Movember -- Day 3

Yesterday I tried to focus on fruits and vegetables.  I should start by telling you that I've tried every diet plan known to man: Atkins, Nutri System (when humiliation was an important component of their program), Blood Type, Weight Watchers, Zone, Paleo and LockTheFridgeTheresNoStoppingHim.  I long ago came to the realization that dieting to lose weight is math -- calories in minus calories burned.  It doesn't matter WHAT you eat.  Dieting for health, on the other hand, is different.  So yesterday was an attempt to get back to mostly fruits and vegetables.  I did fairly well (contents below), but knuckled under when the family requested Piattino's pizza.  There are five actual restaurants in Mendham: Sammie's Ye Old Cider Mill (think Peter Luger's without great food -- another post on this topic later); Black Horse Inn (the center of gravity in Mendham, held fast by $9 glasses of red wine); Aoyama (typical Sino-sushi combo with above average food and no liquor license); Dante's (wonderful little Italian place that most of us have come to associate with take-out food); and Mackenzie's.  This last one is owned (along with Black Horse) by the Scotto family.  They recently converted it to Italian, even though it's a four iron away from Dante's.  You'll forgive them as Anthony Scotto is part of the Villa Pizza family who own hundreds of pizzerias as well as a number of other types of restaurants.

One of Piattino's features is an 800 degree brick oven (they actually call it a "stone-fired oven"...I used to work in restaurants and have seen many a steak danced upon by angry cooks, so I will forego pointing out this grammatical error) that makes terrific pizzas.  Donna strongly suggested we stick to veg and it was a brilliant compromise.  Until Deidre decided she wanted the Prosciutto di Parma pie.  I am a sucker for food with a location in the name.

   
This breached the "no-meat" rule, so it was a short slide into the Salsiccia pie, which had fresh basil pesto.  Somehow, I convinced myself that the fresh green herb neutered the fat in the pork sauzeege.  These are also small pies (four slices) and we try to get our underweight son to eat dense calorie foods whenever we can.  So I had a long-carbon-chain of restaurant rationalization:  I've eaten veg all day (hell, it was almost vegan) so I'm off to a good start; I've got a green natural pork-canceller on the worst dish; my wife wants something to go with red wine, so I'm husbanding in an above-average fashion; and, most importantly, my daughter deserves Prosciutto di Parma and my son needs dense calorie foods, so I'm being a great parent.

• Breakfast (Grade: A- ... points deducted for the amount of water I used in the bathroom)
• 8 oz Prune Juice (correct...now I am less full of s@#$)
• Green Drink (kale, spinach, green apple, lemon juice, cucumber, celery)
• Mid-Morning Snack (A+)
• Mint Fruit Juice (pineapple, green apple, mint)
• Lunch (A ... points deducted because the tastes clashed harshly enough to make me call this a Cypriot lunch)
• Green Drink
• Greek Blueberry Yogurt
• Dinner
• 4 slices of pizza (2 salsiccia, 1 mushroom, 1 veg)
• 4 glasses of chianti (Donna's bi-lateral symmetry is contagious)

Movember is not all about healthy eating and whiskers.  More to come and thanks for reading (except you, Lori Quann...Bumbles have feelings, too, ya know).