Jennifer Cornbleet: People often ask me how to stay healthy during vacations and business trips. It can be difficult to stick to a healthy diet when you are traveling, but this doesn’t have to happen. I’m away from my Chicago home about 50% of the time, in hotel rooms without kitchens, without access to health food stores. So out of necessity, I’ve had to learn how to make eating raw on the go practical and enjoyable. I want to share some of my tips with you.

First of all, you want to start your plane trip, well hydrated and energized. I recommend to having a smoothie or green juice before your flight; to save time, you can make them the night before. Then once you are on the plane, keep it light, just have a piece of fruit or maybe a hand full of almonds, if you get hungry and make sure you drink plenty of water. As far as what to bring with you, I’ve got everything you need right here, you can see that it’s not very extensive, you will need to purchase a few fresh ingredients at any grocery store once you reach your destination. You can see the study guide insert for a complete list of what to bring and what to buy at your destination. But I’m going to show you what I bring with me and then we’ll will go ahead and pack this travel bag.

For breakfast, you can make a simple smoothie using a light wait, portable blender. This is another great product by Tribest. I love it. Its called the personal blender and it only weighs about of a pound and a half, and the way you use it is, you take the jar, the blade is right on here, open it up and put your ingredients inside. When I’m traveling, I usually use half an orange and half a banana because oranges and bananas are really easy to find at any grocery store, and you can get them at the continental breakfast in most hotels also. So, I’ll put an orange and banana in there, and because it can be difficult to get greens when I’m on the road, I’ll just bring a green powder with me. And, this particular brand is Vitamineral Green, but there is so many great green powders on the market that have dehydrated vegetables and algaes in them.

So, I’ll just add a couple of table spoons of green powder to my orange, banana, little water and you’ve got it great smoothie. Then you attach the blade on, once you’ve got your ingredients in there, you put it on the base and just by pressing this in, if this were plugged-in, it would start to blend. Then I can take it off, and the blender jar is the cup, so there is no mess; easy clean up. And this blender jar is virtually indestructible; I’ve traveled with it everywhere and it does not break. So, I just love the Tribest personal blenders. So, that’s the first thing I would take with me, and you’ve got breakfast covered just with that blender there. When mid-morning hunger strikes, you might want to have a small hand full of almonds. Another great snack is almond butter and it taste delicious on apple slices, with baby carrots You can also make a great snack by filling celery stalks with almond butter, and topping it with a few raisins; that’s a great snack.

Another great snack to have on hand, are raw food bars. So many companies nowadays are making healthy, raw, power bars that are made from nuts and dried fruits. And they are a great snack to have on hand, in your purse, in your bag. Just if you are stuck in traffic, if you are in an airport or just as mid-morning pick me up. So, I always take several of these bars with me as well.

Now lunch often needs to be portable when you are traveling. So, I like to bring some flax crackers with me, and these crackers are made from flax seeds instead of wheat. And you can get them at many natural food stores and also from online sources. And they just give you that crunchy, chip kind of feeling and they are great to take with you. So, I always take these with me for portable lunches.

Then in addition to crackers, I might want to have some cutted veggies, that’s easier to take with you than a salad. So, I’ll take a flexible cutting board with me, very easy to pack with. I can cut up whatever I need, right on this board. And then, a small knife in a sheath, and this you will need to put in your check-in luggage as suppose to your carry-on, but this tiny knife works great for cutting up celery, cucumbers, red bell pepper, carrots, whatever you want to have for lunch. And, you can just serve it with some store bought guacamole, a mashed-up avocado, or that almond butter right there. So, you got lunch covered between that crackers and some cutted veggies with some avocado or almond butter or guacamole.

So now on to dinner. If you are going to be making dinner in your hotel room, it’s fairly easy to make a salad, even if you don’t have access to a kitchen. You can buy lettuce cream-washed, so that’s an option if you don’t want to wash it yourself. But an easy way to wash lettuce for salads in a hotel room is to take a spin and store bag. And these are available at most cookware stores or online, and the way they work, is you rinse-off your lettuce, tear it up, put it in this bag, and then you just spin it. And, after you spin it all the water is going to go into this gutter, that you can just pour out and you just store the lettuce in this bag too, if you want. So, it’s a great substitute for a salad spinner and it’s very easy to pack.

So, I’ve got my lettuce taking care for my salad, and then I go ahead and use that flexible cutting board and that small knife to cut up some cucumbers. Maybe, I’ll put some cherry tomatoes in there, half of an avocado, squeeze of lemon, a little bit of olive oil, and I just eat my salad right out of a Tupperware type container and that’s my dinner, if I’m at my home in my hotel room. I might have some flax crackers with it and maybe one of those raw food bars for dessert.

Another thing that you can put on top of your salad is some dulse. And, dulse is a very nutritious sea vegetable, it’s very rich in minerals, it comes in a flaked form, has a delicious salty flavor. So that’s something that you can sprinkle up on top of a salad that you make. Now if, you are going to be eating dinner out at a restaurant, you can be a little bit more flexible. You’ve already eaten a raw breakfast and a raw lunch, so you might want to allow yourself a little bit of cooked food at a restaurant. I just tried to stay away from the red meat, the fried food, too much byte sugar and white flour, and that kind of thing. But you know, you can be a little bit flexible. But you if you do want to eat all raw at a restaurant, it is possible.

At Mexican restaurants, you can order a salad and pile it high with guacamole in salsa, and take a few of those flax crackers with you and you can eat those instead of the chips. At a Japanese restaurant, you could order a regular or vegetarian sushi roll, and just have them leave out the rice and put in extra veggies and avocado. And if you are at a French or an Italian restaurant, the salads there are often really good, so you might want to order even two or three of the salads, if the portions are small. And in the summer month, sometimes you can even find Gazpacho on the menu as a first course. Now, if I’m going to be eating out at a restaurant that, you know, I’m not really sure what the quality is, and if I can get a descent salad; what I’ll do in that case is bring along with me in my purse a small jar of a little bit of lemon juice and olive oil dressing stashed away, so that I have a healthy dressing ready to go. I may even bring an avocado with me, if I’m not sure if can get a good salad, but between my dressing, my avocado, maybe a couple of flax crackers, I can round out almost any salad into a great meal.

So as you can see, healthy eating doesn’t have to be something that you just do at home. Whether you are at home or on the go, if you follow these tips you can always enjoy delicious raw food.

Thank you for watching my DVD. I hope I made it easy for you to incorporate healthy raw meals into your life. I’m Jennifer Cornbleet, wishing you the best in healthy eating.