Bits and Food

This has been another busy week for me at work and catching up with folks.  Time seems to go quite fast these days.  Currently, I’m working on building up muscle to continue to work off body fat, which has decreased by more than 50 percent since December.  To that end, I’ve plucked down significant investment with a personal trainer to “pump me up.”  He’s a nice fellow, a former football player at North Dakota State.  Keeps telling me about the time NDSU beat the Gophers in the Brewster error (no it’s not a typo).  He’s getting me on a good program twice a week that I hope provides some discernable results.  If nothing else, it’s provided me some discernable soreness.

However, according to my Medifast counselors orders, I should take the liberty to have an "alternative” food item once in awhile.   So to that end, I have taken the liberty to eat a few times the last few weeks.  I have primarily gone to Asian restaurants, for better or worse, during that time period.  Here’s a list of places where I have eaten the past couple weeks:

Biryani (Edina)

Chapati (Northfield)

China Pagoda (Chaska)

I have to rank my experiences in this order. 

Chapati is a familiar spot that I have traveled to since I was a student at Carleton.  I remember going there as a student with my roommate and smashing up the lunch buffet.  But now it’s a “high class” affair for me as I travel down there to order off the menu (or let the “assertive” ones in my dinner party order for me).  The food is still above average, especially for rural Minnesota Asian fare (I’ve been to all 87 counties).  It rate this the top experience.

Biryani was a suggestion provided by my former intern and current tennis partner.  The cuisine there was respectable and the portion sizes quite large.  However, the other member of my dinner party (who dines with me once a month), suggested that we stop going to Asian restaurants for awhile and try fare from some other continent, perhaps South America.  Suggestions are welcomed.

China Pagoda is a place I decided to go since it was close to a fellow NE Minnesota colleague that I attended the Carlson school.  The food is was what you would expect from MN Chinese restaurant (no “spice,” very conventional) and I thought the prices were a bit high, but reasonable compared to the Twin Cities Metro area.  Of course, who am I to decide what’s a good Chinese restaurant?  Not that I’m prideful or anything like that regarding that subject.

I hear there’s a good malt shop in the area though.  Perhaps I’ll try that before the summer is out.

All in all, I guess I should branch out a bit in my culinary choices.