guest post!—>holly w.

Happy Sunday Meals & Movers! Our favorite Janetha Bean can’t be here with you all today, and while I’m nowhere as near as cool as the new Mrs. Gallegos, I can say I’ve hung out with her AND snuggled with her. Doesn’t that make me cool by association? I like to think so. Anyways, my name is Holly, and I am the writer + rambler extraordinaire of The Healthy Everythingtarian – a blog about food, exercise and most of all, LIFE. Because at the end of the day, I am so grateful to be able to expend energy worrying about food, talking about food and enjoying eating {too much} food, for not everyone in the world has this luxury.

While we all share a mutual love for good, delicious food; I have to admit there is something that makes me even happier in life: traveling.

I love the adventure.

I love the exploration of new cultures.

I love the excitement of the unknown.

I love meeting people.

And I LOVE eating foreign cuisine.

So today, I thought I would bring you on a whirlwind, around-the-world tour of some of my favorite places I’ve had the amazing opportunity to travel to and the utterly delicious food I ate while there. I will warn you however, it may cause you to hop on the next flight out to some exotic locale, and I take no responsibility for the credit card flight purchases made as a result of this post.

I should probably warn you I didn’t eat a lot of food in Germany.

Instead, I drank a lot of my meals. While liquid lunches and dinners were aplenty, I did restrain from drinking at breakfast. I’m a strong woman, I know.

With a plethora of pilsners, lagers, hefeweizens and beers as my meal accompaniments, I indulged in lots of German specialties. And in case you were unaware, the land of my grandparents’ birth is well-known for heavy, thick and meaty dishes. In fact, I blame Germany for my five pound weight gain that August. There were plates of schnitzel + lentils in gravy (top left). There were daily desserts of the most flaky, buttery apple strudel with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (top right). There was my favorite German discovery, known as the schneebollen, which is essentially a big ball of fried dough dipped in chocolate (bottom left). And there was my favorite dish, the German version of macaroni & cheese known as cheese spaetzle, complete with crunchy onion rings on top (bottom right).

In other words, go to Germany.

I swear, those were the best five pounds I’ve ever gained in my life.

Can you tell what (or, ahem, who) doesn’t belong in this picture? I’ll give you a hint – she’s a curly-haired white girl in a bright purple top perusing a teeny tiny city market in the Yunnan province in southern China and attempting to "Ni hao!" everyone she meets.

China is by far one of the most interesting places I’ve ever traveled to. You never really realize just how big that country is until you are there, and the next province is a monstrous 48-hour overnight train ride away. It’s expansive. It’s historical. It’s fascinating. And it has some seriously amazing food. When I first arrived in China, I had no money to my name (my ATM card was not accepted at the local bank), and the nicest Chinese man bought my friend Lauren & I lunch at a roadside cafe. Nobody spoke English. Everybody stared at us. And I was so hungry, I probably would have eaten a horse. Luckily, the man did not order horse from the menu but instead the most deliciously spiced stir fry over rice I’ve ever tasted (top right).

The culinary deliciousness only continued from there.

I happily devoured the fluffy, stuffed balls of white dough conveniently located on every street corner (top left). Half the time, I had no idea exactly what was inside them (pork, soybean, savory, sweet?) but ate them with wild foodie abandon anyhow (bottom right). While almost every traditional dish in Asia is served with rice, it’s hard to get sick of this {gluten-free} grain when its black fried rice served in half a pineapple and served with freshly brewed green tea (bottom left).

I want to go back to China, if only for another fluffy white dough ball.

Last summer, I had the most amazing time hiking the Canadian Alps with Susan, whom you may know as the wonderfully talented trainer + author of The Great Balancing Act. Not only did we conquer some seriously impressive mountains, but we also conquered some seriously epic food. I believe I even impressed Susan with my man-like eating abilities. It’s not easy to do with people who love food as much as you do.

From bison burgers to ice cream to local brews to maple fudge (top left), we ate everything Canada had to offer. Let’s just say it was a good thing we were hiking + walking our butts off all day, and leave it at that.

Some of my favorite meals included the Alberta cheesesteak sandwich with garlic-encrusted fries in Calgary (top right), the Manitoba bison burger with sweet potato fries I dominated the day after a major hiking excursion (bottom left) and the refreshingly crisp Rickard’s white ale (bottom right). Oh you Rickard’s white ale! To this day, you are still one of the my top three favorite beers I’ve enjoyed rotting my liver for.

I could really use one right now, in fact.

Just last month, I met two of my very best friends in Austin, Texas for a girl’s weekend.

I pick my best friends carefully, you see. They must meet several requirements, the most important being (a) they must have healthy appetites (girls should never be ashamed of packing food down), and (b) willing to try new things. My best friends {obvs} go above and beyond meeting this basic criteria, but these two things are especially essential when traveling new places.

We would have never consumed the amazing basket of truffled waffle fries we downed in six minutes from an Austin food cart (top left).

Or, enjoyed South Congress Cafe and their amazing mango ginger mimosas and migas (top right).

Or, forced down some locally-made Amy’s ice cream (bottom left).

Or, most importantly, tried Freebird’s, a pimped out, much better version of Chipotle (bottom right).

And let’s be real, these are the important things in the life, no?

So, there you have it.

Four countries.

Four completely different types of cuisines.

Four amazing places to travel.

I’d really like to stay and chat some more, but I’m getting majorly hungry and want to know if Freebird’s will deliver to Wisconsin. I’m thinking a trans-state order will still be cheaper than a flight to Austin. I’ll let you know if that’s true.

What is your favorite place you’ve traveled to AND the best thing you ate there? As I like to say, sharing is caring!