Make your own granola
with California Almonds!

The folks at California Almonds had a neat set up. They had
these HUGE bowls full of a bunch of different things you could use to make
granola. My roomie, Sarah, and I hit up Kroger on the way to the hotel for some
supplies (Note: A Foodie always
requests a mini-fridge in the hotel room!), including CarbMaster yogurt. OMG! I
love this stuff. For those of you who aren’t too big on Greek yogurt this stuff
is a great option: low sugars, low carbs, high protein! I topped my cinnamon
roll yogurt with some of my granola (please don’t ask me to remember what’s in
it!) and that was breakfast!

Playing With My Food

Well not me…but there were a lot of foods I know and loved
that were presented in new ways! The folks at Ninja Kitchen did smoothies (click on the
picture to expand for the recipes). The green one I liked, the orange one was a
little strange for me.

The big surprise was the avocado people! California Avocados
made a blueberry muffin with avocados replacing much of the fat and they. Were.
Awesome! Here’s the recipe although it is NOT WLS-friendly. I will work on tweaking. But in it’s current form I think I could even get this past my oldest (read: pickiest) daughter!

Tapas! (And Ignite)

One of the highlights of FitBloggin is an event called “Ignite.”
The concept is simple (yet petrifying for presenters, I think). You choose a
topic and you do a PowerPoint Presentation that’s five minutes. But here’s the
kicker: the slides change every 15 seconds! So you don’t really have much time
to talk. For me, this would be a disaster. Sarah did a great Ignite talk to
raise awareness about Lipedema and Lymphedema so I enjoyed watching her.

At the event there was tapas. If you don’t know what tapas
is, it’s a way of eating food in really small portions, small plates. In my
estimation, tapas is MADE for us! Here’s what we had:

Little Caprese skewers – aren’t they cute?

Pork tenderloin with (I think) mango salsa

Gator!

So I know I wasn’t…like…IN the bayou…but still. We went to
this lovely restaurant that had a gumbo with gator meat. I am an adverturous “Nawtherner”
so I tried it! Although this LOOKS more like bean soup, it’s definitely gumbo.
And it was GOOD! The texture of gator is slightly gamey/chewy. It’s good. As my
friend Julia would say, “I’d hit that again.” 

Indulgence

I mean c’mon…I’m in Georgia. And besides I refuse to lie to
you. I ate pralines – but not THAT many of them!(Six years post-op and I still dump). I
also brought some home thinking I’d save them for the kids but alas I left them
unwrapped and they dried out and, I’m sorry, but I wanted my kids to get the
REAL praline experience! (Side note: I have it on good authority that it’s “prah-lines” not “pray-lines” like I always say it!)

On the day I left Georgia, my friend Martinus and I went on
a tour and visited some African-American historical sights. The tour ended with
a stop at one of those places that I call “the truth.” The truth is a
restaurant in a city that is not touristy. In fact, it may be a dive or a hole
in the wall. But the food is as authentic as you can get.

Now I want to emphasize that a) I don’t eat this kind of stuff every day
and b) my pouch still works so I didn’t get through a lot of this plate! It is
BBQ ribs (what is it about ribs!), okra, some kind of rice (rice generally
upsets my stomach though so I didn’t fool with that too much) and some mac ‘n
cheese. (Yes, I ate mac ‘n cheese. Crucify me if you want but it was worth the
pouch space and the resulting extra workouts I had to do once I got home!)

The name of the restaurant, by the way, is The Garden of Eden. The owner was super nice!

So there you have it…the Foodie recap of FitBloggin. I owe
you one more and that’s some of the stuff I learned. It’s coming!

Bonus: One thing I did NOT consume…

Now I’ll say there are a lot of doom and gloom warnings about alcohol consumption post-WLS. For me it’s not so much of a problem. I have a sip or two of wine every once in a while and leave it at that (usually because two sips and I’m tipsy!). Plus…I’m cheap.

There’s way better stuff I could spend my money on. Like these things, many of which I also did not spend my money on!

Like honey from the Savannah Bee Company. I did spend some money here. I bought a jar of honey from their Bee Cause Project that lets kids learn to tend hives in schools and learn about the importance of beekeeping. All proceeds benefit the program! I like to leave a little love when I visit places.

…or a cupcake from Sweet Carolina’s

While I didn’t spend any money there, I did indulge…sorta…it was a group thing…

Although clearly I did not enjoy my bite as much as Martinus did. I think the Red Velvet cupcake gave him a religious food experience!

…or a trip to eat at The Lady & Son’s (That’s owned by Paula Deen, y’all! And yes I am black. And yes I would have.)

But still. It’s fun to find these things and snap them!