Cajun Food....Smart Choices?

[becka]

DH and I have a date night tonight First one in quite a while and we have decided to go to a restaurant called Jazz that has been open here for about a year. I love spicy foods so I am sure there will be lots of tempting foods on the menu. I am not overly familiar with many cajun dishes so I thought I might get some advice here. Does anyone know of any spicy cajun dishes that might be fairly healthy? Any items you would tell me to look out for and avoid?

I have 480 calories planned for today between breakfast, lunch and my afternoon snack so I can splurge a little on dinner but I don't want to go all out either, kwim?

 

[Desiree]

Eh... ok from down here I think the best you can hope for would be some blackened catfish or something similar. Everything else is usually stuffed, boiled or fried!

I guess any of the boiled seafood wouldn't be too bad either. Good luck with your choices and I hope the food is good! (It's too good down here, just ask my waistline!!!)

 

[ohMom]

becka -- how was it??

 

[becka]

The food was sooooo good. I think I have a new favorite place to eat. It is a good thing that it is not really the right atmosphere for kids so I can't go very often.

Since it was date night I did allow my self one small frozen margarita. I wanted more but I knew to stop there and I drank water the rest of the night.

DH ordered gumbo for an appetizer and I decided to skip it in favor of my entree but I did have just a few bites of his gumbo to try. It was very yummy!

I ended up ordering the crawfish ettoufee with jambalya. I cannot properly describe just how wonderful this dish was. I ate about 3/4 of it and made myself quit which was really hard because if I let myself I think I would have licked the plate clean. I didn't know exactly how many calories were in the dish but I did some google when I got home and I don't think I did too bad. I think I counted 400 something calories for the ettoufee and 300 something for the jambalaya.

The top it off they had beignets for dessert. I have not had a beignet since 1999 and I really wanted one as did DH. We ordered one serving and split it. I figured it up to be around 550 calories (which of course did some damage to my calorie range for the day) but I figure it is about half of what I would have had in the past.

The way I look at it is that even when I am not trying to lose weight there will be special occassions that you have to deal with. I don't want to deprive myself all the time so on those special occassions I want to allow myself a treat every now and then. I enjoyed my meal and the very next morning I was 110% back on program. What was even better was that I used to feel guilty sometimes going out to eat because I would eat so much. This time I didn't feel any guilt and I bet I enjoyed my meal 3x as much as I would have in the past.

Overall I think I went maybe 350 calories over my target range for the day which I considered successful. DH and I only get a date night maybe two times a year so I figured it was a good night to splurge just a little.

 

[Tiger Lily 03]

I am so glad to hear that you had a good time. Your report of things sounds very reasonable to me and I cannot say that I would have been as good as you well at least in the beignets for dessert part. I don't enjoy seafood anything so the rest would have been easy.

Congratulations for getting back on the track too! You are doing it!