Road Trip!!!

It is a common practice among US citizens to eat at fast food restaurants when on a road trip. It's fun, a chance to get out of the car, and pretty cheap (depending on your group size). But for PKU kids it can get pretty tiring to eat at fast food places (even if you don't repeat a single restaurant). Because in Fast Food places our typical choices are salad or fries. It's that way at McDonald's, Wendy's, Arby's, Artic Circle, Burger King, and other places like that. Some restaurants don't even HAVE good salads!!! So it's really refreshing to find something else we can have on the menu. With the Health Movement that's sweeping across the U.S. it's actually getting easier for us in some ways. Fruit is more common on the menu, which is a HUGE plus for me!!!! Usually at home I don't eat salads because I eat them so often on the road.

So fast food... it's fun right? Sure. But you want to know what's better? PICNICS!!!! I have a lot of fun on picnics! Especially when there's a playground nearby! If you want to stretch out your legs from sitting in the car, a nice playground will do the trick. Or a field with a ball if your too grown up for a playground. Exercise after eating is nice. Maybe they really do have a point in Elementary schools by having recess after lunch! Road trips are fun. Picnics are great. Too much fast food= repetition for PKU'ers. Do you get it??? :) I sure hope you do if not try reading it all over again but slower that usually does the trick for me.

Restaurant Review #2

Last night I had the opportunity to go to this Frozen Yogurt place with my family. It's called Yogurt Bliss and has this really unique atmosphere I really enjoy. Items on the menu? Frozen Yogurt, soda, water, SORBET, and waffles. Yes waffles, which in my opinion is a tad bit odd but cool at the same time. It's a self serving restaurant where you can grab a cup and find an ice cream flavor that you want. It's in a machine where you pull the lever and it comes spiraling out. They only have one sorbet at a time but what they have it extremely delicious. Then you head to the toppings cart. It's full of candy, hot fudge, fruit, Carmel, chocolate. They actually decide the price based on it's weight. (They weigh it on a scale). Which it a fantastic unique way of doing it because you can get the amount you want for a fair price. I had strawberry-kiwi sorbet with white chocolate chips, fresh strawberries, and kiwi on it. It was fantastic!!! I wished I could back and get some more to be honest. :)

Now on to the atmosphere... the walls were painted each of different color (green, purple pink, and white), the ceiling was purple, and the floor was white with squares of all the colors used. There were white tables with chairs all around so you could enjoy your treat there. AND there was a white couch. How many restaurants have you been to that has a couch. It was all very hip, and casual. The radio was playing on a good station with several songs I enjoy, but it wasn't too loud so we could talk. People came in and out constantly but it wasn't crowded.

When it comes to PKU friendliness though... I'm not going to lie. Out of all the flavors there PKU kids could have 1. Which is going to make me have to rate it 4 on the PKU Friendly Scale. The reason it gets a 4 is because the flavor changes constantly, and is very unique. But it really is a neat place that I enjoy. For anyone who isn't a PKU'er but health cautious it doesn't have ice cream it has frozen yogurt which is a healthier choice.

Have a great summer!

My favorite dessert in the world!!!!

Ice Cream. My favorite dessert in the world. (I also really like smoothies.) Sometimes I think I could live on it. I almost hear people, who have read my blog since I started, mumble in confusion. "Isn't ice cream dairy?" "Wasn't dairy one of the things she said she was allergic to?" *Checks 1st post* "So she's cheating on her diet??" "What?!" Don't worry I'm perfectly healthy and have not been cheating. It's true dairy is on the no-no list. I can't have average American cow-made ice cream but there are a lot of other types of ice cream I can have.
There's Rice Dream Ice Cream which is made with rice milk as opposed to cow milk. It's healthier for us but definitely not the healthiest. There's sherbet which has a little bit of cows milk but less than regular ice cream. Homemade ice cream is probably the creamiest while having no milk. You just make it using water and a powder (if you want the name just comment below and I'll find it and post it). Thanks to America's healthier food obsession there's Coconut ice cream too now.
Just so you know: A coconut is NOT a nut! (I get that comment a lot) It is either a legume, because it can be turned into oil, or a fruit. There seems to be a lot of debate about it, and I can't find a positive resource to confirm which one it is.
Anyway, coconut ice cream is one of the healthiest choices. But sorbet beats them all. Though it's not the creamiest sorbet is entirely fruit made.
My favorite??? I don't know I just like ice cream a lot. I would say whatever I'm eating at the current moment. But as I am not eating ice cream at this moment (merely dreaming of it) I cannot tell. But I do dare you to try one of these (PKU or not) just for fun. See what you think! Maybe you'll find a new favorite type of ice cream! If you do tell me all about it I want to hear!

*I'm not sure if these products are available outside of the USA. You can try to find them. I want to know if you found it and where!*

Summer Snacking

In the summertime kids get school off. Suddenly you have all this extra time to waste! What do you usually end up doing... heading for the pantry to snack on something. For PKU'ers it's a little harder to join in with this summer ritual. We have to count our PHE equivalents for the day, and snacking sure doesn't help. Here are a couple ideas for both PKU and non-PKU people to avoid snacking a lot during the summer:

1. Have a lot of fruits and vegetables in the house. This doesn't necessarily help you stop snacking... but you might as well be snacking on something healthy if you need to snack. My favorites are apples, strawberries (especially fresh), watermelon, and carrots.

2. This one is for PKU people especially. Keep PKU foods that are lower in PHE so you don't go over your limit because of snacking. I like Cambrooke Foods a lot, and you sometimes can find lower foods in grocery or health food stores (lemon pudding, onion rings, low-pro pretzels...)

3. Drink plenty of water. In the summer where I live it can get pretty hot. Chances are your just thirsty.

4. Go out and do something! Sitting around the house will make the forbidden pantry a temptation. If you go outside and have adventures, you won't even be thinking about snacks.

Snacking can be okay when your actually hungry. But eating when your bored? Why? That prevents you from getting yourself "un-bored" which is the original problem after all. It's summer you should be outside basking in the glory of the sunshine. Go plant a garden! Trust me it'll be worth it and in the fall you'll have lots of good healthy food to snack on.

Many Apologies

Many apologies to all! I have been a procrastinator and it gets worse as I keep putting it off. So to make up for it this post will (hopefully) be long. :)

Bettermilk- My thoughts- My observations- and my Choice

Day 1:

• For breakfast I made the Island Smoothie recipe they had. Being the smoothie queen I did change it slightly though: I doubled the soda added water, and 1/2 a banana. It probably was the best smoothie I've ever had! I can't taste the soda which is fine by me. But it was super tasty.
• For lunch I made mashed potatoes with it. It turned out kind of gray... and I didn't like the taste. In fact I couldn't bring myself to eat it all. :P My dad says it tastes like real mashed potatoes but I've decided I don't like the taste of "real" mashed potatoes. Bring my water made any day! (this was a recipe I tried on my own)

Day 2:

• I used it as a creamer for cereal in the morning. Sugary cereal + sugary creamer= too much sugar. Again a recipe I tried on my own! Of course I don't like my normal formula as a creamer either. They use sugar to mask the bitter taste.
  
• For an after-school snack I froze an Orangsicle using their recipe. It was good! A little lumpy maybe but that was my fault being in a hurry to get to school. At the end it had a bit of an aftertaste, but while I had it I loved it. Why does their recipes work and mine don't??

Day 3:

• I finally made it as a normal drink according to the instructions. It looks white and milky... but it tastes kind of acidic. I don't know I don't like it. And since that's the way I'd have it 99% of the time, I don't think I want to change!

After thoughts: It was okay in their recipes, obviously they know better than me what it tastes good with. But the milk itself was kind of icky. You can try it yourself and see but that's my opinion.

I decided against downloading pics... just because it's kind of hard for a person who's not tech savvy like me... oh well. See you later this week for another post. ;)

Better Millk 3-Day Challenge

Today I received a surprise in the mail. A package labeled Cambrooke Foods (which is a PKU food company). Inside it contained: instructions on how I begin the challenge, recipes for the product, a pamphlet labeled The GMP Revolution, and 6 packets of Camino Pro Bettermilk. Bettermilk is a new formula they're promoting. I looked at booth they had at Camp PHEver last summer, and it looked pretty interesting. It's high in good protein but is relatively low in PHE. (1.5 equivalents for each packet) The challenge is to try their product for 3 days, 2 packets a day. But the hard part is I have to use 5 of them in a recipe, then I can drink the last one. After I'm done I fill out a survey for their research. It sounds cool, and I'm eager to get started. Don't know when I'm going to get started but it will be relatively soon. When I drank a sample of the bettermilk it tasted pretty good. The one major downer for me right now is how much PHE allowance it takes up. Don't know what I'm expecting at this point but the recipes look awesome. (They even have one for ice cream... possibly my favorite dessert in the world!) The pictures above are of the box and it's contents. The one on bottom are the packets which are rather large in size, they contain 15g each. I'll post about the results after I complete it. :) And post the recipes along with pictures of how it turned out!!!

The Many Faces of Hungry

Yesterday while mowing the lawn I had sudden inspiration. I had been feeling hungry and my stomach was protesting the wait. When I realized... I wasn't hungry for food! I was hungry for my formula! As I kept mowing I kept thinking about it. I decided that there were 3 different types of hungry.

1. There's when you're really hungry for food. You'll eat anything! Even yourself if you could!

2. There's when your body is hungry for nutrients that it's lacking! (For PKU it's when you are hungry for formula)

3. And then there's when your actually thirsty, but your body feels like it's hungry.

There could be more but these are the ones I came up with.

With other news I thought I'd like to hear what you would like to know. If you leave a question (any question) as a comment I will answer it as truthfully as I can. Only rule: It has to do with PKU in some way. Okay? I know it's a short post... more like a thought to be honest but next week I'll come up with something longer. ;) See you next week!