Eating Out

The Good News

Where to begin? What a day for food.  First I greet with great joy the news from Dr. Oz: it is easier to lose belly fat than booty and thigh fat.  Do read this article.  You'll probably learn things about your body-type that you don't know. For example, it turns out that I am a hunter! (Of vegetables, of course). Since I like my booty and thighs just fine, this is good news indeed!

Shopping

I went shopping yesterday to do a bit of re-stocking.  The damage was higher than I'd anticipated: $26.72.  Today I added $1.50 worth of fresh dill from the farmer's market and 2 lbs of cherries (OH YUM!!!) for $5.00 from a fruit-cart vendor.  The vendor said I was beautiful and invited me back to visit again.  And I think he gave me extra cherries.  That totally makes up for the price. My current tally this week is $33.22.

At the Harlem Farmer's Market

 Altogether this is what I added to my stock 'o victuals:

July 3, 2012

In addition to the dill and cherries, I got steel cut oats (awesome with walnuts and dates!!!), almonds, kalamata olives, coconut milk, cilantro, tahini, dates, bananas and gluten free brown rice fettuccini.

So, here is the deal. The budget is $40.00 per week.  Whatever I don't use from the week before rolls over to the next week.  Last week I spent a total of $29.74.  Round up to $30.00.  Which means that I had $50.00 for this week leaving me $16.78 for the rest of the week.

Eating Out

Last week I chose to stick to only eating fresh food that I had made myself. Sticking to this in the long term is not possible since, as a small business owner, business development sometimes means taking clients or prospects out for lunch or dinner or attending networking breakfasts and so forth.

Still, there are plenty of ways to stay true to the spirit of the fresh food lifestyle: simply choose the right restaurants.  Today I visited one such restaurant: Massawa on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.  I love that place! Massawa is the best Ethiopian restaurant in the city.  They know me so well that they practically start preparing my order when I walk in the door!  Today I had lunch with my dear friend Kate.  Here is what we had:

My friend Kate :)))

I love Shiro (and the Wench look, apparently).

Choose the right restaurant.  Ethiopian, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese restaurants are usually really great options. Mexican and Chinese restaurants might require a bit more planning (I like to look at the menus online before I go) but there should be plenty of low-fat, low-sodium, totally fresh options on the menus. By the way, this was Kate's treat (she's such a darling) so my food budget was not impacted. Ha!