Death By Eating

Sunday was a ridiculous eating day.

First of all the kids begged us to take them to the diner for breakfast (see last post), which we didn't finish till about 10am.

Then we were heading up to San Francisco to see a ballet at 2:00pm, so we had to eat an early lunch. At 11:30am we were forcing ourselves to eat sandwiches.

We ordered drinks and snack for the ballet intermission - experience tells us that we need something with caffeine in it to revive us at half time - and the only small thing on offer was a plate of chocolate dipped strawberries. Hubby declared that he felt queasy afterwards.

Then at the end of the ballet, which was only 4:30pm, we headed to Max's Opera Cafe on Van Ness, as we had promised the kids we could eat dinner there. Pointing out the early hour, I suggested that we drive back home and go out to eat downtown, but Deep Thought revealed an urgent need for the loo - which she had failed to mention while we were in the theatre - and so Max's it had to be. I think the kids mostly like this restaurant for its desserts, but on this occasion they were forbidden to have any. We ordered our entrees which, when they arrived ten minutes later, proved to be as enormous as any we've ever seen. I had the crab cakes with fries and coleslaw. I didn't eat any coleslaw - too much onion - and only one of the three crab cakes. Deep Thought had half my fries. She had ordered a BBQ pork wrap, which provokes images of a healthful sandwich substitute full of salad, yes? How wrong can you be? She ate about a third of it, and an untouched half came home. Little Starlet, who is currently in a meat and two veg stage, ordered the beef brisket with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. There was enough mash for at least four people. She bravely made an igloo in the middle of it, then most of that came home too.

What is it with restaurants? Why do they insist on giving such big portions? I imagine it is so people think they are getting value for money, but all that happens is that you bring the excess food home, keep it in the fridge for a couple of days and then throw it away, complete with the extra refuse created by the "to go" plastic boxes. Really quite ridiculous.

Incidentally, the ballet was "The Little Mermaid" which was the first modern ballet that we'd taken the kids to. They didn't like it much, especially because the music was discordant; but Hubby and I enjoyed it more than the traditional fru-fru ballets like "Swan Lake". We actually found it emotionally affecting, which is definitely a first for us with ballet.