Thai Pastry & Restaurant II, Chicago

Posted by Nicole

Yesterday was a good last day of vacation. After eating our fair share of french vanilla ice cream, chocolate covered raisins, peanuts, and Reese’s Pieces on Tuesday night, we were ready to hit the gym on Wednesday morning.

Our Aunt Cindy let us have a 2-day pass to her gym, Lifetime Fitness. We were thankful that the employees at Chicago’s Lifetime Fitness were cooperative and let us split the “One person, 2 Day Pass” into a “Two person, 1 day each Passes.” The gym is basically magical. Tons of cardio and lifting machines, a pool, a beautiful locker room, lots of gymnasium space, and a huge waterslide. I wish we could join a Lifetime Fitness center in San Jose!!!

I had explained to Lauren that morning that I felt like I lost all of my exercise mojo. I didn’t feel like working out again….. EVER. With the help of some of my gym motivation tips, I forced myself to spend a good 40 minutes on the treadmill. I managed to run three sets of running and completed 3.25 miles overall. This will be added to my Week 5 Running Goal of 20 MILES. The big 2-0! And, I only have Wednesday-Saturday to complete the goal– it’ll be a challenge for sure.

Lauren decided to walk/run for a while on the treadmill and did a 5K. She then did 15 minutes of the stairmaster doing speed intervals.

Together, we did lots of ab work with a 12-lb ball (for me) and 10-lb ball (for Lo). We did a lot of reps in a form similar to this:

(Source)

I also forced her to join me in some partner work… basically tossing the 12-lb ball to me, then I squat, then I lift the ball above my head, then I throw it back. We each did about 15 reps of this. We then did 30 squats. Feeeeeel the BURN!

After showering and packing our bags for the airport, we made a lunch stop. After Yelping for a nearby cafe, we headed towards one of the Italian cuisine cafes on the way to the airport. We actually ended up eating at one of the Thai restaurants near the cafe- Thai Pastry & Restaurant II (7350 W. Lawrence, Harwood Heights, IL 60706). The restaurant offers lunch,dinner, carry out, delivery, and catering (it is BYOB). It looked kind-of-sketchy from the outside, but when we walked inside, it felt like a whole new atmosphere!

Lauren and I both ordered the Lunch Special ($6.75) “Selected Entree with Appetizer of the Day and Soup of the Day, Choice of Chicken, Beef, Pork, Tofu or Shrimp.” Each of our dishes began with a little soup appetizer and a vegetarian egg roll. Lauren’s soup had little bits of chicken, whereas mine had little pieces of fried tofu. The egg rolls stole the show! They were on top of a sugary-sweet sauce that made Lauren say, “The egg rolls should be the dessert!” Yup, we liked ‘em.

For my entree, I ordered the Mix Vegetable with Rice. Instead of fried tofu, I got extra vegetables. It was REALLY oily, but the oil actually made the rice quite tasty. I loved the veggies too, minus the mini corns (but I gave them to Lauren).

Lauren selected the Panang Curry (with shrimp for extra $1.50) with Steamed Rice. She was upset that the dish was skimpy on the vegetables. It wasn’t all bad though, the restaurant was very generous with the panang curry and it flavored the steamed rice very nicely. The jalapenos added some spice, which is always a good thing. Also, the shrimp were fresh and relatively large.

Where are the veggies???!

For dessert, we each received a little piece of cake. We aren’t sure what the dessert was, but Lauren described it as a “Tres Leches” cake flavor. To be honest, I did not like mine at all, but I’m weird sometimes. Lauren sure liked it!

Then we roamed around a nearby dollar store, even though most of the items were MORE than a dollar! Crazysauce.

And then……. we had GELATO because we like to eat dessert at least 3 times per day. More on that from Lauren ;)

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Q4U: Are you a fan of curry? What is your favorite- red, green, yellow?