The Little Goat

Our weather has been so weird.  I never thought I’d be using a comforter to sleep at night in the middle of June!  Its been between 48-52 degrees in the morning the last several mornings.  Right now I have slippers and a sweater on while I am writing this!

Breakfast yesterday is what I like to call a breakfast crostini – a slice of my artisan bread topped with 1 scrambled egg, 1/4 cup egg whites, baby spinach and then put in the toaster oven with a slice of 50% reduced fat swiss cheese.  It’s stinky cheese and I love it.

While I wanted to swim outside, even though the temps were just at about 70, um, turns out not even the kids were in the pool, so no lifeguards out there, so I ended up swimming 40 minutes in the indoor pool – after swimming outside the water felt like bath water!

I made a quick chicken orzo soup with the leftovers of the Parmesan orzo I made over the weekend.  Just chopped up leftover chicken, the orzo, chicken broth, celery and carrots.  It was good, but I made it over the weekend and somehow it got really salty when it sat in the fridge.

So my cousin Karen was in town for a conference for work.  She heads back today but had an open night last night.  Now, I work in South Barrington, and my Mom was going to meet at my sisters office in Oak Park and then we were all going to drive to Chicago for dinner.

The Little Goat is the second restaurant of Stephanie Izard – foodies will remember she’s the first Top Chef female winner.  She opened The Girl and the Goat in 2010 in the West Loop area, which is a really hip area. It used to be known as the meat packing district.  The Little Goat opened in 2012 serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, and actually you can get breakfast all day long.  (And Louise, it has nothing to do with the Billy Goat Tavern).

I left my office at 4:15, got to my sisters office by 5:15 and we were at the restaurant by 6:00 – actually not too bad considering 290 traffic!

I texted these pictures to Tony, just to let him know what fun he was missing out on!  Truth be told, he looked one look at the menu and really couldn’t find a thing he would want to order.  What??!!

Karen and my sister:

Momma in the mirror:

Karen and Mom kissing – ha!

We started out with the hot crab dip with Ritz crackers.  Tony disagreed with the cracker choice, I thought it was brilliant.

More cheese than crab, but I think I need to recreate this one!  If you have a crab dip recipe, please share it.

My sister got a beer – look at the glass it came in!  It looks big, but this was tiny – maybe an 8 ounce pour?

Looking on Yelp, everyone raved about their burgers, so I knew I was going to get one of those.  But I wasn’t brave enough to get a goat meat burger!

I have to be honest though, this menu item nearly steered me in a different direction – next time!

REUBEN

smoked corned beef . kimchi . kraut . cheese . mustard . special sauce . pretzel rye

But I ended up with:

WING

wing sauce . blue cheese . celery . crispy onion . potato bun

You want to see it up close again, don’t you.

I ended up taking the top bun off and eating it open faced.  I thought I would only eat half of it, but. . . nope!  At the whole thing!  We split a basket of fries, but they were the skinny ones that don’t stay hot very long, I only had a few.

Now I normally don’t go for desserts when I eat out.  But guess what? I didn’t have any alcohol, so I had some wiggle room.  It’s all about balance, right?

BLUEBERRY PIE

served with goat cheese gelato

YOLO!!  Holy shizz you guys.  Best dessert I think I’ve had in a very, very long time.  The goat cheese gelato and just enough of a sour tang to balance with the super sweet blueberries and the crust was perfect – super flakey.

My blog friend Bonnie went there for breakfast not too long ago – and I am happy to report to her that the dinner menu was just as excellent!

After dinner we wanted to go see the rooftop deck, but sadly it was closed to a private party, so we just got a peak into it – this is the prep kitchen for the rooftop deck.

While it was chilly, it was a gorgeous night!

My cousin Karen and I took a series of ridiculous pictures, but I will save her and only publish the most “family friendly” one!  I may have touched her boobs in the other ones.

So after dropping my Mom and sister back off at Oak Park, and then heading back to the “sticks” where I live, I was home by 9:30 – not too bad!

So how did I do stats wise?  Well, my best guestimate was my dinner came in at 1078 calories, 38 fat, 119 carbs, 3.9 fiber and 38 protein.  But let’s check out the day as a whole:

Stats for the Day:

• 40 minute swim at lunch
• 1903 calories, 64 fat, 215 carbs, 8.1 fiber, 86 protein
• 45% calories from carbs, 31% from fat and 24% from protein

The moral of the story?  That was one meal.  While I skipped a day of Insanity, life gets back on track today.  The old me would have taken this as a sign to just eat like shit for days, weeks, months even! 

It just show that you can still indulge while trying to have a healthy lifestyle.  My friend Janetha is living proof.  I hope she doesn’t mind me showing this, but she is proof that it’s not about being 100% perfect, because no one ever is.  She’s so inspiring!  She put this on Instagram yesterday.  The photo on the left is from April – the one on the right is June.  Um, she’s a bad ass cross-fitter if you can’t tell.

But what she wrote is what is inspiring:

The message I got out of it is that it’s okay to indulge and enjoy life.  Life is too short not to have hot crab dip once in a while!

Alright, off to put my shit together – I hope you make it a great day!