Update on This Week's Goal: No Eating Out Challenge

As you may remember, I set a goal to not dine out all week (until next Tuesday). In all honesty, Dan and I have been struggling to stick to that goal. I've wanted to grab a breakfast sandwich from Wawa as I left for work in the morning, get a quick dinner when we didn't get home from the gym until almost 8pm, or stop for breakfast at a dinner when Dan woke me up early this morning so he could go geocaching. It was the hardest when we wanted to celebrate my first day working on my own cases as an attorney on Wednesday. I wanted to sip wine at our favorite wine bar or sit down to a nice dinner at our favorite little Italian place, but I fought the urge. It was not easy!

Instead of celebrating my big day with a meal out, I cooked up one of our favorite homemade dishes, what we like to call "Sausage Pepper Pasta." The pasta (in this case whole wheat linguine) is drizzled with chipotle olive oil, loaded with crumbled hot Italian chicken sausage and sauteed bell peppers, onion, mushrooms, tomatoes, and garlic. Since I was so busy that day, I didn't have the opportunity to each lunch so I was STARVING. Thankfully, Dan was too. I served myself an "I don't give a !@#$" helping (about 1.5 servings worth) and a large glass (or two) of red wine. Dan took care of dessert. We had tea biscuits topped with Nutella and a homemade strawberry banana bruschetta. So tasty! Sure, I went over my points by almost 10 (tapping into my weekly allowance points), but I'm sure I would have done worse if we went out to a restaurant. The only thing I missed was the fresh bread and caponata.

I just wanted to let you all know that I am sticking to my goal of not dining out this week. Dan is not making it easy for me. He keeps trying to find ways to eat out on a technicality, but I refuse to budge. "What about hot food from the Italian market. That's a store, not a restaurant! AND we are taking it home to eat it!" I said if it didn't come packaged with nutritional information OR would classify as a prepared food, I'm not eating it. However, the weekend still lies ahead, and that tends to be when we fall victim to dining out. Wish me luck!