take a hike, salmonella.

I'd been off the road for a few weeks.  I was looking forward to giving hotel cooking another shot.  I continue to be interested in the variety of responses I get when I tell people that I carry a mobile kitchen with me on the road.  People seem to be at one extreme or the other.  "Are you crazy?  Your job pays for you to eat out whenever you want and you chose to cook on a hot plate?" or "That is so awesome.  Way to be creative."

Long story short, I'm not overly concerned with where any lands on that spectrum.  It is a challenge and something to do in what can otherwise be a pretty boring hotel room.

A few lessons I learned from last time:

• Cutting the chicken was the hardest part.  Salmonella is a bitch no matter where you.  On an airplane?  That's about as low as it gets.  If I could avoid having to cut raw meat, that would be awesome.
• Leftovers are important.  As much as it kills me as a cheapskate and person who tries not to waste things: if I have to buy $2.50 worth of leftover containers and that allows me to spread $10 worth of food over 3 nights ... I'm still coming out on top, even if I toss the leftover containers at the end of the week.

So, this week I decided to try whole wheat pasta with beef chunks.  My grocery bill, including the leftover containers, was about $13.  Here is the stuff that dinners are made of:

The meat was "stew meat," meaning it was already cut up for me.

The pot may have been a little small for the volume of food I cooked.  Not wanting to get splatters all my desk (because the desk seemed a lot more sanitary than the bathroom), I made a make-shift lid.

It works.  Hotel cooking is all about utility.

It was delicious.  I bought some cheese to sprinkle on it, but forgot, so I guess that's extra healthiness?

Yum

I feel pretty good about the outcome here.  I'll keep it up.  I did put extras in containers and will be able to eat that for several more meals this week.  More meals coming up.

starting off

So here goes:

I am a foodie (who is sometimes weak and does McDonald's drive thru).  I wear reading glasses because I think they look cool, and they DO make it easier to read.  I hate socks.  Seriously, there is very little redeeming about them.

I am also a road warrior.  I spend approximately 90% of my life living in hotel rooms while I consult with clients across the country on the implementation of my company's software.  At first, this was awesome.  I got plenty of money from work to find the best restaurants in town and try incredible food.  I was eating out 4-5 nights a week.  Come to find out: restaurants serve crazy big portions of food.  I am getting big.

Mix this with some crazy body stuff where everything hurt (seriously, like 9 different places on my body were super tender and at times more or less worthless), and I realized that if I'm going to continue my job that I love, and not stop walking/picking things up/not crying when I bend my knee I need to find a new plan.  The goal is to figure out ways to eat healthily while on the road, hopefully to some extent by preparing my own food in my hotel room.  

I have made one serious attempt.

My company offers a pretty comprehensive benefits package, including a dietitian on staff that we can visit with for free.  A few months ago I took advantage of this service, and the biggest thing that came out of it was an awareness of hot plates.  I guess I was such a goodie two shoes in college that I didn't even know these contraband devices existed.  I went out to the store and bought a hot plate and a variety of other necessities.  I set out on my next trip and was excited to try my new cooking setup.

Here is my setup in the bathroom.  Yes, that is raw chicken.

Cooking.  I basically chopped up the chicken and threw in some canned tomatoes and spices.

Finished product.  Paper plates are where the "ish" part of "gourmetish" comes in.

So, this wasn't a dismal failure.  Here are the challenges:

• Food safety: I'm not sure it's a great idea to have raw chicken on my bathroom counter.  Or have my dinner prepared in the same room as my toilet.
• Leftovers.  Short of packing leftover containers, there is not a great way to store leftovers.  Bored in hotel room, this led to eating several portions worth of this deliciousness, kind of canceling out any health benefit I may have received.
• Bulkiness. Packing a hot plate, spatula, spices, oil, and of course the paper plates does not exactly make for mobile lifestyle. 
• Laws.  It may be illegal to use a hot plate in hotel rooms in many states.  I'm not particularly asking.

I had given up on preparing (cooking, microwaving, assembling?) food in my hotel room for a while, but I am not a tiny man.  It's time to get this under control and what I eat on the road is going to be a big part of that.