Sushirrito. This sushi burrito place is so good. We loved it so much we tried to recreate our own at home. Thank you to Meg for suggesting it! 

Chez Panisse. This place is wonderfully delicious! It’s in Berkeley and was suggested by my friend Melody. We went for lunch because they only serve one thing for dinner and that changes everyday, same with their lunch (for lunch they have 3 or so options), but the options for that particular evening didn’t make us curious. On the other hand, the lunch menu peaked our curiosity and it indeed was fantastic! If you want to go here, make sure to note it’s reservations only, so be sure to call ahead of time.

Tartine. Of course, I had to go here! So many of you suggested it and I am glad you did. I know Bi-rite was nearby, but sadly I didn’t get to go. The line was way too long and I didn’t want to wait. At least it gives me another reason to go back!

Dosa. Delicious! Funnily enough, we didn’t order the dosa! Ben said he could have used more kick in his food, but overall so yummy. I loved the coconut rice so much and I want to try and make that at home now. Thank you Elle for suggesting it! 

Cowgirl Creamery. Open faced grilled cheese totally hit the spot for breakfast right before our long bike ride to Sausalito. Thanks Jess for sharing!

Ice cream in Sausalito. Can you really go wrong with pumpkin pie ice cream in a waffle cone?! Yeah, I didn’t think so. After 8 miles of biking, I think I deserved this.

Italian doughnuts from the Ferry Building. We actually passed this in the morning and I wanted one, but didn’t get one. We came back to the Ferry Building in the afternoon and I made sure I got one. Glad I did!

The Slanted Door. This was my favorite meal during the entire weekend! It was my birthday dinner too, so maybe that made it a bit special. Rule #1 when going to The Slanted Door is make a reservation way ahead of time! I didn’t realize how popular this place is and it is reservations only. We couldn’t get any, but thankfully they serve the full menu at the bar. When we got there the bar was full, so we stood around waiting, we only waited five minutes until someone left, and then sat down. We didn’t wait that long and sitting at the bar didn’t bother me one bit (it’s cozy sitting side by side), but if you want a table, make reservations. The uni, the oysters, the noodles, the fish (and the sauce), the squid, and the sour cream ice cream with figs and strawberry turnover was super uh-mazing! No joke. I’m craving it as I write this. Slanted Door, I miss you!

Burma Superstar. This was the last on the list and we ate it right before we got back on the road. It was good, but again Ben said he could have used more spice (that guy and spice!), but other than that, it was definitely tasty. I loved their chocolate spring rolls with coconut ice cream, which I took to go to eat on the road. We went to the Alameda one right after the flea market, so I don’t think it’s as busy as the SF one. Again, call ahead of time to get your name on a wait list. And thank you to those who suggested this place! 

I was telling my baby sister everything I ate in San Francisco and she was like, “Oh my gosh. All you did was eat!” I really did. There are even a few little places we ate at that aren’t pictured. Ben and I (and the kids) really don’t go out to eat very often. Eating out is just not something we do regularly (maybe once a month, if that), partly because it can be a bit of a challenge to eat out with all 4 kids and partly because it’s more budget friendly for us to have home cooked meals. Though when we go out of town, we like to splurge a bit (and it’s a lot easier to eat out at restaurants sans kids). And pretty much with every meal, I got dessert (and I was the only one who ate it as Ben doesn’t eat dessert). I figured it was my birthday weekend, so why not!

Thank you to all of you for taking your time and sharing suggestions. It totally aided in our planning as did yelp. Ben and I thoroughly enjoyed indulging in such yummy food together. I can’t wait to plan another trip somewhere and go crazy eating! I am sure you San Franciscans have many more places you would recommend and are the total pros in your area, and just based on our short time there, we’re pretty enamored with your eatery options.

Turkey Meatloaf and Mashed Cauliflower and Pumpkin. If you haven’t tried the meatloaf from Skinny Taste, you must. It’s good and easy! I made two batches; one for the kids and one for me and ben. A couple changes I did from the recipe is throwing the onions straight into the meat instead of browning it first, and also in the one for me and ben, I added 1 1/2 tbsp cayenne pepper. Again, we love that spice. I did mashed cauliflower, but then realized we were out of potatoes or potato flakes, so I threw in some canned pumpkin. The combination doesn’t look go together with the meatloaf as far as color (both are kind of orangey), but it really does taste good together.

Sushi Burritos. Inspired from our trip last week to SF and eating Sushirrito. Okay, mine are oddly shaped and just looking at the pictures doesn’t make it look particularly appetizing, but this is a don’t judge a dish by its cover kind of thing. I was hurriedly rolling up our sushi burritos and frankly, I just don’t have time to make every picture look perfect. I’m just a mom who is trying to cook healthy, fresh meals for my family, I cook, put the food on the plate, take a picture (on a white background), then put it on the table and we eat! Despite the strange caterpillar-like-shape, this came out yummy. I studied the ingredients Sushirrito had and kind of added my own based on what we had. It was an experimental dish and we liked it. I’ll do another post sharing the recipe of what went in and this time I will try to roll better. I have no doubt sushi chefs would put my rolling skills to shame because I hardly call my rolling a skill. It’s more like crossing my fingers and hope the whole things stays together!

The rest of the days were spent eating leftovers and other quick things that were put together from random leftovers. Also, I got to escape two evenings in a row and have dinner with some of my friends. I really am so thankful for my friends. It’s always good times when we’re together. Food and friends make a really good combination!

Week 11/12 – 11/16
Monday: Chicken and Vegetable Soup
Tuesday: Paella Valenciana (reader’s recipe)
Wednesday: Black Bean soup
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Pizza night

What’s your favorite soup to make? I’m in a soup mood!

Fish tacos. I made a breading mix from panko bread crumbs, whole wheat bread crumbs, a little bit of cornmeal, and a pinch of salt. We had some white cod, dipped it in egg whites, then coated it with the bread crumb mixture and lightly pan fried it in a skillet. I also chopped up some serranos and onions, and stuck that in the oven until they were slightly crispy. We top our fish tacos with the avocado, cilantro, and the crispy serranos and onions (we omit this bit of spice from the girls’ tacos). It pretty much always comes out yummy!

Oven Fried Chicken with Mashed Sweet Potatoes. It’s not a very colorful looking dish as it is all pretty much the same color, but I tell you, it’s really good! With this chicken recipe (and I throw in lots of extra ground cayenne pepper to makes our more spicy), I don’t even miss fried chicken at all!

Vietnamese Chicken Pho. I highly recommend trying this! And if you have any recipes you would recommend, please do let me know. I would love to try your recipe out and blog about it!

Week 11/5 – 11/9
Monday: Sushi Burritos (inspired by Sushirrito)
Tuesday: Turkey Meatloaf with Mashed Cauliflower
Wednesday: Black Bean Soup
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Pizza night

What was your favorite meal you had last week and what do you have planned for this week?

Vietnamese Chicken Pho

Ingredients for broth:
1. 1-2 tbsp salt (I used 1 tbsp)
2. 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
3. 9 – 12 star anise
4. 1 tbsp Better Than Bullion chicken stock concentrate (no MSG)
5. rice stick noodles
6. 1 large brown onion
7. 1 large chunk of fresh ginger
8. (1) 4 – 5 lb. chicken: wash, remove giblets and discard, keep the neck for the broth (not pictured cause raw chicken ain’t pretty!)
Directions for the broth:
1. Place the washed chicken (and neck), along with all the star anise in a pot, cover with water and start to boil chicken.
2. While the chicken is cooking, cut the onion and ginger (with the skin on for both) in half and char the onion and ginger over an open flame. You will start to smell the onion and ginger and the skin will burn. Let it roast for about 10 minutes or until you can smell the onion and ginger. This can also be done on a grill or in the oven until it is a golden brown.
3. Remove the burned onion and ginger skin and discard, then place the ginger and onion into the pot with the chicken.
 4. Add the salt and sugar. Continue boiling the chicken until the chicken is fully cooked and the meat easily pulls apart from the bone. Takes about an hour.
5. Once chicken is fully cooked, remove the chicken and let it cool for a few minutes. Once it is cool, remove the meat from the bones and put the bones back in the broth and set to simmer.
 6. Shred the cooked chicken and set aside. We like to keep the dark and white meat separate because Ben and I prefer the white meat, while the girls have no preference and could use the extra fat from the dark meat.
 7. Add 1 tbsp of Better Than Bullion into the broth. Taste the broth and add salt if needed. The broth should have a slight sweetness from the chicken and not be overly salty like chicken noodle soup.
8. Cover and allow broth to simmer for at least another hour, but like with all soups, the longer it simmers, the better it tastes.
9. Strain the both and bring broth back to the pot. This removes all unnecessary bones and chunks. Can also skip this and when you ladle the soup into your boil, just be mindful not to let any chunks in.
10. When ready to serve your broth, bring it back to a boil, so it is nice and hot when you ladle it into your bowl.

Note: You are using the whole chicken, so the soup is a bit oily. We wanted to healthify it a bit and cut out some of the unnecessary fat, so we resisted eating it once it was done (I know it’s hard to do!), refrigerated it overnight so that the fat would harden and accumulate on top, then proceeded to scoop the fat out and discard.

Toppings for soup:
1. side of hoisin sauce (the dark colored one) and a side of siracha hot sauce (the red one)
2. chopped cilantro
3. chopped green onions
4. slices of lime
5. soybean sprouts
6. jalapeno/serrano peppers (we love spice!)
7. basil
Directions to put together soup:
1. Prepare noodles according to the package.
2. Chop all your toppings you want for your soup.
3. Place cooked noodles in a bowl, add shredded chicken on top, and ladle some of the hot broth into the bowl. If you like, grind fresh pepper on top.
4. Garnish your bowl with all your desired toppings and enjoy!

A great thing about this whole blogging thing, is learning from and getting inspired by others. I first met Liz when I ran The Color Run with my friend Lance. She was on his team and I joined the team, not knowing anyone else, and when he was introducing me to everyone, Liz was so sweet and told me she kind of already knew me thanks to the internet. I tell you, when you meet a blog reader/, it’s like seeing an old friend again and you cut out all that weird awkward stuff and you just pretty much start chatting. At least that’s how it happened with Liz. Liz and I have hung out a couple times after and she is a great cook and baker! I was inspired by this recipe that she shared with me to start this new little feature… Reader’s Recipes!

She learned how to make pho from her grandmother and is so kind to pass the recipe along. It is totally legit and Ben and I love it so much! We’ve made it twice already and will probably make it a lot more once it really cools down over here. If you have never had pho, try it, it really is quite delicious!

Now, this is where you all come in. I would love to try more of your recipes! Do you have a favorite recipe you made up? Maybe something that has been passed down through the generations? Or just a favorite recipe of yours you like to make over and over again? If so, I would love for you to share it with me and I would love to try it and then share it with everyone else. Kind of like those recipe chains that used to go around. We are totally open to trying all types of food (and then healthifying when needed), but I would just love to try new recipes and then pass them along to everyone else. If you do have a recipe to share, leave the name of your recipe here and make sure your comment links up to your email. I will email you if I choose your recipe and you can share the entire recipe that way. I want to try and include a reader’s recipe in my meal planning at least once a week or once every other week, it will depend on my time and if I get a lot of suggestions.

I will make it, post it, and then link back to the originator of the recipe (if you have somewhere to link back to). If it’s something you fancy, then try it! I know some of you asked about this pho recipe when it was in our meal plan, so finally here it is. If you try it, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. I’m pretty sure you would give it a thumbs up too! Thanks Liz for being our first recipe!!!

So tell me friends, do you have a recipe that I could try?

Shrimp & Chive Dumplings. This was first made for this and it is surprisingly easy and so delicious. It was our favorite dumplings out of the various we made that day and so it’s the one I choose to make when I have a dumpling itch. I need to stock up on more wrappers so that dumpling dinners can happen more often.

Malaysian Chicken Curry. I have made this before too, but this time I used a different (hot!) curry powder and boy was it hot! I also made a batch without the spice for the girls and they weren’t fans, but Ben and I totally were. If it’s got spice (and a lot of it), it’s almost guaranteed we will love it.

Steak and Tequila Lime Chicken Fajitas. Fast and good. I had a steak and chicken breast option with lots of bell peppers and onions, throw in some avocado and pretty much everyone is a fan!

Vietnamese Chicken Pho. Oh. My. Gosh. Ben and I love eating pho and we tried making it once, but it cost so much (and took so much time!) to make that we figured we’ll just get it out to eat instead of make it again. Then I met Liz (Hi Liz!) and she told me about this recipe that her family has been making for years and it only takes 2 hours! And by golly, after two hours, I had pho! It was so good. Now, it was a bit oilier than we would prefer because the broth was made with a whole chicken, but next time to eliminate some of that fat, I would make the soup, then let it cool and put it the fridge so that the fat could separate, scoop the fat out, and then voila, it’s much better. The flavors are spot on and this is something I plan on making often. We love it that much!

Breakfast Pizza. We we’re pretty low on food in our fridge because we needed to make a run to the market, but I just grabbed things we had and experimented. I had some dough that I made a couple weeks ago and just froze, then I sprinkled herbs, added olives, sprinkled feta cheese, mozzarella, eggs, and shaved sweet potato and we had dinner. It was eh. I think I didn’t like the olives and I typically love olives, but something didn’t taste right to me. We all ate it, but I don’t think I will make this again.

Mexican Breakfast Pizza. Another experimental kind of dinner and I like this breakfast pizza much better than the previous. This one had fresh dough, soy-rizo (soy Mexican sausage), mozzarella, eggs, avocado, and lots of cilantro. I think the soy-rizo brought the flavor and we all really liked it. Plus, it had some spicy kick from the sausage, so that helped make it taste good for me.

Vietnamese Shrimp Pho. I wanted to try and make a shrimp pho after making the chicken one and I combined a few different recipes I found online, while sticking to some of the basics that Liz gave me in her recipe. This was a vegetable based broth and Ben says it came out creamier than he’s used to, but we both gobbled it up with seconds and thirds, so obviously we liked it. It is definitely good, but we like the broth of the chicken pho better. The girls really like the noodles and Brave was all about the shrimp.

These are some of the meals from the past couple weeks. I like cooking for my family and I am learning how to experiment. Not that it always comes out great, but I’m learning.

Week 10/22 – 10/26
Monday: Oven Fried Chicken with Asparagus and Sweet Potato
Tuesday: Turkey Meatloaf with Mashed Cauliflower (made here)
Wednesday: Cold Soba Salad with Dried Shiitake Dressing
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Pizza (or sushi)

Still need to get better at planning my meals around veggies. Ben does all the grocery shopping, so he picks all the veggies out and I usually plan around what he gets and never have recipes in mind ahead of time. It usually is roasted broccoli or mashed cauliflower because you can’t really go wrong with those options can you?! What are some of your favorite veggie dishes? I need some ideas!

Oh man. My last family meal post was over a month and a half ago, right before Ben went on vacation. He was on vacation for three weeks and during that time, I handed all my cooking duties over to him. He is much better in the kitchen than I am! We didn’t really meal plan and he was just going with the flow. There is one significant difference when he is in charge of the kitchen… we eat a heck of a lot more vegetables. Seriously. We all love it too. I think one of you commented once, that you meal plan around your vegetable dish. I really like that. I think that will be a new goal. Well, for next week. This week I am going with my usual and next week I will plan my meals around a vegetable dish. Thank you to whoever shared that tip (if it was you, please let me know here so I can properly thank you!).

The pictures above are just a little sampling of things we have eaten these past few weeks. Besides a lot of veggies (though I get too many pictures of them), we had a whole lot of homemade pizza. The girls got really good at making them (see above pictures). With Ben back at work now, I have slowly started taking back the reins in the kitchen again, so expect my regular meal planning menus to be back.

Week 8/8 – 8/12
Monday: Chicken Fried Rice and Bok Choy
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Tequila Lime Chicken and Steak Fajitas
Thursday: Chicken Pho (my friend Liz gave me a recipe that I am so excited to try out!)
Friday: Wedding food (My best guy friend is getting married this day, so we’ll be busy celebrating!)

With it being Autumn and all, I probably should start getting into the seasonal foods, but it’s still unbearably hot over here that I can’t imagine anything but Summer, so it’s preventing me from getting in the Autumn spirit. Ugh. We even had lunch the other day and for music the girls requested their Rudolph album. With it being over 100 degrees outside, though I obliged, that just felt wrong. When the weather does finally cool down, what are some good Fall recipes you recommend?