Magic Carpet Ride

Today was back to a normal day. I started it off with a brotein bar.

After my class, I kept up my newly restored gym habit by doing some HIIT cycling. I had another brotein bar just prior to pedaling my butt off.

After said butt-vanishing pedaling, I again had a brotein and BCAA shake to ward off any potential muscle-robbing gremlins.

Then I headed home and worked on some homework. A little while later I was informed that we would be going out to eat to celebrate Sidney's birthday as a family. That's awesome, but I'm thinking, "I just had a cheat day..." My cares immediately vacated my head when Sidney suggested Aladdin Cafe as our destination. I mean, I had only had just over 500 calories today plus I did some strenuous exercising.

So let's begin. I started off with a cup of the amazing lentil soup.

Like I said, amazing.

I even swiped a small piece of pita/naan from Sidney (with her permission; I didn't want to die) and used it as a lentil soup-delivery vehicle. It was even better than I had imagined.

For my main course I ordered a gyro meat and hummus plate. It came with vegetables...

...and of course my very own basket of pita/naan!

This plate, which I didn't even see on the menu, turned out to be the best discovery I had made at this restaurant (other than the buffet, of course, but that's in a different league). But this plate essentially compiled my favorite items from the buffet together in a single dish!

I had pita/naan, hummus, and gyro meat! That's the Big Three! It was a dream meal, and partly so because it wasn't a buffet. This meant that, while not as good of a value, I didn't eat nearly as much as I would have had it been a buffet. I am thankful for this, because with food this good I find that I cannot control myself.

Now, normally when we eat at a restaurant on Mass, we head to Sylas and Maddy's for an after dinner treat. But this was a celebration of Sidney's birthday, after all, and no birthday celebration would be complete without...

And no birthday cake would be complete without candles. Since there were neither two "2" candles nor 22 regular candles, Sidney got creative and suggested a Roman Numeral 22.

I thought this was absolutely brilliant!

And since Sidney's mom made this carrot cake, that makes this carrot cake the best carrot cake in the world. I'm certainly not arguing with that at all.

Most everyone else opted to supplement their cake with some vanilla ice cream, but I wanted the flavors of the cake and frosting to really shine through. This is also my way of saying, "This slice of cake already had 650 calories, I don't want any more!" In all honesty, though, I really did want to taste the cake and frosting unadulterated. I'm glad I did, because the combination of this cake with this cream cheese frosting is simply amazing. And if we're being technical here, this is a carrot cake with literally a pound of carrots in it, so this is basically the same as eating vegetables for dessert, right??

At any rate, this was a very worthy Part II to Sidney's birthday, albeit this judgement is based solely on food.