I made the wrong choice!!
We went out last night to hook up with friends and usually they order
from a local pizza place. I generally have them get a small (8")
vegetarian pizza with no cheese when we go there but this time I looked
at the menu again and saw a vegetarian pasta neapolitana dish that
looked promising and I figured it might have less calories.
When
it arrived, I remember being surprised by the kinds of vegetables in
it, but they tasted really nice -- there was broccoli, zucchini, snow
pea pods, bell pepper (capsicum) etc., and even potato slices which I
found odd in a pasta dish, but it tasted good. A bit oily perhaps --
which I noticed more as I got further down into the dish because the
sauce tended to sink to the bottom. And as I got past most of the
veggies and was finishing up the pasta it definitely seemed high in
fat/oil - I could feel it in my mouth, there was just a greasy feeling
even though the sauce had a lovely flavor. For the next hour or so I
could still 'taste' the oil and was really thinking maybe I should have
stuck with the pizza. Then suddenly my gut was churning and I knew I'd
made the wrong choice. I'll be delicate and just say I visited the
bathroom a few times, and my host was concerned, she said she hoped it
wasn't the pasta, was it perhaps bad? No, it wasn't spoiled or anything
like that -- but I just don't use oil in cooking anymore, I've been
eating that clean and healthy for that long that I think all that oil
just assaulted my system. I felt bad the rest of the night, and we
ended up leaving sooner than I'd planned because I just needed to get
back home.
Now, to try to guess at the calorie content of that
so I can add it to FitDay is so hard! There's nothing similar in the
database, and if I search online the closest thing I can find is a
calorie count for those new pasta bowls that Dominos sells in
Australia. They have a veggie primavera one, and while it's not the
same thing I figure maybe the nutritional data will be close. I was
horrified to read the nutritional data for the Dominos version -- 676
calories, 32.7g fat! 18.3 of those are saturated! OMIGOD. I do hope my
dish wasn't that bad, but since I've got nothing else to go by I'll use
those values. And I resolve never again to assume a vegetarian pasta
dish is the best choice on the menu at a restaurant. I'm still paying
the price this morning.