A Tale of Two and a Half Dinners
After I picked Maya up from school, picked up the dry cleaning, read Maya about 20 books at the library, and gave her a bath, Maya said she wanted to eat. Stat. Of course dinner wasn’t ready and when she asked why I told her it was because I’d been doing my nails since picking her up from school. She thought for a second and then said “so what’s for dinner?”
I think my sarcasm is a bit much for a four-year-old to understand.
With limited time and even fewer groceries I made what Ali now calls Greek Style Chicken Parmigiano. Sounds like a bad mix of two very distant cuisines, doesn’t it? But it turned out surprisingly well.
I sautéed some organic chicken breast in olive oil, added some tomato sauce and then shredded the chicken. I put a dollop of hummus (hommos?) on some Trader Joe’s Arabic bread, added some organic spinach and mozzarella cheese and put the whole thing in the oven at 400 degrees for 5 minutes.
When dinner was ready 15 minutes later Maya had already eaten a banana and an apple so she barely ate half of her “chicken sandwich.”
As a side dish I roasted some sliced zucchini in olive oil and baked it at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.
Since I don’t eat chicken or bread I decided to make myself some salmon instead. I used my foolproof Salmon Marinade but divided it by four to make enough for just one piece of fish:
Salmon Marinade
1/2 Tablespoon of plain mustard
1/2 Tablespoon of soy sauce
1/4 Tablespoon of olive oil
1/4 Tablespoon of apricot jam
1 Tablespoon of capers
1/4 of a medium onion
Combine the first 4 ingredients and pour over the salmon. Sprinkle the sliced onion and capers over the top and at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.
Before:
After – served over a bed of spinach:
My photography is getting better, isn’t it? Okay so just humor me.
Although this was delicious I wasn’t very hungry tonight so I just ate about half of this with some zucchini. I asked Ali to remind me how much I love this salmon so I can break away from the scrambled eggs rut that I am in. I saw him put a note in his iPhone. Seriously, he really did. But he’ll probably forget he did, so I’m sure I’ll be back to eating scrambled eggs again soon enough.
Have a good night!
I Love Bread Baskets
Since Ali has always been pretty indifferent (read: indecisive) about where he eats, I am usually the one to choose the restaurants we visit. Anyone who knows Ali knows that he isn’t shy about asking for a meal with 50 modifications. I wish I could say I was the perfect customer but of course I have my own issues too. Waiters often hate us. Managers often hate us. Most of the time I can’t really blame them. In order to minimize meal disasters, my strategy has always been to choose restaurants based on the quality of their bread basket. Ali and I love love love bread and if it’s good it can usually make up for dismal food.
Our favorite bread in Los Angeles?
1. Il Fornaio
2. Fogo de Chao
3. Grand Lux Cafe
As you probably already know, I found out last year that I am wheat/gluten intolerant. (How ironic is it that I can no longer eat my favorite food in the world?) Since then I’ve had to come up with a different criteria for my restaurant selections. Truthfully, I would rather eat at home because attempting to deal with both my allergies and Ali’s demands is just a bit more than I can handle. But if we ate at home seven days a week then our social life would be very sad instead of just pathetic. So my solution is to find ethnic restaurants that don’t revolve around wheat.
We were feeling pretty adventurous and decided to visit Sunnin Lebanese Cafe. Being that this restaurant is new to us we weren’t sure about wait times and so we attempted to make a reservation. When we called, however, Sunnin told said that “for our convenience” they don’t take reservations. Not sure how that is convenient for us but we decided to put our name on the call ahead list and hope for the best. When we reached the restaurant 15 minutes later we were told to wait off to the side until they called us. We were confused because there were several empty tables and no other people waiting but by some miracle we managed to keep our mouths shut for a change.
I wasn’t happy about it though.
Ten minutes later we were still waiting, even though parties that came in after us were seated ahead of us. I guess the no reservation concept only applied to certain people?
While we waited I took a few pictures of the interior.
It is pretty nice and more importantly, very clean.
We were finally seated and ordered the Fried Cauliflower appetizer. I wasn’t really feeling it but the Falafel had bread crumbs in it so there weren’t a whole lot of other options for me.
This was pretty terrible. Greasy and tasteless. I had one bite and that was more than enough.
I also ordered the Lebanese salad ( lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers in a vinaigrette) and the Eggplant Delight (grilled eggplant with tomatoes, diced onions, parsley and EVOO) .
I had a few bites of each but neither of impressed me. All I could taste was oil.
Ali and Maya had the Combo Grill (1 skewer of each, beef kebab, chicken kebab, and kefta kebab, served with hommos, rice, Lebanese salad and pita bread).
Sorry for the blurry picture but apparently I will always be camera challenged.
Ali was happy with his food at least. And he had NO modifications!
I ate almost all Ali’s hummus (or hommos ?) and I am happy to say that it was really good. I still left hungry but what else is new?
Final thoughts on Sunnin – if you eat meat it’s a great place to go. If you are vegetarian, don’t like greasy food, and have a million allergies, I recommend you eat at home.
I really need to follow my own advice.
Endless Patience
It’s really weird how some days I wake up in an irritated mood for absolutely no reason. And then other days I wake up with boundless amounts of patience. I’m not sure why this happens but lucky for Maya and Ali I happened to wake up this morning with a ton of good cheer and energy.
I jumped out of bed at 6am and hit the gym for an hour. When I came back upstairs Ali and Maya were still sleeping and I was able to take a shower in peace and quiet. This meant that nobody knocked on the door asking me where their slippers were (Maya). Or what was for breakfast (Ali). Or if they could watch TV (Maya). Or if we had any bananas left (Ali).
Twenty blissful minutes later I came out and everyone was still sleeping! This is unheard of in our home where everyone is usually awake and annoyed with each other by 6:30 am. I had some hot water with lemon and quietly worked on my computer and just when I was halfheartedly planning to check if Maya and Ali were still breathing I finally heard Maya get out of bed.
I think Maya was surprised when I enthusiastically suggested we make waffles for breakfast. And not only did we make waffles but we made waffles and topped them with vanilla yogurt, apples, almond slivers, maple syrup, and powdered sugar. Maya and I even made Ali tea and brought him breakfast in bed.
Ali was speechless and maybe even a bit scared.
I let Maya drop a ton of chocolate chips on her waffle, about a cup of maple syrup, and some powdered sugar, and I let her eat in our room. This has never, ever happened. I didn’t even get upset when she wiped her hands over the leather ottoman instead of on the napkin I so conveniently provided for her.
(Side note – it took every ounce of self-control not to fix the fitted sheet before I took this picture)
After breakfast Maya was so in awe of my good mood that she offered to help clean while I made some granola. So naturally I put her to work cleaning out the cupboards.
I won’t let Maya eat Cheetos but I have no problem letting her use dangerous chemicals. My logic surprises even me sometimes.
We finished the bottom shelf and organized foods according to size. The end result was so fabulous that it put me in an even better mood. Such a good mood, in fact, that I agreed to accompany Ali to a car dealer to check out one of the cars on his not so shortlist.
Although I would rather watch my nails grow than look at a car on a Sunday afternoon, I did, by some miracle manage to maintain all my patience during our visit to the dealer. After leaving the dealer empty-handed but armed with even more paperwork, pricing, and information that Ali will never look at, we headed to Wahoo’s Fish Tacos for lunch.
I had heard good things about Wahoo’s, and frankly, that was the only reason I decided to visit yet another fast food restaurant. While the outside of the restaurant looked nice and clean, the inside was decorated with bumper stickers like “My child is an honor student and eats at Wahoo’s.” Charming.
It baffles me why any restaurant would intentionally make their establishment look like the equivalent of a truck stop diner.
I ordered the Wahoo Bowl. It came with flame-grilled fish, rice and black beans. On a plate. Wahoo’s is full of contradictions. I ate 3/4 of the fish, and 1/4 of the rice. I am not a huge black bean fan so I had a couple of spoons. The fish was good…not as fresh as I would have liked but still pretty good.
Ali had a burrito of some sort…I believe it had chicken in it and about 1,000 calories worth of other stuff. He proclaimed it “decent.” That could be really good or bad. After more than a decade of knowing Ali I’m still not sure.
We visited with Ali’s dad for a bit after that and on the way home Maya fell asleep in the car.
When she woke up in the worst mood ever I still managed not to lose my temper. When she said she wanted pizza and not pasta for dinner, I kept my calm. When she flung her clothes on the floor I somehow maintained my patience.
I think things are about to change though because I just heard Maya tell Ali…”Fine. Then I will break your toes too.”
That can’t be good.
While I'm not going to win Mother/Wife of the Year Award anytime soon, I haven't killed anyone yet or shot myself in the head. And that, my friends, is how I calculate success these days. 
FANCY THAT FANCY THIS 
