Even though Trevor and I both love to cook dinner and enjoy cooking together, we love Friday nights when we go out to eat. I probably love it more for not having to do dishes and clean up (we don't have a dishwasher).
Something you may not know about us is that ever since we have been married (and even when we were engaged if I remember correctly) we have almost always split a meal when going out to eat. Not only is this more economical for us, but we do it more for portion control. We both have the tendency to finish whatever is on our plate or eat more than we need to. We used to say, "Oh, I'll save some for lunch tomorrow," and then we end up eating most or all of it. We both have experiences eating at buffets when we were younger and feeling so sick afterwards because we ate too much. Needless to say we rarely eat at buffets now.
When we first started this, I remember sometimes leaving a restaurant a little hungry. If we were still hungry 30 minutes after eating, we would promise each other we would get something else to eat. Almost always, though, we didn't need to do this. We realized it just took our bodies a while to tell us we were in fact full. It took a while for my body to get used to this notion, but it has worked great for us (we are not implying everyone else needs to do this). We've stopped asking the waiter if a certain item on the menu would be enough for both of us, because their response is always, "I guess if you both aren't very hungry..." (we understand they just want a bigger tip). Whenever we got it, it ended up being enough food for us.
Speaking of restaurants, for those living in Utah, on Friday night we went to a Mongolian Grill we discovered about a month ago in Springville right by Walmart. Those kinds of restaurants don't really exist around here. It's kind of funny because all of the waiters except one speak very little English (makes it all the more authentic!). They had good service, though, and the waiters are all really nice. I remember the last time we went we asked what "crystal sauce" was on the Moo Goo Gai Pan, it took a while for us to explain our question and understand it was "cornstarch and water". We both laughed when we finally figured it out. They have really good food and they give you huge portions! We like it because not everything on the menu is battered and fried and we also love stir fry! So if anyone is in Utah and wants to try a new restaurant we would recommend this place. They also have a buffet if that interests you, but we have only ordered off the menu.
