When eating out, I strongly prefer eating at restaurants that provide calorie information so I know what I’m eating. It’s shocking the number of calories some “healthy” alternatives such as salad have in them. In case anyone else is interested, below is the list of restaurant and fast food venues that I was able to find some nutritional information for. Unfortunately, the healthiest places to eat often don’t provide nutritional information because they are small local restaurants.

Applebee’s (Nutritional Info)

Arby’s (Nutritional Info)

Beau Jo’s (Nutritional Info)

Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe (Nutritional Info)

Chili’s Bar & Grill (Nutritional Info)

Dairy Queen (Nutritional Info)

Daphne’s Greek Cafe
Nutritional Info “coming soon”

Domino’s Pizza (Nutritional Info)

Einstein Bros Bagels
Nutritional info is available but can only be accessed through flash website.

Global Chili Co
Nutritional info allegedly coming soon

Goodtimes Burgers
Nutritional info is on the website next to each menu item.

International House of Pancakes
Lists selected menu items that are under 600 calories.

Islands Restaurant (Nutritional Info)

Jamba Juice
View nutritional information by choosing specific items.

Jimmy Johns (Nutritional Info)

Kentucky Fried Chicken (Nutritional Info)

Mad Greens
Nutritional info for some items at the bottom of the page.

Masalaa
No nutritional information but does have “smart meal” items.

Noodles & Company (Low calorie dishes.)
Calorie information is also available for the standard menu items.

Olive Garden
Nutritional information for selected items

Panda Express (Nutritional Info)

Panera Bread (Nutritional Info)

Pei Wei (Nutritional Info)
Watch out for the “servings per dish” information.

Pizza Hut (Nutritional Info)

Quiznos
Nutrition info for selected items.

Rumbi’s Grill (Nutritional Info)

Spicy Pickle (Nutritional Info)

Subway (Nutritional Info)

Starbucks (Nutritional Info)

Taco Bell (Nutritional Info)

Tokyo Joe’s (Nutritional Info)

VG Burgers
Nutritional info for burgers but not for buns or toppings.

Wahoo’s Fish Tacos (Nutritional Info)

Wendy’s (Nutritional Info)

I love my newest kitchen appliance. Last week I bought a 6 Quart Slow Cooker. I had been thinking about it for a while and I’m not exactly sure what pushed me over the edge. However, I woke up Sunday and decided to buy it. The main reason I was interested in buying one was so I could cook dried beans without paying too much attention to the process. Even though it’s just Jaeger and I at the moment, I got a 6 quart slow cooker so I wouldn’t have to go out and buy a larger one later once we had kids. I was a little worried that it would burn the small quantities I was cooking but so far it’s worked great.

I soak one cup of beans overnight. In the morning, I put them in the crock pot with 3 cups of water, 1/2 onion and 2 small bay leaves. I then set the time to cook on high for 6 hours and then it automatically switches to the “warm” setting until I get home from work to turn it off. This makes around 2 1/2 to 3 cups of beans.

While dried beans are much cheaper than canned beans, I wasn’t sure how much the electricity was costing. This morning Jaeger attached his Kill-A-Watt to the crock pot. Based on our electricity bill, I was able to determine that cooking one batch of beans costs us approximately $0.10 in electricity. Obviously, the initial cost of the crock pot out weighs any immediate savings using dried beans versus canned. However, I believe I can use it for other things such as soups which will probably make up the cost in convenience.

I’m having great fun experimenting. However, Jaeger is probably having less fun washing the crock pot bowl every night

Some kind soul donated four boxes of romances to the library last week. Donations very rarely get put into the library’s collection (costs too much to process them). Instead, they are sold to the public to raise money for various library programs. Today, I had a chance to go through the boxes and was thrilled to discover sixteen historical romance books that I was interested in.

I didn’t start reading romances until around 2003. It’s one of the newest genres I read so I haven’t collected as many romances as I have other genres. In general, I don’t buy books until I’ve read them at least twice but I made an exception today since $0.50/paperback was too good of a deal to pass up. I limited my selection to books that got good reviews on Amazon from writers I’ve read before and liked. However, I still ended up with more books than I meant to buy I now have them all cataloged in LibraryThing. Tomorrow is my day off so I’m hoping to get my housework done early so I can start reading my new books

When buying processed food in the grocery store it is fairly common for what appears to be one serving to actually be two servings. Thus, I always check how many servings there are per container before assuming I know how many calories it contains. However, until tonight, I did not realize it was necessary to do this with restaurant food also.

I’ve started a science fiction book club at the Erie library. It meets at 6:45 which doesn’t allow time to go home and eat before coming back for the book club. Because of this, Jaeger (who also comes), usually picks up take-out for us to eat before the meeting. Last Monday, I asked Jaeger to get take-out from Pei Wei. I’ve eaten there once before and thought the food was pretty good. More importantly, they provide nutritional information on their website. Before giving Jaeger my order, I perused the nutritional information looking for a non-mushroom vegetarian dish that seemed to have a good calorie level. All the dishes seemed low on the calorie side but I assumed that the portions would be relatively small.

Jaeger arrived and I was quite surprised by the large amount of food I received. It seemed way too much food for the amount of calories that was purportedly in it. However, I shrugged and started eating. About half way through I was full. Normally, when food is in front of me, I continue eating until it’s gone. I know it’s not a good habit but I’ve had a hard time breaking it. For some reason, I was able to stop eating that night once I was full. Jaeger ate a little bit of it and then we took the rest home for leftovers.

Thursday night Jaeger is either at BLUG or Hacking Society so I have the house to myself (I love my husband dearly but it’s also nice to be alone sometimes ). On these nights, I rarely bother cooking something for myself and instead have leftovers. I saw the Blazing Noodles from Pei Wei in the fridge and decided that it would make a good meal. I have a nutrition program that I fanatically use to enter in everything I eat. I hadn’t decided what to eat Monday until I was away from the house so I had never entered in the Pei Wei food. Tonight, before eating it, I pulled up the nutritional information and started entering it in my program. I had already noticed that the noodle dish did not include the calories for the actual noodles and so knew that to get the true calorie count of the dish I had to combine the calories for “Blazing Noodles” as well as the calories for plain “Rice Noodles.” That is a little sneaky but it allows for more flexibility if you decide to customize the order. I entered the nutritional information column by column until I got to the very last column which I had missed on Monday, “Servings (per dish).” Suddenly, all was clear. My portion size seemed too large because it was actually two servings, not one. While I applaud Pei Wei for having nutritional information available, I feel that including two “servings” in one “dish” is deceptive.