Shrinking Sisters

Two servings, really? My Pei Wei experiment

One of the things I like about Pei Wei is that it has always been upfront with its nutritional stats. (HERE they are.) So with the husband out of town, I took the teenager out to dinner last night, and I was going to do something unprecedented:

Eat half my entree.

After all, the nutrition stats say that each Pei Wei entree is two servings but how often do you see people split one of those? Not very often, at least from what I've noticed.

In the past, I'd find the entree with the lowest amount of calories and eat all of it while nibbling a little of the brown (of course!) rice. But I wanted to know if I could really just eat half the entree and half the rice.

Guess, what? Not a problem. And I've documented my experiment in pictures.

I ordered the Sweet & Sour Shrimp. I know what you're thinking -- "Sweet & Sour Shrimp, are you crazy? That's a gooey fried disaster!" Well, not at this place. It's not gooey at all, and it's only lightly sweet, mostly from the pineapple chunks. I also always order my entrees there "stock velveted," which means the protein is cooked in stock instead of oil. It saves a ton of calories. This combo (without the rice) is only 170 calories a serving. The rice is another 170 calories a serving. The dish is also gluten-free, for those keeping track.  At right is the entire entree, enough for two (or so they say).

I then grabbed a to-go container, which is kept at the back of the restaurant with the forks for "gringos."

Before I downed even one morsel of rice, I grabbed the serving spoon and shoveled half the rice and half the entree into the container, closed it up and pushed it to the corner of the table.

Then I enjoyed my entree. I didn't have to guess and the uneaten food didn't stare back at me from the plate. It was safe and secure, locked in its little white box.

Below is what half of everything looks like:

And yes, that container called to me all evening but I knew that it'd still be there the next day.

So I ate it for breakfast! (Brown rice is a great breakfast food -- full of fiber, a little protein and whole grain.)

And now for a HealthBuzz:

Wordless Wednesday: Veggie spotting at Disneyland

 
Actually found skewered grilled vegetables in Disneyland's Frontierland -- peppers, squash, red onion and one little potato. They also have bacon-wrapped asparagus, which is great if you're counting carbs. The park also has bananas, Vitaminwater Zero and Powerade Zero in addition to bottled water so it's not all churros and turkey legs. Couple that with a half-marathon worth of walking and you should do OK at Mickey's place.

Spare the bun, save the fries

We don't need no stinkin' buns!

We don't live anywhere near an In-n-Out, so when we happen to be near one, that's the first place we go when the first available mealtime beckons -- except, perhaps breakfast time.

If you're not familiar with the legendary burger chain, they make burgers, fries and shakes -- that's it. So when we go once every other year, I order the same thing -- hamburger "protein style" (no bun), fries and a diet soda.

I relinquish the bread so that I can eat the fries -- it's all about compromise (hear that, Washington?)

Even with all that bread relinquishing, the whole meal is still close to 700 calories -- the burger's 250ish and the fries are around 400 (good thing I didn't spring for the shake!). But hey, that's what the gym is for. We make sure to bust our butts for an hour every morning to help offset the restaurant food.

In California, it's easy to discern the calories because, depending on the restaurant, it's either right up on the menu or available in a nutrition brochure.

It makes eating healthier much more simple -- there's no guessing, no fumbling for a phone app, no memory jogging. It let my kid know that his chocolate chip cookie had more calories than my entire strawberry-chicken salad at Panera Bread.

Is an In-n-Out Nutrition Facts brochure a ridiculous oxymoron? To some people it may seem so, but to me it's a clear roadmap to let me know that anything can fit in a healthy eating plan as long as you know the score.

Take me out to the ballgame: May I run the bases?

OK. I got the pork nachos out of my system.

Literally and figuratively.

Dolphin Stadium isn't a culinary bastion among ballparks. While we've had sushi and healthy turkey wraps at Dodger Stadium, grilled fish tacos at Petco Field in San Diego and crabcakes at Camden Yards (we go to a lot of baseball games on vacation), the fare in Miami is pretty ordinary -- hotdogs, burgers, grilled chicken sandwiches.

  But there is a relatively new barbecue stand, and their signature dish is a monstrosity known as "pork nachos."

It's a pile of tortilla chips blanketed in nacho cheese sauce and topped with pulled pork. Diners then can squirt a variety of barbecue sauces atop the whole thing.

Miami New Times did a recent piece on Dolphin Stadium food and ran this photo of the Everglades BBQ pork nachos covered with peppers (hey, I didn't get peppers!).

Saturday we went to the Marlins game and as is custom, around the fourth inning I took the kid for his snack. Usually it's ice cream but we walked past that barbecue concession stand one too many times.

"Wanna split the nachos?" I asked conspiratorially.

C'mon, he's a 12-year-old boy. What do you think he's going to say?

As we walked to a table, pork nachos wobbling on the cardboard tray, you'd think I was carrying the Hope Diamond.

"Where did you get those?" more than one person asked. People pointed, stared and salivated at my feet.

So we split the nachos, walked laps around the table, then did a circuit around the ballpark (wow, those outfield dwellers really can't hold their booze!) and headed back to our seats. If I could have, I would have raced down to the field and trotted the bases. Burn calories, burn!

Craving finally sated, we now never have to get them again.

It's probably a bazillion calories and to put on my food critic hat, the nacho cheese sauce doesn't quite work with the smoky pulled pork flavors.

I compensated the next day by keeping calories low and myself busy.

Have a food or cooking-related catastrophe?

Check out Shrinking Sisters Reviews  for my latest post for The Daily Laugh. I'm part of a dozen bloggers who are writing every month on the foibles of living a healthy life. And check out the Daily Laugh Hub for other bloggers' stories and for a chance to win $150. Just leave a comment below on one of your cooking-related goofs. That'll buy a lot of pork nachos. Or not.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips!

Yesterday was crazy busy. Pick the kid up from school, take him to golf lessons, grab a bag of dinner at Subway and then home to eat, change into his baseball uniform and make it to the game by 6 p.m.

All of that in a little more than 2 hours.

The Subway stop isn't a regular thing but we were seriously strapped for time and Subway is our go-to place for fast food. You have total control over what's going in your sub or salad and the calories are reasonable.

I usually get a footlong turkey sub on the bread with the highest fiber (even though the honey oat has 5 grams for a 6-inch, I get the 9-grain wheat at 4 grams of fiber because it has 210 calories instead of 260 calories). And then I run it through the garden -- every available veggie -- and a squirt of mustard.

When it came time for my son to ask for his toppings, he looked at the list and said to me "Oil? Why would anybody put oil on their sandwich?" Beats me, kid.

My son likes to grab a bag of baked chips with his sub but I don't do that anymore -- I don't need the extra 120 calories of fiberless carbs.

I would always ask him for a chip or two -- "just one!" I would say.

But yesterday I ended that. Mom doesn't want that chip anymore. The sandwich suits me just fine.

Just another thing I'm doing differently in 2010.

A Baja Breakfast

Had brunch today at a Newport Beach fave, Charlie's Chili. We'd been there the last time we visited California and I ordered the same thing then as I did today -- the Baja Breakfast. It's a scramble of eggs, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and jalapenos and comes with  salsa, refried beans and small homemade flour or corn tortillas.

I wasn't running a marathon, so I skipped the refried beans. But when I get back home I can definitely see myself making this for brunch or lunch. I'll sub out the eggs for Egg Beaters and probably skip the tortillas -- everything else is good.

Flickr photo/Danny Sullivan

'Order like you give a damn about losing weight!'

"Order like you give a damn about losing weight!"

That was the verbal smackdown I gave myself before we went out to dinner tonight. I usually do OK at restaurants but often look the other way when cheese, bacon, fries or some other junk finds its way onto my plate. I try not to succumb but "just one" turns into " a little bit" and even a little bit can throw off your calorie count.

I knew the place offered turkey burgers, so I planned on ordering one. I also brought along my secret weapon -- an Arnold's Sandwich Thin, in a Ziploc bag tucked into my purse.

If this place was uncharted territory, I would have checked to see whether it had a menu online -- I Iike to know what I'm getting myself into.

I ordered the turkey burger, which came with either fries, onion rings, cole slaw or pasta salad. "Can I have salad salad?" I asked.

"Sure, but that'll be an extra dollar," said the waitress. And pay I did. Actually my parents paid.
:)

I made sure the dressing came on the side and did the fork trick (dip fork in dressing then into salad), I swapped out the big, fluffy bun for the Sandwich Thin, and had a perfectly lovely dinner. And mooched an onion ring from my kid.

What made dinner taste even better was the fact that I stuck to my guns and did the right thing.

Performance-enhancing buns

Manny Ramirez lives a few miles west of me cooling his heels in his mansion while he waits out his 50-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing whatevers (Steroids? Fertility drugs? Mentos?). So I figured it'd be safe to smuggle something into the Marlins-Dodgers game last night and not have spies on my case.

I'm totally on the up and up with my water bottle. You're allowed to bring in your own water at Dolphin Stadium (I'm NOT calling it Land Shark!) as long as the bottle is sealed. So I bring in the biggest bottle I can find: Last night it was a 1.5-liter Crystal Geyser that I paid a whopping 60 cents for at Big Lots. 

So what did I smuggle in? An Arnold's Sandwich Thins, multigrain variety. Healthy food is not cheap or easy to come by at most sporting events, so sometimes you have to resort to drastic measures. The Sandwich Thin, encased in a Ziploc bag and slipped into a pocket of my handbag, slid past security unnoticed. Bwaaaa haa haa!

I was wearing pants that I haven't worn in a few years and I wasn't going to spoil my weight-loss buzz for a big fluffy bun. Arnolds Sandwich Thins are only 100 calories with 4 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. They look like Big Papi sat on your sandwich.

I bought my $8 chicken sandwich (with extra lettuce and tomato), an $8 fresh fruit cup (which I split with my son) and proceeded to disassemble my sandwich. I discarded the giant kaiser roll and replaced it with my Sandwich Thin, plopped on the veggies, squirted on mustard and a sprinkling of banana peppers and I was good to go.

Steak 'n' Shake chili mac aftermath

Oh, man. You wanna see something scary? I had ordered a Steak 'n' Shake Chili Mac after a hockey game last weekend. In case you were wondering, a Chili Mac has 827 calories. What was I thinking -- a cheeseburger would have been safer.

Anyway, this disgusting oil slick was left on my plate. Apparently, the spaghetti noodles created a drainage filter and the chili grease was left behind, so I probably saved some fat calories that way.

And that is what we called twisted logic.

Free pancakes at IHOP today

If you missed the free Grand Slam at Denny's earlier this month, today's your shot for another free breakfast. IHOP is giving away free a free short stack of pancakes today. In the Catholic religion, the day before the beginning of Lent is called Shrove or Pancake Tuesday, and traditionally people would make pancakes to get rid of "luxurious" products like butter, milk and eggs. Things that someone might give up for Lent. (A friend of mine is giving up Facebook for Lent -- stay strong Joyce!).

Anyway, if you do succumb to the free pancakes, the short stack is 600 calories, but that's with margarine and sugar-free syrup (that's the only way I could find the count). I'd suggest skipping the margarine and even the sugar-free syrup (yuck). That should save you around 50 calories, and for that order yourself some scrambled egg whites to boost the protein of your breakfast.

IHOP is using today to ask for donations to the Children's Miracle Network, a worthy cause, so send some pancake bucks their way.