Jeff and I don’t eat out much.  Generally we feel its too expensive for so-so quality.  I like to cook and we both like to eat what I cook, so eating out isn’t something we do.  Yesterday, however, we did decide to eat lunch out.  This may have been our third meal out for 2008 and the first two were work related functions for one of us.

We hit the book sale as promised (it was a great disappointment - the first time I’ve said that in the 8 years I’ve been going).  On the way home, Jeff said we should stop at this new place called “The Pita Pit”, several of the guys he works with had been raving about it.  We figured it’d be a fun treat.  Jeff had the “Dagwood” pita which I think was a bit like a club sandwich and I had the Falafel.  I haven’t had falafel in a long time and was looking forward to it.  Since it was a treat we decided to have the combo which included a bag of chips and a drink, being a treat we ordered Cokes.  The total bill came to just under $16.00. 

Maybe that’s about standard for drive-thru, I don’t know, but it seemed a little steep to us.  The food was so-so, not a place we’d eat again, so the price seemed even higher.  However, worse than the price was how we felt the rest of the day.  Lethargic, at best.  We both felt drained and honestly hungry at the same time.  We were tired and both of us kept grazing the dried fruits and nuts in the pantry to fill up.

In the end, I think I learned that while eating out can be a treat and should be a treat.  We just have to be extremely choosy in where we decide to have those treats.  We need to pick places that have a good reputation for whole food ingredients and from scratch cooking.  We also need to avoid the Cokes no matter how much of a treat we’re having.  We don’t drink soda as a general rule, its not something we stock in our pantry and no doubt it was the sugar rush and inevitable crash that hurt us more than the rest of the so-so meal.