Adventures in Eating Out

This is gonna be a long one! I haven't posted much food lately so I've built up a lot of photos from my adventures in eating out. From a family BBQ, to on-the-go, to restaurants... I've been doing it all. I don't usually CHOOSE to. When Ian and I have the choice we stay home! But I have always planned to live as normal of a life as possible post-op and saying no to social engagements is not really something I want to do... within reason of course!

So here I am going to share my recent adventures in eating out :)


FAMILY BBQ

We've had a lot of family BBQ's this summer but thankfully the last couple have had healthier fare (and not just bratwurst!) At the last one, my aunt and grandma prepared shrimp skewers with pineapple and veggies. VERY tasty.

Here is my plate:

I had not tried rice yet so I wanted to try it. After one bit I decided I didn't care... it tasted blah. It's not worth eating anything that doesn't taste GREAT, right? So I ignored that. The bread on the other hand was SO delicious, especially with REAL butter on it. I took a VERY small piece and enjoyed every bite. In the end I left some hard crust behind, and I left some veggies behind. Here was what I did not eat:

While I didn't eat any of this, I wanted to share it. It's called Caprese, and it's similar to bruschetta without the bread. Thick slices of mozzarella cheese topped with tomato and basil, drenched in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

It's not my thing, but Ian had one and loved it. It's a side dish involving protein, so definitely a score for a post-op.


Dessert I couldn't get a photo of because it was dark outside (and it didn't look pretty either lol)... but so delicious. She cut 3 huge peaches in half and put them on the grill. Once they were grilled for a few minutes, a scoop of vanilla ice cream went into the hole where the pit used to be. This was SO GOOD! I ate most of my ice cream and maybe 1/3 of the peach, I was too full to have any more. I did wait about 40 minutes in between dinner and dessert.


HOSPITAL CAFETERIA

A couple days after the BBQ, I spent half a day at the hospital with my mom while my dad was having a heart procedure done. (Don't worry, everything is great now!) I thought ahead and packed a lunch box full of stuff I could eat while I was there. My mom got hungry so we went to the cafeteria, and when I saw they actually had some good stuff, I decided to get a meal there too. For their salad bar you just take a plate and put anything you want from that whole area on the plate and they weigh it. I opted for some cold grilled chicken strips, carrots, and hummus.


Here's my plate, photo taken from afar so you can get an idea of the small plate size on the tray.

Here is what I was NOT able to eat:

I put the chicken and carrot in my lunch box containers and saved it for later :)



OLIVE GARDEN


My sister-in-law and I go to Olive Garden every single time we have lunch together. Because of surgery, it's been a while - we hadn't been since a week before my surgery!! Let's talk for a second about what I USED to consume when I would go to Olive Garden. 1-2 bowls of soup, 2 plates of salad, at least 3-4 breadsticks and 2 glasses of peach tea. Wow.


This time? 1/2 a bowl of soup (which is about 1/2 a cup) and 1/3 of a breadstick. Of course no drink.

It looks like a big bowl of soup, but it's shallow. I ate about half and brought the other half home, which I measured and it was 1/ 2 a cup so I assume the total amount was about 1 cup. That little piece of breadstick is all the bread I had. Big difference from having 4 full breadsticks! I did not eat any salad this time. I wanted to get the most protein from my meal, and also I haven't tried salad yet and I've heard it's hard to digest post op so I didn't want to try it for the first time in public ;)


Closeup of my favorite soup, yum!

And here is my adorable sister in law, Melissa, about to enjoy her lunch:

One last thing I should mention about Olive Garden - since I didn't plan on eating salad, and very little bread, I ordered JUST the bowl of soup instead of the soup, salad, breadsticks lunch and so I saved $2.



ANOTHER STARBUCKS STOP

So I had this one day where I UNEXPECTEDLY ended up being out for a really long time. I had this Best Buy reward coupon I had to spend that day. I went there first and didn't like anything all that much so I decided to check a couple other stores for similar items before deciding what to use the coupon for at Best Buy. I hit 2 stores before I had to make it to my 1-hour workout class. After that I was already hungry but I thought I could hit a couple more stores before going home. Then I kept finding myself near another store I could check. I knew I NEEDED to eat. I pulled through Starbucks and asked for a snack plate - but they were out! I knew a pastry was not in the cards so I decided to go with a breakfast sandwich. Ham, egg, and cheese.

It was a really thick bread so I barely touched that and focused on the insides. But the cheese stuck to the bread so I did have a LITTLE bit of it :) Here is my leftovers:

It tasted SO GOOD, I thought for sure I just ate 500 calories LOL but you gotta do what you gotta do when you are out and need to eat, right? I was pleasantly surprised though when I got home that it was not "that bad"... the stats are: 370 Calories, 16 grams Fat, 32 grams Carbs, 23 grams Protein. I have no idea how to calculate how much of this was in the bread, but I would assume at least 100 cals was the bread (probably more) and at least 15-20grams of the carbs were probably in the bread too. This is not a choice I'd go out of my way to make, but I think it was pretty decent for the situation. And definitely tasty. It also kept me full for about 4 hours!!!


RED LOBSTER

While Ian was on his business trip, I went out to dinner with my aunt and grandma. Their choice was Red Lobster. I figured this would be easy, shrimp and fish are great choices. My dilemma though was that I hate any of that stuff re-heated. I decided to go with grilled shrimp because I could eat it cold after the fact. I paid extra for asparagus as a side which was silly since I barely ate a couple of pieces and it was an extra $3. Ha. Anyway here is the GIGANTIC plate I got:

I decided to use my bread plate to make a smaller portion for myself:

And here is what I left behind:

I also ate 1/2 a biscuit... that was gone so fast it didn't make it into a picture :) Ha.

Overall this is ridiculously overpriced and of no value to me. I sent home ALL the veggies with my grandma. I saved the shrimp but still couldn't get into the idea of eating it the next day so my husband ate it when he got home. With tip I spent $20!! Sigh. So while it was healthy, it was definitely the most I have spent on any meal and it really felt like a waste.

Well that's it for my eating out adventures over the past few weeks. Since I am about to be going on a NINE DAY TRIP (yikes) I'm sure I will have lots to say when I get back about how I dealt with eating away from home for that long.