Anyone else get super anxious on long plane flights? We do! And not just because you go up in the air like 10 000 metres, in a huge chunk of metal with 300 other people… seriously… how to planes even fly? Anyway, not what we’re here for! We ALSO get super anxious about the food! Because ‘paleo’ was definitely NOT an option to tick.
Let’s chat: healthy food to pack on a plane. Our first question was can you even pack your own food on an international flight? What about tea leaves? Can you take your own tea when you travel overseas?
We had many answers and travel tips from our lovely followers on Facebook (check out this post!), they helped us decide what to pack on our almost 20 hour plane trip and what to not! Our trip was from Canberra – New York, a long one! This meant we had to try and cover at least 4 meals! How did we go? Well, we think we did pretty good! In fact, we felt like all we did was watch a movie, eat some merrymaker food, walk around the plane, watch a movie, eat some more merrymaker food, walk around the plane some more… we had MANY comments from the flight attendants (who all deserve a massive shoutout for their awesomeness… and for making us giggle!) as well as conversations with our fellow passengers (some of the Today show crew were sitting in front of us, we gave them a paleo 101)… clearly all super jealous of our BYO plane food! So here’s the run down of the merrymaker plane food menu!
Healthy Food To Pack On A Plane (this served 2 x merrymakers)
2 x simple paleo chia puddings. We made these the night before and put them in jars. We actually had these before we boarded so we can’t tell you if the glass jars are a-ok or not ok. Sorry… we were hungry!
1 x loaf of paleo savoury bread, wrapped in lots of 4 slices (2 pieces were enjoyed at a time each).
2 x avocados mashed with salt, pepper and lemon to keep it from going brown, we kept this in a small container and brought our own plastic knife so we could spread it easily on top of our bread!
You could also top your bread with nut butter or tahini! Yum!
Half a bunch of celery chopped in to crudites
1 x punnet of cherry tomatoes
1 x punnet of strawberries chopped
2 x apples chopped
2 x oranges peeled and chopped
We kept all of this chopped goodness in 2 containers. Chopping all the fruit beforehand made it easier to eat and less sticky! The plane seats are squishy so you want your food to be easy to place on your fold out tray table and ready to eat!
2 x Loving Earth luvjus. Because chocolate is ALWAYS necessary! Hot tip! You can take as much Loving Earth choccie over to New York as you like! We declared ours, wishing and hoping it would make it through customs. The customs guy was super interested but not because of the customs thing but because it was refined sugar free, paleo friendly chocolate deliciousness! We thought for a second he was going to pocket it!
1 x bag of Aussie Macadamias! Because they are the best tasting nut ever! You don’t have to take macadamias, that’s just what we packed! Make your own nut and seed mix with your favourites!
One of the Qantas attendants had a paleo friendly brekky meal made up for us too! It was just eggs, gluten free sausages (ok, these probably weren’t 100% paleo) spinach and tomatoes.
We also made sure we drank a heap of water! Keeping hydrated on a plane is super important! They had sparkling water so we requested one with lime every couple hours and had our own big bottles of water!
Making friends with the flight attendants is a good idea, this way they look after you!
We decided against taking our own tea leaves because ours were loose and not packaged. Lots of our merrymaker friends said packaged tea leaves were fine, so we took our own tea bags… and customs didn’t mind those either!
Plus! We kind of forgot to mention to customs that we had left over celery in our bag… they didn’t find it or mention it… but we’re guessing you’re not supposed to take any veggies or fruit in to the US! We recommend binning any fresh fruit and veggies before you go through customs, juuuuust in case!
Carla got the SSSS stamp on her ticket which meant she was randomly selected to go through uber strict security. We counted and she was patted down 4 times, scanned 6 and taken in to a room because explosives were detected on her clothes… erm… safe to say our experience was a little interesting! We have no idea where these explosives came from but the second test came back negative so they let her go free! Yay! We were only a teeny weeny bit scared. Ok, maybe a lot.
We organised a shuttle from JFK Airport directly to our accommodation, we’re not princess travellers but we think it’s always a good idea to get a direct shuttle when you’re some place new (and sleep deprived!), plus the novelty of someone holding your name on a sign is always fun!
We’re now settled in to our Lower East Side apartment, it has wi-fi and a kitchen (all the necessities!), we already got lost in Central Park today, visited Wholefoods (AHHH-mazing) and enjoyed sweet potato fries and salmon at our local corner bar – called Spitzer’s Corner (they also had pork belly on the menu which was sold out!) Safe to say… merrymakers LOVE NYC! Be sure to keep up to date with the hashtag #merrymakersdoNYC on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram and why not watch our first diary entry, it includes our pics of the day! The lighting is dodgy… we’ll work on that!
http://youtu.be/rtEmW2P6ZI0
Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla
#merrymakersdoNYC is brought to you by Raw Blend and Australian Blueberries.