We have just arrived for our annual visit to the great state of Texas. After three days of travel, our horses and our dogs are happy to be there too.
Before leaving the house, I thrilled our live trailer with as much grocery store as in our small refrigerator and our limited wardrobe space. No need for anything that requires an oven. Don’t have it. And since the propane stove is under a cover that serves as a counter space, we reserve its use for special occasions.
However, we have a microwave. With a George Foreman Grill, a coffee maker and the cute little toaster that I found during a garage sale last year, we are quite well defined.
The animals pass first when they travel. We therefore limited our daily journey time and we stopped each evening in a motel on horseback with comfortable corrals and a place to connect our residual trailer to water and electricity.
Breakfast on the road should be easy, portable and as nutritious as possible. Fortunately, I threw frozen burritos with eggs and cheese from my home. A little over a minute in the microwave wrapped in a paper towel and we were happy travelers.
Bananas and easy -to -shed oranges make an excellent median snack when you are tempted to stop for donuts. Just make sure you have towels.
After three days on the road, my husband boasted that we had not yet given in to fast food. And then, when we stopped for gas, we saw the Dairy Queen. My husband has just ordered a cheeseburger. Me? For the same price, I could not refuse a junior size hamburger and children’s fries. And the meal has just come with a little chocolate sundae …
Sometimes we need a little sweet thing. Or this is how my grandmother rational. This is why a small bag of individual chocolates joined us during the trip.
And now it’s time for Valentine’s Day. Some say that chocolate is like a love potion, probably because it contains chemicals which, according to experts, can stimulate our mood. Other experts say that the pleasure we obtain by eating this treat concerns more the satisfaction that we obtain from the taste and the creamy texture of a very good chocolate.
Is chocolate good for us? This can be, according to a 2021 review in the review Nutrients. These authors have concluded that moderate quantities (no more than 1 to 2 ounces per day) of dark chocolate can help protect the heart. But these advantages are reversed with higher intake of these fatty foods.
Another systematic review of 2021 on this subject in the same newspaper strictly examined the results of randomized controlled trials. Again, these researchers have confirmed the cardiac protection properties of dark chocolate products “when consumed in moderation”.
I guess my grandmother was right. Sometimes we just need “little” something sweet.
(Barbara Intermill is a nutritionist dietitian and unionized columnist. She is the author of “Quinn-Essential Nutrition: The Underplicated Science of Eating” barbara@quinneritrition.com.)
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