And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

Oh my goodness.

This weekend was crazy.

I'm pretty sure I ate enough for 3-4 horses, a couple of pigs and a goat.

What is that you ask?  That my friends, is a lobster pot pie.  Because what else should you do than put a lobster in a pot with cream and veggies, put a crust over top, cook it away, then take it out of the pot and reconstruct the lobster on the plate (the crust is underneath)

But I get ahead of myself.

This weekend I graduated!

I am officially awarded the doctor of physical therapy degree.

Needless to say I am thrilled.  Three years of hard work, but I made it through, and now I get to start my life doing something I love.

As my family was in town, there was lots of eating and fun to be had.

 

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Oh my goodness the pesto here was out of this world!  I think my family and I were eating it off the spoon by the end of the night.

And of course on Saturday night we were at Bourbon Steak

 

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Which is of course where I got my Lobster pot pie.

The other highlights here included the bread, which was rolls in a cast iron skillet with truffle butter (yum!) and the Chai tea at the end of the meal, which was the best tea I have ever tasted in my entire life.  So good that I'm pretty sure I'd go back and spend 7 dollars on a to-go cup of it.  

And this doesn't even include all the small meals that I also ate for lunches and other times.   

Needless to say I have been avoiding my scale all week and am terrified as to what Friday will bring.  However,  in the grand scheme of life, one week doesn't matter, and this weekend is hopefully one I will remember for the rest of my life.  

A weekend in Wilmington

No sooner had I published my Friday weigh in, I was packing up and driving to Wilmington, DE for the weekend.

My dear friend Emily was stage managing an opera over the weekend and had wonderful things to say about it, so I went up to enjoy it.

On our way up we stopped at Jetties for lunch sandwiches. 

I could not make myself take a picture before I had eaten half the sandwich.  For those who don't know, this is called the Nobadeer, but everyone I've ever met just calls it the Thanksgiving sandwich.  It has turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce on sourdough bread.  It is amazing.  That is all. 

When we got to Delaware we changed and headed over to the theater. 

The opera was really good.  Grant Youngblood who played Macbeth blew me away he was so phenomenal.  Which I didn't expect at all from such a small opera company. 

Saturday was rainy and chilly all day, so when Sunday turned out to be beautiful, Emily and I went to Longwood Gardens for a couple hours. 

The gardens were spectacularly pretty, and it was a beautiful way to spend a couple of hours. 

My favorite were the lilac trees, but I didn't get a picture of them.  I just love the smell of lilacs.

One thing I definitely did over the weekend was eat too much.  Last week I ate out a lot but I worked hard to ensure that I never felt really gross afterwards. This weekend was a super fail for that.  I definitely feel sluggish today.  However, it was a lovely weekend, so onward and upward, I'll have to really listen to what my body says it needs today.  

How was everybody else's weekend? 

 

Friday Weigh In

I guess there is no reason to put this off.....

Last week's weight: 216.1

Current weight: 217.1

Weight gain: 1 lb

 

original characters and comics by Jim Davis

The thing is, I'm not even all that sad about the number.  I'm actually a little impressed, because this is how my week went.

Friday- wings at Buffalo Wild Wing with blue cheese dressing

Saturday- Mongolian BBQ for lunch and Gallerie Bistro amazingness at dinner

Sunday- Carrabas for dinner

Monday- Steak dinner at Ruth Chris' Steakhouse

Tuesday- Pho for dinner

Wednesday- Cafe Rio with chips and guac for dinner

Thursday- Wegman's Burrito and chocolate covered strawberries for lunch.

So I guess what I'm saying is that this week was almost like me going on vacation, and coming back only 1 lb heavier.  And that 1lb could be water retention, or a mixup, or anything.  So there really isn't any reason to be upset over this weigh in. 

All I really need to do is embrace the healthy at least some of the time perspective.  Eating in just once or twice this week might have made a completely different number on the scale.

And on that note, I'm off for the weekend to Delaware to see an Opera my friend is stage managing.  So more eating out!  

How did everybody else do this week?

Gallerie Bar and Bistro

In less than two weeks I have my graduation from physical therapy school.

I've had my dinner reservations for Saturday night since about two and a half months ago.

So on Friday evening, when my older brother and I found out that my little brother had totally dropped the ball on his own graduation dinner, we went into panic reservation mode.  We honestly didn't expect to be able to get anything amazing, after all over 10,000 people graduated from OSU this past weekend.  So we made a reservation at the first place my brother found on open table that looked pretty good.

Oh man.  This place was AMAZING.  It's only been open for about six months at this point, inside the downtown Hilton hotel in Columbus.

It has an Alice in Wonderland lamp.

The executive chef is Bill Glover, and he works with local farmers and businesses for almost all of their produce, cheeses, and meats.  Not only that, but they are currently working on a sustainable garden and bee hive colony on the roof of the Hilton to become even more sustainable.

The food was incredible.

I didn't manage to get any pictures of the appetizers, firstly because I hadn't quite hit "blogger mode" yet, and secondly, because it was a late reservation we were all STARVING.  We got beet carpaccio, which was a nice little salad with thinly sliced beets, beef tartare with a quail egg, and an appetizer of bone marrow.

The bone marrow was incredible, they gave us three huge bones with marrow in it, with toasted bread, a bacon and onion jam, arugula, and capers.  My whole family devoured it.  I really wish I had gotten a picture.

The entrees were just as amazing as the appetizers.

I got this incredible chicken dish.

It was roasted and stuffed with a chicken/herb mousse to keep it moist, on roaster fingerling potatoes, with apple slivers and a truffle sauce on top.  

Of course in my family, we never just get one dish, life is all about sharing! So of course I also got to sample:

The duo of duck with red cabbage marmalade (another of the best things I've ever eaten in my life)

French Gnocchi

 And rabbit pappardelle

Also eaten, but not pictured was my little brother's filet with frites.  Which was good, but he didn't really want to wait for me to snap a picture.  We got sides of asparagus and roasted Brussels sprouts as well, the Brussels sprouts being positively delicious.  

Our waiter was incredible, telling us different things about the dishes, recommending things to us.  All in all it was a fantastic meal, and I highly recommend it to anybody in the Columbus area who is looking for a nice dinner.  Don't be thrown off that it's in a hotel.  Take advantage!

Has anybody else ever eaten here?  Or had something amazing to eat recently?

The weekend I didn't get enough sleep.....

So on Friday, because I had procrastinated preparing all week, was a crazy, run around like a chicken with my head cut off kind of day.

First there was a minor freak out because for some strange reason, my plane ticket wasn't there on my united site.  After that was resolved I popped out to get a mani/pedi and my eyebrows waxed.

After that I grabbed a quick lunch and headed on the metro to DCA.

 

Except our plane was delayed, and we would have missed our connection in Newark.  So we ended up having to hop on (a very expensive) taxi ride over to Dulles airport to get a direct flight to Columbus.  

Once in C-Bus the weekend was a blur of staying up late and getting up early.  I will go into more details about certain stuff later, but needless to say some highlights

And some lowlights:

 

I hope everybody's weekend was great! Further discussions on some of the amazing food I had and how much I love flying further down the line.