that scare off leopards or foods that soothe leopards. So sometimes these foods are in the cupboard, sometimes they are in your leopard wrangling kit. Sometimes they are what you serve yourself on a relaxation night.

My list

McCain smiley fries

Nacho cheese Doritos

Mexican hot chocolate disks with cinnamon

Spaghetti Os

Canned Clam Chowder

Oyster crackers

Goldfish crackers

Anise sponge cookies

Root beer

Dark chocolate covered almonds

As you can see this list is pretty carb heavy, these are comfort foods, things that I know specifically can lift me out of a leopard moment or can dissuade leopards from taking residence. But these are not my everyday foods. Some of my everyday foods, like tea, also work against leopards, but since that is a staple, it doesn’t need to be specifically on this list. If I am in a bad way leopard wise, this is a quick list for an online grocery order, a request to a friend or a specific short list for my own foray into the store. Only one item on the list is frozen, so even if I disassociate I don’t need to worry about a cart full of ruined food stuffs. The hot chocolate disks are a specialty item that most of my local grocery places don’t stock, so this is something I either have to keep on hand or pick up when I spot it and save it. This is a definitive leopard wrangling kit item and also requires that I keep some option of milk on hand.

How to use these lists.

List one: Having a routine for meals gives the day a bit of structure and helps keep leopards at bay for a bit. Meal routines also allow for prepping meals in advance, such as when the leopards are quiet. As you know from reading other posts, I also love to cook, so my lists are designed around that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t shove ingredients for a new recipe in the slow cooker to fulfill my need for food when avoiding a leopard. If the lists are too rigid and the leopards too loud, adjust the list. It’s just a list, it’s a reminder and suggestion to yourself.

Lists two through four: knowing your core needs and preferences for food makes it easier to grocery shop, keep track of what you need versus what is on hand and do alternative ordering when you cannot shop for yourself. You can print out your lists and keep them tacked on the fridge and puta mark next to things that are used up and need to be replaced. You can load all the items into an app on your phone and do the same.

#leopard #mental heath support #trauma recovery #meal planning

[melforbes]

cold, ocean, phonebook

post Drive

What she needed was a local dive, some seedy diner with busted red vinyl booths and laminated menus featuring blue plate specials and eggs any way you would like them. As dusk settled over the Californian sea beyond her, she flipped through a phonebook, thought of keywords for what she wanted: milkshakes, family-owned, titled as Chuck’s Place or Beverly’s Diner or even The Greasy Spoon. Biting her lip in concentration, she counted the waves beyond her little payphone, measured time with them as she looked over all of the listed restaurants from here to San Francisco. Loleta was an odd combination of seaside and rustic, rich and unpopulated; if she wanted a diner, she would have to drive, and after that day, she didn’t want to be stuck behind a wheel any longer than was absolutely necessary.

And Kersh had been called, and their asses were on the line, and their return flight to D.C. would be filled with her last moments of reprieve before an inevitable hailstorm of paperwork, liability, and unfortunately both metaphorical and literal manure rained down upon her desk, but somehow, she had the inkling that a good plate of corned beef hash at a checkered palace where neon lights claimed open twenty-four hours and where blonde waitresses scooted around on roller-skates would at least take Mulder’s mind off of exploding eardrums and the fragility of human life. Of course, the inkling was hardly backed up by solid scientific fact, and just last week, she’d told him that he needed to better his diet for the sake of his heart’s health, but nonetheless, she needed to find him respite, a place where he felt most in his element. First, a diner came to mind even though Loleta seemed void of any diners.

Back in her second year working with him, they’d been stranded in a snowstorm in Burlington, the roads closed and all of the native Vermonters snuggled beneath flannel sheets while she’d phoned her mother to say why she couldn’t make mass on Sunday. That night, they’d holed up in one of the few bed-and-breakfasts that had power, the lake effect wind rustling the shutters on her window, the television’s rabbit ears barely picking up a signal, and at two in the morning, when she’d somehow still been awake, he’d knocked heavily at her door, shouted to her, “I’m starving. Want to get dinner?”

And then, they were in a Ford Taurus - rented, of course - barreling over snowdrifts while plows on all kinds of cars - most commonly trucks but also Jeeps and Yukons and even the occasional S.U.V. - cleared what they could, silent and fat flakes of snow still falling well into the night. From the reckless turns Mulder made, and from the crunchy way the brake pedal on that car had felt even before the snowstorm, she clenched her fists on her lap for the whole ride, her mind repeating I cannot die in a snowstorm with this man, for that’ll be the most tragic way for me to go. While Mulder sought out a diner, they both realized that, apparently, there was a culture surrounding the idea of a diner and that so-called diner culture didn’t exist in Vermont, where shops closed at five in the afternoon and dared not reopen until morning. Stomachs empty, they made it back to the motel, where they managed two candy bars out of a vending machine and where they sat together on his bed, her boots left at the door while his were kicked off haphazardly in the middle of the room, and watched local programming on the fuzzy television. Unsurprisingly, Vermont news was tame to the point of hilarity; over processed chocolates, they laughed at how Mrs. Roberts’ grandson’s visit was the breaking story of the night, and when Scully fell asleep alongside Mulder, he was polite enough not to wake her until morning.

And now, she once again found that, when they needed a diner most, one would never appear.

Stepping over to where she stood at the little payphone off of the side of the road, he looked over her shoulder, asked, “Why don’t we just find a place to stay for the night?”

She took a deep, quiet breath, her eyes cast down at the Yellow Pages.

“We need dinner,” she said coolly.

“There’s a burger shack two miles up the road,” he commented; she wondered how he knew that while she’d been left oblivious. “Let’s just go there.”

She sucked her lips into a near-smile, went to nod when he quipped, “Unless that’s not up to your standards for my diet.”

But his little smile fell flat, held solemnness beneath it, and suddenly, her mind blanked, then centered on one thought: it was absolutely up to her to protect this man, to comfort him, for she was the only person in the world who could, yet she couldn’t even find him dinner when prompted to do so.

“It’s fine,” she managed, then set the phonebook back down, headed for the driver’s side of their rental car.

At the passenger’s side, he climbed in, and with the radio off, she pulled away from the ocean in silence.

They were lucky for the summer weather, for the lack of youngsters mulling about the shack’s picnic tables, for the fact that the place was still open even though the sun was beginning to set. Benji’s Burgers, a hand-painted sign on top of the place indicated, and the menu was simple, just five separate burger titles and their ingredients listed on a propped-up chalkboard. Two teenagers worked the place, and when Mulder asked if either of them was Benji, he received shrugs and the excuse that Benji was out of town on business.

“Burger business?” Mulder asked incredulously as they later sat alongside each other at a picnic table, plastic baskets of burgers and fries in front of them. “What kind of burger business do you have to go out of town for?”

In between bites, she commented, “Maybe this is just his side business.”

The sky formed a shade of bright orange, remarkable and vast above them; cars would occasionally buzz past the roadside shack, but mostly, the only sounds were the summer insects around them and the transistor radio that the two teens had set up in the shack. Currently, some staticky Spencer Davis song played, and she kicked off her heels beneath the table, let her feet rest bare against the earth beneath them.

“Benji’s Burgers,” Mulder enunciated, hovering his burger in front of his mouth, “a front for Benji’s Blow and Dope. This, of course, is just a side business. Doesn’t make nearly as much money.”

For his sake, she quirked a lip at that even though her face felt heavy with woe, her eyes tired, her uncertainty making her hands shaky as she went to take a bite of her own burger. Extra mustard, hold the pickles. He’d ordered for her.

“Do you think at all about dying nowadays?”

The question left her gagging on her bite, one of her hands coming to her mouth while she forced herself to chew, swallow, find words. Before she could speak, he smiled to himself at her response, admitted, “I didn’t mean to make you choke.”

Embarrassed, she defended, “It was an abrupt change of subject.”

“We can’t lie as though it wasn’t on our minds.”

She took a deep breath, said, “No, we can’t.”

“With the cancer and all, it must’ve been hard not to think about it,” he said, “but do you ever thinking about it now?”

“About dying?”

He nodded softly, honestly, so she shrugged, offered, “Sometimes, I guess. When we thought Crump-”

“Mister Crump,” Mulder corrected, then took another bite of his burger, Benji’s so-called special sauce leaving a red stain alongside his lips.

“Well, when we though that Mister Crump had been infected with something bacterial,” she repeated, “I thought about dying.”

“How did it feel?” he asked. “The concept, I mean. The thought of it all.”

She weighed her words, gave, “Horrifying. Uncomfortable. But in the end, your only option is acceptance.”

“It’s not your only option,” he said. “You could be kicking and screaming until the very end, right until that profound plug is pulled. You’d don’t need to accept a thing.”

“You need to accept it if you want peace of mind.”

“Who cares about peace of mind?” he asked. “If you’re going to be dead, then why does it matter?”

And to that, she had no response, so she stared down at her lap, the fries in her basket going cold, a sedan driving past at a speed that deserved a ticket. Uncomfortably, he shifted his weight, finished off his meal, kept his eyes down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being an ass.”

“You had a rough day.”

“He didn’t deserve to die, Scully.”

“Does anyone?”

Humorlessly, he laughed.

“You don’t want to know my answer to that,” he admitted, meeting her eyes.

She stuck a cold, unsatisfying fry into her mouth and wondered where they would stay tonight as she chewed.

“I just think that today’s injustices were avoidable,” he said, unbuttoning two buttons on his shirt and ruffling his - dirty, she might add - hands through his hair. “You said that everyone in that home area was dead. There’s no way a government can rationalize that.”

“A government can rationalize anything,” she mumbled as he chose not to listen.

“How many more people have to die, Scully?” he asked. “How many more innocent civilians have to get in the way before someone, anyone, realizes that this is unjust?”

“You’re assuming they don’t already realize that this is unjust.”

“I can’t keep doing this anymore, talking to rednecks about their beets and pretending I’m making a difference,” he said softly. “There’s so much more out there, so much more I could be doing.”

“We’ll find our way back to cases like this,” she assured, bringing her palm to rest on his leg. “We’ll solve x-files again. We’ll be able to help again.”

“But what have the x-files done for either of us?” he asked, his tone stark. “They caused your abduction, your cancer. They’ve attacked our families, and for what, Scully? For next to nothing. If we do something, people die. If we don’t do something, people die. There’s no way out of this.”

As Jim Croce crooned hazily through the teens’ radio, she folded her hands on her lap, swallowed hard. Though she wanted to offer something, to say that everything would be fine and that no one would ever die again and that the world, though he had never been able to see it in such a way, was, at its depths, a good place, she couldn’t offer any of that without knowing her statements would be lies. Breathing in, she closed her eyes, felt the soft touch of a breeze, could smell the sweat and grime heavy on his skin; when she thought of their flight home in the morning, of the inevitable meeting with Kersh, her heart began to race, so she pushed those thoughts away, forced herself to find something that would comfort him. Her search for a greasy spoon had failed; her consolation efforts were nonexistent; though she thought she knew him better than anyone else did, she still couldn’t find words to take his mind from the injustices of the universe. The injustices of men, she corrected herself. The injustices of the world were mauled animal corpses left to rot in the savannah; the injustices of men were a slew of deceased bodies as a product of government experiments.

Opening her eyes, she reached out, took his sticky hand in hers, entwined her little fingers between his thick, calloused ones. The sky was fading to darker tones, and by now, she knew he needed somewhere to rest and wash, but she still searched for something to say, some little compliment or inside joke or anything else that would bloom a smile of his, but her search continued to be fruitless.

“You’re pensive,” he said with a dry laugh, but she could hear a hint of nervousness in his voice.

Softly, he curled his fingers against hers, so she sucked her lips into a smile, spoke the first words that came to mind.

“Some of my best memories are with you,” she said, the compliment absent-minded and unrelated, but as she looked up, she saw the stunned look on his face, the deep blue-grey of his eyes, the way he looked at her as though everything else had momentarily faded away, leaving only her dry and freckled face in its wake. With sauce still on his cheek, he was messy and unshowered and himself, and she wanted to curl her arms around him and reassure herself that, even though death seemed to follow them wherever they went, it had yet to touch them and that that was a good thing.

Glancing down and breaking their eye contact, he smiled toward his shoes, said, “Let’s go find a hotel, Scully.”

Exhaling, she nodded, said, “Somewhere nice.”

“On the bureau card?

She gave him a look, said, “We’ll call it repayment for the talking-to Kersh’ll give us in Washington.”

Smiling, he stood, pulled her up as well. She picked up her heels and dangled them from her open hand while he led her back toward the car, but before he could go around to the passenger’s side, before he let go of her hand, he added, “Scully?”

She hummed a response, looked up at him with new perspective; she so rarely stood next to him flat-footed, so the positioning reminded her of the moment when he’d held her in the hospital after Penny Northern had died, of how warm and alive he’d felt alongside her dying body. Absently, she wondered how his arms would feel now, California nighttime surrounding them, unrighteous death behind them and personal anger ahead.

Looking down, he admitted, “Most of my best memories are with you too.”

Then, he ducked over to his side of the car, and as she opened her own car door, as she slid her shoes back on, she didn’t realize that she’d begun to smile.

#food // #how do you spell kersh #messages #my apologies #this is an instance of 'wow i hate this but if i don't post it i'll hate myself' #what are tenses????????????? #what is dialog #what's a plot #what's california #what's proper grammar #my writing

[nanalikessurveys]

Breakfast! 1.) Have you ever eaten a “balanced breakfast” like they show in cereal commercials (I.E., bowl of cereal, fruit, glass of orange juice)? I have but i don’t do that as often as i should

2.) When’s the last time you made someone breakfast? Couple weeks ago i guess

3.) What’s your favorite cereal? I don’t eat cereal

4.) What’s the highest calorie, most terrible for you breakfast you’ve ever had? I don’t remember. but it had been somewhere in a hotel, i love hotel breakfast buffets

5.) Would you rather get breakfast from McDonald’s or Burger King? Mcdonalds

6.) Waffles or pancakes? I love pancakes, waffles not that much

7.) Eggs or cereal? Eggs

8.) Milk or orange juice? I would prefer someting else but i guess i would pick orange juice over milk

9.) PopTart or Toaster Strudel? I have not tried either of these

10.) Do you even eat breakfast? Every morning 

11.) Do you take vitamins with your breakfast? I take those multivitamin gummy bears lol

Lunch! 1.) When do you usually eat lunch?

If i eat it, at about 12-1pm

2.) Did you get notes from your parents in your lunch when you were little? Haha no

3.) If you had one, what did your lunch box look like? Never had, we have free lunch in schools here

4.) What’d you have for lunch today? I didn’t have lunch, just a snack

5.) Do you like to go out for lunch? Where? Yes but i don’t do it that often, i like to go for sushi lol

6.) Do you have/want any cute sandwich cutters? (They decrust your sandwich into a shape) Nope

7.) Do you sit with/meet with anyone for lunch often? Not really

8.) Have you ever had a peanut butter and butter sandwich, or does it sound appealing at all? I don’t think i have

9.) Is your lunch usually a hot food or a cold food? I think cold

10.) Has the word “lunch” been repeated so many times it’s a meaningless word by now? Hahah no

Dinner/Supper! 1.) Do you follow the health rule of having a small dinner and big breakfast? No, all of my meals are pretty big lol

2.) Do you ever say a prayer before eating dinner? No

3.) What’s your favorite take out dinner, if you have one? Idk, pizza?

4.) Have you ever been taken out to a nice restaurant for a dinner date? Yes

5.) Did you grow up eating dinner with your family? How do you think that affected you? Yes when i was a kid and my dad still lived with us we used to eat together, but when my parents separated and he moved away we just kind of got more chill and started to eat whenever and wherever we wanted. I don’t think that affected me tho in anyway?

6.) Do you have “nice” dinner plates for special occasions? Not really

7.) Do you ever eat frozen dinners? Rarely

8.) What dinner foods can you cook? I can actually cook alot of foods if you just give me a recipe

9.) White or red meat (or their vegetarian substitute counterparts)? White

10.) Soup or salad? Salad

Dessert! 1.) Do you ever get dessert at a restaurant when they ask? Yes if my mom allows me LOL

2.) Is there a dessert food most people like that you hate? I don’t like cream cakes

3.) Cupcakes or real cake? Cupcakes

4.) Ice cream or pie? Ice cream

5.) What kind of birthday cake (or other sweet birthday type thing) do you usually get? No-bake cakes are the best and i always ask for those

6.) What was your favorite childhood birthday cake?

Ice cream cake

7.) Do you have a favorite foreign (to a Westerner, anyway :P) desserts? (Baklava, biscotti, churros…) Yes i love churros and creme brulees

8.) Do you bake sweets? Which are you best at? Sometimes. i make pies and cupcakes

9.) Have you ever had a good “diet” dessert, like something endorsed by Weight Watchers? What was it? No

10.) What’s your dream dessert? Some fancy ice cream bowl like a banana split lol

11.) Do you watch shows like Cake Boss or Cupcake Wars? No

Snacks! 1.) What’s the best candy in the world? i like liquorice and haribo candies

2.) Do you eat more snacks or full meals? Meals i think

3.) Is there anything you find yourself eating when you’re bored? Anything i can find lol

4.) Do drinks with calories count as a snack? Sure

5.) What’s your favorite food that’s usually served at parties? I don’t go to parties so i don’t know whats served in there lol

6.) Do you eat in class? If so, what is it, usually? Never

7.) Honestly, are your snacks healthy or bad for you? Unhealthy usually

8.) Potato chips or trail mix? Potato chips

9.) What do you usually get at the movie theater? EVERYTHING literally, we bring the whole grocery store with us lol

10.) Did you get fruit snacks with your favorite character on them when you were little? No

11.) Do you remember any sayings from conversation hearts? Which is your favorite? I don’t know what those are

Food in general! 1.) Do you buy generic brand food? Sometimes

2.) Is there a common food you find repulsive? Pickles

3.) What’s your favorite “ethnic” cuisine? I’d say chinese

4.) If you were stranded in a zombie apocalypse with only a full, run-of-the-mill and full-of-junk vending machine for food, which items would you eat first? Chocolate maybe

5.) Are you a candy fanatic? No i wouldn’t call myself that

6.) Do you like any weird food combinations? No i don’t think so

7.) Are there any foods you shouldn’t eat because of your religion? No

8.) Would you eat a bug if it was covered in your favorite food? Haha no

9.) Do you think being a vegan would be/is really hard? I don’t think it would

10.) Do you eat in the car? I rarely travel by car but yeah

11.) Do you pay attention to serving sizes? Sometmies

12.) Fruit or vegetables? Fruits

13.) Mustard or ketchup? Ketchup

14.) Does mayonnaise disgust you? Nooooo i love mayo

15.) What’s your favorite holiday, in terms of the food you get to eat during it? Christmas obviously

16.) Are you hungry? (: What do you plan on eating next?

I am not, i just ate mushroom soup lol

#survey #surveys

[jeninthegarden]

The Garden reflections 2019

Back to Eden (are we there yet??)

This is my 11th year of garden logging.  So it is time to do a little retrospective on a decade of negligent vegetable gardening.  The big issues remain WATER and DEER.  I refuse to create any kind of irrigation system.  While I may mound up to help drainage, hugle to use up logs and preserve moisture, plant closely to prevent things getting too dry, I have not invested in any drip irrigation or rain barrels, or even ollas (buried terra cotta pots).  So, after a decade, I remain largely at the mercy of the weather.  I am still on the fence about any larger investment.  If anything, it has been too much rain and too many snap heat waves that have been the most disruptive events.  I haven’t ever had a real drought.  Row covers have been useful for direct seeding germination. Still considering rain barrels, but still haven’t done it.  The greenhouse we had for a couple of seasons was more useful as a screen house to keep chipmunks away from the tomatoes than for weather protection.  I prefer row covers and bird-netting.

The other ongoing issue is still the deer – from the very first years when I covered my tomatoes with sheets at night and still found half eaten tomatoes floating in the bird bath the next morning, to the Mexican deer that happily ate all my hot peppers (because I wrongly assumed they were too spicy and it was therefore safe to plant them outside the fence), the depressed deer that tried to off themselves by eating my rhubarb leaves.  The list of things I have assumed deer would not eat and been proved wrong is apparently endless.  I had a brief respite when a local coyote put us on his day and night patrol route, but he has moved on and the pesky deer leaned over the garden fence to eat the tops of my tomatoes this fall.   My investment in infrastructure to keep deer out of my garden has also been limited. I still do not have any permanent enclosure other than my original 20x30 fenced garden.  And that is in serious need of a facelift since it is now 13 years old.  The decadal lesson on deer is that there are more of them than you think and they are really just large rodents that eat everything.

The secondary issue that stands out from the decade is WEEDS.  I am a negligent gardener so the weeds sneak up on me every year.  I have a complicated relationship with weeds:  I know most of their names.  I eat the ones which are edible: purslane, lambs quarter, burdock, wild garlic, dandelions. I find some of them interesting too look at: bittersweet and porcelain berry vines are invasive but pretty. I should exterminate them but they are growing rampant in the back of my yard.  Some I even cultivate because they are so hardy and ornamental: I am constantly moving violets out of the yards and into the herb garden and I never weed them out of the vegetable garden. Fuzzy mullein is everywhere and I am always moving it around.  And then there are the cultivated plants which have gone native: lemon balm I planted one plant of has spread all over the property and I just move it around now.  Giant red India mustard self-seeds and is also to be found everywhere on the property.

WEEDS I have learned must be controlled from earliest spring.  The only patches of garden that remain weed free by July are the ones that were mulched with newspaper and straw by the end of April.  This is true every year.  My success in controlling the weeds depends on how much time and effort I put into weed control in the month of April.  Propagation can always be supplemented with bought seedlings and I have no issues with soil quality because I compost and rotate crops routinely.  But I just do not weed, routinely or even at all some years, so weeds that sprout quickly overtake me.

Being at the mercy of the weather means that some years are better for certain crops than others.  And, whichever vegetable patch is fully mulched by April, those vegetables don’t get subsumed by the weeds.  I enjoy abundance, of whatever happens to grow vigorously.  I always appreciate volunteers that go to seed and grow again unassisted and leftover plants that make it through the winter. I subscribe to the philosophy of Eat the Invaders, so I eat whichever weeds are edible. Some of the most satisfying plants I have grown are:

Peas. There are never enough peas and everyone loves peas. I dry and save seeds for the next year. They are so easy to grow.  I never forget to plant peas and since they are planted very early, they are always mulched and never lost to the sea of weeds.

Cabbage. From the days of Helen having to be taught to only eat one leaf off each red cabbage seedling, to watching the chickadees bathe in the rainwater caught in giant cabbage leaves, to my favorite quote of the decade: “But always to her the red and green cabbages would be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry; life has no weapon against a woman like that!”  I love cabbages. I love to interplant them with sky-blue petunias and dill. I like to pickle cabbage. I have even made sauerkraut. I always plant cabbage.  My chickens love cabbages too. I will never be able to free range the chickens in my garden.

Tomatoes.  Heirloom tomatoes are my favorites.  Nothing will ever compare to the taste of an heirloom tomato you have just picked from your own garden. I am partial to the yellow with red stripe varieties like Big Rainbow and Mr. Stripey.  Dan likes the black varieties like Black Krim and Purple Cherokee.  I like the Hungarian Heart paste tomatoes.  Unfortunately everything likes tomatoes and it is difficult to protect them from deer, squirrels and chipmunks, and field mice. Weather is always an issue, especially when you think you are getting a head start by planting early but the weather never warms sufficiently for the fruit to set. Nevertheless there is no question that there will always be tomato plants in my garden.

Leeks.  From the earliest days of the leaky dance, we always plant leeks.  Mostly because they are the first thing that needs to be planted, right after Christmas, right now in fact.  And then they just need to be transplanted and allowed to grow, for 10 months.  And they need to be planted inside the garden because trial and error has proved that there are Welsh deer hereabouts that will eat leeks.  Oddly, although I plant them compulsively, and dance the obligatory leaky dance (it is like ribbon dancing with leek tops) when they are harvested.  I eat them right away, if at all, and never store them. And I have never yet let them go to seed and saved the seeds.

Nasturtiums.  Yes, I really do always plant nasturtiums.  I love the shape of the leaves. I love the taste of the leaves and the flowers, tastes like bell pepper/cucumber/arugula with salt and pepper.  I usually plant them around the leeks. Sometimes I save the seeds for planting the next year.  I have even pickled the buds and seed pods like capers. The leaves with long stems still attached are beautiful in vinegar, in old, odd shaped scotch bottles.

That is the top five constants for the past decade.  I have grown these 5 every year and have every intention of continuing to grow them in every vegetable garden I ever plant.

The top five favorites of the decade are:

Arugula.  Love arugula.  It is tasty; it is cold hardy; it is actually biannual; it self- seeds.  It is a reliable germinator very early in the spring and will keep growing through the fall. It produces many seed pods so it is easy to save seeds for the next spring planting, and if you aren’t interested in moving the arugula bed, it will self-seed.  I like it in salad and in sandwiches, and even in soup.

Parsley.  It is cold hardy; it is biannual; it can be brought inside for the winter; it is very shade tolerant.  My favorite thing to do with parsley is make chimichurri sauce, which is a parsley pesto made with parsley, garlic, olive oil and salt.  It is great on steaks.  And it is very easy to freeze the ground parsley and garlic for later use, just don’t add the olive oil until you want to serve the chimichurri.  And no parmesan in this pesto.

Runner Beans:  They are one of the most satisfying pole beans.  An early starter with good germination rate. The blossoms are beautiful and really sweet to eat.  The young beans can be harvested and eaten like string beans, the mature beans can be shelled and used in salads or soups.  All very tasty and not commercially available. Because they are a neglected varietal, there are generally only two or three types available and they are heirloom.  I prefer the Painted Lady – larger blossoms that are pink and white, instead of red.

Zucchini:  I love the blossoms, cooked with sage and eggs. I love the zucchini made into zoodles, cooked with tomatoes, stuffed with sausage, grilled with Greek dressing marinade, breaded into sticks with marinara sauce. Zucchini is a weed – really easy to grow and you only need one bush.  I like Burpee’s variety called “Sure Thing” because it is resistant to powdery mildew and does not require full sun.

Asparagus:  Fresh picked asparagus is up there with heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn and sweet peas.  There is nothing store-bought or even farmstand fresh that compares. It is almost too good to cook.  If I do cook it, I only blanch it.  But it is perfect cut up raw with raw garden peas in a salad (with a little fresh ricotta). Or you can puree it raw for a chilled summer soup with a drizzle of olive oil and salt.

The top five failures: 

Radishes. I have never yet succeeded in growing a radish root.  They get a yard high with lush green, downright bushy tops, and below ground nothing but a thin pink hair of a root.  Not standard radishes or daikon, not in sandy soil, full sun, dry soil, partial shade.  Not mixed with carrots and lettuce. Every year, every way, I try, try and try again, and never succeed. The easiest crop to grown, planted as soon as the soil can be worked. And I have never yet produced a radish.

Celeriac.  I can’t even get these to germinate, indoors, outdoors, nothing. And I love celeriac, so like radishes, I try every year and fail. Celeriac makes a wonderful soup (with green apples) and amazing schnitzel steaks.  It is a late fall root so it is readily available in the green markets. I should just give up trying to grow it, but I don’t like sacrificing garden space to stalk celery when I could grow celeriac and have both the root and celery leaves for soup.  But I also grow lovage in the herb garden which is a “cutting celery” that can be used for soups.

Corn. Fixation on the Three Sisters native American planting of corn, beans and squash has led me to try over and over again to cultivate corn.  Makes a nice bean pole. But the sweet corn and even the popcorn attracts squirrels. So even if the ears form, and don’t have corn ear fungus, 2 days before I decide to harvest, the squirrels strip the cobs and break the stalks.

Hot Peppers.  Have never produced a hot pepper.  They have cross-pollinated with sweet peppers resulting in bitter peppers. Or they have not produced any fruit, or the Mexican deer ate them.

Pumpkins.  Never enough space for pumpkins. They need too much room and whenever I try to cultivate them outside the fenced in garden, the deer and the groundhogs eat the vines.

The top five freaks:

Noodle Beans:  They score high on the fun factor. They are neat looking and they are tasty.  They need a lot of support which I have so far failed to provide.  Different varieties vary widely in taste from the more asparagus tasting green variety to a hazelnutty tasting red variety. 

Portuguese Kale: I just love how this looks. It is a sweeter variety of kale that ends up looking like a giant open rose.  It is green but somebody developed a lavender variety that is stunning.  It is very tasty and easy to grow but gets large and needs a lot of space per plant.

Purple Orach: tastes just like spinach but is a deep, purple-magenta color (with a slightly velvet texture) and grows on an upright stalk which is a real space saver.  It is cold hardy and so beautiful in salads, especially with nasturtium flowers.

Typhon Holland Greens:  This is one of the fastest growing brassica ever.  It looks a lot like romaine lettuce but tastes like a mild mustard or turnip green.  It is crazy tolerant of heat and drought. 

Claytonia:  another strange shaped veritable – looks like a clump of lily pads.  It has only one, tiny tap root.  It is very cold hardy and it self seeds and comes up everywhere.  It tastes like a cross between cucumber and butter-leaf lettuce.

The top five flight risk:

Horseradish - it is a weed.  I don’t even see seeds so I can’t figure out how it is moving so quickly and spreading so far. The roots may look dead, but resuscitate miraculously. That can lie bare on the compost pile all winter and still sprout new leaves in the spring.  I should never have bothered planting them in the enclosed garden. They grow 4 feet tall with wide, collard-like leaves. I think they need to move to the west wall of the house and be cultivated in semi ornamental clumps. Yes I was digging it up at Christmas because fresh grated horseradish is so sweet and spicy and goes perfectly on fresh shucked oysters! Giant red India mustard - I decided to save the seeds of my first harvest. I was shelling the seed pods on the patio and the seeds are so small that I dropped a couple hundred, which washed off the patio in a rainstorm, into the herb bed.  The next spring they were a lovely bronze carpet of seedlings very early and I weeded them out as necessary to make room for the other plants, but allowed several clumps up remain because they are such a nice color contrast. Those clumps went to seed (300-500 seeds per plant) and it was game over.  In the heat of summer, the mustard taste gets really spicy.  A leaf or two on your sandwich or burger or taco instead of lettuce is great. Lemon balm: one plant.  I thought it was going to be a culinary herb for tea and sautés.  It is pretty much inedible because it naturally contains citronella.  It thrives in anything from full sun to full shade, any soil type. It can propitiate by underground runners that pop up a foot or more away, or by wind blown seeds - it flowers at least twice a season.  I am constantly pulling it out.  However, i have planted it all around the patio in a defensive ring because it does keep the mosquitos away. Mutant pak choi.  I bought some kind of a hybrid Asian green maybe 5 years ago.  Some of it went to seed and ever since it has been randomly volunteering in the garden, except that its subsequent generations have reverted back to one of the plants it was hybridized from which is more like a biannual headless broccoli. And another strain is coming up fresh each spring looking like a rootless turnip green.  Again, nothing like what I once planted. It is very cold hardy and not particularly tasty. Burdock.  It is a weed.  And at one point a couple volunteered in my garden, and that year the weeds won, and one of the burdock flowered dropped several hundred seeds in my  garden.  And then I started harvesting it and cultivating it and letting just one go to seed each year so I always have plenty of seeds.  I don’t mind burdock. It’s first year it makes a nice ground cover and only gets about 12 inches high. It comes up very early, very beginning of March and the young leaves are edible. They are also very easy to see in March - the only green thing in the garden, so I harvest what I want and later, I just cut the tops off if they are in my way or over-shadowing things.

The garden report from the past year:

The cloche experiment: fail.  It did not work.  Nothing under a milk jug survived. Good-bye milk jugs.  Like the greenhouse, without electric controls over heat and ventilation, it is not effective.  I either need a cold-frame or row covers. The rosemary died as usual.  The parsley not under milk jugs survived better than the parsley that was covered.

The herb bed:  about eight years ago I improved the soil with woodchips, and the herb garden has flourished.  I need to re-mulch with woodchips this year.  The oregano has begun to wander.  The Egyptian walking onions have begun to peter out.  I am weeding out violets, or rather, moving them to other spots on the property.  I never get rid of them; they are excellent groundcover.  The thyme has really established itself and comes back with gusto.  The sage has thinned and needs to be replaced.  The rosemary is all dead.  The lavender is surviving inside.  I may put it out but keep it in pots on the patio. Mint, a weed, was all wiped out by black spot fungus in the shade bed.  I treated the bed with neem oil and will try adding woodchips.  The Lemon balm, of course, in the same bed, contracted the same fungus and survived anyway. The rhubarb is okay.  I thought it was thriving until I saw somebody’s rhubarb patch on Cape Cod which was a four foot tall hedge. The bed needs more compost, and some wood chips. 

The west wall project:  The west wall of the house gets total afternoon sun and plenty of water coming down the hill.  It is also entirely devoid of plantings – the grass comes right up to the foundation of the house.  I have decided to build a 3 foot wide garden bed all along that side.  I hate grass, so I am smothering it.  I am going to plant the new west wall bed with clumps of horse-radish which grow very tall and sturdy green leaves. I will relocate the asparagus to clumps there because the current asparagus bed in the fenced garden is a waste of space since only humans eat asparagus.  Asparagus get nice tall, feathery fronds with red berries.  Fall blooming saffron crocus, with wire covers because the deer like to eat crocus.  Strawberries, also under wire cloche because everything eats strawberries.  Oddly strawberries, asparagus and horse-radish are companion plants. And they all like borage, so I’ll throw in some of that. And I’ll relocate some of the violets to there. And maybe some of the rhubarb.

So the back Back to Eden weed barrier method of gardening worked really well in the children’s garden, which took up all the cardboard I had saved.  I am busy hording up more cardboard boxes for spring but now have a much clearer idea of just how much more cardboard I need.  I will have to solicit people’s old moving boxes in the spring.  And I will order wood chips to spread on top of it.  This year we just used old leaves – didn’t have enough of those either. I have been sheet composting with chicken manure and used coop straw.  Plenty of that to go around.  And I am now faithfully saving my used coffee grounds and citrus peels for the same (the only kitchen scraps the chickens won’t eat).  Once I move the asparagus bed out of the fenced garden I can cover the whole thing with compost, cardboard and woodchips and begin the grand experiment in my garden, and hopefully defeat the weeds this coming year.  The children’s garden was pretty weed free, but we didn’t get the fencing up so critters ate everything.

An update on the house plants.  I repotted all the house plants and even divided some.  The largest corn plant, that I divided, has thrived in one pot and is wilting away in the other.  I have the Areogrow planter out and ready to plant my winter culinary herbs.  It is an excellent little hydroponic system.  Last year’s Christmas poinsettias died.  But I have 3 new ones I will attempt to nurse through the year.  Will try forcing bulbs in the next month.  I did plant another 200 daffodils, and 200 crocus.  I clumped the daffodils and spread the crocus throughout the lawn because the deer eat all the crocus clumps by the porch in a night.  So I’m making things more difficult for them.   The large art glass globe still needs to be replanted.  And I am still contemplating getting a bee hive.

The seed list this year is a fresh start.  I have no seeds saved or stock-piled so I get to order all new this year.  Looking back at my lists of constants, favorites, fails and freaks, it is not hard to guess at least 10 plants that will be in my garden.  The choices this year will be what varieties and the fun factor.  And yes, still following the crop rotation schedule.

 Legumes (follow the Root crops):

Grew no beans in 2018, I planted them and most of the seeds were just too old and did not germinate.  The few that sprouted were eaten by I do not know what kind of caterpillar.  I give up on fava beans.  No reason they shouldn’t grow here, but they just don’t.  500 peas planted in 3 successions, 2 weeks apart, in the spring and one fall planting will suffice.  Runner beans, if I decide to try 3 sisters again.    

Brassica – Cole - Green Crops (follow the legumes):

 I love all members of the cabbage family.  But they also like space. I can grow, and the chickens love, cabbage too.  I likely will not start from seed because it is too easy and inexpensive to buy the seedlings.  Same for cauliflower.  I have saved lettuce seeds for so many years, and only bought mixes, that this is an exciting year when I get to buy seed and actually select certain varieties like “spotted trout” and “deer tongue”.  Romaine lettuce now comes in a pale pink variety, as well as bronze.  Escarole is my new favorite vegetable – I’ve stopped just throwing it in soup.  Now I like it sautéed, and escarole chips are far superior to kale chips.  Claytonia and purple orach are still lots of fun

 Fruits (follow the Brassica and Greens):

 The weather and the squirrels, chipmunks and mice all devastated my tomatoes, and then the deer leaned over the fence and ate the tops.  So tomato plants will be purchased this year.  As will screen covers for the plants.  Likewise, the zucchini will have to be covered with netting row covers.  I’m not crazy about my eggplant and pepper crops.  Maybe my problem is I don’t like bell peppers – all of them got sunburn this summer and had horrible brown scales.  Maybe I should grow a different variety.  Eggplant, I always try to grow Japanese variety, with moderate success except for years when this really odd insect eats the whole plant. Melons, cucumbers, pumpkins and winter squash all need much more space and protection from every kind of predator.  Okra – some one in the garden club successfully grew okra this past year so I am going to try to grow it.  I like okra blistered and dipped in chili salt and hummus. 

 Roots (follow the fruits):

  I certainly will be harvesting burdock.  I didn’t plant it, but it self-seeded and there will be plenty in the spring.  I am crazed for watermelon daikon radishes – they get grapefruit sized and thin slices make wonderful tacos for shredded duck and scallions.  I also love the chopped radish and ricotta salad. Black Spanish radish doubles as horseradish – very sad tale from a local farmer who used to grow black radish for Heintz because it made up almost 80% of their prepared bottled horseradish, but new labeling rules forced them to switch to mostly pure horseradish so the black radish industry collapsed.  However, black radishes are large enough to stuff with clams casino and roast, so, here we go again trying to grow radishes. There are so many available at the green market I should just give up, but I can’t.  Still have not perfected the potato in the bucket method.  Despite being in raised towers, they got too much water.  I think I need to try sandier soil this year.

  Flowers:

 We are still working on smothering the lawn in several large swaths and planting wildflowers.  I have more seeds ready to spread in spring.  Going to keep adding perennials like Echinacea, milk thistle, comos, sunflowers.  I also bought cardinal flowers (lobelia) and zinnias to add around the edges.  I have some salvia and primrose that a neighbor sneaked into my herb garden. Might add some more primrose to the shade bed. Nasturtiums and petunias and marigolds are all important companion plants in the vegetable garden. And I am going to experiment with some saffron crocus for the west wall. 

Herbs:

 The new mint garden has still to be planted.  I ended up inter-planting some with the lemon balm border around the patio, but the lemon balm really crowds it out.  Not sure where the mint will go this year.  The front of the house may be dug up for the new front walk this year so I am not going to do any planting out there. As always I have grand designs for growing cumin.  But not really hot enough here, so maybe I will try it in a pot on the patio where it can get some extra heat from the stones.  Same for the Indian Hibiscus.   And sorrel, I like to grow it but don’t really like to eat it, so don’t know if that will get into the herb garden this year. It is a bit too tempting for the deer, so it doesn’t survive outside the fenced garden. And I have not come across any good companion planting for sorrel, so unless I eat some sorrel dish that is really tasty, I might skip it.  Sage needs to be replanted, several varieties – I had the most delicious dish of walnut and gorgonzola raviolis served with whole sautéed sage leaves in olive oil.  I also like batter fried sage leaves with warm olives.

 Seed List

 The seed list will be shared separately this year.  As I mentioned above, I am out of seeds. Nothing saved or in stock, so I get to start fresh!  The poor germination rates this past year really motivated me to just dispose of everything.  So now I have the very pleasurable chance to peruse all the incoming seed catalogues and consider all the newest hybrids.  I will circulate the seed list after I have spent the next few weeks researching.

#gardening backyardgardens

[lindafrancois]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

Use this Guide as a resource. Something you can fall back on for a quick reference when you find yourself in a food court with no way out and your rumbling stomach is leading the way.

Bookmark this page your in phone and pull it up whenever you’re in doubt.

Don’t let a drive-thru derail your fitness goals. Often times what you order can be just as, if not more important, than where you order.

If you are following a low-carb or Keto Diet for a weight loss goal, hitting up a fast food joint doesn’t mean you have to abandon it. Stick to the orders of this Guide. If you find yourself at a restaurant not covered here, fear not! Reference the tips at the beginning of this article and you’ll do just fine.

We’d love to hear from you:

Any other restaurants you want us to cover as part of our Guide?

Interested in other fast food guides, like for paleo?

Let us know in the comments!

-Steve

PS: It should go without saying, that you probably shouldn’t live off fast food. But I get it, sometimes you have to do the best you can, with what you have, where you are. Just don’t consider this Guide as a pass to live life through a drive-thru window.

###

All photo citations can be found in this footnote[2].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

If you’re into weird business statistics, here’s a link to show you the most popular chains in America.

Photo sources: Model Train Display, Cookies, Navigators, Harry

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[joshuabradleyn]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

https://ift.tt/2TW37Kq

#Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

[johnclapperne]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

https://ift.tt/2TW37Kq

#Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

[neilmillerne]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

https://ift.tt/2TW37Kq

#Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

[albertcaldwellne]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

https://ift.tt/2TW37Kq

#Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

[almajonesnjna]

Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go

Let’s be real for a moment: you’re not always going to have a home cooked meal prepared and waiting for you.

Sometimes you need to depend on a fast food chain to keep hunger at bay, scanning the menu for a healthy option.

However, when you add in a highly restrictive diet like Keto, Paleo or low-carb, the task can seem impossible.

“Forget it. I’m screwed. Order me a burger and chocolate shake and I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

WAIT!

You don’t have to throw in the towel quite yet.

Just because you pulled into the drive-thru doesn’t mean I’ll let you fall off that low-carb wagon. In this Guide, I’ll tell you exactly what to order so you can stick to Keto. And a couple other options in case my first suggestion isn’t jiving.

To start, let’s discuss some general tips when ordering low-carb at a fast food chain. Or you can click below to jump to any specific restaurant, in case you are reading this in line and need to make up your mind quickly.

Don’t fret, instead click here:

Boston Market

Burger King

Chipotle

Dunkin Donuts

McDonald’s

Starbucks

Subway

Wendy’s

Quick Tips for Low-Carb Fast Food Dining

If you’re interested in learning about the Keto Diet, make sure to read our MASSIVE guide on the subject. We have included everything but the kitchen sink in the article. And in the next update, I’m getting that sink in there.

Personally, I don’t think carbs deserve the bad rep they currently have, as I lay out in our “How to pick the perfect diet for you” article – but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, we’re gonna tackle it as if you’re somebody that thrives under a low-carb environment but has to eat fast food for whatever reason!

Keep these rules in mind for dining out while following a low-carb diet.

Ditch the bun. Oftentimes, making a low-carb meal at a restaurant is as simple as saying “no bun please.” And really, it’s pretty much required if you’re following Keto. For example, including the bun on the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder adds an extra 30 grams of carbs. Some forms of Keto recommend 20 grams of net carbs (total g of carbs minus g of fiber). Lettuce wraps are your friend.

Focus on meat, veggies, and cheese. Carbs can creep into all sorts of items in fast food. Take an order of coleslaw from KFC. Sure, there are veggies in there all right. But it also has a lot of carbs, 14 grams for one serving. 10 of which, is sugar! Order simple things like meat, veggies, and cheese, which will generally have less hidden carbs.

Avoid fried or breaded food. You would think that fried would be fine with Keto, because of the fat involved. However, they’ll add flour into the mix (meaning carbs) so stay away from mozzarella sticks or fried chicken. Grilled over fried, everytime.

Salads can be problematic. If you find a salad that’s just veggies, meat, and cheese, go all in! However, you’ll run into trouble with the added croutons, dried fruit, or sugar covered nuts. Be careful and check ingredients. Also, the dressing can be loaded with sugar. Speaking of dressing…

Condiments on the side. One packet of Honey Mustard Sauce from Chick-fil-A has 10 grams of sugar. That could be a lot of your carb allowance for the day. Ask for all sauces and dressings on the side, and stick to fattier options like Caesar, ranch, and oil when you can. Chick-fil-A’s Garlic and Herb Ranch sauce only has 1 gram of carbs per packet.

It’s okay to special order. Often times the low-carb solution at a fast food joint is there, you just have to ask for it. “Can I have the chicken salad, but instead of the normal dressing it comes with, can I just have ranch?” Restaurants want to help you. It’s okay to ask for what you want. You are special.

Consider these above highlights for navigating fast food under a Keto Diet or low carb diet. Want to be told exactly what to order? We got you.

In line? Staring at the menu and can’t figure out what’s low-carb?

Order the following, just make sure you look at both calorie intake along with carb count!

It’s not gonna help much if you stick low carb but eat 5,000 calories worth of fast food! So make sure the calorie count fits into your daily allotment whenever possible.

Low-Carb Options at Boston Market

Because you choose your sides here, it’s relatively easy to get a meal at Boston Market that will comply with Keto. They also have a nutrition calculator online to help with macro ratios. However, Keto at Boston Market does mean you are going to have to pass on the dinner roll or side of cornbread.  Pick the following:

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Three-Piece Dark: Lot’s of protein, decent fat, and no carbs.

Calories: 300

Protein: 37g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 16g

 Green Beans: Keep it simple.

Calories: 90cals

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 5g

Fresh Steamed Vegetables: Following our “simple” strategy.

Calories: 60

Protein: 2g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 3.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Turkey: Lot’s of protein, but less fat than the chicken order.

Calories: 230

Protein: 43g

Net Carbs: 0g

Fat: 6g

Caesar Salad: While it has some carbs, it’s not considerable when weighed against other options.

Calories: 150

Protein: 3g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 13g

Low-Carb Options at Burger King

The name of the game at Burger King is “no bun please.” Luckily, their nutrition calculator lets you customize your order, showing you exactly how many carbs you’ll save by removing the bun. For us nerds who love data, that’s awesome. Although I’ll gripe that this customization functionality doesn’t work on BK’s salads.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Double Cheeseburger (no bun, no ketchup): It’s simple, but simple works. You’re basically getting meat, cheese, and a pickle.

Calories: 250

Protein: 20g

Net Carbs: <1g

Fat: 19g

 Garden Side Salad (no croutons): We’ll make up for the lack of veggies here.

Calories: 60

Protein: 4g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 4g

Ken’s Ranch Dressing: The fattiest dressing they have.

Calories: 260

Protein: 1g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 28g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun, with mayo): In case you don’t feel like beef.

Calories: 270

Protein: 30g

Net Carbs: 2g

Fat: 16g

Low-Carb Options at Chipotle

Chipotle is a personal favorite of mine, as it’s one of a few chains where you are able to order a “paleo-ish” meal. That, and it’s easy to follow low-carb here. If there’s a Chipotle near you, it could be a great resource for a quick and painless Keto meal. Scope out Chipotle’s nutrition calculator here, which will cover any customization you can imagine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Salad Bowl (with Carnitas): order it with Fajita Vegetables, Fresh Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, Cheese, and YES for Guacamole.

Calories: 710

Protein: 34g

Net Carbs: 12

Fat: 51g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations: Stick to the Salad Bowl. However, go ahead and pick out any meat you’d like. Carnitas just has the highest fat content, which is why we recommend it for a Keto Diet. Steak and chicken are also fine.

Low-Carb Options at Dunkin’ Donuts

Proving that you can get a low-carb meal pretty much everywhere, we have Dunkin’ Donuts. As a nerd that grew up in New England, Dunkin Donuts will always hold a special place in my heart.

Granted, you won’t be ordering a donut (sorry). Also, for drinks, stick with black coffee or unsweetened tea. Everything else is a sugar landmine.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel (no bagel): Sausage and egg are a breakfast staple. Plus, cheese!

Calories: 370

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 33g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Egg, Sausage and Cheese Wake-Up Wrap: If you’re following a strict Keto protocol, stick to the sausage and egg bagel sandwich, sans bagel. If you have some leeway with your carb allowance, you might be able to get away with this wrap which will net you 14 grams of carbs. If the Carb Police arrests you for this one, I warned you.

Calorie: 290

Protein: 11g

Net Carbs: 14g

Fat: 20g

Low-Carb Options at McDonald’s

If one image is associated with fast food, it’s the arches of McDonald’s. In America, you’re never too far from one. Or really, even in most of the world. Can you be low-carb here? Yes! Plus, like Burger King, their nutrition calculator includes all the bunless customizations you can think up. I like that.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad (Use the Balsamic Vinaigrette listed below for a 9g carb meal): It’s mostly greens, grilled chicken and a little bacon. No customization required. Your salad comes in under 400 calories.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Newman’s Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette: The lowest calorie dressing found at McDonald’s.

Calories: 35

Protein: 0g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 2.5g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (no bun, no ketchup): Lot’s of fat, decent protein, and little carbs. You can order any burger on the menu this way with similar results.

Calories: 590

Protein: 45g

Net Carbs: 4g

Fat: 43g

Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich (no bun; vinaigrette carb content is negligible so go for it): Not a lot of fat with this order, but very low-carb with a decent source of protein.

Calories: 160

Protein: 29g

Net Carbs: 1g

Fat: 4g

Sausage McMuffin with Egg (no muffin): I know, it seems sacrilegious to lose the muffin. However, it’s the only way to keep the order low-carb.

Calories: 340

Protein: 16g

Net Carbs: 3g

Fat: 29g

Low-Carb Options at Starbucks

At this point in civilization, there’s a Starbucks on the corner of every Starbucks. Which is good if you follow the Keto Diet, because you can make an order from this chain work. If you get coffee or tea, keep it unsweetened. If you want some cream, ask for “heavy cream.” They’ll give you the full-fat version they have in the back. With Keto, always go full fat.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Sous Vide Egg Bites, Bacon & Gruyere: The lowest carb count of the egg bite options. A great protein to carb ratio. Plus fat. Always fat.

Calories: 320

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 6g

Fat: 14g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Chicken & Greens Caesar Salad Bowl: Greens, chicken and a fatty dressing. This will work in a pinch.

Calories: 340

Protein: 19g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 25g

Low-Carb Options at Subway

It’s estimated that 18.5% of all fast food restaurants are a Subway.[1]The more you know.  The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward to order a low-carb meal here. Every sub they sell can also be made into a salad, forgoing the bun.

Go ahead and ask for cheese (duh) and get plenty of veggies. Get ‘em. Also, bacon and guacamole are your Keto friends. For dressings? Stick with oil and vinegar.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Tuna Salad: This will give you the most fat for the fewest carbs. Plus, a solid serving of protein. Nutrition info below is with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing.

Calories: 500

Protein: 15g

Net Carbs: 7g

Fat: 45g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Oven Roasted Chicken: If tuna isn’t your jam, go ahead and get the chicken. Follow the same idea as the tuna salad and grab it with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and olives, with oil and vinegar as dressing. Also, feel free to add bacon and guacamole to increase your calories. Your nutrition info will look like this if ordered as above:

Calories: 490

Protein: 24g

Net Carbs: 11g.

Fat: 35.5g

Low-Carb Options at Wendy’s

I’ve always been amused by Wendy’s, probably because they make square burger patties. Wendy’s, you cray. You can also get a decent low-carb meal here.

Our Low-Carb Favorite:

Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad: It is nice not to have to special order anything. Go ahead and eat this salad as is. Lots of fat and protein and low-carb(ish).

Calories: 600

Protein: 42g

Net Carbs: 11g

Fat: 41g

Other Low-Carb Recommendations:

Baconator (no bun, no ketchup): If a salad isn’t what you’re after, a meal of bacon, meat, and cheese can keep you going. I wouldn’t recommend this all the time (see the calories), but the beauty of Keto is, a pile of meat and cheese can get you by.

Calories: 760

Protein: 53g

Net Carbs: 2g.

Fat: 60g

Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to give up on keto or low-carb

Just about anywhere you go can offer you a low-carb meal. We just covered 8 popular restaurants and provided exactly what to order to stick with the Keto Diet.

Even if you find yourself at a restaurant not covered in our guide, DON’T PANIC!

Stick to the advice at the start of this Guide, and remember, it’s okay to request a special order. The staff at restaurants want to make you happy, so good ahead and tell them what would make you happy.

The good news is, this is getting easier and easier. As the Keto and the low-carb trend continues to skyrocket in popularity, more and more chains are working to accommodate.

Go ahead and let the store know about your low-carb requirement. They’ll listen. And the next time you stop by, there might be something on the menu specifically designed to meet your needs. That’s how you end up with The Low Carb Thickburger at Carl’s Jr/Hardee’s. Capitalism at work!

Another note: If you’re following a low-carb or Keto Diet, my GUESS would be that you’re doing so for weight loss goals.

What can I say, I’m a mind reader.

Also, you look nice today.

No matter what nutritional strategy you pick for weight loss, navigating your food choices will be critical. As we say in our Guide on Healthy Eating, 80-90% of your success will depend on how you eat. Low-carb or non-low-carb, real food should be at the center of your fitness plan.

If this stresses you out, we can help!

If you find yourself on the road frequently, and constantly finding your health and fitness goals sabotaged by travel, a hectic life, or just being too damn busy, I hear ya.

This is why we launched our own private online coaching program that works with you to meet your goals! We help busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.

We can help you be successful with Keto, or any other kind of diet. We can build routines and strategies for the weeks you’re traveling, and the weeks you’re home.

If you want guidance from a trained professional, schedule a free call with Team Nerd Fitness by clicking on the image below and see if we’re a good fit for each other!

Save this guide

https://ift.tt/2TW37Kq

#Your Best Low Carb Fast Food Options: A Guide for Keto on the Go