{"id":16278,"date":"2011-04-15T09:09:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T16:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=16278"},"modified":"2011-04-15T09:09:43","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T16:09:43","slug":"preparing-for-restaurant-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=16278","title":{"rendered":"Preparing For Restaurant Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday night Michael, his friend Jeremy and I met Michael’s family downtown for his belated birthday dinner. Michael was craving lasagna–that was his only request. So I made reservations at Mama Mia Trattoria<\/a> for 7 of us.<\/p>\n

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\nI wanted to go into the restaurant prepared. I spent some time looking at their online menu and decided what I would order. My biggest pitfall in restaurant eating is not being prepared when I go in and getting overwhelmed with all the yummy food options on the menu. My eyes get bigger than my stomach and my willpower falters<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\nThis time I was smart: I picked 3 entrees I was interested and Googled the calories (estimated) to see which would be the healthier choice. I finally settled on the Eggplant Parmesan and was super excited about eating it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nI ordered a glass of red wine: Frescobaldi, \u201cR\u00e8mole\u201d Sangiovese-Cabernet, Toscana, 2008. It was a lovely, crisp red.<\/p>\n

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\nThe second part of my Restaurant Fails<\/strong> is the bread basket<\/strong><\/em>. It’s so hard to resist it for some reason. I ate a few pieces of the bread.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe third part of my Restaurant Fails is the serving sizes<\/strong><\/em>. This time I had a plan: when I ordered my dinner I’d ask the waitress to bring a To-Go box so I could immediately put half the serving in there to make sure I was only eating one serving.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Birthday Boy!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

We arrived at the restaurant and it was still happy hour so our plans changed a bit. We got a table for 7 of us and I looked at the happy hour menu. It was different than the website. I didn’t panic–I zeroed in on what I thought was the healthier option:<\/p>\n

LOSTA THE PASTA LASAGNA: pasta-free baked lasagna layered with sliced eggplant, ground beef, tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella & parmesan cheeses<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seemed healthy to me because there was no pasta and the eggplant was good. It was almost like Eggplant Parm. I tried to order that but the waitress said they had no eggplant because of the weather all the crops froze.<\/p>\n

Damn.<\/p>\n

Second choice: Lasagna of the day. It was lasagna with white sauce, Painted Hills ground beef, Carlton Farms pork, veal, vegetables like carrots and celery, and cheese. I ordered a Caesar salad to start. It was really small, which was perfect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nI asked the waitress for a box and she said they didn’t do that for Happy Hour. Uh Oh! A little panic but I knew I could be strong. Luckily, the lasagna came out in a proper serving size! Since it was happy hour portions I didn’t have to feel guilty about eating all of it.<\/p>\n

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\nIt was so good! I think there was egg in it too. It was light and fluffy and the veggies inside were a nice surprise. Delicious!<\/p>\n

Since it was Michael’s birthday they brought him a piece of the Amaretto Cheesecake! We all passed it around and took a bite (so I had about three bites of cheesecake–the perfect amount). It was creamy cheesecake with an almond biscotti crust that flaked at the touch of a fork. It was served with caramel sauce and candied almonds.<\/p>\n

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\nIt was to die for! It was a good night and it was nice to spend time with everyone. I feel like last night’s restaurant experience was a positive for me. I may have gone over my calories for the day BUT I did eat proper serving sizes, enjoyed some wine and a few bites of dessert. I say that’s a win!<\/p>\n

QUESTION: How do you prepare for restaurant eating? Are you successful?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday night Michael, his friend Jeremy and I met Michael’s family downtown for his belated birthday dinner. Michael was craving lasagna–that was his only request. So I made reservations at Mama Mia Trattoria for 7 of us. I wanted to go into the restaurant prepared. I spent some time looking at their online menu and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[336,55,64,65,314,1193,315,85,86,87,92,95,104,106,107,1949,124,134,2946,1785,152,154,166,169,171,193,194,195,196,214,2806,254,258,278,303],"tags":[8773,2320,3052,465,516,3053,1674,8641,3050,3049,8691,1913,3051,8725,8763],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_6683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16278"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16308,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16278\/revisions\/16308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}