Help! Cheeeesy Potatoes!

Saturday I had a party at my house, so we decided to go out to dinner so we wouldn't mess up the kitchen.  We picked Ruby Tuesday, a midwest chain, because we had a coupon there.

I decided on a small steak, but the side choices were cheesy potatoes and broccoli. All I could see was fat fat fat, and I eat broccoli at home all the time. Then the waitress said we could choose any sides we wanted.

I ordered Grilled Zucchini and Tomato with Vinaigrette. Then I traded a couple of slices of tomato for a few of my husband's sugar snap peas. It was beautiful on the plate and tasted pretty good too. I wasn't very hungry, so I saved about half the steak and zucchini.  My husband didn't finish off his rice pilaf so we stuck it in a box with the rest of my food.

This made the perfect balanced lunch for Sunday.

Unfortunately, I think I drank 500 calories of sparkling apple juice at the party!

Here's the recipe for inexpensive sparkling apple juice:
1 can frozen apple juice (12 oz.)
3 cans seltzer water
Makes about 48 oz. sparkling juice.

I guess the other ladies liked it too, because I had three bottles of flavored soda, and they drank about a third of the bottle of strawberry soda, and about 3 quarts of the sparkling juice.

The sparkling juice can be done with club soda, but I cut out extra salt wherever I can and I like the purer flavor of the seltzer water. It's good with cranberry and other juice flavors too.

I only had one small plate of snacks at the party, plus a little extra fruit, not filling up and practically making a second dinner out of it as I have been prone to do.  Yay for me!