I survived

Our office had it's annual barbecue this afternoon. In all the years I've worked in this department, I've never been able to attend. It's held at our VP's cottage on the St. Lawrence (a beautiful spot) and everyone brings stuff (desserts, salads, appetizers, munchies, etc.). My friend at work and I decided to go together, I took veggie burgers, she took pickles. We started hearing all of these horror stories about how the food was never ready to eat until after 3 p.m. I was actually not looking forward to the food aspect of the afternoon because I eat pretty much on a schedule and I was pretty sure that almost all of the food at the party would not be stuff that I could eat and stay on plan (and this was not an occasion that I felt worthy of going off plan for).

Anyway, we decided that we'd stop off at Wendy's for salads on the way (did I mention that it was pouring rain at 11:30 a.m. when we departed?). It turned out that this was a great idea because there was literally nothing there that I would have felt comfortable eating. Everything seemed very fatty, even the salads were either really mayo-y or quite oily looking. Detached as I was from the food, it was interesting to watch my colleagues in action. I know that a couple of years ago I would have behaved the exact same way: munching on chips and cheezies and bread with spinach dip for a couple of hours until the meal happened. Oh, and save room for dessert. There seemed to be one of everything. I can honestly say that I wasn't tempted by any of the food. I guess not knowing what was in anything made it completely unappealing to me. Since I've had this change of lifestyle, I've noticed that I get very antsy about eating anything if I don't know how it's prepared (btw, I ask a lot of questions at restaurants). It's definitely a good thing in a way, because neither my friend nor I were groaning about how much our stomach's hurt because ate too much. We really enjoyed walking around by the water and visiting with some of our coworkers who we don't see every day. I admit that I wasn't really looking forward to it but I actually enjoyed myself. It was a nice break in the week.

The other nice thing about not pigging out at the party was being able to come home and have a great dinner with my family. Last night, we barbecued and had grilled a bunch of extra chicken breasts. Tonight we made chicken caesar salads with fat free dressing and they were terrific. After dinner, we went grocery shopping (seems like we do that a lot lately!!) and we're all stocked up again until probably the weekend. We're spending more money on groceries recently but we're also eating out a lot less. I totally don't mind the cost when I know that we're all eating so much better, heck, we even have LOG eating fat free cheese, organic whole grain cereal, soy milk and whole wheat bread (this from a man who would eat white bread with kraft cheese slices and wash it down with whole milk -- pretty amazing huh??).