Food filled weekend

Without a Bears game (or even football) to watch and with no softball yet, it was a rare weekend without much going on....except eating. Yeah, it was tough with the diet and all, but it's LL's birthday on Monday so some birthday dinners were on the agenda.

First, on Friday, we headed down to Blue Island to dine at The Maple Tree Inn with my sister and brother-in-law. The food there is southern, I guess you can say Cajun, and very, very good. It's where I've gone for my first crawfish boil and recently a crabfest. Once again the food did not disappoint. We did try their bread pudding though to compare it to Sapori Trattoria's and there is no comparison. Sapori is still the hands down champ.

After doing some squats, since we ate so much, we watched Inception. Apparently it's received mixed reviews from those who are not critics, but I actually liked it. The stereotypical bad guy misses with 180 shots and the good guy hits within 3 got a little old though. Hey, it's his dream I guess so whatever.

Saturday another fun day that started with a nice, lazy morning and a high protein breakfast of scrambled eggs, cheese, beans and sausage. Good eating that kept us full until an early dinner with LL's parents at Wildfire. Though I've only been to this place a few times, it's starting to grow on me. There's LOTS of steak places in Chicago, but they have a fillet, wrapped in bacon with horseradish crusting that's just outstanding. Their sweet potato rubbed with barbecue spices was pretty awesome too and I might try that at home.

Interestingly, LL's parents brought gifts over for LL's birthday and gave them to her. That's not the interesting part because you would probably expect that. However these gifts weren't wrapped! Yeah, they don't wrap their birthday gifts for some reason. The stated reason of "would you rather have more unwrapped gifts or fewer wrapped gifts" doesn't fly with me. What's a roll of wrapping paper cost? $5 tops? C'mon, what gift are you going to buy for $5???

Anyway, after her folks left we headed out to Glen Ellyn for a birthday party (about an hour away) for a softball buddy of mine (E-Money) and stayed until 12:30 I think. All I know is that we didn't get to bed until 2 and we slept in very, very late. Which meant another late breakfast and no more food until dinner (because we weren't hungry not because of the diet). In the late afternoon I even got a great workout in at the gym. It made me wonder if the protein diet is helping with my weightlifting if not with my weight. Possibly.

For dinner we had pork chops, brussel sprouts and eggplant. Yeah, eggplant! LL went out to the store while I was working out and bought a little one, quartered it and baked it with the sprouts. Good stuff!!