Victory over All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

A Keto Win

Every month my team goes out to eat at a different restaurant. This week, it was the locally famous all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant Little Pigs. It’s a patriotic country place that features the flags of each branch of the Armed Services on the walls, along with the “Thin Blue Line” flag and a flag for MIA-POWs. And they serve the three styles of barbecued pork sauce predominant in South Carolina: tomato-based, mustard-based, and vinegar-pepper.

Buffet means minefield

Unfortunately, meat isn’t all they serve. There’s also the tantalizing display of casserole-type foods and starches that are mainstays of the Southern diet. Here’s what I had to pass by in order to stay on my Keto way of eating:

• Fried chicken
• Wings
• Rice
• Hash
• Tomato pie
• Hush puppies
• Macaroni and cheese (this is considered a vegetable in South Carolina)
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Candied Yams
• Corn
• Candied Yams
• Cut Corn
• And for dessert:
• Banana pudding
• Chocolate pudding

What did you eat?

Believe it or not, I was able to dine quite nicely at the BBQ restaurant, and not feel too deprived. (Although I did sigh several times over the tomato pie I couldn’t have.) I filled my plate with broccoli salad made with cheddar cheese and mayo, green beans, and three types of pork: mustard-based BBQ, vinegar and pepper-based BBQ, and plain pulled pork. It was divine. And best of all – my teammates who ate all the carbs were falling asleep later that afternoon at work. Me? I had no problem powering through the day.