What a weekend!!

I got back from a family weekend away to visit my sister, her family, and her new house. My husband, son, daughter and I took off Saturday morning. I had posted before that about how much eating I might do, and I DID! So this post will be quite a long litany of my overindulgences. Unless you like reading about other people's food, this isn't going to be a lot of fun for you to read, but I feel like writing it all down. So here goes.

Saturday morning started off with my usual breakfast (240 calories) and lunch was my usual Subway salad (190 calories). Dinner at my sister's house actually wasn't too far off the mark: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (not cooked in the bird so it wasn't too full of turkey grease), pickles, green beans, and rolls. That wasn't too bad. I indulged in two homemade cookies that my other sister brought even though my daughter, whom we named the "food police" this weekend, told me not to eat. After dinner, I had a half-inch slice of homemade pound cake, one bite of homemade carrot cake, and one sixteenth of a pumpkin pie. The "food police" said I should not have had the pound cake, but I did it anyway. It's so hard to calculate calories when you don't have recipes or ingredients, but I bet I had about 2000-2200 on Saturday, so I felt ok about that. We stayed overnight in a suite at the Farmville Hampton Inn, which was a beautiful room and only about 20 minutes from my sister's house.

Sunday, ah, what can I say about Sunday's eating except that I bet I had 3000-3500 truly DELICIOUS calories!! Ha Ha!!

It started off with a breakfast provided by the Hampton Inn. My sister and step-mother also stayed there, so we had a leisurely breakfast with lots of great conversation in the breakfast room, lingering for nearly ninety minutes with coffee. I ate some scrambled eggs, a low-fat sugar free yogurt, and a banana. That was all reasonable, but lunch more than made up for it!

My son Lowell had told us about "the best burger place in the world." It is in Charlottesville, VA, right in the heart of the UVA campus. Boylan Heights is the name of the place, and it truly was unique. They give you a scan-tron type of thing where you can color in the dots on all the things you want on your burger plus the side dishes. I had a vegetarian burger on a multi-grain bun. Mark had his veggie burger "in a bowl," which meant no bun, so I should have done that, but...I didn't. Anyway, on the burger I had pepper jack cheese, black bean and corn salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle chips, and grilled vidalia onions. It was amazing. Each of us had a great time building our personal burgers. The side dishes were also truly unique. I chose sweet potato fries, which I've never had and truly enjoyed. Evey had traditional fries, but Mark and Lowell picked the most unique thing, fried potato salad! It was a large scoop, somehow breaded and deep fried, with a horseradish style sauce drizzled over it, served in a separate bowl. It looked and tasted amazing. I sliced off the edge, maybe three bites, from Mark's just to try it. I loved it, but I'm not a fan of horseradish sauce, so if I ever ordered it (which we all know I NEVER should), I'd ask for the sauce to be left off.

The fun and calories didn't stop there! Oh, no! There were tempura battered and fried dill pickle chips for an appetizer. None of us ever had that before, so we just had to try it. I ate one; it's not going to be my favorite. Evey hated it. Mark and Lowell each ate four or five to finish the big platter. They really liked them. If you like pickle chips and fried food, then this is the dish for you!!

I'm not done YET!! Dessert!! Well, when you go to such a cool restaurant and there are unique appetizers and entrees, you just KNOW there is going to be a very special and wonderful dessert menu. Evey and I decided to share the S'mores option because in addition to the traditional s'mores ingredients of graham crackers, marshmallows, and melted chocolate, this one included banana slices and peanut butter. There were three separate "sandwiches" on the plate: one for me, one for Evey, one for Lowell. The melted chocolate just made it the messiest thing any of us had ever eaten. Evey went through about two dozen napkins and got some on the side of her new jeans, but we all were smacking our lips with delight. Lowell ordered something with a clever name that I've forgotten. but it had a huge Ghiradelli brownie topped with ice cream, chocolate sauce, many, many pieces of Hershey bars, and whipped cream. Fortunately it came with four spoons, so we all had some of that, too.

Wow! The only thing I did right was insist that we walk around the UVA campus a little bit before getting in the car to start the drive home. We took about a 20 minute walk. Later that night we went to Denny's where I ate my usual 750 calorie tilapia dinner. What a wonderful day of food. I bet tomorrow will not look pretty on the scale. Sigh.

Today I can easily control my breakfast and lunch, but tonight I'm bringing Chinese food to Lowell's apartment so we can play the Beatles Rock Band game. I always eat Hunan Chicken, which is not the worst thing to get at a Chinese take-out place, but the sodium content is so high that the water weight clings to me for at least 24 hours. Tomorrow is the day of reckoning on the scale, and I do not think I will like the number. Sadly, I did not like last week's number either. UGH.

All I can say is that today is the last time that there is any reason to overindulge. I'm trying to take the attitude that it's okay to overdo it for special occasions as long as I'm able to get back on track and back to my better habits when the occasion is over. I hope that this is the way the maintenance phase of my life will go. When the new year starts, I have two more months to lose weight before the six week trip. Last year I managed to lose 15 pounds on our five week vacation. Maybe I can do the same this time.