#MomAndDadInCali

I had every intention of having this post scheduled and ready to go early this morning. Until I fell asleep on the couch last night while we were watching House of Cards. I blame it on the beer all the excitement 😉

We’ve been having such a great time with my parents here. I don’t mean to leave you hanging, but hey, life just gets in the way. So let’s do a little recap so far.

Thursday

Post-barre muscles with Mom!

Farmers’ market lunch.

Mmm!

Salmon & Hamachi Kama. A new favorite.

Friday

Ooh that pizza..

WE WILL NOT!

Saturday

A fun trip to Oxbow Public Market. Let the drinking begin!

Sunday

Blue Bottle Coffee.. strongest in the world! Ha.

My 2 favorite Orioles fans.. right?

The best chick peas ever.

Sunny day selfie.

The beginning of the end.

The best ending to our beer-filled excursions. Our most favorite ice cream from Ici.

Now excuse me while we go drink and eat some more!

Food for Thought

What’s your favorite part of having company?

Liquid Diet

Hi friends! Hope you had a great weekend. We certainly did over here.. it started out a little like this:

We hit up a new-to-us restaurant for happy hour called Eureka! I planned on sticking with the 1 glass of wine but when I saw they had a Bear Republic Racer 5 with a shot of rye, I couldn’t pass it up. And I’m so glad I didn’t.. what a great combo! After dinner, we made our way over to another bar where a little more beer, a shared slice of pizza, and gelato happened. So much for sticking with 1 glass of wine, huh? 😉 It had been quite some time since Nathan and I went bar hopping and it was a really fun night.

That night that subsequently resulted in a nice, quiet Saturday morning.

Got myself all snuggled up on the couch before hitting up the farmers’ market, wandering Berkeley, and having a relaxing Saturday that ended in our favorite Indian food.

And if we didn’t get enough on Friday, we had a nice Sunday Funday. We made our way into the city and grabbed brunch at Pork Store Cafe.

The mimosa was a surprise.. Nathan decided to order them and I put up no fight at all. Besides, it paired perfectly with the fabulous benedict with avocado and grilled tomato. Yesssss! We took to some more relaxing, this time in Dolores Park.

Never forgetting our sunglasses again! Haha. The day started a bit gray, as usual these days, but turned out to be perfect weather. It was so nice to just sit in a park and enjoy the day and people watch. It was a really great weekend and I’m sorry to see it end. But it just means we’re that much closer to heading home again! 🙂

Weekly Meal Plan

Sunday – Grilled balsamic chicken thighs, roasted brussels sprouts, & balsamic basil heirloom tomato salad
Monday – Smokey Peruvian chicken with roasted carrots
Tuesday – Char siu pork bowl
Wednesday – Greek chicken souvlaki with side salad
Thursday – My birthday! Going out!
Friday – Leftovers
Saturday – Big birthday dinner at NOPA!

Food for Thought

What fun things did you do over the weekend?

Gimme Some Routine!

First things first, I totally forgot to choose a winner for my Pure Via giveaway on Friday. Congrats to Emily D! Shoot me an email at Brittany@BarrAndTable.com with your shipping in and I’ll make sure it gets sent out right away!

Yesterday the SIL headed back home and Nathan and I relaxed at home by ourselves for the first time in over a week. Heading back to Baltimore and then coming back with a guest was fun but we were really ready for some quiet time. Not to mention we couldn’t wait for some light, healthy, home-cooked meals! That said, we did Saturday right for my SIL’s last day with us.

For lunch we stopped at a little restaurant called Southie where we sat up at the bar watching the cooks and drooling over all the food. They were really friendly and happy to answer all of our questions about what they were making when it looked like something that wasn’t on the menu. It all looked so good but I think next time we’ll have to get a steak sandwich!

Making the Steak Giardiniera sandwich.

Making Nathan’s spicy hog pulled pork sandwich.

Ahi tuna sandwich made into a salad!

I need to remember that so many restaurants like this are so accommodating and more than happy to make a sandwich into a salad. The ahi tuna was delicious and this might have been my favorite tapenade ever. I’m not a huge olive fan and these olives had such a light flavor and weren’t salty at all. Fabulous!

Of course we couldn’t go out for a stroll without grabbing a couple of drinks. After some beer, we made our way over to Smitten for a little liquid nitrogen ice cream.

Brown Sugar with Cinnamon Shortbread liquid nitrogen ice cream

Everything is made-to-order and you can choose a flavor plus add-ins. I stuck to a regular [homemade] cone with no add-ins and it was great! They have some really interesting flavors and I think we’ll have to head back for Nathan to try the flavor-of-the-month, Nectarine.

We finished off the SIL’s trip with our favorite Indian food.

The best tandoori chicken and naan.

I love the tandoori chicken; it’s the first spicy tandoori we’ve ever had! She had the curry chicken and it was equally as delicious and flavorful. With all of the food we had throughout the day, we ended up splitting 2 meals between the 3 of us and it was plenty of food!

So you can imagine I was glad to keep it light yesterday.

Salmon sushi.

Coconut basil grilled chicken, grilled asparagus, and roasted sweet potato.

My body will be thrilled after a few more days of being back to normal eating! Looking forward to this week’s plan.

Weekly Meal Plan

Sunday – Coconut basil grilled chicken, grilled asparagus, and roasted yukon and sweet potatoes
Monday – Chopped chicken and couscous salad with sweet basil dressing
Tuesday – Chicken and dry-braised green beans and baby bok choy
Wednesday – Leftovers
Thursday – Apricot barbecue chicken with roasted brussels sprouts
Friday – Feta chicken kabobs with roasted broccoli
Saturday – Leftovers

Food for Thought

How was your 4th of July weekend?
What’s on your meal plan this week?

Foodshots

Happy Memorial Day and many, many thanks to all of the amazing men and women who are serving and have served our country. I hope everyone is able to take the day off and spend some time with family and friends today! We had a great weekend filled with lots of delicious food [for a change..] so I thought I’d share some tasty shots.

Friday

Cheese [aged gouda & cream cheese], crackers, balsamic jelly [from Italy], and white wine. Glad I remembered to take a picture before we dug in. We needed a little something to hold us over while this baby was in the oven..

Holy porchetta!

With porcini pasta & roasted tomato sauce.

Saturday

A pair of old-fashioneds to kick off the night. While trying to figure out where to go for dinner, in the middle of Little Italy and Chinatown, I said “I don’t care, I just don’t want pizza.” So we got asparagus.

Oh..

.. and pizza. Same place that we went for Nathan’s birthday. Best pizza since Italy. Though the margherita was better than this one.

Wrapped up the night with Einstein and a little live music 😉

Sunday

The best Indian food we’ve ever had for lunch..

Chicken Kathi Kebab

Lamb Biriyani

Aloo Tikki – potatoes surrounded by chickpeas and chutneys. The flavors in all of the dishes were so complex and absolutely incredible. Especially this aloo tikki; the mixture of the chutneys gave a variety of sweet and spicy and the chickpeas and potatoes were nice and creamy. We’re definitely going back.

I really just wanted veggies by the end of the weekend so I broke out my spiralizer and went to town on some golden beets and turnips. I added some kale and, of course, an egg on top.

Weekly Meal Plan

Sunday – Throw together
Monday – Chipotle cherry chicken & roasted carrot salad
Tuesday – Orange rosemary roast chicken thighs w/ brown rice arugula salad
Wednesday – Leftovers
Thursday – Pan Seared Brussels Sprouts w/ porchetta and mushrooms
Friday – Out!
Saturday – Leftovers

Food for Thought

How did you spend your weekend?
Are you enjoying Monday off?