Jan 2nd and 3rd- I almost lose the bet..

Yesterday, I woke up around 11 and made myself a bagel, an over easy egg and the left over strip steak. I picked up some soup from my mom's house around 6 or so and had two bowls of that for dinner. It was a roast beef soup with carrots, potatoes, rice, noodles and of course roast beef. Around 8:30 Jody and I met up with a group of friends at a local Chinese/Japanese byob for dinner.  This is of course a restaurant that is allowed under the paramters of the bet. I got a spicy tuna roll and the Szechwan delight which I believe was a pork, beef and shrimp dish with veggies and white rice. Everything was very delicious. 

Today I didn't eat my first meal til around 2 pm. I had another bowl of the roast beef soup and I made some mozzarella sticks and jalepeno poppers for Jody and me. Mozzarella sticks and poppers are a more recent addition to most fast food menus. As a Burger King employee in high school, I got to witness the addition of these two items circa 2000 with the introduction of the BK cravers menu. I thought they were a delicious addition to the menu and they seemed to sell well however BK shelved the cravers menu a few years later. Although there aren't many fast food restaurants to choose from, here is my list of the best mozzarella sticks in the business:

3. Burger King (when they had them)

2. Sonic

1. Arbys

Coincedentally, Arbys also has the best marinara sauce as well. Sonic's marinara sauce has a bit of a weird taste to it. McDonalds also used to have mozzarella sticks (they may still have them). I had them twice and thought they were absolutely terrible which isn't surprising to me considering I feel McDonalds is the worst fast food restaurant. 

I'm not sure if I wrote about this before, but Matt and I decided before the New Year started that the qualifying factor for whether a restaurant is considered a chain that is not allowed is if there are more than 50 locations in the US. So back to today and how I almost lost the bet. We went over to Jody's brothers house around 5:30 to celebrate his birthday with some pizza and cake. Earlier in the week when I had learned of this event I thought about whether I'd be able to eat the pizza and had decided that I likely would be able to because they usually order from a local pizzeria. When we got there I saw that they had ordered from a place called Pat's Pizza (http://www.patsfamilyrestaurant.com/site/index.jsp?go=locator)

I knew there were a few in the area but I figured I was fine to eat the pizza. Right before I was about to grab a slice I thought I better be safe and had Jody's brother check their website. As you can see on the site it says choose from one of our 55 locations! Thank god I didn't take a bite of that pizza or I would have lost the bet on the third day! It was pretty painful sitting there starving watching everyone eat that delicious pizza. It was made even worse by Jody's brothers 11 year old nephew who somehow managed to bring up the bacon cheddar gordita crunch from taco bell several times while stuffing his face with pizza. 

I ended up waiting until 12:30 to eat due to extenuating circumstances. We are leaving for Florida tomorrow morning so we didn't really have any food in the house so I went to the grocery store and bought a Kashi margherita pizza and a Lean Cuisine chicken panini. We eat the Kashi pizza's on a regular basis and they are very delicious. This was the first time I had the Lean cuisine panini's and I thought it was just okay. 

The trip should be quite a challenge trying to figure out where I can eat and where I can't eat. We are gonna drive 9-10 hours and stop halfway and stay the night in a hotel tomorrow and finish the trip to Florida Monday. I'll be sure to update while I'm down there. 

Tre