Day 9 - Beef - it's what's for dinner

Eating out in restaurants is like looking into mysterious black hole. You don't really know what's in there, unless you happen to be patronizing a restaurant that publishes their nutrition statistics online or on the menu (This is actually required of most restaurants in NYC, which makes me want to move there! But not really.) and have planned out ahead what meal you'll eat, and how much. Most restaurants on Oahu do not have stats for their menu options readily available, and so this makes for some interesting internal debate when one who is watching their figure chooses to dine outside of their home.

Let's talk about last night. Tyler and I had an appointment with our wedding dj after work, and I had a meeting later that evening, which left us with not quite enough time (or energy on my part) to go to my house and eat a homemade dinner, but just enough time to patronize a lovely little local restaurant that we're fond of and had a gift certificate for. We arrived just in time for the last 10 minutes of happy hour (yesss!) and so I promptly ordered wine and we chose one of their happy hour tapas options to share (gnocchi with pumpkin and mushrooms, which sounded not too bad for you, but when it came out it was swimming, I mean drowning, in oil. Yikes.) Then began the debate in my mind about what to order for dinner.

'Do I order a salad?' I thought, 'but, you know, sometimes restaurant salads are really calorie laden when they appear to be healthy! And there's not a lot of protein in these options...'

'Or do I go for the crabcakes? I'm from Maryland, so I lovvveee crabcakes, although few people make them well. And sometimes to compensate for not being able to make them well, restaurants shovel in the butter and fry them in olive oil, kind of like they did with the gnocchi here....'

Then I remembered that old ad from the 90's - the one with the voice over saying "Beef - it's what's for dinner", and I starting thinking...

'What about the kobe burger with a salad? I could forgo the mayo, which is disgusting anyway, (who eats mayo? EW. Except when it's in deviled eggs, then it's YUMMY! I'm not a hypocrite at ALL.) and only eat half...'

So beef was what was for dinner for me last night. Was it a good decision? I don't know! It's a mystery! My calorie counter told me that it wasn't actually that bad for me (450 calories, a lot for one meal, but not so bad at a restaurant), and I even lied to it and said I ate a whole burger just in case the stats were off. I can't say I was sure of my decision, but it sure did taste good!