Crescent City on a Dime

Hi there, it’s Christen! This week on the podcast Amber brought up a great topic, dining out on a special diet. I enjoyed this topic because not only do Travis and I both have special dietary guidelines we try to follow, but we also have budgetary restrictions when it comes to dining out. He is diabetic, and I am a bariatric patient. We are also hoping to buy a house in the near future. Planning ahead and committing to the plan will ensure you don’t get too crazy and go off our budgets, not only with the calorie intake, but financially.

As I mentioned last week on the blog, the three of us went to New Orleans, Louisiana, also known as NOLA. If you are not familiar, NOLA is well known for its unique culture. The cuisine, music, history, and religious practices are a mixture of French, Spanish, Caribbean, and African-American, commonly known as either Cajun or Creole. When I travel, my main goal is to explore the local culture by enjoying the eateries, visiting history and art museums, and enjoy the present moment, by either relaxing, having a high adventure, or just doing something I love with people that I love. So since we were planning a trip to NOLA, I wanted to ensure we got to try it all. I hope you know me well enough to know where this conversation is going… planning!

You cannot go to Louisiana without trying the simple, yet sinfully delicious deep fried pastries called beignets! They also are known for their use of crawfish, andouille sausage, boudin, andouille sausage, grits, the Holy Trinity, duck, frogs, alligator and shrimp. One of the things that I love is trying new foods. Thankfully, Travis is also somewhat adventurous when it comes to trying food. I am still working on him with seafood, but we are getting there. I make it a goal to try all of the quintessential dishes, especially when traveling to a place so well known for their food. I decided that I needed to have a bucket list of must haves while on our trip.

• Po Boys
• Étouffée
• Savory Grits
• Pontchartrain Sauce
• Crawfish Pie
• Gumbo
• Jambalaya
• Red Beans and Rice
• Fried Frog Legs
• Fried Alligator Tail
• Beignets
• Chicory Coffee

Budget

We had already set a budget when we set money aside for our trip. I recommend paying cash so that when the waiter brings your check, you can pay, tip, and leave without having to wait for them to bring your card back. Seeing the money in my hands helps me keep an eye on how much we have left. Knowing how much we could spend on our trip helped us narrow down what types of establishments we could afford. We also opted for water instead of expensive beverages at restaurants. This helped us stay hydrated and probably saved us anywhere from $36-$48 plus the incremental tax and tip that would have accompanied. The one drink I did manage to purchase was planned, and I was so glad I spent my money on it!

Research and Recommendations

When you are traveling, it can be hard to make quick, smart decisions on where to eat. It almost feels like decision fatigue, so, to prevent that from taking up time on our trip, we planned where to eat ahead of time. I did a lot of research to find the best places for certain things; I wanted to make sure that we got a wide variety, not just quick and cheap, but also try some fine dining and local favorites. My first step was to listen to what my friends and family had to say. Amber and Cindy had both been to NOLA recently, so they both had great recommendations. We were not able to try all the same places, but I picked out the must-haves and worked them into my itinerary. I ensured that each restaurant I chose was near whatever tourist destinations we were heading for that day, since we were on foot most of our trip. This ensured that we made it on time and spent less time wandering around lost. For the other meals, I used Google maps to locate high rated eateries within my budget. I could easily determine if the restaurant was in my price range and offered the type of food that I wanted based on other Google users' photos and reviews. Most of the restaurants have a photo of their menu, just click on the images and scroll through to see if the food is appetizing and affordable.

Don’t Over Eat

Be open to sharing your food! Travis and I knew we wouldn't be able to try all of the foods that we wanted on such a short trip. We opted to order two menu items that we both wanted to try so we could split them. The first day, all three of us ordered individual meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although we shared the food we ordered, we still over-ate. That totaled 9 meals for one day. By the time we got to dinner, our eyes were hungry but we filled up fast. We learned the next day to order less food. Since I am a bariatric patient, I can only eat so much as it is, so this was easy for me to munch off of both of their meals, or have a smaller portion if something was offered a la carte. This helped cut back on food waste, too, since we can’t take it home with us. 

Fried Brie Burger at Trenasse

Louisiana Crawfish pie at Trenasse

You can always go back

One thing I had to remind myself when I was in NOLA was that I can always go back. I don’t have to eat everything in sight, and buy every souvenir I see. We decided to purchase a Cajun cookbook as one of our souvenirs so that we can take the cuisine home with us and enjoy it for years to come. 

You don’t have to eat out. 

Call ahead and see if the hotel room has a fridge or a microwave, or pick a hotel that has extended stay amenities. Food can be kept in a cooler with hotel ice and taken to a park for a picnic. Imagine mocktails (non alcoholic) and a charcuterie on a blanket in a park like Congo Square/Louis Armstrong Park, where you can enjoy the statues and manicured lawns in a historic place. It never hurts to get a little grounded and relax during your vacation, too!

What are your methods for planning meals on your trips? Do you just go and eat what you see when you see it? I want to know how you stay on your monetary and health budgets while traveling! Pop on over to MMC chat and let me know, or post in the comments below.

Pro Tips for PowerSheets®

Hello, Christen here. This week I want to show you how I, and many others, take my PowerSheets® to the next level. I am super stoked about setting up the first section of the book, where I will dive into my thoughts and ask myself what is important to me and what I want to accomplish in 2022. The program itself is a fantastic tool, and it has really helped me propel forward with my dreams and aspirations.

Through trial and error, I have identified one key factor that makes it as successful as it is, which is daily use! When I use the PowerSheets® workbook daily, by checking in and reading my daily, weekly, and monthly action items as well as my overall goals, I tend to have far more success. In addition to checking in on your “Tending Lists”, as they are called, I recommend a couple of other tools to keep you organized. These methods will help you stay engaged in the workbook, and bring it into your everyday life.

Color Coding with Pens and Washi Tape
One of the things that I was most attracted to about PowerSheets® was that I had seen many others using their very own color coding system with markers, pens and stickers. This allowed them to use a separate color to compartmentalize their goals within different areas of their lives. In the PowerSheets® workbook there are some places where the designer, Lara Casey, has used corresponding colors and there are plenty of places where you can add your own splash of color. Lucky for me, I already had a color coding system in place with my MacBook. On iCal, I have certain calendars in their own color, for example work and home life, so I can easily see what areas of my life might be over-scheduled and I was able to carry that over to my workbook and continue the flow. Below you can see where I have used the color coding system to keep things organized in my calendar, and these are the same categories that I work through in my PowerSheets®.

Washi Works Wonders
If you want to give it a little pizazz or want to change the colors that are already established on some of the pages, you can go all out and make it your own. There are endless things you can do with color coordination.

My next tip… is a Brush Tip
I keep a separate bundle of markers just for my PowerSheets®. I absolutely love the Tombow brush tip markers. They are dual sided pens. you can write with them as well as use the brush tip to write in script or as a highlighter.. I love using these in my day planner. You are going to find that things on your tending list might need further planning out. Dedicating the time for the action items gives you that extra structure to make it to the end goal. When writing the action items into your day planner in their respective colors really does give you perspective and makes those items jump out at you, so you can’t miss them!

Have it out and take it with you!
One thing is for sure, you have to pick up your PowerSheets® Book and use it every day! In that regard, it is very much like a day planner. Daily use, lots of notes, and eye-catching color are several ways that make a day planner successful. PowerSheets® run on that same principle. If you don’t actively reach out, pick it up and affirm your daily, weekly and monthly objectives, it will not do you much good at all. If you struggle with utilizing the workbook every day like I did, you will notice that once the month comes to an end many of the tasks you had eagerly planned out were left forgotten or only half completed. Since the action items that are performed at those intervals can possibly slip your mind, it is extremely easy to lose focus on the main goal. My suggestion to champion this is to always have the workbook available to grab and use. Think about it as something that you need in order to get through your day. I keep my day planner open to the current week, so I don’t miss anything important. I need to check it everyday. I keep my power sheets workbook tucked right under my day planner. I always take it with me if there is a chance that I might be staying overnight somewhere so that I can continue tracking and building the habits that I established as part of the daily action items. In the past I have just used a cute book bag or laptop bag to carry my workbook with me, but this year I just couldn't resist the matching zipper bags that were available on the Cultivate What Matters website. The best part about the matching bags, is that I have one for my pens and stickers too, so I will always have them and can quickly grab them when I am on the go. You don’t have to have the bags, but they sure do make it cute!

Seeing is Believing
Posted on my wall, right above my desk is a piece of paper with my goals written out. Is it color matching? You betcha! There are 8 blocks, one for each goal, with the goal written on the block. I kept it as simple and plain to see as possible. I guess you could say that it is a vision board in its most rudimentary form. It took very little effort to make, and doesn't require deep thought or any symbolism or flipping through magazines to get my point across. I simply just wanted a fast reminder of the exact wording of my goals for 2021. Be on the lookout for a demo for a refreshed version for 2021!

If there is one thing that I wish for you to take away from all that I shared today, I hope it is to understand the importance of using the PowerSheets® on a daily basis. Just like a newly forming habit, the PowerSheets® workbook needs to be cultivated by repetition and a serious heart. I got my husband into using a daily planner two years back and we are still working on building that habit with him - it doesn’t come naturally for everyone. Don’t kick yourself if you have days when you forget to use your PowerSheets®, just open it back up, refocus and keep on going! I can guarantee that you will see some wonderful, positive changes in your life!

How We Grieve and Why It's Different for Everyone

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and earlier this week, Amber opened a discussion on grief during the holidays. In our podcast, I shared a few things my family did to lessen the sadness of missing a loved-one during important family holidays, while Christen talked about working through a holiday, and Amber shared her personal experience with holiday grief on the blog. Dealing with grief is such an important topic that I wanted to dig a little deeper -- I want to continue the conversation about how people grieve and how we can help each other through the tough times.

Let us start by talking about what grief is, and how we experience it. Many people think that grief and mourning are the same thing, but they are not. Mourning is the outward actions that we take when we have a loss; grief is the internal thoughts and feelings we experience. Likewise, people often mistakenly attribute Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 5 Stages of Death and Dying to the stages of grief, but in fact, her research was about people dealing with their own deaths. According to psychologist and author Dr. J. William Worden, there really are no “stages” of grief because grief is not linear. His model is a set of “tasks” that a grieving person works through to find the way back to some level of function and normalcy. These tasks can occur in any order, or even concurrently. Sometimes, in the process of grieving, a person will go back to one or more tasks repeatedly. The tasks are:

The most important factor in this process is time, and there is no specific timeline for grief. Every person’s response to it is different and quite subjective. But the idea is to work our way back to a level of function as we move forward. Charles Jacob, a psychologist and teacher at Sacred Heart University, says, “Eventually, we just start trending back to normal.” He says that the real key is to get through the pain and then to derive meaning from all of it that “doesn’t leave us feeling completely hopeless.”

One of the best things, besides time, to help with grief is to share it. Experts agree that talking with friends and family, and telling stories about our loved ones is beneficial. It can even be helpful to talk to strangers, thus the growth of online grief support groups and the trend of pop-up “grief cafes,” where participants join a group of strangers over coffee, cake, and, of course, lots of talk about death.

WebMD’s “19 tips for coping with holiday stress and depression” includes tips like:

• Make realistic expectations for the holiday season.
• If you are lonely, try volunteering some time to help others.
• Limit your drinking, since excessive drinking will only increase your feelings of depression.
• Try something new. Celebrate the holidays in a new way.
• Spend time with supportive and caring people or contact a long-lost friend or relative and spread some holiday cheer.

One group that has an especially difficult time with death and grieving is children. Kids of different ages deal with grief differently, and it is often done in spurts because their brains simply cannot tolerate more. Moreover, children will continue to grieve in different ways as they age and mature, continuing into their 20’s when their brains are fully developed. Mila Ruiz Tecala, LICSW, Center of Loss and Grief in Washington, D. C., tells us that when “children are not helped to grieve at every stage of their development, they experience cumulative losses.” Unresolved grief has been shown to create a higher risk of depression, unemployment, smoking, over-eating, lack of appetite, and risky behavior, and has links to immune disorders, hypertension, cardiac events, and cancer.

No matter the age of the child, the experts agree that it is important to make sure they know that it is acceptable to show emotions and talk about the person who died, and that it is okay to be sad.

To help children during the holidays:

If you have more tips on dealing with grief, we’d love to hear about it. Please join us as we continue this conversation in the Facebook group.

Thanks for sharing!

For more information about grief cafes, please visit the following websites:

• https://deathcafe.com
• https://www.thegoodgrieftrust.org/need-know-info/from-us-to-you/pop-up-good-grief-cafes/
• https://www.thegoodgrieftrust.org