These factoids are from July's Real Simple issue.

• July is National Blueberry Month. To find a place to pick near you, go to nabcblues.org.
  
• A single blueberry bush can produce up to 6,000 berries a year.
• Native Americans used the fruit, the leaves and the roots of the plant to treat coughs, flavor soups and dye cloth.
• They're big in Japan: More than 500 metric tons of blueberries are shipped there from the United States each year.

• In 1919, the snow cone mae its debut at the State Fair of Texas. This iconic treat was dreamed up by Dallas inventor Samuel Bert, who also patented the first snow-cone-making machine. Bert remained a cool fixture at the fair for more than six decades.

• 150 million hot dogs are consumed by Americans every July 4, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Coucnil. (Yes, there is an industry group for everything.) Kind of gives new meaning to the term "downward dog."
  

Two tidbits for you today, a website and a quote.

The website, bread.org, is helping to bring awareness to world hunger. It also encourages people to contact their local congressmen and representatives to change the laws on helping other countries with their food shortage issues. Check it out and get involved!

Also, here's a quote I love from Julia Child:
"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."
(I can't wait to see the movie about her coming out next week!)

Round two of HG vacationing tips!

• Chill Out! Whether it's big and old-school or cute and fancy, BRING A COOLER! If you're gonna be out and about all day long, this is the best way for you and your travel pals to avoid junk food. So load it up with light string cheese, sandwiches (toasted light bread = non-soggy stuff), salads (dressing packets on the side), and cut-up veggies. Make sure you have plenty of ice or some good quality cool-packs, too.
• Be Water-Wise - This one's a given, yet it's easy to forget. PACK LOTS OF WATER. Sometimes, we think we're hungry when we're actually dehydrated, which leads us to mindlessly munch when we don't need to. No cooler? No problem. The night before your day out, stick a couple of bottles in the freezer and one in the fridge. Your frozen bottles will be defrosted by the time you finish the fridge bottle. And if water bores you at times, have a few packets of sugar-free powdered drink mix on hand to zazzle up that H2o!
• Summer Reading Material - You've got to feed your brain, too... even if you're feeding it the nutritional equivalent of potato chips (aka fun gossip mags!). Plus, if you give yourself an activity, you won't be sitting around thinking, "I'm bored. Maybe I should have a snack." So hit up your local bookstore or library before you head out on a trip.
• Clean Up Your Act - Make sure you pack some napkins or even a whole roll of paper towels if you've got room. (No one ever said, "I wish I hadn't brought those paper towels.") HG Tip: Stash a few wet-naps in case of an emergency mess. And don't forget about a sealable bag for garbage.

Have a great vacation if you're headed out, even if it's just a day trip!

Hello folks!
In honor of my upcoming vacation to the east coast, I thought y'all might like these Hungry Girl survival tips for summer outings. Enjoy!

The #1 Rule of Vacationing:
ALWAYS eat a good meal or a filling snack before you head out for the day. If you don't, you're likely to get cranky and make silly food choices when hunger and heat hit you. If it's early, you're not hungry, and/or you're just eager to hit the road, at least grab something on the way out the door.

The Best 3-Snack Stash:
(Sneak these in anywhere you can get away with it.)

1. Fresh Fruit - Go for something with an edible or east-to-peel skin that's not too delicate - apples and bananas are popular for a reason. Pears are OK, but be careful if they're really ripe. (No one likes pear mush in their backpack!) If you take your fruit-toting seriously and want to avoid bruising, consider investing in a Banana Guard or Froot Guard. Good stuff! (Those seem like a waste of money to me - just be careful with your fruit people!)
2. Jerky - There's a whole world of jerkys out there. We're NOT fans of the really random stuff (like alligator and ostrich... GROSS!), but we LOVE jerky made from beef, chicken, turkey and soy. It tastes good, fares well in any temperature, and won't get crushed in your bag. And an emergency snack that's protein-packed is ALWAYS a good thing.
   
3. Crunchy Bars - We love chewy bars, but when it's hot outside, those things MELT and become a sticky mess. Sad times! You're WAY better off with a crispy granola bar. Avoid anything chocolatey, drizzled, or with a coating - it'll get messy fast.
   

Quick Tips for Daytrips:
At a ball game:

• If you NEED a beer, stick to the light kind and save about 50 calories per pint.
• Roam the entire stadium to find the best concession options. The exercise you'll get is an added bonus! Soft pretzels are better than nachos, veggie dogs are better than regular ones, and a grilled chicken salad with salsa is one of the best finds ever.
• Ignore those annoying vendors yelling about peanuts, hot dogs and popcorn. Not only are their snacks fat-fests, but relying on them encourages laziness!

At an amusement park:

• Don't take the tram. WALK.
• Avoid corn dogs, funnel cakes and anything fried. If you've got a sweet tooth, stick to Dippin Dots or cotton candy. Sure they have sugar, but they're better than Churros!
• Save cash and calories by getting your hand stamped for re-entry and then hitting up eateries just outside the park gates. No one needs a $16 greasy personal pizza.

**More to come tomorrow!!**

Don't worry, I still have more HG fun facts and tips for you from the new book 200 Under 200!

• The city of Lafayette, Colorado, REALLY loves oatmeal! Each January the city hosts an oatmeal festival, featuring a bake-off, health screenings, a big hearty n healthy oatmeal breakfast, and an oatmeal mini spa!
• The world's most expensive pizza - dubbed "Pizza Royale 007" - was madde with salmon, venison, lobster, caviar and edible gold. That crazy pie was auctioned off for 2,150 British pounds, and all the money went to charity.
• The true fudge fanatics flock to northern Michigan each year for the annual Mackinac Island Fudge Festival. "Fudgies" - local slang for the treat-happy tourists - enjoy the Fudge Festival Dance Series, meals Under the Influence (of fudge!), and, of course, enough fudge to last til net year's festival. Craziness!
• Are you sitting down? A lage order of mozzarella sticks at Arvy's has 849 calories and 56 grams fat! AAAAHHHHHH!
  

It's baaaaaack! Eat This, Not That: Olive Garden style. FYI: Olive Garden has just begun to provide limited nutritional information on their website, which was after the book I'm using was written. So numbers may have varied since then, but at least you get an idea of what to order!

Eat This:

• Linguine alla Marinara with a breadstick. Men who ate two to four servings of tomatoes per week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 26 percent, a study review in the Journal of Nutrition found.
• Shrimp Primavera.
• Chicken Giardino.

Not That:

• Stuffed Chicken Marsala with garlic parmesan mashed potatoes. This roasted chicken is stuffed with cheese and covered in a Marsala sauce spiked with heavy cream, giving this dish an entire day's worth of fat.
• Mixed Grill with vegetables and mashed potatoes.
• Pork Filettino with potatoes and bell peppers.

Guilty Pleasure:

• Sangria. Vitamin C in the fruit helps bolster your immune system, and resveratrol - the polyphenol found in red wine - can stop influenza cells form replicating, according to scientists at Rome's Institute of Microbiology. Limit yourself to one glass, though, since too much alcohol may impair your immune system.

Hidden Danger:

• Stuffed Mushrooms. Although mushrooms are normally a healthy sie option, this appetizer is stuffed with a deadly trio of cheese - Parmesan, Romano and mozzarella - which cancel out any nutritional benefits provided by the fungi.
  

Here are some fun veggie facts from Hungry Girl's 200 Under 200.

• Crystal City, Texas, is strong to the finish and proud of it. In 1937, this spinach-growing community erected a statue of Popeye in honor of how popular he made their favorite leafy green veggie. However, the muscled-up sailor got no such love from the sweet potato community for his catchphrase, "I yam what I yam."
• Let's say you order an appetizer of potato skins and split it with friends. Even three little skins will set you back around 300 calories and 17 grams of fat. And that's BEFORE you even get your main dish. There's nothing "skinny" about that!
• Most of us are used to plain old white cauliflower, but it also grows in green, orange, yellow, brown and even purple varieties. Put them all together, and you've got one amazing Technicolor casserole. Or, um, just a scary gray one.
• Avocados aren't just delicious. Spanish conquistadors used the liquid from the avocado seeds to make reddish-blackish ink.
• Catherine de Medicis is credited as the gal who introduced artichokes to France. According to a royal chronicler, she ate so much at a courtier's wedding that she "thought she would die, and was very il." We've been there, Catherine.
• Ever wonder why bell peppers aren't hot like other peppers? Bell peppers actually have a recessive gene that cuts out capsaicin, the stuff that makes other peppers spicy.
• January 6th is National Bean Day. Eat up!
• In the 1920s, the word "tomato" was slang for a good-looking woman. The Aztecs called tomatoes "xitomatl," which means "plump thing with a navel." Hmmm, forget "tomato." How about you just say we're pretty?
• In Australia, butternut squash is called "butternut pumpkin" and is used just like ordinary pumpkin. Bet they have some crazy, narrow-headed jack-o-lanterns down under!
• In France, green beans are called haricots verts. It's basically an exact translation. Haricot means "bean" and vert means "green."
  

Here are some Dos and Don'ts when hitting up your favorite Italian restaurant, thanks to Hungry Girl...

• DO start your meal off with a house salad (light dressing on the side) or some minestrone soup. Broth-based soup before a meal often means lower calorie-intake overall. Be careful with salad entrees though. Some are worse than most regular meals, so watch out for red flags like oily croutons, creamy dressing, fatty meats, and lots of cheese.
• DON'T be afraid to make special requests, just make sure you're super-nice when you do it. Swap fatty sides for veggies. Ask for whole-wheat pasta in place of regular - many places (including Olive Garden) offer up the fiber-rich stuff as an alternative to plain white pasta, and it's better for you and more filling.
• DO save some to take home. Most Italian eateries serve up crazy-huge portions - so before you even start eating, get it into your head that you're not going to consume that whole ginormous serving. Then eat slowly and savor your meal!
• DON'T eat bread AND pasta at the same meal. In Italy, that's a no-no. Clearly, they understand the dangers of carb overload. If you choose bread, skip the butter. If you go for pasta, choose tomato-based (not creamy or cheesy) sauce, and keep the portion reasonable. And if you feel like being really good, avoid the bread and pasta altogether.
• DO have a glass of wine, if you like, but control yourself. A small serving of 4-5 oz has about 100 calories and a POINTS value of 2, but you should know that a typical glass often contains a few ounces more than that. So if an Italian dinner without vino seems wrong to you, go for that glass, just make it last. And be careful with sangria. A glass at Olive Garden has 220-250 calories (POINTS value 4-5). And we all know how one glass can lead to another... and another...
  

I'm in the middle of reading Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik and it's better than I thought it'd be. Here are a few snippets...

• It is as if all American appliances dreamed of being cars while all French appliances dreamed of being telephones. The French freezer is, in a French refrigerator, always on the bottom rather than the top and is composed of drawers and secret compartments, like an old writing desk; you are supposed to fill it with culinary billets-doux, little extras, like petits pois, instead of with next week's dinner, as you do in an American freezer. - p.55-6

• Most people who love Paris love it because the first time they came they ate something better than they had ever eaten before, and kept coming back to eat it again. My first night in Paris, twenty-five years ago, I ate dinner with my enormous family in a little corner brasserie somewhere down on the unfashionable fringes of the Sixteenth Arrondissement. We were on the cutrate American academic version of the grand tour, and we had been in London for the previous two days, where we had eaten steamed hamburgers and fish and chips in which the batter seemed to be snubbing the fish inside it as if they had never been properly introduced. On that first night in Paris we arrived late on the train, checked into a cheap hotel, and went to eat, without much hope, at the restaurant at the corner, called something Le Bar-B-Que. The prix-fixe menu was fifteen francs, about three dollars then. I ordered a salad Nicoise, trout baking in foil, and a cassis sorbet. It was so much better than anything I had ever eaten that I nearly wept. - p. 147-8

• Waverley Root once divided all Gaul into three fats - lard, olive oil, and butter - and said that they determined the shape of French cooking. That you might be able to cook without putting any fat in the pan at all was an unthinkable notion. The charcoal grill, the brick oven, and all the other nonfat ways of cooking now seem normal everywhere except in France. People who look at cooking more practically than philosophically think that that technical lag is the heart of the problem. - p. 159-60
  

Planning on doing a little celebrating this weekend for the 4th? Here's are Hungry Girl's tips and tricks for all that alcohol.

• Moderation is the name of the game. Overdoing it with any type of alcohol is a fast way to derail a weight-loss (or maintenance) plan. Not only do the calories in alcohol add up, but if you're tipsy (or hung-over), fattening food may be tougher to turn down.
• A bottle of light beer or a glass of win typically has about 100 calories. (There are exceptions, of course.) But don't despair if you're not into wine or beer. Just follow our tips for keeping calorie counts in cocktails down.
• A shot of most clear-ish alcohols - like vodka and rum - has about 100 calories. So if you mix your liquor with something calorie-free, you can enjoy a single-shot cocktail for around 100 calories and a Weight Watchers POINTS value of 2. Not bad!
• DON'T trick yourself into thinking juices are guilt-free. They're not. Ordinary fruit juice will likely add 50-75 calories to whatever you're sipping.
• Calorie-free sodas are great mixers. We love fruity diet sodas, and Sprite Zero is a fave. Seltzer and club soda are also good, but watch out - tonic is similar and SEEMS safe, but it's got almost as many calories as regular soda.
• When you're out, order a club soda with a single shot of fruit-flavored vodka and just a splash of fruit juice. If the bar has fruit (orange slices, pineapple chunks, etc), ask for a piece in your drink. That super-fruity sipper will likely clock in with no more than 120 calories and a POINTS value of 2. Just be sure to ask for club soda (remember, tonic has calories!) and only a splash of juice.
• Avoid frozen drinks (daquiris, mudslides, pina coladas and margaritas) like the ice-blended plague - especially ones served in glasses the size of salad bowls. Those things are CRAZY-HIGH in calories!
• Steer clear of sweet creamy drinks (we're looking at you, white russian!) and mega-cocktails made with a ton of booze (like long island iced tea, which has five kinds of alcohol - YIKES!). Those are loaded with calories.
• Keep your home bar stocked with low-cal stuff like sugar free syrups, sugar free powdered drink mixes and sugar free mixers.
• If you like to mix OJ into your drinks, opt for Topicana's new Trop50. It has 50 calories a glass (that's half the amount in ordinary OJ), is naturally sweetened, and tastes REALLY good. THere are other great-tasting diet juice-like drink lines out there too, like Diet Ocean Spray, SoBe Lean, and Diet V8 Splash (**one of my favorites!**)

Here are a couple HG facts from the new book about some of your favorite restaurants! Beware of the bad!!!

• We've always known Chili's little Southwestern Egg Roll appetizer is fatty. But 810 calories and 51 grams of fat for three little rolls?! That's NUTS!
• Arby's Roast Turkey Reuben Sandwich has 594 calories, 30 grams fat, and 55 grams carbs. SO not worth it people!
• Ay caramba! Taco Bell's Steak Quesadilla has 520 calories and 28 grams fat! How do you say "shocker" in Spanish?!