Dessert Bar on Steroids

On Friday, I had a big test. No, not a school-like test, a test of my healthy eating habits!

My boss suggested a few weeks ago that our department try something different for our holiday lunch. This is obviously my first time doing holiday lunch with them, since I just started in March, but I guess they try to do different things each year other than the typical chain restaurants. Last year, they went to the Henry Ford Estate, and this year, my boss, who has been taking cooking classes at a local college, suggested we go to the college’s restaurant.

The college is actually Schoolcraft College in Livonia, and while I knew it had a culinary school, I had no idea they had a restaurant that was open to the public! But I guess it makes sense, since they need to have lots of practice, and what better way to practice then to serve food to people all day long!

As I mentioned, my boss has been taking classes there. She loves to bake, and she’s quite good at it. She’s brought in several of her “class projects” for us to try, and they have been amazing…both beautiful AND delicious! But, the thing about the culinary Institute restaurant is that there is no set menu. Each day, the menu consists of whatever is being instructed that day. Because of this, it wasn’t like I could pre-plan my meal to make sure it fit within my daily calories/point allotment. So while the concept of eating there sounded appealing, it also sounded a bit worrisome.

When I got up Friday morning, I decided to run an extra mile to help me burn some more calories. I ran 4 miles instead of my usual speedy three, a bit slower. I might’ve been able to pull out a sub-10 for 4 miles if it weren’t for the 15 mile an hour winds. Still, I ended up with a 10:11 overall, which wasn’t too bad. And, I also banked a nice 374 calories for lunch!

I made my coffee smaller than usual to help me save some calories.  I’ve also discovered that weight watchers is not as friendly toward the fat-free milk or the little bit of sugar that I put in my coffee on the new program.  (FYI: I always referred to my morning drink as “coffee,” but it’s actually a wet cappuccino. Coffee is just easier to say.) Besides that, I also chose to skip my cereal, since I usually have it about 11 AM, and that was when we were getting ready to go to lunch. Every little bit helps!

When we arrived at the restaurant, I was a little surprised: it was quite fancy, and since we usually wear jeans every day, I was a bit worried about being underdressed! But it didn’t seem to be a problem, so we sat down and were given a menu.

I just took a picture of a portion of it, mostly because I wanted to make sure I could remember the exact ingredients of what I ordered for tracking later. What you don’t see on there, down at the bottom, was a grilled pizza and a pretty fancy hamburger. There may have been a chicken entrée on there as well, but I can’t remember now.  Two of my coworkers got the burger and said it was delicious!

The breadbasket ended up right in front of me as soon as we sat down, and it smelled so good, I couldn’t help but take a piece of rye bread. I love rye, and it was warm from the oven!  Sooo good.

I ordered the festive Greek salad, which, to be honest, I don’t recall it being all that festive. Unless by “festive” they meant big!

That picture doesn’t really do it justice, but it was in a bowl that was bigger than most of my serving bowls! I should’ve taken a picture before I mixed it all up, because it was a very nice presentation. It came with beets (which I don’t like so I took them off), a little bit of feta cheese (and when I say “a little bit,” I mean like a tablespoon! ha ha!), Greek olives (which I don’t care for, so I just pushed those aside), and this really odd vegetable type thing. I never did figure out what it was, but my boss and I talked it over, and we decided it was some sort of pickled something. Maybe cucumber? At any rate, it wasn’t worth whatever calories it contained, so I pushed that aside too.  The lemon and oil dressing was quite good, and very light. They’re actually wasn’t a lot on there, but it didn’t need it, because the lemon taste was pretty strong. It did indeed come with the naan bread, but since I’d already had the Rye bread, I only ate a small portion of it. It was also very good!

After we finished our entrée, we all waited rather impatiently for the dessert menu. The restaurant was beautiful and the service was very elegant, but I will say they were a bit slow. On the other hand, we had a view back into the kitchen, and it was pretty sweet! Very shiny and stainless steel-like, and all the chefs were wearing full chef gear, including the big white hats. And there were a lot of them! The whole set up was pretty impressive. Several of my coworkers joked about whether or not Gordon Ramsay might come storming out at any moment. 😉

Eventually, we learned that the desert “menu” was actually just a dessert “bar”: there was a counter right as we walked in that held all of the day’s dessert offerings (how I missed it, I’m not sure). I’m not ashamed to say I was the first one to jump up and rush over there to see. And it was definitely an impressive site:

The lighting wasn’t very good, but hopefully you can see how incredible the desert selection was. Everything looks so good, it was SO hard to choose, but I finally settled on a “tropical” tiramisu. What is a tropical tiramisu?

It’s basically a citrusy version of the Italian dessert that I love so much. (My love of tiramisu is pretty well-known. I make my own, and it’s to die for, if I do say so myself.) This one did not have any coffee flavor at all, but more of an orangey, creamy taste. There was a layer of yellow sponge cake on the bottom, and then a chocolate cake layer, both very thin, and then a custard flavored with orange. On top of that was whipped cream, and on either side where the traditional lady fingers that the desert is known for.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but although it turned out to be absolutely nothing like the tiramisu that I know, it was delicious! It would make a perfect summer dessert, and I really wish I could get a recipe for it. I might have to try and create it on my own and see what I come up with.

My boss, meanwhile, got the bread pudding.

She let me try a bite, and oh my God! It was like sugar and fat overload, and it was so good!! You could tell the bread was homemade, it was so soft and just so yummy. So yummy!!

It was a bit challenging to figure out how to count the tiramisu, but I just looked up the Olive Garden version and then counted it as half, since the slice I had was actually kind of small. The good news is, since I had a salad with pretty much nothing on it but vegetables, only a little bit of bread, and then half a dessert, I was able to stay well within my calories for the day, and I even had enough to have an extra half a helping of dinner that night!

Dinner was a crockpot meal called bacon ranch creamy chicken pasta, or something like that. It’s a pretty simple concoction of chicken breast, sour cream, cream of chicken soup (or a homemade version, like I do), a packet of ranch dressing mix (but I’ve actually started using only half, because they’re so much sodium in it!), garlic, and pasta. I like it, because all you do is throw everything but the pasta in your crockpot, cook it on low for six hours, and then cook up some pasta quickly and mix it all together. I like to do pasta meals on Friday nights, since I run long on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, I did indeed run long, although 5 miles doesn’t really feel as long as it used to after training for and running two marathons. 😉 I had texted my friend Katie earlier in the week, and we made plans to run on Saturday. I wasn’t sure if she still wanted to, since her husband had been having some medical issues, but she said that he was doing better and we agreed to meet at 7 AM Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize just how dark 7 AM would be on a cloudy morning! We both got there a few minutes early, so we actually started at about 6:55 AM, and it was damn dark! Katie led the way, because we were at a park that she was very familiar with, while I’ve only run it a few times. It was a bit tricky at first to find the path, and figure out where we were going, but eventually it got lighter, and it was a very enjoyable run. I was disappointed that we ended up going slower than I expected. We started out sub-11, but then we just kept getting slower. I’m wondering if it was because we were getting into a more wooded area, which may have messed with the satellite reception. At any rate, we had great conversation about lots of different things, and the 5 miles went by pretty fast!

Not a bad run, actually, considering that I’m usually in the 11:30 range for my long runs lately. But when we started, Katie was running a sub-11, and I didn’t want to hold her back, because she is super-speedy compared to me, so I just did my best to keep up. I really do feel like we were working harder than those 11:20’s for the last few miles, but it is what it is. We ended up running a little over five after we had a detour due to the darkness and being unsure about route, but I burned a good 500+ calories!

Afterwards, I went around and took a few photos, just because I like to do photos of my long runs.

Because I had to cover quite a bit of ground to get all the photos I wanted to, I decided I would just go ahead and run it, and burn even more calories. 😉

So there you go: 600 calories for a Saturday morning, all before 8:15 a.m.!

After that, I went home and spent the morning working on finishing up the team photos for the hockey teams, and then, unfortunately, I spent the rest of my afternoon and evening, along with all of Sunday morning, doing actual “work” work. While that certainly isn’t ideal, it’s still better than last year. Although I was certainly doing my share of work from home last year at my old job, at least this year, it was simply because I am still learning and don’t have enough time in my day to overcome the learning curve yet, whereas last year, I was working from home because I was trying to clean up other peoples’ mistakes. The truth is, I really do enjoy what I do, and doing it at home doesn’t bother me too much, as long as it’s not because I’m cleaning up someone else’s mess. :p

Tomorrow morning is my weigh in on the first week of the new smart points weight watchers program. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for reading!