Upcoming

Tomorrow: Enoteca Vespaio (finally!!) on SoCo. I'm thinking of ordering one of the following salads (yes I'm an avid read-the-menu-before-I-go-to-the-restaurant kind of person):

SPINACH: baby spinach, radicchio, candied walnuts, mushrooms, gorgonzola dolce, fire roasted peppers w/ pancetta vinaigrette sm $7/ lg $9

NICOISE: big eye tuna confit, arugula, radicchio, hard boiled egg, tomato, haricots verts, new potatoes, kalamata olives w/ lemon citronette $13

Wednesday: Iron Works BBQ on Congress and Red River

I'm thinking of either getting the All-you-can-eat salad bar. But I mean, come on, it's a BBQ place and I really need to compare it to Lambert's, right? So, being a little more realistic I'll probably get either the order of sliced beef or smoked turkey. The plates all come with a side of potato salad, beans, bread, pickle, onion, barbecue sauce. I'm going to replace the potato salad with a green salad and avoid the bread (as best I can, it is my weakness after all).

Tonight I had my first run at making tofu at home... it didn't go so well. I didn't really follow a recipe either so maybe I should do that next time. I bought extra firm tofu, cubed it and then planned on "searing" it on each side so that it would be browned but that didn't really work out. Either way, I stir fried it with bok choy, bean sprouts, mushrooms, carrot, onions, garlic, gingner, miso paste, soy sauce, red curry paste. Although the tofu was kind of mushy the flavor was delicious and all the veggies were crunchy. It ended up making a lot and so I have lots of leftover. The nice thing is that it was a much greater veggie to tofu ratio, which makes it nice and healthy but still interesting because there was so much going on! I guess it would have been good served on rice or with with some Asian-type noodles but I liked it just as it was, veggies and protein. Yum!

As for the raw food detox, I decided against it, for this week anyway. I'm going home on Thursday to visit my family and I want to be able to enjoy all of my mother's cooking. I hear the transition back to cooked food from raw food can be quite unpleasant so I don't see the need to put myself through that. Maybe when I have a full 7 days to myself I'll try again! Having said that, I have been incorporating a lot more raw fruits and vegetables into my diet. Today alone I ate a mango, pear, orange, strawberries and baby carrots. I also had low fat yogurt and cottage cheese. Low sodium butternut squash soup and then my veggie tofu stir fry (made with virtually no added fat). Not bad, huh?

Okay okay I had some dark chocolate (60%) too but, hey, I'm only human, and I let myself consider it a health food! Antioxidants! Yum!