While I must steer clear of nuts, I've never let that affect my travel plans, although I imagine I'd have to be prepared if I ever make it to the land of the curry and cashews. So, what do you do if you're headed somewhere and have to keep an eye on your allergies?
CNN has a great list up, which suggests everything from the classic "talk to the chef," to traveling with cards that list your allergies in the languagespoken at your destination. How neat is that? Just buy the card you need, and you won't have to worry about trying to translate yourself and accidentally telling someone you're allergic to shoes instead of shellfish.
I'm one of those people who is pretty laid back about their allergy, and even I see the benefit of this. Do you want to get stuck in some foreign hospital, or die before you finish your vacation? How inconvenient!
This one is a little different from the regular Food Porn Daily pic I normally pick. I went searching for pepper images and when I came across this one, it struck me as particularly beautiful, with that vast tangle of hot red peppers and the women with the smiling faces. The flavor potential (as well as the amount of heat) contained in that pile of peppers is hard to even imagine.
If you have gorgeous travel/food pictures, join us over at the Slashfood Flickr group and add them to the pool. We'd love to see them!
Amtrak has a new feature in store for its riders, and luckily, it's better than random bag checks.
If you get hungry on your Amtrak or Acela ride, forget those sub-par turkey sandwiches and tiny pretzels - you can now purchase a "GoPicnic" meal from the cafe car. The meals are perfect for long train rides, as they don't require refrigeration or heating and have a long shelf life. What makes them special? They're all-natural and organic, and don't contain partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, or MSG.
As most airline and train meals aren't exactly a picture of nutrition, these sound promising. There are a ton of meal choices, and some even come in vegetarian, kosher, and halal options. But a closer look reveals that, like most prepackaged meals, most are too good to be true. Remember: just because a meal is trans fat-free, doesn't automatically make it healthy. Some of the meals are ostensibly good for you, but their ingredients contain copious amounts of sugar, salt, and calories. For instance, the "Anytime Break" meal comes with pretzels, white cheddar corn puffs, mixed nuts and chocolate chunk cookies. And the "Deli Break" meal isn't much better - mini salami slices, peppercorn cheese spread, crackers, chips, and those cookies again.
The company does provide other meals that contain more lean fish, dried fruit, and healthy protein sources like hummus and skim-milk cheeses, but you won't find these choices on Amtrak.
The meals are okay if you're caught without food on a long trip, but if you know you're going to be train traveling, bring your own snacks. You'll save calories and money.
You thought today was going to filled with yummy, delicate posts about sweet treats and flowers, didn't you?
Think again.
Trifter.com has oh-so helpfully provided us with eight of the "most disgusting delicacies" - although we prefer to think of them not as disgusting, per se, but as ...daring. Different. Deconstructed.
Some of the more colorful examples? In Morocco, you can indulge in oil made from goat excrement. The goats climb the trees in search of food, and the resulting oil is though to have medicinal purposes. Or you could hop over to Italy and try some Casu Frazigu. Sound exotic? It's made when a fly lays its eggs on cheese, and maggots hatch and crawl throughout the cheese. So, essentially, it's rotten maggot cheese.
But that's just kids' stuff compared to what awaits you in Southeast Asia: balut, a fertilized duck egg, comes complete with a partially formed duck fetus inside - at no extra charge! Just season with salt and pepper, and dig in.
And for dessert, engage your senses with Sumatran coffee beans [ed. note - pictured]. Not adventurous enough for you? Well, they come fresh out of the digestive track of a civet, a small, cat-like creature. The civet eats the beans, and when they are excreted, they are scrubbed clean and brewed.
Some people eat while they're traveling. Others, including myself, travel to eat. Either way, the two activities -- travel and food -- are connected, so we're giving a little weekend linklove to our favorite travel site, Gadling:
If you happen to be traveling through LeRoy, New York, you most definitely want to make a stop at the Jell-O Museum, erected in the city of the jiggly stuff's origin.
Clearly, the criteria for "hot" isn't necessarily the quality of the food (Katsu-ya? West at the Hotel Angeleno?), but the places are definitely hot scenes.
Even if you're a serious griller, you probably don't pack up your large, home barbecue when you want to travel somewhere. The massive size of the bbq and the inconvenience of such a move just isn't worth the hassle. Alternatives usually include using the grill that is built in to the park/picnic grounds or wherever you are going or using a small, portable grill that might be adequate for hot dogs, but not much else.
Grilling fans can rest easy now, however, because Hammacher Schlemmer just added a Full-Sized Travel Grill to their spring lineup. The fully portable grill folds up to the size of a roller suitcase that tucks easily into cars for transport but can be unfolded to a height of 34" when you're ready to grill. IT weighs 69-lbs. The propane grill has a patented regulator system that ensures an even flow of gas under all conditions for even cooking, and the tank holds enough for 1 1/2 hour of cooking. The grilling surface is 345" sq. and can fit up to 12 steaks at a time.
Unless you travel frequently for business, travel season doesn't usually start until late spring, with spring break, or summer, when many people try to get away from it all for a week. The hardest part about being on vacation is eating right, especially because we tend to tell ourselves that it is ok to indulge - a vacation is from your diet, as well as from your job, right? Indulgence is fine, but even on vacation it's not a great idea for every meal. Forbes Traveler offers up some advice on how to travel and stay thin that will come in handy if you want to stay in shape for swimsuit season
Their basic advice to chose lighter salads and sandwiches, especially in airports or other places where they is a lot of fast food and to avoid fried foods, is good for almost any situation. On the plane, avoid the snack packs, which are usually packed with calories and not much in the way of worthwhile munchies. You can always bring your own snacks.
Once you've landed, order sauces on the side and choose from the "light" menu if you is offered, especially when you're eating at the hotel. Save the splurges for when you get to try some of the local cuisine.
The newest issue of Cooking Light, which is their 20th anniversary issue, has the magazine's choices for the top 20 cities in the US, based on 15 criteria that they feel embody their "Eat Smart, Be Fit, and Live Well" philosophy. They looked at fitness, health and exercise data from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of parks and recreation areas (and how often they're used) from the Trust for Public Land, restaurant ratings from the Zagat Survey and James Beard Foundation, and the USDA's farmers markets listings. Everything was evened out on a per capita basis and the cities with the most of everything made the top cut.
One of the top ten cities will be featured each month in the magazine this year, so readers will have access to information about all the things that got the city their ranking.
1. Seattle, WA 2. Portland, Ore. 3. Washington, D.C. 4. Minneapolis, MN 5. San Francisco, CA 6. Boston, MA 7. Denver, CO 8. Milwaukee, WI 9. Philadelphia, PA 10. Tucson, AZ
Airlines are all over the map in terms of what food they will offer, if any, on flights. Some lines stick to small packages of peanuts or pretzels, while others offer snack packs (that usually have to be purchased) or, in a few cases, full meals. The Diet Detective did a little investigating and found out, from a nutritional standpoint, which airlines are giving out food worth eating and on which flights you're better off bringing a snack from home.
United - offers variety and healthy choices in four different meal types, Smartpack, 895 cal; Minimeal, 560 cal; Quickpick, 655 cal; Ritebite, 625 cal. The Smartpack and Ritebite are your most balanced options.
Continental Airlines - doesn't have all the options that United does, but the meals are definitely health-oriented with pretzels and sandwiches made with low-fat mayo. Turkey, 285 cal; Ham, 316 cal.
JetBlue - has a number of individually packaged, portion-controlled snacks, including Nabisco 100 calorie packs, Doritos Munchies Mix, Mrs. GoodCookie Jungle Crackers, All Nuts Jumbo Cashew Halves.
American Airlines - skip the breakfast muffin, but the meat, nuts, raisins and cheese in the 710-calorie snack pack are filling.
US Airways - offers a fairly low calorie snack pack (470 cal), but lacks any real nutritional punch. Try the fruit/nut mix and skip the rest
Delta Air Lines - again, the fruit and nuts are worth eating in Delta's snack pack, but the rest of the 766 cal meal can easily be skipped.
For the first time, Harley-Davidson will be lending its name, image and support to a food product. In the past, they have stayed away from such promotions, but they couldn't resist this one because the image of the food fits perfectly with the rough and tough, on-the-go image that the company loves: beef jerky. The jerky is being made in conjunction with food company ConAgra, which already produces several kinds of jerky, including Slim Jims, and is slated to hit the market in early January, when it will be sold at convenience stores, grocery stores, Harley-Davidson dealerships and truck stops. It will come in original, teriyaki and pepper flavors and will be sold in thick slices.
General Manager of general merchandise for Harley, Tom Parsons, said that "riders are always looking for food on the go, so the jerky will be billed as 'Road Food'... 'You put it in your pocket, keep on eating and keep on riding.'"
We have seen a couple of containers that allow you to take your salads to go in the past couple of weeks, but the on-the-go technology hasn't been extended to too many other types of food. Cereal, for example, is not typically thought of as a food you can take to go, but these Cereal-on-the-Go containers aim to change all that. The cups have two parts: a lidded compartment for the cereal and an insulated base for milk. The sides of the base are filled with a freezable gel which, after being frozen, holds cold for hours, keeping milk refrigerator fresh until you have a chance to eat your breakfast. The milk itself is never frozen. The container also has a built-in spoon, so you will not have to worry about finding one before digging in. The bowl holds up to 12-ounces of cereal and almost 5.7-oz milk.
Some beer drinkers will tell you that the best place to drink beer is on the couch, with a sports game on and a couple friends around. Others will point you to their favorite after-work pub. A few will scoff at the notion of American beer entirely and advise you to pick an import, a wine or a cocktail, instead. In truth, there are a lot of great American brews and more people are realizing it all the time. If you're looking for the best, though, you might consider taking a look at the recommendations for the five best places to drink American beer from Christopher O'Hara, author of Great American Beer: 50 Brands that Shaped the 20th Century. His picks include: the Ironworks Barbecue in Austin, Texas; Blue and Gold Tavern in New York City; Straub Brewery in St. Mary's, PA; St. Nick's Pub in Los Angeles, CA; and Axel's Inn in Milwaukee, WI.
Of course, given the number of brewers in the country, there must be far more than five great ones. It never hurts to have a jumping off point if you're going to hit the road (not while drinking, of course), to track them down.
You thought today was going to filled with yummy, delicate posts about sweet treats and flowers, didn't you?
I haven't had a great breakfast in a while. I usually just grab a granola bar. But here are some recipes for breakfast foods, including 
Unless you travel frequently for business, travel season doesn't usually start until late spring, with spring break, or summer, when many people try to get away from it all for a week. The hardest part about being on vacation is eating right, especially because we tend to tell ourselves that it is ok to indulge - a vacation is from your diet, as well as from your job, right? Indulgence is fine, but even on vacation it's not a great idea for every meal. Forbes Traveler offers up some advice on 
The newest issue of 
Airlines are all over the map in terms of what 
For the first time, 
We have seen a couple of 
Some beer drinkers will tell you that the best place to drink beer is on the couch, with a sports game on and a couple friends around. Others will point you to their favorite after-work pub. A few will scoff at the notion of American beer entirely and advise you to pick an import, a wine or a cocktail, instead. In truth, there are a lot of great American brews and 
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