Friday, March 2, 2012

Vacation notes

Here are some impressions, from a nutritarian perspective, of my vacation.   These are rather random:

  • manatees are nutritarians.  They weight about 1000 lbs and eat about 100 lbs of salad (sea grass) per day.  From that perspective, my few lbs a day doesn't seem like so much!   
  • I tried some prepared foods from Whole Foods, and a fun raw/vegan place.   Amazingly, these were completely nutritarian, with no salt, oil, or refined sweeteners.  One of them was very good (from the raw/vegan place):  raw carrot cake.  It wasn't too sweet or big, and was a nice treat.  The others were some raw goodies that I didn't think were very good, definitely not worth the calories.  All of them were combinations of fruit, dried fruit, nuts and seeds, some oats in one of them.  I also checked out the Whole Foods hot and cold bars.  It's great to see so much "health starts here" foods available.  These probably have more salt than I would like, but they have no oil.  I think they are fine for occasional eating--and great convenience food on the road.   The funny thing is, my salads are better than all these things!   I guess there's nothing like high-quality fresh produce.  I seem to prefer fresh ripe fruit to dried fruit, so that explains why the raw treats are usually a disappointment for me.  Except for the carrot cake.  I'm glad I had that treat.
  • Today I took some medications!   I hurt my back taking the kayak off the car.  It was full of water and started tipping, and this was all unexpected and my lurch to right the kayak wrenched my back a bit.  I had plans for kayaking and snorkeling.  I went kayaking first and felt okay until I got out of the kayak and loaded it back on the car.  Then I decided to take some ibuprofen.  What was interesting to me was realizing I don't think I've taken this in 5 years or more!   Before becoming a nutritarian I took it several times a week because of my hip pain--that disappeared with healthy eating.  Sure makes me appreciate the benefits of healthy eating!  Snorkeling was fun.  I will rest more tomorrow--just some easy walks, though perhaps I will kayak.  Fortunately it doesn't hurt when I'm just sitting or lying around.  Hopefully it will get better in a few days....
  • I have fun trying out the local produce and seeing how it compares to Wisconsin.   Of course Florida wins on length of season.   I had sweet cabbage and bitter cabbage here.  My Wisconsin locally grown organic cabbage is almost always sweet and yummy.  So Wisconsin wins on that.  Kale is good here, but at home I get it fresh from my garden and it's more tender, so that wins.  Wisconsin totally wins on carrots and sweet corn.  Florida totally on the oranges and grapefruit.  ha.  and mangos.  Today I had a luscious mango from my favorite fruit/produce stand:  Robert is Here.  It was from South America since they are not in season here, but it was still probably the best I've ever had.  Okay, Florida wins on all fruit, except blueberries.  California wins on strawberries, though.
Here are some pictures.  We're seeing lots of wildlife in the everglades, birds and alligators:


There are some great mountain bike trails near Tallahassee and Fort Myers.  The scenery is unique to Florida which makes it interesting.


On one trail I saw a snake, and several different kinds and sizes of turtles:




Today I kayaked among the mangroves:


One of many fruit/produce stands.  Florida citrus is hard to beat!


Nutritairan on vacation:

I like snorkeling shots because I look funny:

tomorrow's salads:  lettuce, kale, spinach, cabbage, jicama, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, seed mixture, kidney beans, yellow summer squash.  I'll add d'angou pear vinegar just before eating.  yum!  I'm saving my fruit for the fruit stand---perhaps another mango?   who knows!

1 comment:

Ginger said...

I hope you didn't hurt your back too badly. Glad you had a nice time.