The Food Crisis

A number of people have asked us what we eat (and how much do you need to eat) while we're biking. Our strategy on this front was pretty basic: We'll eat food. When we're hungry. No fancy protein shakes or whey powder concoctions or energy gels or goos. Largely because those things are, well, gross. They taste gross and they're highly processed and usually packed with sugar and salt. And while I like sugar and salt and will happily eat copious amounts of either, it must be be presented to me in a way that is palatable before I'm willing to belly up. And since we're not competing in a race and have no schedule to adhere to and, therefore, have no need to gulp down something that will rapidly metabolize while we're still madly pedalling, we figured we'd be better off just to eat, you know, food when we're hungry,

We obviously can't carry around a raw roasting chicken and a five pound bag of Yukon Golds, but we can carry some fresh fruit and nuts and good old sesame snaps (that do just as good of a job as Power Bars, only without all the fake processed crap). And, hey, bread weighs, like, nothing. So that's good. And then when we're done for the day, we hit the local grocery store and do up a fresh meal. Simple and healthy, right?

This strategy worked beautifully and got us to Calgary in good spirits. In fact, we had some awesome meals made with fresh local food (fresh asparagus picked THAT DAY seared in butter with grilled salmon steaks vs. whey protein powder--hmmm). I mean, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and good fresh food. Yeah. We felt good.

And then we headed deep into the heart of the prairie. These towns, they're SMALL, people. And they're remote. I mean, I was born and raised in a small prairie town and even I couldn't get over how small and in the middle of nowhere these places were. Many of these towns don't really have a proper grocery store and the produce is just...sad. Freckled bananas, some apples, and some wrinkled up oranges. And that's about it. (I also noted that a lot of people have gardens, in case you're wondering how they get by.) So it's slim pickin's at the confectioneries and to make matters worse, it's even slimmer pickin's at the local restaurants. These places, the food is just...bad. I'm not entirely sure it technically qualifies as food. Meats that come in gelatinous loafs. (As far as I'm concerned, meat should never shimmy.) Or meats that have an unnatural iridescent sheen. And other things-- anything--that comes breaded and frozen and can be dropped into a deep fryer. Salads are very rarely an option and even more rarely an appetizing one.

Unable to stomach the "meats" in their most unnatural incarnations, we went on a flapjack bender. There's very little you can do to mess up or overprocess a pancake. For a while, it was fun. There's something rather homey and comforting about melting butter on a stack of pancakes that mingles with a sort of childish delight at getting to pour syrup on your meal.

And then after about a week on the Flapjack Diet, I started to feel funny. Sluggish. Tired. Not so great. My skin started to do that thing where it's dry yet breaking out.

After another week where a serving of fruits or vegetables in a day was a triumph, I started to feel downright sad. Nothing was fun anymore. Nothing. Biking was hard. Camping was hard. (There were other things at play, like the headwinds that have dogged us and a general lack of sleep, so I suppose it was something of a perfect storm--malnutrition meets extra demands on body.) Getting up and doing it all over again and again and again was hard. I didn't want to quit, but I also didn't want to go on.

The day we were heading into Regina (also the day we found the injured duck, so, you know, generally a shite day), I realized how far things had gotten when I lost three hours. I simply couldn't believe we'd gone 75 km because I'd been so absorbed in daydreaming about vegetables. I'm not kidding. First, I planted an imaginary vegetable garden, carefully selecting imaginary plants (well, you have to have peas, and carrots, and Oh! beets! don't forget the beets!). Then I made an imaginary vegetable stock with my imaginary vegetables, lingering over images of coarsely chopped celery and carrots and bunches of fresh herbs. I then used my imaginary broth to make a variety of imaginary soups including, and not limited to, Ukranian style borscht with fresh dill, curried spinach and potato soup, and a chilled pea soup with a hint of mint. I even paired each of my imaginary soups with imaginary salads.

While I've had the occasional chocolate craving that's run amok in my day, I've simply never obsessed about food. And certainly never about vegetables! Vegetables!!

It was a sign and I knew it was a sign. Obsessing about food in disturbingly thorough and precise detail is, in fact, a VERY CLEAR SIGN that your vitamin deficiency is STARTING TO AFFECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

So Regina couldn't have come at a better time. We actually went to the buffet at the Hotel Saskatchewan* so we could not only eat a variety of salads, we could eat multiple helpings of those salads. Washed down with platefuls of fruit. I then went back to the hostel and ate a bag of cherries, which was utterly fantastic, despite the predictable results of having consumed intense amounts of fibre in one sitting.

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*If you want to get your money's worth out of a $14 buffet, I suggest going for a 120 km bike ride into a headwind first. You'll be amazed.