Easter brunch and roasted beets

Yesterday for Easter we did a family brunch in the middle of the day. I'm beginning to be a little afraid of restaurants, because you really don't have any control over what you're eating. Of course, you can read the menu, and try to figure out the caloric content, but most restaurants that want to do such things as "stay in business" and "make money" focus almost exclusively on delivering food that tastes great, and will sneak a calorie or two in there to make that happen.

As I've said before, I'm not going to be "that guy" that complains and gets special treatments and preparations on his food. My weight is good now, and I want to appreciate the genius of the chef in the restaurant I visit, not insult him or her by forcing them to cook something my way. Plus, going off diet every now and then is perfectly okay. So I enjoyed my brunch with the family. I did resist the temptation to eat the delicious muffin that came with my meal though. Muffins, cupcakes.... anything you bake in those little cups is kryptonite to me. Delicious kryptonite.

Brunch sets you in a weird place when dinner comes. Do you eat a full meal? Do you eat late? Light snack then another snack? I decided to make a light quick dinner with pan seared chicken breasts topped with a caramelized onion-caper-marsala sauce, served with green beans in a sun dried tomato and caramelized onion sauce with oven roasted yellow beets. The beets were incredible - I tossed them in a touch of oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted them at 400 until they started to brown lightly and got nice and soft. Absolutely delicious, and surprisingly low in calories - about 35 calories per beet. Overall, the less than 500 calorie meal seemed to do the trick.

Today I went to the gym and did weights at lunch. This is a slight deviation from my normal routine, but I've decided I am going to add more weights to the routine in order to maintain the weight and improve tone. One of the most painful things I did was a Tabada routine of jumping up on a block that is about 2 feet high, 7-10 times per 20 second jump. I had to sit on the block for a minute or two after to catch my breath from that one.

Dinner was with the kids - simple pasta with red sauce. I made my standard meat sauce with lean turkey breast inspired by Mario Batali's basic red sauce of onion, thyme, and tomato (I added carrots to it for additional sweetness). One serving of pasta with meat sauce is about 500 calories if the lean turkey is used, and a side salad with balsamic vinaigrette rounded out the meal.