food on friday: social dining {a.k.a. when the diet gets left behind}

I had a friend make an interesting comment about the original food diet the other day. He said something like, "it sounds like a good thing, but the biggest thing about it is that it makes it difficult to be social."

I agreed with him.  It's not easy to eat a special diet in a group setting.

I told him that's why we decided early on, back when we decided to make the big diet change- if we were at someone else's home or party, we would eat what we were served, and if we were to go out for special occasions, we would eat and enjoy whatever food we wanted to eat. Life and people are more important than food.

Food plays a big role in social events, and it's important to us to enjoy this life and the friends we are given. :)

We are very blessed to be free of medical needs that make a special diet necessary. We choose to eat vegan foods while we are at home, and if we go out, we try to follow those rules unless it's important to the situation or to us to eat whatever we want at that time.

So I'm still doing the original food diet, for the most part. :) The other part has been lots of special celebrations! :D We've been busy celebrating life, milestones, and good things {like anniversaries!} for the last few weeks, and it's a good thing. :)

In fact, we hosted a little dinner party shower a couple of weeks ago, and I made pasta with chicken and sausage:

along with homemade marinara and sun-dried tomato basil cream sauce:

My sister-in-law made italian creme cupcakes....

and we got to visit with these lovely people who are being blessed with twin girls in the next month or two!

{and their cutie-patootie Della!}

I definitely ate more than my fair share of pasta, chicken, bread, and cupcakes. I think we both did:

And you know what? We had a wonderful time! {And I think eating vegan foods may make regular food taste even better!}

The pasta and meat were really good, and the bread, salad, and cupcakes were even better {thank you, Jolinda and Cayse!}. It was so much fun eating and enjoying time with our sweet friends!

And honestly, this is so what I wanted to do with the cupcakes too, Della:

They were YUM!

Here's to good food, good friends, and new babies!  :D 

{and going back to the ofd when the parties are over! ;)}

Q: When you're on a special diet, how do you handle social meals? 

I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas!