I'm having dinner with my grandma and a friend of hers tonight, and the first words out of my grandmother's mouth were "Do you like Country Buffet?" At least I managed to steer her away from a Chinese buffet. At least the old AllYouCanPack Buffet will have salad and hopefully some unbreaded meat. Of course, if I do eat something I "shouldn't", it's not the end of the world--but if I'm going to put something high sugary or high starchy in my body, and suffer the crappy feelings afterward, shouldn't it be something of better quality than Country Buffet?

I haven't been to one of those places in years. Well, I have been to this abso-fucking-lutely amazing all you can eat Italian place, but I consider that high quality. Anyway, my dad used to like to go to the all you can eat places, and he encouraged me to engage in competitive eating. When we went to regular restaurants, I rarely ordered off the children's menu--he would encourage me to order a full-sized steak and eat it all. We'd have milk drinking contests at home. No, really! He'd sit us each down with a half gallon of milk and see who could drink more during dinner. And then later, when I was a teenager, he tried to blame my weight on my mother, I suppose because she was fat and he wasn't.

At any rate, buffets just trigger my impulse to eat more than I should. I have to "get my money's worth", and all that stuff is just there for the grabbing, and that's what I did for years. Add into that the fact that my company today is going to make me want to spend as much time as possible away from the table (not my grandma! her friend.), and I'm not sure how this meal is going to wind up. You'd think that getting all that laid out in my head would be helpful, but you know how it is when you're confronted with a hot, delicious bowl of something terrible. :)

Interestingly, Country Buffet has nutritional information for everything on their website! Can someone please explain to me why a gross all you can eat place like that has the info up, but most regular restaurants don't? Honestly! Although I just discovered that Chili's does. But the place I work doesn't, which drives me MAD! I eat there five days a week, it would be nice to be able to eat something other than plain chicken and broccoli without wondering how many extra carbs are snuck into sauces, etc.

Apparently a law is being pushed to make restaurants print calorie counts on menus in Colorado, which was recently done in NYC. I'm not down with that, actually. Our society is waaaaaay too obsessed with looks and weight, and I think printing calorie counts on menus is only going to make people more obsessive. However, I do think the info should be available on request--but all of it, not just calories, because calories alone is pretty useless.

How'd I get off on this subject? :)

In other news, my cat only likes Jell-O brand sugar free pudding! The little brat always tries to climb on my head and lick my spoon. But I bought Hunt's brand and offered it to her, and she sniffed it and walked away. Snob. :)