"Hey, do you want to try this really great Caribbean restaurant for lunch today", said my customer as we were finishing up our meeting. Always ready for lunch, breakfast or any food, I reply, "Yes, that sounds great!!" Immediate panic. How can I look up or even anticipate what might be on the menu? My customer says, "I love the jerked shrimp." Bingo, shrimp is good to eat and they probably will have veggies too. This is what I expected:
We arrive at the restaurant and the non-detailed menu has about 4 choices of jerked this and that. I copy my customer and order jerked shrimp. "Spicy right?" says the waiter, "Sure", I reply. My water glass remains empty (as I do not drink anything 30 min before/after eating anymore). We share some pleasantries and then the food arrives. It is a heaping plate of breaded and fried shrimp, on top of rice, with a corn muffin and a side of mac and cheese, oh, and enough brown jerk sauce to almost hide the identification of any of the food mentioned above. I am frozen. I can literally not eat anything but the shrimp that is buried under fried batter and jerk sauce. How will I dig those shrimp out? I will tell you that I had to work very hard to get any shrimp out of their jerky dripping batter coffins. I so wanted to take a picture of the actual challenge, but I didn't. The resulting plate looked like I had just stirred it around, all along, I raved at how wonderful everything tasted. My table was filled with men. They cleared their plates in quick succession and actually didn't even ask me why my plate was full. The only one to ask was the server (who was the owner unfortunately and couldn't just ignore this like my customers!) and he immediately asked why I hadn't eaten anything and if I wanted a box. I got a box. Put the box in my rental car trunk and that is where I left it when I returned the car to Newark airport.
Now, I don't like to waste food. But after all that I have been doing to get back on track, I wasn't going to put one thing in my mouth that could derail me. Now don't get me wrong. I will absolutely justify a spoonful of key lime pie or coconut almond ice cream, but just one bite since that first bite is really the best one. I consider yesterday a victory. I traveled, I didn't succumb or get off track and I logged and best of all, I got off the plane, jumped in my car and straight to the YMCA for a swim.
These are the challenges that I avoided by doing the easy thing, like "just eat the plate of food, you might not ever get to eat something so.... calorie laden". That would have been my inside voice saying that. So fun to actually say I overcame the obstacle and came out ahead!!
