Thursday Weigh-in, Olive Garden, etc

My half-eaten fettuccine alfredo.....

Aster adores her "Nonna", my Mom and I adore getting to eat a meal without a squirming toddler in my lap! Mom is looking good! I won't say her age, but I'm 43....and it's not like she had me at age 20...so do the math from me and you'll get within range!

By Kevin Williams

Okay, last night was my Mom's birthday.  And we celebrated it by going to that most American of Italian chains: The Olive Garden.  The chain has experienced a bit of a resurgence of late, but it'll never be 'real' Italian to me.  Save that for some hole-in-the-wall dive in Boston or New York or even a Mom and Pop place in the heartland.  Or better yet the time my non-Italian speaking parents (my brother and I were with them, but have no memory of this, unfortunately) were exploring the Italian countryside and ended up at what they thought was a restaurant in the rural hinterlands.   After talking their way in and sitting down to a dinner of wonderful homemade noodles they found out later they were in a convent (I'm thinking all the habits should have been a tip off?) .    I laugh thinking about the mystified Italian nuns trying to communicate with my parents that this is "not a restaurant" and they come in and sit down anyway and , I guess, the resigned nuns figured hospitality was the quickest way to get rid of their American guests and fed them.   But, wow, I bet those were some of the best noodles.  My Mom attests that they were and later found out that these convent noodles were renowned in the pasta world.  So Olive Garden is a bit of a come down in that sense. Spices and flavor are absent at Olive Garden as they try to appeal to the widest swath of palates.   What do you think about Olive Garden?  Nice place to eat or overpriced faux Italian?

Those of you on my email list (if you aren't on it, why not?:) know that I've been battling weight.  No, I'm not terribly overweight, but my weight has (I can now said had) been steadily climbing on a daily diet of 2 - 3 Cokes, constant grazing, and a bum knee that kept me from running.  But the knee is better now so I am running, I've swapped out the Coke and beer for unsweetened tea, reined in the grazing and upped my fruit intake and, voila, the weight is coming off.

So, here is over a year's worth of weigh-ins, you can see where I am today:

YEAR 2015

JANUARY 20: 233.4

JANUARY 27: 232.6
FEBRUARY 3 : 233.6
February 10: 234.00
February 17: 232.2

February 24: 230.4

March 3: 230.00

March 10: 223.7 (anomaly, was sick that week)

March 17: 226.3

March 24: 229
March 31: 231.4
April 7: 229.6
April 14: skipped
April 21: 231.00
April 28: 231.00

MAY 5: 233.00

May 12: 228.00

June 9: 231.4