Healthy Across America Road Trip. Omaha, Nebraska to Chicago, Illinois

(March 9th; although this is posting on the 10th…just to be clear)

Yes, Iowa was on our itinerary and we did stay in Davenport last night, but that is all we did. We slept in Davenport, had a free breakfast at the hotel (another grim hotel breakfast) then hit the road. They did have hard boiled eggs and fruit so we made the best of it. Then 3 short hours to Chicago.

One of us is not so thrilled to be in the windy city. I will give you two guesses who it is:

Oh Willie Pickles, you're a handful.

Today was the first day that we were feeling stuck in regards to food. The breakfast didn't hold us over and by 2pm we were starving. We stopped somewhere in the middle of Illinois for gas. I wandered around the convenient store for 10 minutes trying to conjure up a healthy option. I failed. There were some green bananas all individually wrapped in plastic. I bought one. We still had organic peanut butter in the car so I thought that would work as a hold-me-over snack. BUT.. when I opened that banana it smelled so horrific that I spent the next hour worried about what food manufactures could have possibly done to an innocent banana. Why oh why was it necessary to pack it in that awful plastic?

Once we hit Chicago, Karen and I decided to split ways for a bit. We were getting pretty sick of each other 😉

I used a lifeline tonight, kindness from a friend. My dear friend from childhood, Erika, lives in Chicago. Erika and her sister Tara, and my sister Erika, were my best friends growing up. The four of us were a force to be reckoned with.

The four ‘scruff-a-muffins': Abra(me), Tara M., my sister Erika, and Erika M.

Erika invited me over for make your own pizza night with her 2 perfect kiddies Liam and Abbie. It was exactly what the doctor ordered, homemade food and a trip down memory lane.

Erika started by prepping a large platter of organic veggies and the kids got to work on the dough:

Peppers, spinach, basil, mushrooms, tomato and onion. What more could a pizza ask for??

These kids had some serious skills!

Abbie has clearly done this before

Roll it!

Abbie made a pizza heart!

Wonder Woman needs to eat her veggies too!!

The pizza was a big success!

We LOVE pizza!

For the adult pizza we used half tomato sauce and half artichoke pesto jam packed with veggies…yum!

In the meantime… Karen spent all of our money.

Karen blowing our budget.

She said she was going to have a simple dinner with her nephew, Nick. I should have known better! They went to South Water Kitchen and said it was super delicious! Karen had short ribs with KALE and wheat berries a side of brussel sprouts. Sounds innocent enough until you add in her glass of Shiraz and lemon pound cake. She spent a total of $62.00…oopsie. (Karen wants to make sure everyone knows that her veggies were $6, she blew the budget on wine and short ribs not veggies!) Well, we are definitely going to have to make this budget up somewhere else! Stay tuned, 3 more days to go!

(P.S. I did manage to get a quick 25 minute workout in today, the hotel has an awesome fitness center and I needed to move my body. I followed Karen's quick workout guide and felt a million times better in a matter of minutes)

Tally so far:
We are over budget by: $25.37
We used one lifeline: Kindness from a friend.