Friday Meals

This diet is getting easier by the day.  I actually had a little appetite for my breakfast in the morning, and I managed to eat most of it.  I should have heated up the black beans  - but I was in a hurry to get the kids to school, and so I just rinsed them off from the can and put them on my plate.  That Cholula hot sauce is pretty good on the black beans.  It's more flavorful than spicy - my 10-year-old had some beans and hot sauce too.

It's amazing how long the breakfast stays with me.  I was so busy running errands - we're leaving for a 2-week vacation in a couple of weeks - that I didn't even think about eating until 2 pm!  When normally I am starving by 11 o'clock.  I reheated the soup I'd made the night before, and I ate this entire bowl of it.

I still felt a little hungry, so I filled up another bowl (see below), but in the end I only ate about half of it.  I was stuffed!

Then I had my first restaurant experience while following the diet.  We went to Busboys and Poets in the District, the one on 14th Street, and there was actually quite a bit for me to choose from (some with a few minor modifications).  It worked out pretty well!  I totally forgot to take a picture of my appetizer, though.  I ordered mussels in a lemongrass sauce.  They were good, but it looked like the sauce had a ton of cream in it, so I just kind of shook it off the mussels and ate them.  It came with some garlic toast that looked delicious, and I would have loved to dip it in that sauce!  But I gave it to my friends instead, and thought about my splurge Saturday, which was the very next day, and it wasn't too hard.  The results I've had so far really inspire me to stick to the diet rules.

I also ordered the Cobb Salad, and I did remember to take a photo of it: 

It came with some pita bread, which I just set to the side and ignored.  I ordered it without the crumbled blue cheese and bacon (I don't really eat pork) it was still delicious.  But what was a little disappointing - and this is one of my pet peeves - is that I had to cut everything before I could eat it.  Sure, the plating is lovely, and would look super in a food magazine.  But if I wanted to cut stuff up to make a salad, I'd have stayed home and done it.  They give you a dull dinner knife and a couple whole chicken breasts.  Really?  It took me so long to hack everything up into tasty bite-sized pieces that I had to eat so quickly and could hardly enjoy it, because we had a show to catch (imusical at WIT - if you live in the area, you should check it out.  It is hysterical!  And I think there are only a couple shows left this season). 

I love that this diet is so doable, and that there is no counting calories.  I can't stand that.