Lucky: The Weekend of Endless Eating

Last weekend was a food-and-drink-a-thon.

Friday night, we got take-out from Bazzarelli (www.bazzarellirestaurant.com), a great little Italian place by my apartment. I'm very fortunate, actually, to have several great little places very close-by, despite the fact that I live in a town that's 1.7 square miles, and surrounded by a bunch of towns that aren't much bigger.

Anyway, Bazzarelli has great brick oven pizza, but we went with entrees Friday. We started with a garden salad. Fairly basic, with iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onions -- all very fresh. The highlights were 3 big, ripe black olives and 3 green olives as well, and the tasty vinaigrette dressing.

We couldn't decide between pastas, so we got two:  fettucini verdi fiorentina, and capellini primavera.  The fettucini, as stated, was a green spinach variety, with peas and a pink sauce.  This was the second time we'd ordered that, and it did not disappoint.  Nice al dente pasta, and sauce that's so good that I even eat the peas (which I hate).  The capellini was marginally healthier, in a light tomato sauce and full of carrots, zucchini, and broccoli.  I usually don't like "skinny" pasta, but this was yummy and the sauce was great.

Finally, we got chicken picata with a side of veggies (green beans and carrots).  This just jumped out at me from the menu for some reason.  I'd say I'd only had picata a handful of times before, so it's not something I crave.  It was wonderfully tender, and the white wine, lemon, and mushroom sauce was just made for dipping bread in (and they provided plenty of bread, believe me).

We ate about half of all that, maybe a little less, then wrapped up the leftovers.   

On to Saturday.  We went to Staten Island to spend the day at Great Kills Yacht Club and hang out on our friend's grandfather's boat.  It was a beautiful day.  We had some snacks here and there, but didn't have a full meal until dinner.   At that time, our friend's aunt and uncle took us to a place called Cole's Dockside (www.colesdockside.com), which is across the road and down the street from the Marina Cafe, somewhere I've been a hundred times.

Cole's was packed, and we waited about half an hour for a table, since there were 7 of us.  Upon being seated, they brought us bread (both toasted and regular) with an eggplant tapenade on the side.  Great flavor.  For starters, we had fried calamari (well, I didn't have any of that, but it got good reviews), and mozzarella en carozza.  Oh. My. God. I know, it's really hard to go wrong when you're frying mozzarella, but this was soooo good.  It didn't even seem greasy, and the marinara that came with it was refreshing compared to the heavy bread and cheese.

I originally ordered a shell steak as my entree, but changed my mind and got up to find our waitress before she put in our order.  I asked her if I should go for chicken parm or francaise. Without hesistation, she said francaise, so that's what I had.  It was lovely.  The lemon flavor was strong, but not overpowering at all.  The chicken (and there was A LOT of it) was thin and tender. This was served with veggies, and a wonderful little pear-shaped potato croquette. So delicious.  I didn't finish everything on my plate, but I ate plenty of it.  My boyfriend had an impossibly large bowl of zuppa di pesce, which he loved (and also couldn't finish).  All of the entrees seemed to be very well-received (with the exception of our friend's aunt, who didn't seem to care for her shrimp francaise at all).  If there's one thing that Staten Island does right, it's food.

Sunday was a going away dinner for our friends, who are moving to Paris.  This dinner took place at my boyfriend's aunt and uncle's house.  His aunt is an amazing cook, and we eat there at least every other week.

We arrived to a spread of appetizers set up on the kitchen island. Some of the apps were French-themed, including various cheeses, little pain grille, and the most delicious black truffle butter. I imagined using it on a baked potato, or a bagel... mmmmmm! I was pretty controlled with the apps, as much as I wanted to eat the whole container of truffle butter with a spoon ;)

When the 10 of us sat down at the table, our first course was a soup.  This was a chilled, blended vegetable soup, consisting of tomatoes, cucumber, potatoes, shallots, and garlic, with a swirl of heavy cream on top, and a crusty slice of garlic bread. I'd never had chilled soup before, and this was a hell of a way to start. So tasty and refreshing, and perfect for a hot day! I was surprised to know there were potatoes in the blend, because I couldn't taste them, but they added a nice substance to the soup.

After a nice mixed salad, we moved on to the main course: chicken cordon bleu with scalloped potatoes. I can still taste it if I close my eyes and imagine eating it. The chicken, cheese, and ham were in perfect balance. Hands down, it was the best cordon bleu I've ever tasted, and the meal itself was among the best meals I've had so far. Absolutely rich, delicious, sinful... just perfect.

This, of course, was followed by a chocolate course -- small dark chocolate truffles dusted with powdered sugar. Good Lord. They were perfect. I love that coolness in the center of truffles. We had liqueurs around this time, too. Mine was Sambuca over shaved ice. Great combo with the chocolate.

Finally, dessert (!), which was peach sherbet.  Another wonderfully refreshing thing to have during this horrible heat.  There were nice little chunks of peach in it, too. As stuffed as I was, I still ate half of it.

Let me just reiterate -- this fantastic meal, with beautiful presentation and restaurant-quality food was all prepared by my boyfriend's aunt, in her kitchen.  She is so gifted, and we're so lucky to get fed by her so frequently.

So how did all of this over-indulgence effect my weigh-in this week? By some crazy miracle, I lost 2 pounds! I don't know how, and I won't take for granted that this will happen again if I eat like this every weekend, so I feel very lucky. 3 days in a row of crazy eating like this is not the norm for us, so I'm not worried about repeating this amount of calories -- not until we're in Disney, anyway! ;)

Ups and Downs

So my weigh in from Week 1 showed that I gained 1.1 pounds. Gained!

I cried. Seriously. I couldn't believe it. How could I gain? I mean, maybe not lose, or only lose a few ounces, but gain?! I started to think maybe I had one of those 50 pound tumors you read about people having.  It's not my fault at all -- it's that crazy growth! I'll just go have it removed and be wearing a size 4 by the weekend!

Then I remembered logic. It was that lovely bloating and water-retaining time of the month when I weighed in. And I'd gone back to eating carbs and fruit full-time in that week.  The sadness and frustration had to take a back seat to logic and reasoning. Once you let frustration win, it's all over.  So none of that! No giving up. Giving up means you might as well get the film crew from TLC ready, and I'm just not having that.

It was time to re-focus and think about this new Points Plus program. Having the freedom to eat all the fruit you want is not necessarily a good thing. And I'm finding that I have, on average, at least 5 points left after dinner (usually more, actually), which is just ridiculous.  So in my mind, I'm counting at least half of my fruit according to the old points structure. It keeps my fruit consumption in check.  More anything = more calories.  Well, not celery, but you get the idea. Just because it's good for you doesn't mean you should eat it non-stop.

I decided I would take my measurements, as well, to keep the numbers on the scale from being the only thing I was watching -- because those numbers are sometimes deceiving and downright baffling (how could I possibly weigh 5 pounds more at night than I did in the morning?!).  So in addition to my one weigh-in a week (on the same day each week, and at the same time), I will be measuring my waist, hips, and thighs.  Don't really care about anything else. I mean, I hate my arms, but even when I was skinny I hated my arms -- so in a weird way I've just learned to accept them.


The net result of this re-focusing? Today's weigh in shows that I'm down 2.6 pounds. Awesome! Of course, I would love it to be faster, but slow and steady wins the race, right? Oh, and a little NSV (that's a Non-Scale Victory, for those of you who don't know) -- I bought a pair of capris at Marshall's yesterday in a size smaller than I've been wearing lately, and I didn't try them on because it was just too hot to try on clothes.  They fit! Thank God I don't have to return them (or, more realistically, let them sit in the closet with the tags still attached, collecting dust). It's the little things that make me happy :)

My biggest issue is getting motivated to get moving. I'm having an extraordinarily hard time with that, and the heat isn't helping me at all. If anyone has anything inspiring to say, I'd love to hear it. I have to start slow, due to recent back issues, and the fact that I haven't done a damn bit of working out in months, but I'll be happy to hear any suggestions!