A few years ago, my husband and I cut out all processed foods, artificial colors, flavorings, and sweeteners, and went organic ; then he became vegetarian (and I lost nearly half my body weight)! We love to cook and eat, so our work is cut out for us, especially when we travel.  We don’t eat fast food and rarely eat in chain restaurants, which use low quality ingredients and precook a lot of their food, adding loads of added fat, salt, and sugar. And while you can find a salad or a veggie sandwich almost anywhere, it’s a lot harder to find something tasty with substance and especially with high quality protein. We end up carrying along a supply of protein bars and homemade trail mix for emergencies.

I want to eat healthy, but it’s got to taste good. So I’ve got minimalist healthy cooking down to an art. It’s easiest, of course, when you’re housed in a business hotel or apartment with a kitchenette; but if I find myself in a regular hotel room, I have a “kitchen box” I ship to myself. You’d be amazed at what you can do with an electric skillet and a hot plate. Sometimes the hotel will give or rent a small microwave oven or refrigerator; but if those aren’t available, I buy a cheap Styrofoam cooler and keep perishables for a couple of days in ice.

Here in Idaho, where I’m singing the Marquise de Berkenfield in La fille du regiment, I’m fortunate to have a homestay where my hosts have cleared pantry and fridge space for me. They aren’t big on cooking themselves, so I try not to mess up their kitchen much and keep my home cooking plain.

I try to eat very simply most of the time, because there are so many temptations and parties. Spinach is very versatile (it can be a salad or a basis for a hot meal: top it with canned beans and a sprinkling of parmesean cheese or a couple of crumbled up soy breakfast patties).  Dried cranberries and walnuts add a lot of flavor and texture to salads; a little goat cheese adds just the right amount of creaminess, and you can also spread it on toast and stud it with cranberries and slices of banana for a delicious and healthy breakfast. Hummus, whole wheat pita, and a few olives make a great lunch. Baby carrots are great for snacking or adding to the salad. And when you get sick of simple fare, it’s time to have lunch out and bring the leftovers home to dress up your spinach for the next day. Boise happens to have a plethora of great restaurants, including Bardenay’s (where they also distill their own gin), a number of Basque and Irish pubs with great happy hour menus, and a fabulous French bistro called Le Coq Rouge —which recently put on an opera night complete with an opera-themed dinner, including Bellini aperitifs, Pollo Verdi, Votre Toast (a berry-flavored palate cleanser), and Gateau du Fille de Regiment.

Keeping up a workout routine while traveling can also be a challenge. I love to run or walk, because it is so simple and you really don’t need much in the way of equipment.  Last summer in Des Moines, the Women of Figaro made it a habit to run together, and we had a great time — what a wonderful way to bond, offstage!

I’m also a big fan of exercise videos. For the past 8 weeks, I’ve been doing P90X, an “extreme” home fitness program that takes very little space. It’s more fun to do it with free weights and a pull-up bar, but all you really need is a yoga mat and resistance bands. I like this program because while it is indeed quite challenging, it’s also varied, and you never get bored. On any given week I’m doing yoga, plyometrics, several different lifting routines, Kenpo, and a boot camp style core workout.  The big bonus comes when a castmate is also doing P90X (we’re everywhere, y’all!) and you can compare notes and encourage each other with cheesy slogans. One of my Fille castmates is an X-er (in much better shape than me) and every day we greet each other with some silly statement from one of the videos, or some other “inspiration”. My current favorite is, “That’s not sweat. That’s just your fat cells crying!”

Also, whenever I travel, I look for opportunities to hike. In Idaho, and I’ve enjoyed trails through the foothills and Snake River Canyon, and am looking for a chance to make it up into the mountains and hit one of the ski trails. The best workouts are ones that don’t cost anything or require fancy equipment, and get you outside and exploring your temporary new home!

The trick is to realize that travel and temptation are just part of the job. You’re not on vacation (even though you may be having a lot of fun and getting to see new parts of the country). So you can’t eat like you’re on vacation —- at least not all the time — and you can’t be a couch potato, either. Eating right and working out is as important a part of my work as training and caring for my voice.  I never know what my precise living situation is going to be until I get there, so flexibility and adaptability are the name of the game. But one thing I don’t have to worry about when it comes to the challenge of eating well and working out on the road — there’s always a new challenge, so it never gets boring!

I found the beautiful Nanak Dwara Ashram online and went to a Kundalini Yoga Class. Not only was it a wonderful, peaceful setting, but I became fast friends with my yoga teacher, and another yoga student. They ended up coming to our Friday matinee–and enjoyed it so much that they purchased tickets for the whole season! That night the three of us went out to dinner  at a local hotspot restaurant called Hula’s. It’s going to be a shock to return to the fall weather on the  east coast; we had a delicious dinner outside. The cuisine was kind of a Hawaian-Latin fusion.

We have our third performance tonight, so this morning I took my second yoga class at another studio within walking distance of my hotel, called Urban Yoga. It’s a gorgeous new studio, with exposed beams, and a full class schedule. After an hour of sun salutations and a final savasana, I walked to the Jamba Juice across the street and explored the little shops and restaurants around my hotel.

If I had another day in the Phoenix area, I would love to get a chance to go hiking on Camelback Mountain, which everyone says has spectacular views. I’ve loved getting to know the downtown area and I made two new friends, in addition to my wonderful cast!

Namaste

I grew up having fish every Friday in my house. Of every variety and cooked every possible way. When I was first served salmon here in Alaska, I didn’t even know what I was being served. It did not taste anything like what I grew up with – zero (I mean ZERO) fishy taste! Moist, delectable salmon from the rivers and halibut from the coast. But my favorite ever is the awesome Alaskan King Crab!!!!

Right off the boat here is a beauty that the nice fish mongers at the 10th and M Fish Market were kind enough to let me pose with. Now, if I was faced with this dude in the wild, I would probably run the other way cause it looks like a giant spider. But I will gladly partake of his delicious legs once they’ve been boiled and dipped in some butter.

At the recommendation of the kind folks at Anchorage Opera, we went to dinner at Ginger, an awesome Thai fusion restaurant on 5th Avenue. Here is some more FISH- a sashimi tuna tower.

Ginger will be catering the Grand Season Opening party following our performance, Spellbinding Moments in French Opera. I’ll be performing an aria from Rameau’s “Castor et Pollux,”which I’m told will be the first time the composer will be heard in Alaska.

If fish isn’t exactly your cup of tea, the local organic Fire Island Bakery is a nice cozy spot for a cup of coffee and amazing pastry. Scones, fruit tarts and muffins all made with specially milled flours dot the entry way. Even the cinnamon roll is made with whole wheat flour, making it maybe (maybe) a little less guilty.

From my window overlooking the Cook inlet, I can see the beautiful mountains, and the sun setting on the water. There are already snow caps on the mountains, and on a clear day we can see Danali national park even from down here at the coast. Thanks Anchorage-I hate to leave you!

I am working with the Castleton Festival which is in the northern part of Virginia (not far from Vienna, Virginia where I started my summer season) and the beautiful landscape of the countryside makes me want to carry my camera around all the time. I can’t help but take a picture every time I see something beautiful and unlike anything I’ve seen before. Even when I am driving, I stop the car to pull over and take a picture. While it is impossible to do that on the busy highway, it is easy on the peaceful back-roads around Castleton.

When I arrived in Castleton, I heard people talking about a zonkey. I have never seen one before and I didn’t even know what a zonkey was. As soon as I did see him, I smiled – he is funny and certainly unique. I have never seen such striped legs in my life. And now I’ve seen a cross between a zebra and a donkey!

Well, I’ve learned there really isn’t that big a difference between the countryside of the States and Korea. But, never disappointed because I am always glad to find areas where nature has been less disturbed than in big cities. I am a lucky person to have these new experiences around every corner and I am glad to have my camera with me to help save these beautiful pictures and memories!

I just spent the afternoon celebrating the 4th of July with many other Americans, at a Democrats Abroad party along the Danube river. We spent the afternoon sharing travel stories, drinking Austrian wine, and making s’mores. From there, a small group of us went to the “Badeschiff“, which is swimming pool aboard a ship in the Danube river, with live music, fantastic cocktails, and lots of Austrians (in various states of undress) crammed into a small but lively swimming pool.

After watching the sunset, we made our way over to the Rathaus, where a Lang Lang solo piano concert was being broadcast on a huge screen in between two of the most amazingly beautiful buildings, the “Rathaus” and the “Burgtheater.” Being an audience member is always a welcome change, and I plan on doing lots of that in Vienna this summer, since there are so many wonderful opera companies, theaters, and dance companies in this culturally rich city. It doesn’t get much better than Vienna in the summer, although I will admit to missing air conditioning on hot days like today. Happy Independence Day!

And then after rehearsal, there’s… The Bent Spoon. Tucked into all the shopping on Palmer Square, The Bent Spoon has some of the most delish ice cream on the planet and they often use seasonal fruit from nearby Terhune Orchards. The classics are amazing, but it’s the weird stuff that really gets me: Dark Chocolate Earl Grey. Lavender Mascarpone. Ginger Chunk, Honeydew Sorbet. I brought a very discerning 80-something year-old fellow ice cream snob and she said over her scoop of Dark Chocolate Orange “I will be coming back here.”

Lately, I am trying to make sure I give myself time to relax and just enjoy being in a new place to restore the energy that traveling can deplete. When I was in Vienna last week I decided to give myself a day to enjoy the city. I ended up at Shönbrunn Palace with a friend and we spent the afternoon chatting and taking in nature at the beautiful gardens. It recharged my batteries, filled me with some inspiration from the natural surroundings, and helped me to slow down and keep things in perspective, and to remember to breath and keep my feet on the ground. In Europe there are so many of these old wonderful locations so I often feel like I am connecting with history on some deep level; almost as if I remember being in that place long ago. I was happy to have spent the afternoon at this imperial summer residence of many of the Hapsburg monarchs and I am continuing the resolve to truly see the cities where I am singing in the future! Next time you are in Vienna, I highly recommend an afternoon at the gardens of Schönbrunn, your soul will thank you.

As luck would have it we are a mere 15 mins. walk from the new Target Field: home of the Minnesota Twins. This is their inaugural season in their state of the art stadium and I managed to get 2 tix for the opening week of home games. My husband came up from Chicago (he is a Cubs fan) and we enjoyed a great day at the Ballpark. I must say the new Field is a delight but what impressed me the most was how close the field and thus the action is and every seat faces towards the game so they have done an excellent job. It was a glorious cloudless day so we experienced a piece of true Americana.

We also drove the wonderful Grand Scenic Byway and finished off our day at the famous sculpture Garden where my husband wanted to see the famous Claes Oldenburg piece. Living in Chicago which is a great Architectural and Sculptural city, we are admirers of Oldenburgs Baseball Bat sculpture which is not far from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and now have seen another of his famous works in situ.

I will be sorry to go home after this trip as even native Minnesotans are astonished at how sublime the weather has been. I love to walk and have probably racked up about 30 miles while I’ve been here. I think the weather Gods were trying to make a point against the naysayers of the new Target Field who think that building an open fielded Baseball Park was an exercise in folly!!! C’est la vie.

View near the entrance to Mom and Dad's place

So right now is the calm before the storm. I am staying with Mom and Dad (Virg and Glo) here in Creede, CO… one of those hamlets I was talking about earlier. Mom and Dad have the same penchant for meandering, and one of theirs landed them here, and they just decided to stay forever. At right about 9,000 ft above sea level, Creede in the winter time is a magical place. Just an hour from Wolf Creek Ski area, smack dab in the middle of 1000′s of miles of cross country skiing and snow mobile trails, constantly filled with herds of snow laden elk, big horn sheep, and mysterious old west mining ruins, its a place where I can lay down the heavy burdens of a life on the road, and a year of almost insurmountable turmoil, slow down…decompress…reflect…and refresh the dry places in my soul.

Recharging after a long run

The Fish House
www.goodgrits.com
600 South Barracks Street, Pensacola, FL 32502 (850) 470-0003