38 new of 55 responses total.
I've done that before--being filled up when I get an appetizer and then have some good leftovers for future meals. :-) At a steak restaurant a friend of mine from NC and I would eat at, we rarely got an appetizer but often get a somewhat bigger steak to have the leftovers for the next day. It was easy enough to fill up on the salad and bread and just a bit of the meat [and the larger pieces of steak didn't cost too much more]. Wish I could afford a steak dinner now! Oh well, some day...
A little earlier today while watching a video [Little Women], I had some crackers and a bit of a cheese ball that came with a holiday gift pack. :)
I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com this holiday season that I am posting
here cause it was REALLY good. Just a twist on Shrimp cocktail.
Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
2 pounds Fresh or Frozen large shrimp
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon lime zest
1/4 cup lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons green onion -- finely chopped
1/4 cup Anaheim pepper (or Jalapenos) -- Finely chopped
1 Tablespoon cilantro -- snipped
1/2 Teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
Thaw Shrimp if frozen, Peel and devein (if necessary), cook if necessary.
In a food processor combine garlic, lime peel, green onions, pepper and
cilantro
Add mixture to a bowl and add lime juice, olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper
and mix.
Put mixture in a plastic bag with shrimp. Turn bag to coat shrimp with
marinade mixture. Marinate for at least 3 hours. (Over night is fine.)
To serve, drain the shrimp, discarding the marinade. Can be served with
cocktail sauce.
Yum! That makes me think of a ceviche.
Several times in the recent past [mainly at the weekly HHs], I've gotten an appetizer to have as my main meal. To me, though, at least at the Cubs AC where the HHs have been, the appetizers have been big enough to take home leftovers for another meal. The only time that I didn't bring leftovers home was when I ordered something off of their weekly specials menu... As talked about earlier in this item, appetizers used to be a smaller portion of something served prior to the other courses [or the main course and side dishes when served at the same time]. And in the past, I recall appetizers being less expensive than everything else *because* they were served in smaller quantities. But not any more... It seems that at many [most?] places, these cost just as much [or close to] as the main dish stuff. So, ordering an appetizer for one's dinner in order to save a few bucks isn't working any more...
Sad, isn't it? It goes along with the super-sizing of America, I think. As meal portions get larger, so do the portions on the peripheral items, like appetizers and desserts. God forbid you should want a small portion of something - perish the thought!
Yep, and with the increasing size of portions being served, the prices go up as well. And many people can't eat the whole item/serving in one sitting [without feeling like you've over-indulged]. And at the end of a meal, if you want dessert--who can eat it all when the serving is as big as the meal is [and often, big enough for several people to share]. Thus, who wants to pay that much for something you can't finish or take home with you [in the case of stuff like ice cream based desserts or with sauces [think caramel, hot fudge, etc] or whipped cream, because, if saved til later, the underlying item will be soggy and/or melted by the time you get it home]. So servings SHOULD be smaller and if ya want more, you can order more. And the cost of alcoholic beverages are outrageous, especially mixed drinks. Often, the prices of one drink is as much as the main dish or meal. [And when dining, I tend to like to wash down my food with more than one glass of fluid; hence, I rarely get alcoholic beverages while dining out. With the exception of an occasional beer.] With non-alcoholic drinks that have free refills, those prices have really gone up as well. Hmm, I guess everything has gone up in price...
An easy solution is to cook for yourself. Nobody is being forced to eat at restaurants.
Sindi, please note that when I say this, I very much respect and enjoy reading you. You don't get it.
resp:24 If I know I'm going to a place where I will want to eat dessert (and have budgeted accordingly ;) ) I make sure to divide my entree in half and ONLY eat half of it. We occasionally go to Olive Garden, and I know I'll eat a lot of breadsticks and their salad- but I also know that I will have half of my entree boxed up to take home with me. Therefore for the price of that meal I'm actually getting two meals. :)
I honestly wish I could do that, and make it work. I'm really good at boxing stuff up, but not so really good at remembering to make another meal of it. They generally end up being science projects/biohazards. Lots of pretty colors.
That's a trick I sometimes use even if I'm not getting dessert. I tend to sit and pick at what's on my plate, even if I know I'm full. Much easier to box it up at the beginning of the meal.
I've gotten alot better at taking home a part of my meal to save for later... Sindi, *of course* eating at home is an option and I'm sure that most people do eat at home much of the time. Though whether or not *cooking* may or may not be an *easy* or even a desirable of an option as it seems to be for you. Like for me, I do eat most of my meals at home. Sometimes I'll cook--and when I do cook, I often will make enough for leftovers. Other times, for various and valid reasons, I can't or don't cook. Instead, I'll make a peanut butter sandwich, or nuke a frozen item, or have a pre-made whatever out the 'fridge or pantry. But like so many people, I do enjoy dining out from time to time. We may want to do so for various reasons--including not having to cook and clean up afterwards, to try new and different things, very often [most of the time!] I can get better tasting [and sometimes better for me] meals. First off, going out to eat is/can be fun and enjoyable. Sometimes its easier and sometimes quicker to have someone else do the actual preparations for the meal. And meeting other people for dinner, drinks, or dessert [whatever] is a fine way to socialize and catch up with one another. I'm sure there are lots of other valid reasons for enjoy eating away from home, too. That said, that doesn't mean we have to like the trend of restaurants increasing the portion size and/or the price of what they serve. There ARE options in dealing with this-like, as already being discussed--taking stuff home for another meal. Splitting an entree [or dessert, appetizer or whatever] with someone is another option. Not dining out quite as often is another possibility. Or choosing less expensive places to dine. But not going out to eat/drink/whatever all of the time isn't a viable option for many people. Eating at home all[most] of the time is fine with you, Sindi, and that's perfectly ok. You seem to prefer it; but that doesn't mean that everyone else's interests/needs have to reflect yours. And that's ok for us, too. So please try not to be so 'preachy' [is that a word??] when people discuss things they enjoy doing. After all, this IS a conference relating to food and dining/restaurants and such definitely fit the bill. [And if the costs of dining out outweighs the benefits and/or means of being able to do other stuff, then we do cut back somewhere--either in dining out less often, go someplace cheaper, or cut back in some other areas of one's budget.] :-)
resp:28 Well yeah, that sometimes happen. But what's made it less likely is to plan- at the time- what meal the leftovers will be for. See, my hubby and I have lunch together most days- but not dinner. So if we go out to eat over the weekend I have my leftover for dinner during the week.
Re: #27 Fill up on salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden, then have your whole entree boxed - three meals for the price of one! :) I eat out some, but i generally don't drink out, even on somebody else's tab. Paying $4 for the kitchen's work, turning 40 cents of ingredients into a pile of pancakes, sounds reasonable to me. Paying $4 for a quick flick of the bottle opener, on a $1 beer, does not. I'd guess that appetizers are growing for the same reasons that other portions are - with huge fixed costs, giving 100% more food for 50% more money is much more profitable for the restaurant. I ate out with over a dozen people Friday, at a newer local restaurant. Nobody had appetizers, nobody ordered dessert, and still many took half their food home in a box. Not sure how that helps the restaurant...but we decided to eat there, not some place else, so if both places have empty tables and fixed costs... I finished off my meal Friday, but i couldn't keep that up if i ate out very much. Not sure what i'd do if i had to eat out more often. Learn to call a $4 soup and $2 side veggie a dinner? Eat an entree every 2 or 3 meals, and near nothing the rest? Outside of family, splitting an entree seems seldom viable.
Sindi, Response 25 was unusually rude. People on Grex have been polite to you no matter how frequently or stridently you've presented your viewpoint . Please offer them the same courtesy.
I do not consider response 25 at all rude. I consider 33 rude, along with several other responses you have made to me, such as attacking me for listing 'your' height, weight and age, which were actually my own, for which you never apologized. I try to ignore your rudeness, which is probably not intentional but just how you react to things and not intended to annoy. I presume the reason restaurants are serving larger portions is that most of their customers want them, probably because the customers are larger than they were. Instead of complaining online, people could ask the restaurants to serve smaller portions.
"I presume the reason restaurants are serving larger portions is that most of their customers want them, probably because the customers are larger than they were. Instead of complaining online, people could ask the restaurants to serve smaller portions." Yeah, right. That is so untrue, Sindi, that restaurants serve larger portions because people are larger then they used to be. [And if you hardly ever eat out, how would you know this?? It's your presumtion/bias, not the restaurant's]. As already discussed in other items here in this conference, there are many reasons why a person may be 'large' than eating too much. [or not exercing enough, etc]. You're continually trying to place your biases onto what you think society is and should be.
I've noticed that Cubs AC has very large "appetizers" as well. I think part of what we are seeing is that it is not primarily a restaurant. When people order appetizers there, the food is not meant as a prelude to the rest of the meal. It is a snack to be consumed with drinks. And, it is a snack that is often shared. So their sizing and pricing are more for "snack-shared-by-beer-drinkers" rather than "small amount of food meant to whet the appetite of an individual". I frequently order an appetizer plus (side, soup, salad, another appetizer) instead of a full meal. Or, if there's creme brulee, an appetizer and dessert. I *always* check the dessert menu before I order.
Why would a restaurant serve larger portions unless they thought the customers wanted them? Denise, I am not accusing anyone of anything, but it is a well known statistic that the average weight of Americans has gone way up in the last 50 years, and people who weigh more generally eat more. Soda (pop, tonic) has also gone from 8 oz standard size bottle to 2 or 3 times that. In both cases, the cost of ingredients is a small fraction of what the product is sold for, so even people who don't want all of what they buy are unlikely to complain, and the restaurants probably think they are making the most people happy by serving larger amounts. Their overhead (rent, utilities, labor) is the main cost of a restaurant meal. For an extra dollar or so people have twice as much cooked food. And I presume most people don't mind getting more than they really wanted, and are happy to either take it home or throw it out. But those of you who don't want to do either of those could ask the restaurants to offer the option of smaller portions for a bit less money. Or put something on the kids' menu other than hamburgers, spaghetti, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese (which I think is what the local Greek restaurant offers kids - Zingerman's also offers peanut butter and jelly). Doesn't Zingerman's offer two sizes of sandwich already, to adults? A quick web search reveals that one NYC restaurant 'needs to run a 22% food cost in order to make a 14% return', which I think means they spend about 1/5 of their budget on the actual food. Some other place used to spend 40% on food but bought some software that helped them cut it to 32%. (This is a cheaper place.) So the fancy place could double portion size while adding only about 20% to the cost of a meal, and possibly bring in a lot more customers by doing this. If McDonalds spends 1/3 on food, let's say $3 for a meal costs them $1, they could sell double the portion for $4 and make about the same profit, but more people might want to buy the larger portions so they would make more total profit.
It's not that simplistic. One of the main jobs of the kitchen manager in a restaurant is to keep track of the food left on the plates by customers. There is software to do this, because it is a big issue in profitability. Restaurants don't "think they're making people happy by serving larger amounts". Any restaurant that doesn't run on data is going to go broke very quickly. Most restaurants fight every day to keep food costs under 30%. It's not easy, and you don't do it by doubling the amount of food you buy. When I was running the restaurant, a large part of my time was spent trying to cut expenses. Wages and equipment are fixed costs for the most part, except for the $2.15/hour waitresses, which we could send home at any time during their shift to cut expenses. One waitress gone for a whole day saved us less than $20, so that didn't help anywhere near as much as cutting the food bills. Doubling portion sizes doesn't bring in that many customers, either. Again, this is based on shared industry data, not untested assumptions. Your web search gave you very superficial data, and your lack of knowledge about restaurants led you to some pretty wild conclusions.
So why do you think portions sizes are getting larger?
Why assume that most people would especially WANT larger servings all or most of the time? Sure, it's one thing to have the option of having more food/larger servings, but having the option of having smaller portions [and pricing accordingly] would be a better way to go. If/when given a choice of what to get, many people will not opt for the 'Super-Sized' meal [check any McDonald's or Burger King and you'll see that many people don't get the bigger sizes]. Though one thing about many people is that if a plate of food is sitting in front of them, they'll eat it all [or a lot of it], just because its there, whether they need it to fill them up or not. The flip-side can also be true for many of us. If/when served smaller servings, we may stop there and be satisfied and not go back for more. Why are portion sizes getting larger, then? I need to reread some of the statistics to determine how cost effective it is to serve [only] larger portions [without the option of getting the older standard amounts at these dining establishments]. My first instinct is to say that they're increasing the size to increase the costs to the consumre, thus increasing their profitability. But this may or may not be the actual case. " And I presume most people don't mind getting more than they really wanted, and are happy to either take it home or throw it out. " I agree in that a lot of people don't mind having leftovers to bring home for another meal. [Same thing with larger bottles of pop and such, people will often drink some of it then and save some for another time... Or as I said before, they might be satisfied with a smaller serving size/bottle but don't have that option these days.... But to have us decide that we could just throw out what we don't want? Yeah, some people really don't mind doing that. But many will/do think that this is very wasteful to have to do [and thus, feel they 'wasted' money]. " But those of you who don't want to do either of those could ask the restaurants to offer the option of smaller portions for a bit less money. " Many [most?] restaurants don't have the capability to provide smaller portions at a reduced price--unless there ARE size-options already provided on the actual menu. Menu items and prices are a 'fixed' thing that can't easily be changed by the waitstaff, managers, etc [even if we request them to]. Sure, they could actually bring less food than what that menu-item normally provides but they very well may not take a deduction off of your bill. [Though there often is the option of not having specific side dishes that come with the main course item and have those charges not included in the bill. Like when the menu says that sandwiches and burgers come with an order of fries, they very well may charge less for just the sandwich.] In other words, just because we ask for something in a place of business doesn't mean we'll be able to get it, regardless if we're paying for it or not.
Preparing a smaller portion doesn't save any money for the restaurant. What you make in food cost savings you spend in extra staff time re-portioning. In many cases, the items are pre-portioned, so there is no way to re-use the amount you don't send out to the table. In that case, it actually costs you *more* to send out a smaller portion.
And yes, Sindi, I'm aware that the average weight of people in America has been rising. But eating too much isn't the only reason [and granted, a lot of americans ARE eating too much. Partly their own direct decision but also *because* of the trends in advertising, commercialism, the media, etc. They all play a role in this.] Other things also come into play. Like with all of the 'modernization' of how we do things in our society. We use washers and dryers to do our clothes in. We use vacuums and such to clean the floors. Cooking appliances reduce time spent in preparing our foods and refridgeration allows us to make food easily in larger quantities so that we can make stuff to last for several days and/or to freeze for a later time, thus, reducing time spent in the kitchen. So we're not having to be as physically active in our day-to-day chores. Yes, some people may decide to still do everything the 'old- fashioned' way to get more exercise. but in many situations, these are not always a viable option when we have other things to do [like having to have a 2 incomes in a family to just pay the bills]. Our work habits HAVE changed over time. So have our leisure activities. Many can and do spend much of their free time watching tv or playing video games [or, heaven forbid, spend time on the computer checking in on grex!]. Though with a lot of this, it's the media and society itself that advertises so much of this type of behavior [pushing the fast food, larger servings, faster cars, more gadgets to make life easier for us. Heck, if we want to, we can even push a little button on a remote and have the car start up and warm it up in the winter before we have to go out to drive it. In all of this, yes, we as individuals have choices and options. But very often [in varying degrees], what we want is dictated by what the media and/or society tells us what we want. So, with the increasing size of americans [and with us as individuals], it certainly more than us deciding 'ok, I am going to eat too much and be lazy today'.
And back to the topic of this item. Colleen, I do see your point about Cubs AC being more of a snack and drink sort of place instead of primarily a place to have a dinner.
Any good suggestions for fun appetizers for these hot summer days? :-)
Self prepared? I recently took some fresh raspberries and strawberries put them in a bowl with some light Cool Whip. Was *very* tasty, and not a lot of calories. It had to be at least a full fruit serving too.
That sounds good, Anne... There have been a number of times when I've added a little bit of [hershey's] chocolate syrup to a bowl of sliced up strawberries. The small amount of the chocolate doesn't add on much in the line of calories but it does provide a bit more of flavor to it. Sometimes when I'm really hungry before a meal is ready to be served, I'll have something along the line of cheese and crackers or a handful of nuts or something else like that.
Hmm, the Hershey's on strawberries does sound good... and we have both at home. ;)
This reminds me of an attempt to help me gain weight when I was an underweight pre-schooler . The doctor had my mom feed me a bowl of ice cream half an hour before dinner. Some appetizer.
Ice cream, in the mind [and stomach] of a pre-schooler, would love an appetizer like that, I bet. But then, would you be less apt to eat everything served for dinner?
*shrug* They thought it would stimulate my appetite. I wasn't going to complain.
:-) I wouldn't have, either, Colleen!
I'd like to report that last night at dinner, Dave and I shared an appetizer and then split a sandwich for dinner. It was the perfect amount of food for the two of us.
[Yep, often we don't need the amount of food that is often served to us... :-)
Though I have a friend that whenever I went to visit her at her mother's house, her mom always had to serve some food. And she didn't want to take no for an answer, either. A lot of times, it was a main course type of food, not just a snack or dessert. So it got to the point that when I went to visit my friend, I'd go over there hungry and/or not after I had just had a meal of my own. [Karen's mom is one of those people that really enjoy cooking and 'serving' others and it would be a sort of insult if you refused her hospitality.]
Cherry-Cheese-Pineapple Kebobs These appetizer kabobs can be assembled quickly and easily--even the kids could help. Pineapple pieces, cheese cubes and maraschino cherries are threaded onto skewers or cocktail picks and chilled until needed. Ingredients: 1 can pineapple chunks, well drained, or 1 fresh pineapple, cut into chunks 1 packet Cheese cubes (such as The Laughing Cow Mini-Baby Bells) 1 jar maraschino cherries, well drained Short bamboo skewers or cocktail toothpicks Method Thread 2 or 3 pieces of pineapple, a cube of cheese & finally a maraschino cherry onto skewers to make each serving. Cover and chill until serving time. Notes: You can also use other fruits on hand--such as grapes, peach pieces, etc. Number of servings: 4
You have several choices: