Saturday, March 11, 2006

Today was my first visit to a "regular" restaurant since I went raw: Mimi's Café. The place was styled as a French bistro but serves mostly American food. The first thing I did was peruse the menu for the least-cooked foods I could find. I liked their "Bleu Cheese and Walnut Salad" - it seemed to be the easiest to adapt to my needs. It comes with a mix of spring lettuce, walnuts, blue cheese, dried cranberries, strawberries, bacon, and a vinaigrette dressing. My conversation with the server went something like this:

ME: "I'd like the Bleu Cheese and Walnut Salad" but with a few changes
SERVER: Sure, what would you like?
ME: I'd like to substitute avocado for the bacon
SERVER: all right
ME: And one more thing- could I have olive oil and vinegar instead of the vinaigrette?
SERVER: OK. Would you like a muffin?
ME: No, thank you.
SERVER: Do you want the bread and butter?
ME: Oh, no- I'm fine.
SERVER (with a knowing smirk): On a diet, huh?
ME (short pause): Yep.

I really wanted to tell her I just eat raw, but it's easier to just go along with the diet comment sometimes. I wonder if servers will ask me if I'm on a diet after I've lost all my excess weight and am still eating this way.

Anyway, the salad was great, but it had a lot less cheese than I would normally use at home. Probably a good thing, since it wasn't raw. In fact, nothing that was non-raw was present in an amount large enough to make me feel any concern. There were only a few dried cranberries and maybe 1/2 oz of walnuts. There was more lettuce than anything and I ended up not finishing that- I just made sure I ate up all the flavor! So my first non-raw restaurant experience wasn't a bad one, and I didn't make myself crazy over not being 100% raw. I think that for me, this is the best way to go. If I get dogmatic over being raw over everything else, I won't have any leeway for social situations and I'll be feeling either deprived or guilty.

By the way, the restaurant's menu is online, so you can take a look at what they offer if you're curious. If you are somewhere in the southwest, maybe you can pay them a visit, too!

TODAY'S MEALS

BREAKFAST smoothie
banana
papaya
mango
oj
4 strawberries
6 points


LUNCH (restaurant salad)
15 points (I'm estimated that I might have overdone the olive oil a bit)

DINNER (homemade salad)
Spinach leaves
Raw blue cheese
garlic
avocados
tomato
Centrum vitamin
7 points

SNACKS
none - yet!

TOTAL POINTS: 28