Friday and Saturday we were at the local homeschool convention. We found babysitters for all 7 kids (amazing friends!!) for the whole time, and we even got to stay in a hotel on Friday night (woot, woot!).
We went out to eat on Saturday night. I’ve been craving beef, so we went to a steak house. One that is well known, reputable and only has vallet parking (oh goodness! we don’t have a freshly waxed BMW convertible like everyone else apparently has, we have a 10 year old car with carseats in the back and banana peels on the floor from earlier in the day…vallet??!!)…They were booked solid, so we could only sit in the lounge. It was dark, and the music was gloomy, but hey, we were going to be getting getting good food…
I ordered fillet mingon. That’s generally safer than my other favorite, prime rib. I asked if they made their au jus, or if it comes from a package. It’s a package mix. That means the base is probably hydrolyzed soy protein (yuck!) and it very likely contains wheat…So no prime rib…
We were given a choice of soup or salad. They had a "house" dressing that was a French-style dressing (which means it has sugar in it, and probably a ketchup base, which means corn syrup). Their other dressings were bottled dressings–which means the base is "vegetable" (SOY) oil. Yuck. Like we all need more estrogen–on top of our "healthy" salad!! I ordered soup, thinking that their homemade French onion soup (with no bread) would be safest. I make French Onion at home…I didn’t think about the fact that most people use sugar when they’re caramelizing onions…Blah…
The steak came with all of the potato options or rice pilaf. I asked for veggies (for which we had to pay about $5 extra, per person…YES…)…I ordered peas w/carrots and pearl onions. My husband ordered asparagus. The asparagus came with hollendaise sauce, which we didn’t use (who knows what is in it..if their au jus comes from a package mix, this sauce probably does too). My peas and carrots and onions came in a funky sauce, so I had to ask what the sauce contained. The waiter said "it should be fine." That wasn’t reassuring. I asked him to make sure what is in it. He said butter, oil, lemon, salt, pepper…Oil? What oil? I don’t know that answer….very likely SOY (under the pen name of "Vegetable Oil," making people believe they’re consuming something really healthy and can check off a serving or two of vegetables on their daily intake log…Ha!)…
The "special" that we ordered came with dessert. We asked if they had any fruit. None. They had desserts with optional "fresh strawberries" on top, but no fruit to serve to us. We had to forgo the dessert that came with our special. 🙁
And after all of that, I woke up in the middle of the night with SEVERE muscle cramping in my one of my calf muscles. The next night, I had it in both legs. I used to get that kind of muscle cramping OFTEN. On GAPS, I do not get muscle cramping at all….
To all of the people who wonder why I stay on this "crazy" (they think ;)) diet, this is why. Food effects my body. Food effects your body, too. You can heal your body with the right foods…You can destroy your body with the wrong foods…If food causes me to have severe (INCREDIBLY painful) muscle cramping, it’s doing large amounts of damage in my body…
I believe in this diet because my body is healthy when I stay on it….We have been able to dine at a restaurant successfully a few times…you just have to be really careful. A lot of "good" restaurants have "sold-out" and they serve up packaged mixes, prepared foods, and lots of heaping tablespoons (or cups) of refined white, chemically processed sugar and refined, chemically processed soy. It’s worth calling ahead of time to check what a restaurant’s standards are….
Sorry you had a frustrating experience and had to deal with cramping. I was having a conversation with my husband about our grain-free, sugar-free diet when he was looking longingly at some sort of pastry and asking “can’t I just have a little?” I told him, “well, if you want to stay up all night with aching joints, go right ahead!” He’s been so happy with the fact that he no longer has rheum. arthritis pain that he was fine with saying no to the pastry. We do get depressed sometimes that we can’t eat out, but with a crazy toddler, eating out doesn’t seem all that attractive right now anyways. 🙂
“Like we all need more estrogen–on top of our “healthy” salad!! ” BAHAHA! I found this post while searching for a French Onion soup recipe. And what a good find! I had an ‘ah ha’ moment with the muscle cramping. Hmmmm.
The soup prob had that same kind of au jus base in the broth. I doubt they went to the trouble of simmering beef bones for 24+ hours!