Detox ... Attempted Again

So you've probably read about my detox attempt before where I tried to eat "healthy" after eating a whole bunch of non healthy food for a little while and how well that all worked out.  Today was my second attempt at this and hopefully it was going to work.

You can see from all the past entries being about food and what I've been eating, it's definitely time to detox!  I really tried, really I did ... for lunch I went to the gourmet deli and was at the salad bar, but then gravity drew me into the regular food bar and I loaded up.  Not on the super bad food, but not the "healthy" ones either. 

Look at the evidence of the healthy food attempt with the salad!  Then I ended up getting some shrimp, then rice, and finally the two meatballs.  Not so bad right? 

Tomorrow's another day, we'll see how that all turns out.  I have to eat "good" tomorrow since we have our volleyball game, that's motivation for me!

+ mon

Adjusted Diet

I saw something last week that shows how people are trying to cope with the changing lifestyles that people want to lead.  It seems that everyone wants to be "healthy" and people are trying their best to be that way, they even have all the calories listed on the menu's at a lot of fast food places now. 

For me, I've never been able to jump onto that "healthy" bandwagon, I can eat some of the healthy food out there, but add some bacon strips to that instead of the bacon bits, then we can make it work.

Even the Chinese food places are getting into the healthy diets, I've seen some that have "special diet" menu's where everything is steamed, but this was a first for me, and I've been in many Chinese food places! 

Who can blame them??!  They are taking what they know and love to do ... and mixing it to make it "healthy" for those people who want to go that route.  Four wings with salad, not too bad and considering it's only $4.75, if you tried to get that in the city you'd get half a wing if you were lucky.

This sounds like you're getting more with the half fried chicken salad ... but in actually if you think about it, "more is less."  If you got the four piece chicken salad instead, there's more skin to eat than just eating the skin of the half chicken!

Of course I didn't get this, but I'm glad that they do present the option.  I mean, how could you not have rice with the fried chicken!?  It's just unconceivable!  Props to Jade Garden for TRYING to be healthy, or having the appearance of it.

Now I want some wings ...

+ mon

Tebaya - Chicken Wings!

I've decided to add a "food review" category on my blog since I do eat a lot!  So the first review will go to:

Tebaya - Japanese Style Chicken
144 West 19th Street (between 6th and 7th ave)
212-924-3335 www.goojapan.com

After finding this place from www.cheapassfood.com and reading reviews on www.yelp.com about this place I decided to take a little trip down to 19th street and give it a shot.  Yeah I know, for those of you who have read my entries from today ... so much for healthier eating huh!?  So hard to detox from the delicious calories and cholesterol when you're surrounded by it and it's just soooooooooo good!  Give me some credit, I didn't go off an eat a burger from good ol' McDee's did I?!

Tebaya says they have a special sauce that they use for their wings, and when they said "wings" I thought it would be wings and drumsticks ... but they are just the wings.  So for you drumstick lovers out there (like me!  You might want to go elsewhere or adjust your habits).  

The place is a small little hole in the wall place but as soon as you walk in you can smell the wings.  I've read the reviews and people were raving and ranting about the wings and the rest of the things on their menu was just "regular" so I skipped everything else and went for the wings. 

I got the 8 piece wings with rice, salad and soda combo for $6.95 lunch special.  The wings are small, but for me it did a good job of "filling me up."  They make their own dressing for the salad, it's not the regular orange dressing that you might be used to seeing, it's good and when some flavors combine it's even better - I'll get into that later.

The taste of the wings have a garlic, salt, pepper and a sweet taste to them.  So it's pretty much a party in your mouth and all the flavors are invited.  They are covered in sesame seeds and deep dried twice to make them nice and crispy on the outside and on the inside soft and juicy.  

In a matter of minutes the combo meal was finished and I was left sucking on my fingers for the remainder of the sauce that was left over.  The salad was the first thing to go and it left a little puddle of dressing.  For those who know me, I'm not an expert with chop sticks so here I was trying to eat the rice with the chop sticks ... needless to say this was quite a task.  The rice kept on falling into the left over dressing which was a good touch to the flavor.  One of the wings accidently fell into the puddle as well while I was scooping out rice from under it, this was a good thing!  I like the taste of the wings moreso with the dressing on it, it adds a little something to it, or maybe I just can't taste things like I used to since my tongue has been soaked in soy sauce for about 29 years!

Everything went down quick and I sat there wondering if these were as good as everyone had been saying.  The only thing that came to mind was the salt & pepper chicken wings from Royal Mandarin ... for as long as I can remember all the chicken wings post snpcw have been compared and have never won.  This was no different, I compared the taste to that of what I remember the snpcw taste and again Royal Mandarin wins.  But if I were to judge it without comparison, this is definitely a good chicken wing!  There's this flavor with the wings that I like, and after downing the entire meal, I wanted more.  So here I sat with the box that was only left with chicken bones trying to calculate which selection would be most economical.  I think it calculated out to being $0.68 a wing to the cheapest benig $0.65 ... the more you bought the cheaper it was per wing.  

I sat for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if I should buy some more wings, I tried everything to resist but the smell and taste overcame me and I ended up ordering another 23 pieces ($16.50) with two extra salad dressings on the side.  Hey when you find a good combination, you gotta stick with it right??

I'll definitely go back here to get my chicken wing fix, but this isn't the crack chicken that's being served at Royal Mandarin.  Sorry, I can't stop comparing and I guess I'm just looking forward to having some in about two weeks!  

Taste : 8.5
Price : $ out of $$$
Restaurant : 6 (since it was quite small, good for max 10 people) 

 

+ mon