Year 4, Day 101

It was so hot for the second day in the row.  Went to Russo's and bought more strawberries. They are so amazing it's easy to forget the world can be an ungainly, difficult to place to inhabit. Ruby and I headed over to Cabot's for our usual meal of a hamburger and ice cream (her) spinach salad and sugar-free yogurt (me).  I can't tell you what I'd be eating if it were 2004-- I'd be having the french fries, chili, and then splitting a huge sundae with her.   As it was, their air conditioning was broken, causing me to high-tail it out of there for the cool confines of the Chestnut Hill mall, where I ordered spicy food and sweated like a stuck pig.  

Breakfast

Kashi Go Lean

Heritage Flakes

Blueberries

Strawberries

Banana

Coffee

Lunch: Russo's ($5.35)

Romaine

Broccoli

Mushrooms

Peppers

Tomatoes 

Cheese (Assorted)

Olives

Chicken

Balsamic Vinegar

Snack

Almonds

Strawberries

4 sticks beef jerky

Dinner: Bernard's

Shrimp Soong

Moo Shi Pork

Boneless Spareribs

Broccoli/Snowpeas

Year 4, Day 87: Tuesdays at Cabots

Spent the morning hiding under a chair. Emily talked me into going to work.  I realize everyone has a hard time going back to work after the long weekend, but sometimes it's just being away makes you less used to it, and it makes it harder.    I continue on my dates with Ruby, but now instead of Bernard's, the Chinese restaurant in the mall, we're going to Cabot's which is the ice-cream & burger shop around the corner from her clay class.  Though I've already been dragged down the sugar-free yogurt pole, tonight I had a bite of Ruby's burger and fries and IT WAS THE GREATEST THING I EVER ATE IN MY LIFE, for real. When Ruby eats it, she closes her eyes and makes the yummy noise.  I thought she was putting me on, but it's for real, they make great hamburgers.

Breakfast

Kashi Go Lean

Heritage Flakes

Banana

Blueberries

Strawberries

Soy Milk

Coffee

Lunch: Crown Cafe

Greek Salad with Chicken

Snack

4 sticks beef jerky

30 or so almonds

Dinner: Cabot's

Baby Spinach salad with Grilled Chicken

Sugar Free-Chocolate Yogurt

A few bites of Ruby's Hamburger and French Fries

Year 4, Day 80: Fordee's

This morning Ruby and Magnolia were both crying before 7:30AM. That makes it really hard to create a good breakfast for myself. Therefore, I resorted to the peanut butter and bread, and try to make the best of it. No walk today, and it remained cold.  It's a truly bad sign that at 7:48 I am praying to make it to the American Idol finale.

Breakfast

1 Slice of my Rye-Wheat Bread

Super Chunky Peanut Butter

2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar

Snack

4 Sticks Beef Jerky

1.5 oz Boston Lite Popcorn

Lunch: Fordee's

Chicken Schwarma Platter

Lettuce, Hummus, Chicken

Dinner: Cabot's

Spinach Salad

Grilled Chicken

Dessert

Sugar Free Chocolate yogurt

Year 4, Day 73: Another Walk

Amazingly, went for a walk today, which is good because on Tuesdays I go out with Ruby for a little Daddy & Me date.  I pick her up at clay class (where she 1) covered with clay and 2) eager to hug me so I am then covered with clay).  Then I ask her where she wants to go to dinner. Tonight's answer was "Cabots," which is the Hamburger and ice cream shoppe in Newton. It's not FANTASTIC, but it's so rare to find an above-average, family friendly place with good food and good ice cream that you really can't complain. Plus on Tuesdays it's not busy.  I asked if they had any "low calorie" yogurt. Their answer: "We have sugar free, lactose free, wheat free and dairy free" desserts.   I asked which one was the lowest in calories.  She didn't know, she was stumped. I guess no one ever came to Cabots looking for low-calorie desserts.

Breakfast

Kashi Go Lean

Heritage Flakes

Banana

Strawberries

Blueberries

Soy Milk 

Coffee

Lunch: Russo's ($5.35)

Romaine, Peppers, Hot Peppers, Mushrooms, Chicken, Tofu, Broccoli, Balsamic Vinegar

Dinner: Cabots

Baby Spinach Salad

with Hard Boiled Egg, Cheese, Bacon and Grilled Chicken

Newman's Balsamic Vinaigrette (lots of calories, I only used half)

One french fry

Dessert

1/2 sugar free Chocolate yogurt.  A few Reese's cup pieces that fell off Ruby's dessert.

Year 4, Day 66: Sugar Free is not Calorie Free

One of the most difficult things to remember is that things that don't contain sugar are not only not reliably GOOD for you, but that often they are WORSE for you than the things they are replacing.  What all the sugar-free stuff really is for is not for dieters who actually will torpedo their diets by ingesting lots of calories and bad stuff like corn syrup but for diabetics and those that actually can eat anything but not SUGAR.  Anyway, tonight I took Ruby to Cabot's after her clay lesson and for some reason I talked myself into ordering a sugar free chocolate soft-serve yogurt.  To my own dismay, I completed the transition to old Jewish man when I could hear to repeatedly say outloud, to no one but my uninterested, underpaid wait staff 'this can't be sugar free.'  Ruby, meanwhile, was buried, nose to eyebrow in coffee oreo sundae, minus the cherry, whipped cream, or really anything that would qualify it as a sundae.  Again, there were a lot of nuts. It was not a great day.

Breakfast

2 Eggs

3 slices of Canadian Bacon

Coffee

Snack

4 sticks beef jerky

2 cheese sticks

lots of almonds (probably in the 70s)

Lunch: Demo's

Chicken kebab with Greek Salad

Dinner: Cabot's

Side Caesar Salad (made from the dark green gritty tops of romaine hearts, a sad tale but I ate all of it)

Dinner Salad (Spinach, bacon, olives, mushrooms, cheese, grilled chicken). I eschewed the eggs.

Dessert

1 cup of sugar-free (!) chocolate soft-serve yogurt

Ruby said her hamburger was 'perfect' and even better than the 'burger bar'.  She poured ketchup on half of the bun, then dipped seven french fries in it.  Then she lost all interest in her french fries and ate the entire hamburger and left both halves of the bun over.  That's my girl, I thought.  Save the calories for the ice cream.