Portion size, revisited

I wonder how big their scoops are.

It's quite a funny feeling to read about capitalist sharks circling a massive, failing chain restaurant, and it recommends a particular strategy to turn it around: cut it out with the massive portions of bad food, serve smaller portions of good food.

“Extreme portion size is inconsistent with authentic Italian values,” said Starboard Value, which owns a stake in Olive Garden’s parent company, and wants the chain to shift toward selling smaller portions of better food. 

Quantity over quality is an overarching theme when it comes to the American value system of consumerism as a method of finding happiness. But when it comes to authentic Italian food, and to to food and health in general, more is not always better.

One of my resolutions this year is to refocus my weekday calorie consumption back to 2300, and more importantly, do so without counting every calorie compulsively -- to live within the budget without expending more mental energy than I have to. The NY Times ran a series of photos around the new year of exactly what 2000 calories from a fast food restaurant looks like -- 2000 cal is the recommended daily caloric intake for an average adult. Thing is, these meals are just that -- single meals, not an entire day's worth of food.

This picture is 2000 calories from Chipotle, a newfangled face food chain that stresses the quality and sustainability of it's ingredients, fresh cooking and healthfulness along side quick service. I like their stuff, and have had their burritos a bunch of times in the second half of 2014. However, strip away the chips and dip and soda, and I find it challenging to have a meal here for under 800 calories. Credit to them, they have an excellent, simple calculation tool on line, but even when I put together a burrito to my satisfaction (no cheese or rice, but ya gotta have guac) it's still 865 calories, when an ideal meal is 600-700 cal. In these terms, it's almost senseless to look at most other fast food chains -- it's quantity over quality, looking to take my money in hopes that I'm not looking out for my health.

The photo essay ends with home cooked foods that total up to 2000 calories -- easily three squares a day and snacks. They're preaching to the converted, sure, but it's good to be reminded as I start a new year. This year has been a bit bumpy for me so far, but I'm confident I'll be able to get things in order. Start with the good functioning of the insides, and work outward. And the insides work best with good, clean fuel.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2341
Close, felt good, didn't really deny myself much. I'm sure this will get easier as I allow new revised habits to become more automatic.

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BIKE CREDIT: 625 cal
MONDAY COUNT: 2280

SLEPT: 10pm - 6:30am, 8.5 hrs
Nice afternoon bike ride, cold weather is coming in and may not ride again for a week or so...

AM SNACK: 6:45 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1:15pm, falafel, tomato soup, health salad, 615 cal

PM SNACK: 2:15pm, momma salad, grazebox beans, 260cal

BIKE SNACK: 4:30pm, homemade granola bar, 250 cal

DINNER: 7pm, hake, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, fritos, 850 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, potato chips 320 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 2255

SLEPT: 9pm - 12am, 1am-7am, 9 hrs
Sick kid at home, stressful but ate well.

AM SNACK: 7:15 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:30am, fage yogurt with honey, vanilla, almonds, 450 cal

PM SNACK: 2pm, momma salad, grazebox seeds, 270cal

LUNCH: 3:30pm,chicken meatballs, steamed stringbeans, curry lentils, 660 cal

DINNER: 7pm, sautéed chicken breast, poppa salad with dressing, 415 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30, popcorn, +/- 300
Actually measured this out for the first time in quite a while -- around 300 calorie of popcorn fried in butter and olive oil is maybe half of what I was guesstimating before…
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2135

SLEPT: 10pm - 6:30am,  8.5 hrs
Day at home hammering away, nice to have my kitchen right by to just eat when hungry, and eat homemade food.

AM SNACK: 8 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH PT1: 1:30pm, poppa salad with dressing, 200 cal

LUNCH PT2: 4:15pm, stir fry with shrimp, shiritaki noodles, oyster sauce and shitake mushrooms, 350 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, momma salad, cashews, 440 cal

DINNER: 8:15pm, 6" Subway veggie burger, 12 oz diet coke 435 cal
Funny how the small fountain soda is 21 oz, only filled it half way.
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THURSDAY COUNT: 2465 

SLEPT: 11pm - 6am,  7 hrs

AM SNACK: 6:30 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 10:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11:15am, Fage yogurt with almonds, honey, vanilla, 450 cal

LUNCH: 2:15pm, sautéed chicken, pickles, poppa salad with dressing, 580 cal

PM SNACK: 4:15pm, momma salad, 100 cal

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, kind bar, 200 cal

DINNER: 8pm, grouper, brussels, quinoa, chocolate crinkle cookie, congee, +/- 975 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT:2570

SLEPT: 11pm - 6am,  7 hrs

AM SNACK: 7 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 10:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11:15am, fruit smoothie, 450 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, grazebox popcorn 160 cal

DINNER: 5:15pm, hotdog, fries, cesar salad, some ice cream & soufflé, +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 6:45, 2.5 cookies, 400 cal

Am I a Man, or a Garbage Can?

PJ O'Fudgenukkers, Brooklyn Style

One thing that calorie counting will teach you awfully fast: portions are stupid large. They've been large so long that we don't recognize them as large anymore. Look at the plates and bowls and cups from the my parents only 40-odd years ago, and they were noticeably smaller. Now that I'm a parent, those portions are now even growing larger, due to the "I am my own kid's garbage can" phenomenon....

THEY sit there, five little pasta shells, nestled in a shallow bath of melted butter and Parmesan: the remains of dinner for my toddler son and daughter. I cannot help myself. I reach over, grab the pink plastic bowl and scoop a bite into my mouth. At that moment, I realize something has gone terribly wrong.

The NY Time's Dining & Wine piece is all about the struggles of dads with little kids, vacuuming up their left over kiddie portions in the face of trying to keep a cap on their own eating. There are various quotes from what are referred to as "daddy bloggers", which gave me the kinda heebie-jeebies that a spoiled Jewish teenager from Long Island gets when someone off-handedly mentions JAPs.

Yeah, I'm a daddy blogger. Kiss my tuchus!

The piece is a fairly standard exploration of the challenges of living with and feeding a person with the tastes of a child -- sugar this, fried that, cheesy pleasey, and damn the cholesterol. To a certain extent, if you have an adult palate, your child will not always want to eat what you are eating but if you don't have a fully adult palate (and who does?), the temptation of high-calorie, high-taste food every day will be hard to turn away.

Even before I started counting and restricting my calories, I haven't been too tempted to eat Edie's foods, with the exception of the conveniently microwaved chicken nuggets. However today, I did act as Edie's trash can, but....it was a good thing, thanks to the restaurant I was in.

Today, me n' the kids spent the day in Brooklyn Bridge Park with a friend and her toddler, and she recommended a restaurant that she heard was kid-friendly, just up the street from the playground on the butt-end of Atlantic Avenue.

Come for the play-space, stay for kids leaving you alone while in the play space.

The Moxie Spot trumpets "Family, Fun & Food" on it's sign prominently, which immediately got me thinking of the Republican Convention currently going down in Florida. How much retrograde, religiously inclined insanity is defended in the name of "family, fun & food values"? To me, "family restaurant" is code for "crappy food, noisy room". But it looked near empty, so that was a plus.

Family Values runs on cheesecakes. Subservient, God-fearing cheesecakes.

Spacious, lots of wood, we ordered at the counter, they brought the food to us. A play area was near by, and a 2nd floor is a complete play area, too. Menu was standard fried stuff/pastas/pastries, with a healthy number of kids portions. The first thing I noticed was that the prices for everything, including the adult stuff, was kinda low for the neighborhood. Hmmm. The kids bopped at the coloring table, and when the food came, it was surprisingly good and...modestly portioned. Rather than sell you a standard jumbo burger for $12, here was what a burger usually was like 40 years ago, about half the size...for about half the price!

This past weekend in the Northfork, Edie begged us into submission was treated to ice cream every day because vacation days are "special days." It really annoyed me that one particular shop had no kid's size, just a "small" which was easily 12 oz, which is a large at a standard fancy-pants place in Manhattan. But here, my adult-sized burger & onion rings was pleasantly dinky, which allowed me to....hoover up most of the fries in Edie's kid's hot dog combo plate without the guilt wracking all the other "daddy bloggers" in the NY Times.

The place was quiet today, but I'd have to assume on the weekends the Moxie Spot is more jammed up than the "escort services" at the current Republican convention. Still, on a Daddy Blogger scale of one to five diapers, the Moxie Spot gets 4 1/2, discounted a half a diaper for the anemic pickle on my burger. Kids love pickles, but adults love good pickles.

Tomorrow, delving in to the dark heart of daddy blogging.

THE COUNT: 2,305
Last night was a struggle, got really hungry after I went to bed around 11pm. When I travelled around Europe as a student for a few months on a very limited budget, I went to bed hungry many nights, and when I got home my parents were happy/concerned with how thin I looked. The happy/concerned look of my long-gone parents got me through the night with out snacking.

AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, fruit smoothie, 350 cal

AM SNACK: 11am, momma salad, 90 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, burger, onion rings, fries, diet coke, +/- 1000 cal
Felt like a grand. Could be wrong, but don't think so. I think I may have to play with weighing a meal without counting, eating it, guessing the calories then doing the math.

DINNER: 6:45pm, grilled chicken breast, steamed green beans, baked potatoes, 7oz diet sprite,  840 cal