Posted on February 11, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Do Re MiMi’s

Yesterday…was a day I ate too many cookies. For instance, a co-worker gave me this cookie…

…so I felt obliged to eat it. It was chocolate with mint chips, which is my weakness. It was really good.

And then random store-bought cookies kept appearing throughout the day, and I kept eating them mindlessly. I think I’m going to make myself a little sign for my cubicle reminding myself of this often-broken rule: if I find something sweet and calorie-heavy at work that is not homemade or from a nice bakery, it’s not worth it!

I consider Whole Foods’ bakery to be nice, so when I came across some cranberry orange mini muffins this morning at work, I had one.

It had crumble! I could not resist! It was extremely good!

As was this gigantor muffin…

Today was our good-bye lunch for Jamie, and we went out to Mimi’s Cafe! They have the…best…muffins…and they’re huge. We’re talking 600 calories huge. They come with the salads, and it’s like they’re taunting you. “Hello there, healthy eater. I am a huge-ass muffin. You know you want some of this.” Oh yes, muffin. Yes, I do.

Pretty much as soon as my muffin hit the table, I snapped a picture, then split it in half and offered parts of it to everyone in arm’s reach. No one could resist the siren call of the carrot raisin muffin (it had walnuts in it, too!), and so it ended up that I only put away 1/3 of it. Much better than the entire thing!

Oh, and everyone else at our table who had a muffin started passing theirs around, too. I tried a tiny piece of the banana chocolate chip muffin that was passed to me.

I’m not a fan of banana-based breads, but this tasted more of chocolate chips than bananas. It was very sweet–I actually preferred my carrot raisin muffin.

I should interject here that I warned my end of the table that I was going to take pictures of my food and that I knew it was weird. I decided that I will not be embarrassed about it anymore! And you know what? They were cool with it. One person said they took pictures of their food when they were on vacation, and another one asked if it was like a food diary. And then we spent most of lunch talking about fitness. See? No worries!

Picking my entree was tough–Mimi’s has a lot of good-looking food and I had a taste for seafood. Unfortunately, all of the seafood dishes came with potatoes on the side, and I was hesitant to ask for a substitution when our party had 23 people in it. I thought about getting the shrimp po’ boy wrap, but decided to go with a nice fresh salad instead.

I got the bleu cheese and walnut salad–baby greens, bleu cheese, walnut, cranberries, strawberries, and tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette. The portion was smaller than I remembered from the giant cobb salad I got last time I was at Mimi’s, but it was the perfect amount and I happily gobbled it up. I wasn’t sure I’d like it when I ordered–it was an odd combo of ingredients for me–but it was uber tasty!

For dinner, I went rummaging through the fridge and freezer for things that would spoil while I’m away this weekend. I made a stir-fry with asparagus, broccoli, green beans, and shrimp, seasoned with lemon-garlic seasoning (with some fresh garlic thrown in for overkill). And the rest of my grapes on the side.

It was so good and I was so hungry that I went back and finished off the rest of the pan, which I intended to save for lunch tomorrow. This is one of the hardest things about eating healthy foods for me–when you eat lots of veggies and low-calorie foods, you have to eat a lot more of them then when you eat crap. I tend to be hungry a lot when I eat healthfully because I eat better food, but in the same amount as I ate what I ate before. It’s something I really need to work on–I especially need to have more healthy snacks available at the office for when mid-afternoon hunger strikes and I’ve still got a couple hours of work left.

Remember when I said the weather for the 5K on Saturday was looking good? Upper 40s/low 50s and clear? Yeah, now they’re calling for a dusting of snow and a high of 40. Guess I’ll be bringing my cold weather gear…