Day 152 - I Feel Dirty

I feel dirty. Maybe not for the reasons you may be thinking (People! Get your minds out of the gutter!). Last Sunday family joined us in attending my son's high school's Spring musical. We dropped him off early so he could get ready, and we went out to lunch to pass the time (and yes, we did give Him lunch before we left! Ahem!). Mistake. Big Mistake. Our family wanted to go to a buffet. The greasy home style stuff your face and unbutton your pants til you pop buffet. I didn't want to go....but I thought that surely I could find something to eat? Right?

Now, for those of you who have been following my adventures, you may remember that we've switched to a vegetarian diet. We're not quite 100%, probably closer to 95% at the moment, but we are happily getting there and have been feeling much better for it. We're eating lots of leafies and healthy things....low sodium....healthy fats...lots of plain ole good stuff for ya. Until Sunday. We walked in and I should have thrown some wretched fit and faked the plague to have gotten myself out of there. The restaurant was DIRTY. When you walk in and the place they hand you a drink and the soda area is dirty....don't walk...RUN outta the restaurant! Took forever to find seats...and they were dirty and had to be exchanged with another table. I'm thinking if this is what the front of the place looks like, God help what's in the kitchen!

My hubby and I looked like deer in the car headlights. We meandered around, trying to find things to eat, bumping into each other comparing bare plates and then making another round. He came back to the table with some anemic broccoli, a small piece of meatloaf, and some grilled onions and peppers (though I had wondered if he'd seen that nasty grill!). I came away with shrimp and a piece of fried chicken. I know. Meat. But I literally didn't know what to eat and thought that I could take the skin off and dirty hands couldn't have handled the rest of it and it was the only thing not swimming in extra colored sauce so I could see if it had been cooked all the way through thus killing all the bacteria. I got back to the table, pulled all the breading off the shrimp...and it wasn't cooked. Ew.

Round two....I see my hubby's plate. Grapes. Seriously? Grapes. The best part of the whole day. I went back around the salad bar again and grabbed my own stash. Found some unwilted lettuce (soaked, mind you, but at least it had been rinsed!), some croutons and grated cheddar. Topped it all off with half a piece of nauseatingly sweet carrot cake. On a scale of one to ten this place was a negative 40. The amazing thing is that people were loving it...despite the fact that vats of hand sanitizer were placed around the buffet...and sometimes OVER the food! They were piling mounds of food and sauces on their plates and into their bodies and I felt nauseas...both at the fact of what they were eating and the thought that I used to eat like that too!!! How horrible! And I LIKED it! What was I thinking?

A truly terrifying Halloween type of day! Today's pumpkin carving expresses my feelings perfectly. Even a few days later, I feel like going and getting a jar of Metamucil and downing the whole thing while praying that the fiber combs the nastiness outta me. Oh my. Oh ick. Oh how merciful the barfing Gods would have been if I could have just gotten the little I did eat out of me! I later told my husband that if he ever took us back to that place that I would throw the Queen Mother of Hissy Fits and bodily fling myself into the Butter Bar because God knows that everything will stop if we can't coat it in butter so it will slide more easily through our clogged little veins. I swear by all that is green and leafy that I will never go to a cheap buffet again! ACK!