Best ingredients for a bicycle life

The makings for a mix up.

When you’re a bicycle babe fresh food, not greasy fossil fuels, becomes the flavour of the day without you even trying.

Driving a car means you find yourself, through no choice of your own, surrounded by junky snacks, sugary drinks with few healthy eating options.

Radio ads set a low-brow food tone, fast food drive-throughs line your route home and petrol-station snack bars offer the weary traffic-drunk traveler a boggling array of sugar hits to get you home.

The bicycle babe rarely encounters dirty-food diversions, and on-route we end up taking peach-stops at fruit stalls in a no parking zone, detouring down narrow-city alleys to organic eateries, or dropping our ride on the grass of a street park to unpack a home-made sandwich or soup.

Better still, the time saved in traffic, finding car parking spaces, or the hours in the gym leaves space in the day for making meals, eating slow food, or shopping for the good ingredients.

Indeed getting the ingredients right for the bicycle life is the difference between bicycle babe and bicycle slave, so here is the first of my favourite fuels!

Strawberry and Honey-Mustard Mix Up.
– Red lettuce (4 big leaves)
– Vietnamese mint (generous handful)
– Cherry tomatoes (10)
– Strawberries (8)
– Sesame crackers (generous handful)
– Dates (5)
– Indian fried yogurt seasoning (tablespoon)

Chop all ingredients in to bite-size pieces, toss together in bowl, drizzle with dressing, eat.

Dressing
– Honey Mustard (desert spoon)
– Olive oil (desert spoon)
– Lemon juice (half)
– Salt (a pinch or two depending on your taste)

Mix all ingredients in a cup, taste test the flavour and add more salt, lemon or mustard as required, add to salad just before eating.