One of the things I like about Pei Wei is that it has always been upfront with its nutritional stats. (HERE they are.) So with the husband out of town, I took the teenager out to dinner last night, and I was going to do something unprecedented:

Eat half my entree.

After all, the nutrition stats say that each Pei Wei entree is two servings but how often do you see people split one of those? Not very often, at least from what I've noticed.

In the past, I'd find the entree with the lowest amount of calories and eat all of it while nibbling a little of the brown (of course!) rice. But I wanted to know if I could really just eat half the entree and half the rice.

Guess, what? Not a problem. And I've documented my experiment in pictures.

I ordered the Sweet & Sour Shrimp. I know what you're thinking -- "Sweet & Sour Shrimp, are you crazy? That's a gooey fried disaster!" Well, not at this place. It's not gooey at all, and it's only lightly sweet, mostly from the pineapple chunks. I also always order my entrees there "stock velveted," which means the protein is cooked in stock instead of oil. It saves a ton of calories. This combo (without the rice) is only 170 calories a serving. The rice is another 170 calories a serving. The dish is also gluten-free, for those keeping track.  At right is the entire entree, enough for two (or so they say).

I then grabbed a to-go container, which is kept at the back of the restaurant with the forks for "gringos."

Before I downed even one morsel of rice, I grabbed the serving spoon and shoveled half the rice and half the entree into the container, closed it up and pushed it to the corner of the table.

Then I enjoyed my entree. I didn't have to guess and the uneaten food didn't stare back at me from the plate. It was safe and secure, locked in its little white box.

Below is what half of everything looks like:

And yes, that container called to me all evening but I knew that it'd still be there the next day.

So I ate it for breakfast! (Brown rice is a great breakfast food -- full of fiber, a little protein and whole grain.)

And now for a HealthBuzz:

Back in the day, I watched a lot of Disney Channel. Now that the kid is officially a teenager, it's all ESPN all the time. The song below was a staple on the channel back in the mid-00s (is that what 2007 would be called?). It's great for an interval burst on the elliptical: