Slimfast vs. Take-Out?

The Strawberries ‘n Cream Slimfast in my cabinet at work did not appeal to me today. In fact, I find that flavor repulsive. It doesn’t taste like real strawberries, and the only way to consume an entire can is to refrigerate it to near freezing and then chug it all down as quickly as possible. The grocery store was out of my usual Milk Chocolate flavor, so I decided against my best judgment to try something new. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a whole 6-pack of the nasty stuff.

I hope the people at Unilever are reading this. If so, listen up: diet food won’t appeal to anyone unless it tastes good! Not so good as to make you want to consume the entire 6-serving package all at once, mind you. Just good enough to make me want to eat it again will do. I crave chocolate on a daily basis, so they did make a wise choice in using that flavor in their products.

Because I avoided the Slimfast today, I decided to try a new Vietnamese restaurant near my place of business. I wish I had taken my camera with me today so I could show you all how good the presentation was, albeit was in a Styrofoam box. I guess that is my excuse to eat there again. Perhaps I will have to try each dish on the menu, in order to get pictures of them all… hmmm… that’s a concept… I will have to think on that a bit… Well, here's my review of the restaurant:

The Rice Box on Hwy 10 in Ramsey, MN is definitely worth a try, if you like Vietnamese food – or just Asian, in general. The menu has a wide selection of dishes ranging from mild to spicy, with traditional foods like lemongrass and of course things that anyone would recognize such as sweet and sour chicken. There is a definite emphasis on “fresh” in the wording of their menu, and the dish I ordered was awesome in that aspect.

The typical Styrofoam to-go box was half-full of a divine sweet and sour chicken in a sauce that I would describe as light and not too sweet, with the perfect balance of acidic tartness one would expect in a sweet and sour. The chicken strips are all-white breast meat, lightly battered and fried, although not greasy at all – they must have actually drained off the fat! Large chunks of fresh pineapple and green pepper are added to the mix. The other half of the box contained a generous portion of white rice and a very fresh salad of lettuce, tomato and sliced mild white onion. I could live on egg rolls, so of course I ordered one on the side, and that was great, too – with the thin, crispy shell fried till golden but not overdone. The interior was not the bland, flavorless egg roll filling that you might expect from a grocery store deli or a frozen, pre-packaged product, but this was really good, the kind of flavor that can’t be reproduced en masse from a factory kitchen.
Not to mention that the service was fast and friendly. I will definitely go there again. Of course I have to – I did promise pictures, right?