Packing your own food while traveling - crazy?

So, what do you think? Is it crazy or over the top to pack your own food while traveling?

I'm off on a business trip this week, and before I left for the airport I packed myself a sandwich, grapes, packs of instant oatmeal, and several baggies of dried fruit.

I did feel a little silly at first, but by packing my own food, I was able to pass up the unhealthy (and expensive) airport food. I arrived at my destination full and without that sick feeling of eating a bunch of junk.

Plus, all this week I've been enjoying my dried fruit for snacks and oatmeal for breakfast instead of resorting to the stale M&M's in the vending machine or the sickly sweet cinnamon rolls on the hotel breakfast buffet.

So, even though it might feel a bit odd, try it - packing some of your own food and snacks will save you money and save your health!

Week 2 & 3 of September Goals

Well, I struggled last week with meeting my goals - not really sure what happened, and I don't like to make excuses, so instead of beating myself up about it (which defeats the point!), I just moved them to Week 3. No biggie - I'm really only doing this to focus on what's important to me and to keep myself moving in the directions I want to move. Thanks to letting myself off the hook, I've made good progress:

Family/ friends - implement weekly family night done - it's Thursdays!
Health - increasing exercise - done! signed up for three weekly classes
Personal - create a master to do list - always ongoing, but the list is in my notebook
Work - travel article - complete and submitted to associated content
Home - clean up my herb garden and porch - in process, I'll post about what I've done there tomorrow

So, pretty successful overall!

So much to do, so little time . . .

The other day I was talking on the front porch with my husband and neighbors and I mentioned that I was upset at how less energetic I had been feeling. They all were surprised (except for my husband) as they thought I was one of the most energetic people they knew. I guess in retrospect I can handle and do a lot, but there is definitely a slow down . . . and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe instead of thinking about all the things I'd like to do, I should be concentrating on what I'm doing now and accept that I can't do everything but instead should do a few things "better." Make sense?

I have a ton of ideas in my head . . . projects I'd like to start, "improvements" on my home, myself and my family life . . . changes in our eating, health, living . . . the list goes on and on. It's hard to decide where to start - what is most important?

To help myself focus, I've decided to make a list of my top priorities and then determine ways I can work on/with them each week. Hopefully this will keep me from attempting everything at once and create some meaningful changes versus just a bunch of new short lived trials.

Since I love a good project . . . here we go . . .

Saving money while eating well

One thing I've noticed the past two weeks as I've been shopping for healthier food is that my grocery bill has increased! I'm also not buying all those inexpensive but bad for you snacks - cookies, chips, processed food, etc. so my quantity of groceries has decreased. Apparently I'm going to have to start finding ways to save money on the healthier stuff - I'm convinced it can be done, it just might take a bit more work.

Three things I found this week:

1. I was shopping at Whole Foods and discovered they have a section of loose Organic herbs. Now I do spend a lot on herbs - I typically buy them at Penzey's, but since I was there and was almost out of basil and rosemary, I picked some up. It ended up being very inexpensive to purchase what I needed. I got three scoops of each for 15 cents and 24 cents. Definitely enough to fill my Penzey's jars about 1/3 of the way full. Plus - what a great source for herbs and spices you don't use often!

2. Speaking of herbs, I was checking out my herb garden from last year and my thyme, oregano and chives all came back! So, I need to purchase basil, mint, parsley and cilantro and I'll be set. In the summer I use the fresh herbs as much as I can. For less than the price of one jar I can have a plant that will supply all I need all summer long. In fact last year my basil plant was so prolific I ended up giving away bags of basil and made up ten baggies of pesto for the freezer.

3. I found a few coupons for organic/ healthy foods at this website: http://www.eatbetteramerica.com/ I was able to print $1.00 off coupons for Muir Glen tomatoes and $1.00 off coupons for any Cascadian Farms product. I haven't checked my regular grocery stores for prices, but Cascadian Farms frozen veggies were $1.67 at Whole Foods and they took the coupon with no problem.