Favorite Restaurant Meals: Olive Garden Capellini Pomodoro

I like to go Olive Garden. Most of Olive Garden's meals have a lot of calories, so I end up splitting my meals into several servings to make the calorie counts more reasonable. I typically go there for three things: a bowl of minestrone, capellini pomodoro and a single breadstick.

The last time I had my favorite meal, I ordered the capellini pomodoro with grilled chicken added (thereby combining the pasta with a lean protein).

Pictured: capellini pomodoro with chicken
The soup is 100 calories. The breadstick is 150 calories. Without chicken, the dinner portion of capellini pomodoro is 840 calories. That sounds terrible, but I usually only eat about 1/4 of the pasta at the restaurant. That comes to about 460 calories for the soup, pasta and bread, not including the chicken (which is fairly low in calories).

Pictured: Tour of Italy
My husband isn't counting calories, so he had the Tour of Italy for 1450 calories. Fortunately, he brought 2/3 of his meal home, too.

I divide my remaining pasta into three servings and pair them with vegetables or salad. The great thing about pasta is that it usually tastes better (at least to me) as leftovers.