Enter the Munk Pack protein cookie. Munk Pack’s low sugar, gluten free and plant-based products make it easy and enjoyable to incorporate well-balanced nutrition on the go into anyone’s lifestyle.

Each protein cookie is made without eggs, dairy, soy, gluten, and sugar alcohols. Packed with 16 g of protein, 36 g of carbs, 16 g of sugar and 320 calories, the Munk Pack Double Chocolate Chip protein cookie is my favorite. I buy locally at REI, where you earn a 10% off bulk discount on 10 or more power food products. Munk Pack also carries Keto Granola Bars and Keto Nut Seed Bars.

What makes Munk Pack extra tasty is its giving back program. Grant funds support the Yosemite Conservancy, the philanthropic organization dedicated exclusively to Yosemite National Park that funds the research of contaminants in Yosemite’s waters. When I was about 15 years old, I had the opportunity to climb up to the cables of Half Dome (at a time when there were limited restrictions and no permits required). I will choose to remember fond memories of that trip every time I snag one of these Munk Pack protein cookies!

Angie Funnell

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The first thing I look for when we start our edible walk is to check out the fir trees for new growth. It is easy to find the new growth, because the needles are a pale green. I call them nature’s breath mint, because they have a refreshing lemon taste to them, which goes away very quickly. 

Some wild plants taste good and are easy to digest. Others, not so much. Still others are unpalatable or can be poisonous. Plants, like animals, are products of thousands of years of adaptations. Many wild plants have survived over the years and even thrived due to the fact they are poisonous or very bitter to the taste. That being said, there are many wonderful edible plants here in the woods of the Inland Northwest. You should always be 100 percent positive a wild plant is edible before you try it and should try only a small amount the first time. If you find something you like, please avoid over-harvesting. You should always leave some mature plants to produce seeds for the next season.

One of the first edible plants of the season is miner’s lettuce. The early season variety is normally found in early spring, depending on when our snow has melted. (One year I found some in February growing near the Little Spokane River.) There is a later variety that can be found in late spring and early summer. This plant was very popular during the gold rush to California, hence the name. The young leaves of this plant can be eaten in a salad or as a trailside snack. They are very tasty and an excellent source of vitamin C. 

Another of the wild edibles that go well in a salad are yellow violets. All violets are edible, including the garden variety, with no objectionable flavor or bitterness in any of them. The leaves can also be used to make a substitute for tea. Violets are often used to thicken soup, especially in the southern part of the U.S. where they may be called “wild okra.”

A few other plants worth trying are the flowers and leaves of the shooting star, the flowers and leaves of the trillium, flowers of the sticky geranium, flowers of the fireweed, flower petals of the daylily (they have mild onion flavor), and the root of wild ginger, which can be eaten raw. Most of these plants can be found on Mount Spokane, but some can also be found in Riverside State Park and along the Little Spokane River.

Don’t forget the dandelion, which can also be found at lower elevations. Most people think of it as just a plain old weed, but it’s much more than that. The whole plant is edible. The leaves and flowers can be used in a salad, while the root can be roasted and ground into a coffee-like beverage. You can also dry the leaves, which can then be used to make tea.

As the season progresses, be on the look for berries. On just about any of the many trails on Mount Spokane, you will find huckleberries. The best areas to look are on the cross-country ski trails. That is also a good place to find thimbleberries. Eat them by the handful or save them for a salad topper.

Don’t forget to check for wild, edible mushrooms. There are plenty of great edible mushrooms to be found on Mount Spokane. Besides everyone’s favorite, morels, there are also yellow coral, king boletes (porcini), wood ears, puffballs, honey mushrooms, lobster mushrooms, and bear’s head.

Pick up a copy of “Plants of the Inland Northwest and Southern Interior British Columbia” at your local book store and see what you can find while foraging on Mount Spokane or your local natural area this late spring and summer. Make a salad of your wild edibles. It’s so much better than anything you can buy in the grocery store!

Rich Leon

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Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup ground hazelnuts or almonds (toast these babies up for some real flavor)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut shavings
• 1/2 cup oats, musli, bran flakes, corn flakes – whatever you’ve got in the cupboard. If you’re paleo, you can use ground or sliced nut mixtures
• 1/4 cup juice sweetened cranberries
• 1 cup chunky almond or peanut butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 ounces 100% cocoa bar
• 1 Tsp. sea salt, flur de sel, celtic salt, or otherwise

Directions:

• Melt cocoa, honey, and almond butter in a small sauce pan while stirring.
• Set aside to cool.
• Mix all your dry ingredients, then add warm liquid mixture to dry goods. This should make a sticky, crunchy mixture that hardens when it cools.
• Dump the mixture onto a baking sheet and, using a piece of baking paper, press it into a firm square. (Be liberal in your squishing or they’ll fall apart later.)
• Set in fridge or freezer to chill.
• Remove, cut into little squares or bar shapes, and wrap with wax paper. They store for weeks in the fridge.
• Eat them. Share them. Never bonk again.

Ammi Midstokke is the owner of two birds nutrition, where she seeks to find the balance between food dogma and cupcakes. More recipes and ramblings can be found at Twobirdsnutrition.com.

Visit the OTO archives for more recipes and stories about food & drink or to read more of Ammi Midstokke’s Eatology column nutrition advice.

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We went back in time to his home to clean it out and do the bizarre work of peeping into one’s personal affairs and private spaces. It’s an awful job. You become a voyeur of secrets, bad habits, and all the things we hope no one ever learns about us. Like how many hotel shampoos we’ve collected over the years, or just how out of date the condiments in our fridge are.

As I picked through the most recent months of life in a now vacant home, I couldn’t help but notice all the good intentions. So many things had been begun. So many possibilities for a different outcome were spread throughout the rooms. But they had not been used.

The living room was evidence of an inspired shopping habit and a deep curiosity about health. There were books on nutrition, exercise science, the latest health trends. There were boxes of recently received supplements of all sorts: supplements for energy, supplements for testosterone improvement, supplements for anti-aging and vitality and brain health and heart health. Unopened. Unread.

In the mayhem of this was also a brand new rowing machine, freshly unpacked and assembled, just waiting to be used. It may have been there for months, but no one had ever rowed it. If he had rowed it, or taken his expensive vitamins, if he had just taken the next step, would he still be here?

Forces beyond my understanding seem to know when it is our time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t mess around with the statistics a bit. How many good intentions do we have? How many unfinished starts lay in our living rooms? And what keeps us from making the progress we hope for?

It would seem that we have a culture of rock bottom and picture perfect that can overwhelm the idea of anything in between. We often don’t motivate ourselves to make a change until it is desperately and obviously needed. I have no doubt that if he had come home from the hospital, he would have taken those anti-oxidant-testosterone-boosting-magic-pills and gave the rower what-for. 

We don’t have to wait to get that far down to create healthful change in our lives. We don’t have to wait until our spouse asks for divorce to get therapy. Heart attacks don’t have to be our wake up calls. Alcoholism doesn’t have to be why we choose to tone down our boozing. 

Equally, we must learn to envision ourselves, and find pride, in the process of improvement. We often make this process harder by comparing ourselves to our Best Ever Version or our Imagined Perfect Version. Anything that has not arrived there yet is thus Not Good Enough. The critical voice in our head can be paralyzing.

We then just wait until we get to our lowest low and the discomfort is strong enough for us to fantasize about bikini bodies, going vegan, or running a marathon just long enough to make a change. Few of us ever reach those lofty goals. Most of us disparage ourselves while we are trying. Then we’re even worse when we “fail.”

Stop it. 

Find the tiny things you can do to improve yourself. Know that some days you will get there and other days you won’t. Don’t fear the journey, the awkward slow runs after a hiatus, buying gym clothes that fit your post-holiday body, the three days a week you actually remember to take your vitamins. Get on the damn rower, even if you just sit there. Tomorrow, you might actually try rowing. And that is an improvement.

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I start out highly motivated and organized with said change, like preparing scratch-cooked meals for my kid’s lunch when school starts, then watch as time wears down my commitment. By the end of the school year, my kid is getting stale carrot sticks and a slab of crumbling gluten-free bread for lunch. 

Whatever the change is, I’m certain it is better than what the change was. When September shows up, I am relieved to have a schedule again that includes normal eating times, regular gym hours, meal prep, and mandatory coffee in bed on the weekends. There is something safe and secure in the routine (my therapist would suggest an over attachment to control). By the time June rolls around, I cannot wait to stop being a slave to the clock, to have unplanned days, and to live on fresh fruits and vegetables all summer. And run lots of miles.

The pattern is pretty much the same, and I am reminded often that one of the truths of life is that nothing ever stays stagnant. Our health, our lifestyles, our hobbies, relationships, work, goals, and blood pressure all change—and yet we seem to expect a kind of permanent stability going forward when transition occurs. Often we reinforce this with a set of rules. “I’ll get up at five. I’ll drink eight glasses of water a day. I’ll eat five servings of vegetables.”

This is a problem. When we get up at seven, migrate from coffee to wine without water, and have a day where our “vegetable” was the corn taco shell, there is a sense of failure that accompanies our decisions. At this point we start looking for the next transition point to turn new leaves because the old ones have lost their glisten and shine. 

I’m no yogi, but it has occurred to me that our lives and bodies are much like the cycle of respiration: expansion, pause, release, pause. If we perhaps approach our changes and intentions with an acceptance of which phase we are in, we might find a little more compassion in the process—and perhaps a little less overwhelm. 

Our health intentions and goals should be no different. When training for an event, we commit to an expansion phase, then pause, recover, pause, pick a new race. If we push ourselves to continually expand (or train, diet, be at the gym, or follow a rigid schedule), it is not sustainable. Thus we should be intentional about the pauses and the release as well. They make space for new things to eek into our lives. Such as reflection, naps, and cheap smut literature. As summer begins to pause, then sigh into autumn, take a moment to reflect on where you are in your own cycle of respiration. If you haven’t taken a deep breath in a while, maybe it is time. If you need to release the mayhem of summer and settle into the comfort of routine and less potato salad, make it so. And the next time you are worried about losing focus on those previously set intentions, maybe step back and take an objective look at the need for pause. 

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It isn’t so much that we don’t know what to eat, but that we continually back ourselves into corners where we can no longer make good choices for ourselves. Those choices might be to skip lunch, which inevitably results in eating a relative buffet of crackers and chips while preparing dinner. Or rushing out of the house without breakfast, sucking down a sugary mocha, then tanking just about the time an office-mate wanders by with a plate of donuts. Or staying up too late to watch Seinfeld reruns. Or the common inability to decline invitations.

There are other opportunities for less-than-helpful choices: When we’re watching TV and we’ve already eaten, everyone knows that sitcoms are funnier with popcorn or ice cream or chocolate covered almonds. When we’re exhausted from a ridiculous day of productivity and cranky bosses or clients, and wine calls us with its sultry promise of relaxation. When we go to parties and some hippie brought hummus and celery sticks, but we’re tolerating a boring conversation because it’s happening right next to the cheese plate. 

When we celebrate with food. When we mourn with food. When we avoid our emotions with food. When we medicate and distract with food. When we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to consciously consider what we want that food to do for us. 

Our food is supposed to nourish our bodies, and yes, it should also be pleasurable. It should delight our tastebuds and inspire our Instagram photos. It should be aesthetically pleasing (except maybe chili, but a good chili makes up for its appearance with hints of cocoa and complex layers of spice). It should provide us with ample nutrients to fuel our adventures, heal our wounds, and age us gracefully. Often, we don’t even give it the chance.

When we don’t take time to think about what our bodies need or to provide the right care, we prioritize a dirty little word called “convenience.” And you can find a lot of organic convenience in the supermarkets too, but that doesn’t make it healthy.  

In order to make healthy food choices, we need to make healthy lifestyle choices. Here are some obvious little helpers that have nothing to do with what you choose to eat, but might just help you crave more vegetables and have more energy to be kind to yourself.

1. Sleep. I bet you’ve read that one a few times in every list ever written about how to improve your health, heart risk, marriage, etc. When we don’t sleep enough, we crave easy energy—sugar, carbs, and caffeine— which makes us crave more of those things, and an ugly cycle of trendy energy drinks follows. And we all suspect those are a gateway drug to meth use. Spare yourself the downward spiral and take a damn nap.

2. Eat some breakfast. Nothing original here either and it’s no magic trick. Your blood sugars are low when you’ve been fasting all night so stabilize them with a couple of eggs, some fruit and oats, or leftovers from last night. Just sneak some protein and fat in there so you last through lunch.

3. Stop doing so much. In my clinic, I hear time and time again, “I don’t have time to cook.” Frozen burritos and packaged foods fill the gaps so people can scroll social media, watch more TV, get up at ridiculous hours to go to the gym, stay up late, and invest an impressive amount of time in personal hygiene rituals, all at the expense of whipping together a salad in ten minutes while some smokies cook on the BBQ. Slow your roll and make yourself a real meal.

4. Make healthy friends. We’ve all heard that we’re the average of the five people we spend most our time with. Take a moment to look at your circle. Do they encourage your healthy lifestyle choices or get you three martinis deep on a Wednesday night? Are they the homemade-hummus-hippies? Spend more time with the people who challenge you to take better care of yourself.

Ammi Midstokke’s “Advice for Anyone on Anything” Column

Check out Ammi’s online-only “Advice for Anyone on Anything” column. Or send her your nutrition, health, outdoor fitness, or other random advice question at ammi@twobirdsnutrition.com.

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Along with species-perpetuating common sense, like avoiding pyramid schemes and wearing a seatbelt, we seem to know what we need to eat. If you missed the memo: mostly fruits and vegetables, then some other stuff that’s pretty optional depending on your moral compass. In a world of macro-planning and BCAA timing, that might be a little basic. 

We know when we’ve had too many donuts. We know that industrial beef is a Class 1 carcinogen. We know that we don’t eat enough vegetable fiber. We know that glyphosate is suspect in various ailments. We know we need more water, less sugar, and essentially zero alcohol. And if we’re not exactly sure how many calories or grams of protein we need in a day to support our activity level, we can embrace some disordered eating and figure that out too.

But if we know these things, why don’t we do them? If we’re so damn big brained and top of the food chain, why are we careening toward the bottom? Observing that we humans are an enigma falls grossly short of an understatement.

There are few other species that so knowingly accept the potential consequences of their choices. I have yet to meet a cheetah that smokes (though I have met a number of diabetic cats). 

The research is plentiful, but we’ll simplify some of the understandings. First, humans don’t often identify with their future self. We’re a creature of immediate gratification and the prospect of having something nowreleases more dopamine in the brain than that regulating prefrontal cortex can talk us out of. In fact, studies show that people who are successful at delayed gratification release nearly as much dopamine thinking about the future result as the person currently stuffing their face with a pack of Oreos. 

We all know those people and avoid being their friends because they are disgusting and a shameful reminder that we only have $.12 in our savings accounts. Also, they aren’t wordy about their satisfaction with delayed gratification. Most of us need to tout that we are delaying gratification so we hear ourselves say it out loud and feel the dopamine release when others congratulate our self-control and deprivation tactics. 

I’ll have you know that my therapist said there is a more compassionate way to state that, or just about anything else that comes out of my mouth. It’s something really soft and pretty like, “I will be so happy about this later.” She probably has a lot more money in her savings account and never explains why she is skipping dessert.

Most of us humans don’t like to wait, and we can’t envision the risks of the future. That often is not a matter of self-control as it is a matter of biochemistry. That big brain is a tricky bastard and will release all kinds of hormones and flashbacks to inspire you to make choices that don’t serve you… later.It will tell you that you’re doing yourself a favor right now. That double-stuffed crust is going to save your soul and wipe away the horrors of surviving your day.

Also, low blood sugar is like the drunk teenager of the brain. You will make poor choices when you are too hungry and you won’t even care. You can tell this is about to happen if you are walking through a grocery store and one of those apple pie pockets with a half-life of eight hundred years sounds like a good idea. Never in the evolution of the human has a hungry person said, “I could kill for some asparagus right now.” Escort your brain to the part of the store where they have free apples and bananas for children, have a tantrum until an employee gives you one, and proceed to buy real food.

If we want to make good choices for our bodies, we need to set ourselves up for them. Some of it is just a matter of exercising that part of our brain. Think about the future and what it will feel like when you are strong and healthy on your next adventure, or your cholesterol levels are in range at your next annual, or you get a good night’s sleep. Think in terms of what you are gaining, not what you are missing out on in that moment. 

And for the love of pie, don’t try to make healthy decisions on a ravenous brain. Feed yourself regularly, and steal airplane peanuts to keep in your pockets for emergency fuel. Then eat more vegetables like you know you should.

Send Ammi your nutrition, health, outdoor fitness, or other random advice question at ammi@twobirdsnutrition.com.

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Thanks to the addition of rigorous and tireless scientific research, we even have some evidence-based information to apply to our new diets, which is probably why prescription speed got debunked as a weight loss panacea, leaving an entire nation of anorexics to begin vacationing in Mexico.

Among the hottest ideas coming to online ads and headlines near you this year will be brand-new-recycled concepts like: eat less sugar, eat more fat, drink more water, and eat real food. But by far my favorite is not a science-based, calorie-specific, macro-restricted plan guaranteed to solve your particular set of health issues. Rather, it’s the increasing interest in food provenance.

The word provenance comes from the French word, which comes from the Latin combination of words pro (forth) and venire (come). It means the original, or the original presentation of, or the original manifestation of food. Americans are beginning to ask important questions about where their food comes from. There was a time, after the industrial and chemical revolutions, when Americans were romanced by convenience and crackers. Now we have diabetes, heart disease, and a conscience, and we’re starting to ask what impact our diets have beyond our waistlines.

 For example: Did that cow have a good life? Are those grains ancient? Was this cassava root blessed by a shaman?

Aside from the hope that we’ll all have better karma if we give a damn about what we eat, food provenance also asks bigger questions about the original uses of foods. One might argue it also inspires us to think about the love and effort that went into handcrafting this artisan stinging nettle tea, which can later be used as a poultice for arthritic knees.

While it might seem comfortable to be blissfully unaware of where your nourishment comes from, the argument for being a pretentious purchaser of produce is a valid one. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? This applies to your person (will you need cholesterol medication and insulin injections by the age of 60?). And also to the planet (do your BBQ ribs contribute to global warming and deforestation?)

With every question we ask at a restaurant, every café we visit, every ingredient we buy, we are faced with the opportunity to make a conscious choice for our health, the health of our community, and the health of the planet. If you add all your meals up, that is about 21 times a week you can rest in the knowledge that you are contributing to a better world.

Take your grocery and produce bags to the store. Don’t buy stuff with lots of packaging. Choose locally grown and raised. And maybe even start growing some of your own herbs in a kitchen window.

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“I eat a lot of salad,” they say. 

“Gross,” I say, then assume they find joy in their lives with a Netflix or porn addiction, because it sure as hell isn’t coming from lunch.

One of the most major deterrents of a healthy diet is the assumption that eating well has to be miserable, dissatisfying, and generally sad. This can be the case if one equates eating healthy with buying giant boxes of mixed baby greens and changing the color of their stool one well-chewed meal at a time. This is a recipe for failure because after about three days of that, even gas station burritos start sounding pretty sexy.

The truth is, you probably do need to eat more vegetables.  For this reason, the gods have placed an impressive variety of such things on the planet for us, though we seem to stick to an average of about seven regular vegetables. If we’re feeling particularly exotic, we might throw some tomatoes or bell peppers on our salads. 

The risk we run in eating limited variety, other than indigestion from deli corn dogs, is that we are not getting enough of the vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids we need from those meals. The cravings we get when we go on ‘health kicks’ are often not just withdrawal, but your body reminding you that it likes fat for a reason (brain health, hormone production, cell membrane integrity, and oh yeah, deliciousness). 

When we eat “light” lunches, we often find ourselves calorie and happiness-deficient by dinnertime. This leads to pre-dinner eating, dinner over eating, post-dinner grazing, and crawling into bed with a bunch of extra calories and carbohydrates on board. So do yourself a favor, and stop eating rabbit food. Yeah, you with the carrot and celery sticks in your snack pack. Put some peanut butter on those babies.

If you like to pack or go out for a salad for lunch, by all means, it is a greatway to get a lot of vegetables in your body. But don’t forget to load that honey up with some goodness. Here are some ideas:

Good fats:Avocados, walnuts, toasted almonds, pecans, sesame seeds, hemp seeds, flax meal, oils (olive, walnut, sesame, avocado, etc.), cold water fish (salmon, halibut, mackerel), goat and other cheeses if you’re a dairy eater, a beautiful vinaigrette (this does not mean some nasty ranch dressing). 

Good protein: Sprouted beans and legumes, fish, chicken, steak, micro greens (which, by the way, are like 5 times more nutrient dense than salad), bacon – yeah, bacon.Just remember that industrial meat is carcinogenic and those cow farts are apparently impacting global warming. Get your meat clean, local, and preferably sung a sweet lullaby before its peaceful passing.

Good carbohydrates: No, they are not all created equal. For example, sweet potato has far more fiber, manganese, potassium, and vitamin C than a white potato. Sweet potato, quinoa, parsnip, roasted beets, squashes, Brussel sprouts, whole grains, and fresh fruit. Who doesn’t love blackberries on their salad with some goat cheese, roasted beets, and smoked salmon?

The next time you’re making yourself a salad for lunch or dinner, use the lettuce like it’s the fluffy bed space for all the other goodness you’re going to nourish your body with. You might even find that you are still full two hours later. And if you are actually happy, then you’ve done a fine job. //

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