Healthy or nah? (review Thai Food Café & Saigon Café)

Hi everyone! The past week has been one full of social commitments with loved ones. I mentioned in a previous post that one of my favorite ways to spend qt is by having dinner. Of course it is not easy trying to eat according to a semi strict diet (e.g. Paleo) when eating out, because you never know how much sugar, sodium, or MSG is dumped in your food during preparation. The only thing you have control over (except for picking a different restaurant) is opting for healthier choices on the menu. But I honestly did not do that, lol. The "healthy" part about the dinners I had is that they were at restaurants serving Asian cuisine.

First up is the Vietnamese dinner my so and I had at Saigon Café the other day. We had the rice paper rolls with shrimp and pork for starters, and split the crêpe with shrimp and pork, beef phô, and garlic lemongrass ribs for main. For dessert I had the coconut pudding with stewed bananas. I always enjoy the food at this restaurant, although their rice paper rolls are not the best I have had so far. I would have preferred the pork to have some roasted skin on it and the rolls to be a bit bigger. I can really recommend you the crêpe though!

Today I also met up with my childhood friends to catch up, and we decided to eat at a Thai casual styled restaurant. For starters we had the mix of entrées (meatballs, chicken skewer and sausage) and coconut soup with mushrooms. For main we had the pad Thai, massaman curry, and pad king, and for dessert we split the sticky coconut rice with mango.

You would think that Thai food is fairly safe for me to eat. As far as I know, Thai cuisine is known for cooking with coconut milk, which does not contain lactose. Although the food was delicious (the entrées being better than the mains), somehow my body still managed to reject it and refuse to digest properly. Because my friends did not have any symptoms I still do not think I had food poisoning, but seen as I did not ingest any milk based products (from my knowledge) I am still quite confused as to what caused my (acute) condition.

This is just one of the many times I have had problems with my bowels that cannot be explained, and which therefore fall somewhere under the category of "Irritable Bowel Syndrome". I guess that was enough non-Paleo eating for the coming weeks, although I did notice a major change in my eating pattern already. Namely, I eat way less than I am used to! I usually stuff myself full and look about 3 months pregnant after I am finished eating. But now I tend to eat until I am content. Progress is showing!

www.saigon-cafe.nl

www.thaifoodcafe.nl

Lobi,