What is the best food to bring on the road when breakfast places are horrendous. My job takes me to Italy and the U.K. a lot. In Italy, all they have is pastries, and the British only offer greasy eggs, blood pudding, and fat-laden sausages. I know you go to these countries a lot. What do you suggest?
I have been going over to these countries more often enough, that I have scouted the best hotels where they will serve me
meat for breakfast, along with nuts an berries, so that I can have great workout before class without having to suffer from crashing blood sugar levels, or having to turbo blast my gallbladder to digest all sorts of very suspicious saturated fats.
If it is London though, the price of steak and eggs will warrant a credit report before they served you. Actually once in Canary Wharf, when I was handed the breakfast bill, I thought it also included the price of the suite I had rented…
If you are in France and ask for steak and eggs, the waiter starts screaming and runs away, shouting at the top of his lungs: “The Barbarians are coming, the Barbarians are coming”.
In Tuscany, when I asked for steak and eggs, the waitress gave me one of those puzzled look, which made me think, that if my head had been in a filled up aquarium, she would have been less disturbed.
The best steak and eggs breakfast I have had away from home would have been in Latvia. The president of the speed skating federation had arranged it for me. When I get hired for an international gig, I always make sure that my first meals of the day are well taken care. Frankly, it was the best piece of steak I EVER had. You could taste the quality, the same was true for the eggs. I have also found to be able to eat very well for breakfast in Hungary.
In England, outside London, the odds of finding a great breakfast are lower than Brittney Spears reading a book that she won’t color. So for example, if you end in Longborough or Leicester, you better have planned ahead. Actually Leicester is the only place in the World where I have violent indigestion from a breakfast meal. The eggs were unbelievably greasy. In fact, the locals were quite proud of the fact that Don Johnson used to import Leicester breakfast in the early eighties. He used them to slick his back for playing the character of Sonny Crocket in the Miami Vice series. The grease from the Leicester eggs was the only lubricant than would not melt down under the hot Florida sun.
Therefore, in those hell holes, I bring cans of sardines and/or jars of caviar. Bath, is the only city in the U.K. outside of London where I have been able to find a great breakfast, thanks to the local scouting efforts of Tom Crudginton.
These foods are convenient and are great to boost the right levels of neurotransmitters to have a great workout. Sardines and caviar are probably the best brain foods available. I have had students say to me “Isn’’t caviar expensive?”. NO. Having a terrible workout and teaching day because you ate chocolate croissants is far more expensive.
As I have said multiple times before, the first thing you put in your mouth in the morning…provided it is food… dictates all the neurotransmitters. Eat croissants, you will be wanting to go back to bed because of the soaring serotonin levels. Eat steak and eggs, you will be blazing through the whole because of enhanced levels of dopamine and acetylcholine. Add 2 caps of Alpha-GPC and you will roaring.
I also pack pine nuts, macadamia nuts or cashews to round off the meal.