Poconos - The food!

As a Rasmussen it's impossible to vacation without overstuffing yourself with high flavor (high fat!) food. It's just part of the experience. Seriously, the whole reason I'm doing Weight Watchers is because in the nearly 15 years of being a Rasmussen I've gained a good 75 pounds. So YOU do the math... :) It's fun though.

This vacation was no exception ... except that I didn't overeat anything (except maybe the curly fries on Thursday night, but I paid dearly for that on Friday morning...) I managed to find something good to eat at every restaurant we visited.

Here's some of the food highlights:

For some reason I did not take any pictures at Rob's favorite restaurant, Terra Cottage -- probably because we went there as soon as we arrived and I was too busy calming down crazy children who ONLY wanted to play with their Cousin Tommy, who hadn't even arrived yet (WHEN WILL HE BE HERE? WHERE IS HE RIGHT NOW, etc. etc.)

On Tuesday night we ventured out to a restaurant with the girls AFTER they'd spent most of the day playing with their cousin. So they only asked what he was eating for dinner about 4 times.

In this picture we're enjoying (seriously Hannah is, too, despite the way it looks in this picture) the food and ambiance of Bell' Ago. The restaurant's deck overlooks Lake Harmony and the Split Rock resort and had just enough breeze to make dinner delightful on a very hot day:

Rob (and Hannah) about to dig into his appetizer, a caprese salad. My entree was chicken a'olio, which was a boneless breast sauteed with sweet onion, roasted red peppers, broccoli and red skin potatoes in olive oil and garlic. It was served with positively soupy broccoli, which I avoided, but the rest of the meal was delicious:

The girls had Macaroni and Cheese for their main course, but they were really ALL about the huge ice cream sundae for dessert......which was good to the last drop:Rob has a friend who owns a restaurant/bar called Cuz N Joe's Place in Conyngham, PA, and we stopped by to have dinner. Here's Marie with Rob as he waited for his super huge cheesesteak (I also had a super huge southwest grilled chicken salad):The girls had fun reconnecting with Emily, who they met last year. All three girls will be starting 1st grade this year, so there was much talk of iCarly, Jonas Brothers and SpongeBob. They girls got the chicken tenders and fries and ate every single thing on their plates:Terry (on the left) visited for a day with her son (and my nephew as well as the only current hope for a new generation of golfers) and we went to the Sunset Green (at the Split Rock golf club) for lunch. Here, I had half of my chicken panini sandwich -- very delicious, but with all the other food I was taking home half of every day, I never got to finish that other half. My sister Beanie (Tina) is in middle between my mom and Terry. I don't have an pictures from our lunch at Friendlys the next day. It's a tradition that my mom, Ann, Beanie and I do every year after we finish shopping at the outlets. I had a grilled chicken sandwich at Friendlys, and left half the bun and most of the fries behind. Beanie drank an entire black and white milkshake right in front of me:Piggy's! This is the girls absolute favorite place to eat, and they had lunch there twice during the week. The restaurant has a little gift shop where each year the girls select a toy if they've been good on the vacation (which happily they always are, although their behavior the day AFTER vacation usually leaves much to be desired...) You can see my lunch right there in the picture -- a couple of scrambled eggs, homefries and toast. I only really ate the eggs, not because I didn't like the rest or even because of my diet, but because of the curly fries I ate the previous evening (no picture of those) that upset my stomach for much of the next day. :( The girls had waffles (Hannah's was plain, Lizzie's with blueberries) and Rob had the eggs lunch, too. Only he ate all of his. Plus some of Lizzie's waffle.We always have at least one meal all together. This year we went back to Sunset Green where I had some grilled salmon and absolutely delicious sauteed vegetables and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Here's the whole gang getting ready to order. For those who might not know all the family players (and many of them are missing from this picture) they are (left to right around the table), my niece Brenna, my sister-in-law Ann, my nephew Tommy, my brother T.A., my mom, my dad, my sister Tina, Hannah, Lizzie and Rob.Just in case you didn't believe me about the excessive eating, here's Rob's appetizer- a seafood martini. You can tell by the looks on Hannah and Lizzie's faces that they are pretty sure Dad's not going to be sharing it with them (to be fair though, he did give them each a shrimp):And finally, here's Brenna trying to steal some of Tommy's dessert (which was the molten chocolate cake):In other food news, we went to Hog Heaven at least once (I didn't get anything), Dunkin' Donuts a few times, ate a lot of sandwiches, popsicles and salads and with the exception of those d*mn curly fries a wonderful gastronomical time was had by all!

Next blog: Waterpark!!