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Paris Woot-Woots and Womp-Womps, Food Edition

You know how much I love food, so I think it should be obvious to you that food was a major part of our vacation to Paris, one of the most gastronomically famous cities in the world. We had a ton of culinary triumphs… and a few disappointments.

Woot! Woot!s

Croissants Framboise. Near our hotel was an adorable pâtisserie; we stopped there multiple mornings on our way to the day’s activities. Carla occasionally ordered a pain au chocolat, which is her pastry of choice. But I went for the croissant framboise. Not only are they GORGEOUS, they are delicious and not overly sweet – just the right amount of raspberry jam. I have no idea how the pâtissiers ensure that they are still fluffy and airy, despite the jam, but I am very grateful to them for mastering the trick. 

My croissant atop my husband’s pain au raisin.

Jus de Pomme. On special occasions, we allow Carla to order soda with dinner. In the US, she chooses a Shirley Temple or root beer. Since Shirley Temples and root beer aren’t really French, she decided to branch out and during our trip discovered a passionate appreciation for jus de pomme. She enjoys apple juice once in a while in the States, but the French jus de pomme is different and wonderful. It seems to be fresh squeezed; even the juice in bottles seems closer to fresh-pressed apples than the thin brown liquid we call apple juice here at home. Carla loved it. She ordered it everywhere. 

Holy Belly Café. Shockingly, there came a time when we grew weary of croissants. I know; it was a surprise to all of us. Fortunately, my husband had found a little breakfast place we could go to instead. It was an American-style breakfast place, and all the wait staff spoke American English (our server had a Southern accent), and Carla was able to get pancakes and scrambled eggs. The food was delicious, the bathroom was clean, and we all got a little fix of “home” that was a nice change-up from the French restaurant usual. (On a non-food note: Carla wore her Weezer T-shirt the day we went to Holy Belly and the server gave her a thumbs up and then cued “Say It Ain’t So” on the restaurant sound system for us all to enjoy. Top notch experience, highly recommend.)

ChocoStory Brussels. The only museum we visited on our day trip to Brussels was the chocolate museum. It was a cute, kid-friendly, museum, slightly on the shabby side, but informative. I enjoyed learning about the planting and harvesting of chocolate, and was surprised to discover that there are multiple types of cacao pods. The best part, though, was the live chocolate-making demonstration at the end. Our chocolatier was adorable and charming in every way – he even spotted me lifting my phone to photograph him and gave me a grin – and he gave us a super speedy demo of how to make molded, filled chocolates. The specialty of Brussels is called praline, which is both the name for the molded, filled chocolate and also the name for the filling. The filling is a paste made of sugar and either hazelnut or almond. We each got to sample one of the chocolates on our way out of the museum. I would say it took us about ninety minutes to go through the museum. We arrived around ten in the morning, and even on a beautiful sunny Saturday, we were able to walk right in without waiting in line. We passed the entrance later that afternoon and the line stretched out to the street.

Au Bourguignon du Marais. This cute little restaurant was the site of one of the best meals of our entire trip. My husband and I each got the signature boeuf bourguignon and it was out of this world delicious. The wait staff was attentive and friendly, and allowed us to order everything in French, which was very gratifying.

La Corde à Linge. I have already waxed poetic about our trip to Strasbourg. It was such a charming city, I would return in a heartbeat. We found a little restaurant smack in the middle of our Rick Steves walking tour that had outdoor seating on the edge of a canal. I had spaetzle with mushrooms and a glass of local Riesling; both were delicious, and it was so pleasant to sit outside in the sunshine. 

Zen. Listen, Carla was a trooper when it came to the food. She didn’t complain, she ate what she could, but she wasn’t a huge fan of many of the dishes at the restaurants we picked. So my husband tracked down a Japanese restaurant that served things she might eat, and eat she did. She had a filet of teriyaki salmon, a bowl of white rice, and two bowls of edamame. That may have been the only vegetable she ate the entire time we were in France. The restaurant was well worth visiting just to get her to eat, but the food was also delicious! 

Sir Winston. One of Carla’s can’t-miss events of our trip was to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle. At dusk, the whole tower sparkles every hour on the hour for five minutes. We had timed tickets (6:30 pm) to the Arc de Triomphe one night, and we’d hoped that dusk would fall during our visit… but the timing worked out to be later than we thought (the first sparkle didn’t happen until 8:00 pm). This meant that our dinner plans needed to change. We found a restaurant that was a mere three-minute walk away from the Arc de Triomphe and managed to get an 8:30 reservation. It was a late dinner for sure, but the food – a mixture of Indian and British flavors – was extremely good and the location was perfect.

My kid got a burger.
I got the crispy salmon.

Amorino. My husband and daughter are big ice cream fans, so we stopped at Amorino several times during our visit to Paris. (We even went twice on our last day in Paris.) The gelato is decent, and there are some fun flavors – my favorites were the orange blossom, the passion fruit, and the raspberry – but the best part, I think, is that the staff make each ice cream cone into a lovely little flower with as many as three flavors apiece. Carla got chocolate and raspberry every time. 

Breizh Café. My husband had heard about a particular type of food from Brittany, which is a northwestern region of France, called galettes, which are a Breton-style crepe: the crepe itself is made with buckwheat flour and has typically savory contents. He found a restaurant in Montmartre that serves galettes, and after we visited Sacre Coeur and did our Rick Steves walking tour of the area, we got a table for lunch. I’ll admit, I wasn’t particularly interested in the food; I’m not a crepe girl to begin with, although I might be tempted with a lemon curd crepe on occasion. But I dislike eggs, and the galettes all seemed to have eggs in them. I ended up ordering a Breizh roll with mushrooms (I asked for it sans oeufs, but the server and/or chef ignored that request), which was kind of like a crepe rolled up and cut into circles. It was tasty, don’t get me wrong; just not my thing. My husband LOVED his galette. And I loved the green salad I got on the side. It was EXACTLY the kind of salad I love the most: fresh, bouncy green lettuce with a light vinaigrette. Simple and delicious and perfect. My husband and I also both enjoyed a bottle of cider, which was tart and fizzy. (Sadly, Carla did not enjoy her crepe with Valrhona chocolate; the chocolate was too bitter.) 

Bottle Tops. Being thirsty Americans, we bought a pack of bottled water from the local supermarket (Monoprix) to keep in our mini fridge. The bottled water – in fact, all the bottled beverages we encountered – have lids that remain attached to the bottle when open. This is a fantastic innovation in plastic bottle technology and I wish it would make its way to the US. (Not that I want to encourage plastic bottle usage.)   

Monoprix. We had a couple of late nights where dinner in a restaurant wasn’t possible, so we stopped in at a nearby Monoprix to grab some pre-made food. While it wasn’t the best food I’ve ever had, it was nourishing, and it was very simple to microwave and eat at our hotel. What I really want to tout are the tomatoes. My kid found a fresh tomato each time we went to Monoprix, weighed it and applied the appropriate sticker on her own, and then ate the entire tomato like an apple when we returned to our hotel. 

Ladurée. You know we ate well and widely if I had to think about whether to include Ladurée on this list at all. But in the end, I decided it had to make the cut. Ladurée macarons are the best in the world. We each chose two flavors (I think I picked passion fruit and raspberry) and gobbled them up the instant we left.

Womp Womps

Salads. Heading into our trip, I was so excited about the salads. My primary memory of visiting Paris with my mother was the salads: simple bowls of fresh butter lettuce, lightly dressed with vinaigrette. I was ready to eat ALL the salads. And… I didn’t find any! Occasionally, I was able to order a salade verde on the side of my main course, but for the most part any salads on the menus were fussy things with a bunch of ingredients I did not want to eat. I JUST WANTED LETTUCE. One afternoon late in our trip, when I was feeling veggie-starved, we went to a place called Angelina’s so my husband and Carla could sample the famed drinking chocolate. We stood in a long line, we endured a very stereotypically snooty waiter. My husband and Carla ordered drinking chocolate and pastries. I ordered a salade Caesar. On the menu, it came with chicken. I did not want chicken, I just wanted lettuce. So I ordered it without chicken. The waiter was wholly unamused. I ordered in French and he repeated my order to me with a conspicuous question mark at the end of it. Then he repeated it in English, just to be sure. No chicken. When the server brought the salad, he seemed quite nervous as he set it down in front of me: This has no chicken, okay? Has no one in Paris ever heard of a vegetarian??? (I am not a vegetarian, but they do exist!) It was fine, but not great. But it was pretty much the only salad I encountered until we went to the Breizh Café. Where did all the salads go?!

Brussels Frites and Waffles. One of the top reasons we chose Brussels as the site of a day trip was because Belgium is known for so many good foods! Chocolate! Waffles! Fries! We planned to do a lot of food enjoying while we explored the city. Our experience of the waffles and fries turned out to be comedically awful, in part because we felt some time pressure that resulted in us doing too much at once, in part because of the crowds, and in part because we overestimated the number of hands we possess. We walked all around the city, and had about an hour-ish left at the end of the day before we needed to get back to the station to meet our train. We’d been scoping out the waffles and frites situation all day, and we were ready to try them. Both waffles and frites are sold at little stands in the old town: you get your food and then walk around eating it. Lots of people were walking around eating waffles and frites; it looked simple and delicious; we wanted to join them. We got Carla a waffle first. The waffles come in two styles – regular and Liege style – and you can add on a wide variety of toppings. Carla got a waffle with chocolate and strawberries. So far, so good. The waffle is served in a clever little cardboard shelf, shaped kind of like an open bed of a pickup truck: wide and flat, with short walls on three sides. You get a little wooden two-tined fork alongside your waffle. The idea is to maneuver the waffle off the open end of the shelf with the fork, take a bite, repeat. But Carla’s waffle was so laden with toppings that she couldn’t move it by herself. My husband tried to help her, as we were fording the torrent of people to get to the frites place. I am feeling residual stress just typing this out. The frites come in cardboard cones, and are accompanied by the sauce or sauces of your choice. The frites cone has a tiny attached cup that holds the sauce (you can see some images on their Instagram page). It’s very clever – you can hold the cone in one hand, and use your free hand to dip fries into the sauce. Amazing. Carla wanted frites too, even though she was still struggling to eat her waffle. There were many options for sauces, and my husband and I each narrowed down our list to two. I assumed (foreshadowing!!!) that the sauces would be squeezed in next to one another inside the sauce dish. But no. One sauce goes into the sauce dish, one sauce goes into a tiny plastic tub. A tiny LIDLESS plastic tub. So all of a sudden, the three of us were trying to juggle three frites cones, two plastic tubs of sauce, and a waffle on a shelf. All while trying to leave the tiny frites shop, which was packed with a dozen people all trying to get their own delicious potato treat, and avoid being trampled by the relentless crowds. It was both hilarious – an I Love Lucy storyline in the making – and nerve-wracking. As soon as we stepped out of the frites shop – which is just a narrow room with a place for the line of frites buyers on one side and the counter behind which the frites are made on the other – I was ready to jettison my own frites because it was impossible to handle three frites, two plastic tubs, and a waffle at once. I think what happened was, I took two cones of frites and somehow managed to secure two plastic cups of sauce between my fingers and the frites (remember, the sauce cups were OPEN), while my husband held his own frites and helped Carla maneuver the waffle into her mouth. While he did this, I handed a frites cone to Carla, and then started scarfing my own frites, dipping frites and feeding them to my husband. My goal was less frites-enjoyment than ridding us of one cone of frites. When the waffle was done, my husband took over his own frites. It was still very difficult to eat fries while holding them and holding a lidless plastic tub. Our poor planning aside, the frites were amazing. However, if you find yourself in the same situation, ONLY GET ONE SAUCE. (The sauces were quite delicious, though. I got a truffle mayonnaise and a spicy mayo called pili pili. DELISH.) Is there anything that screams American overconsumption more than a family of three becoming overwhelmed by fries and waffles??? I don’t think so. 

Brussels Beer and Kriek. While we were in Belgium, I wanted to try some of the famous Belgian beer, especially the kriek lambic. I’ve had Lindemans lambic here in the States, and I like it, and wanted to try another option. Well, I should have taken a page from my husband’s book and done my research, but I did not, and opted instead to grab a couple of beers and two bottles of kriek at random. They were not good. Not good at all. I made it through one small glass of one bottle of kriek, but could only taste the other one before I had to pour everything out. The beers were so bitter/sour I ended up pouring them out, too. My husband always kindly says that it’s good to TRY things, even if they don’t end up the way we expected, but I felt like I was literally pouring money down the drain. 

Carla-Friendly Food. I knew Carla would struggle to find things she wanted to eat, and I was right. We’d been confident that most restaurants would offer burgers or steak, both things she eats. And we always chose restaurants with one or both items on the menu. However, even when she gamely ordered a burger, they were often undercooked to the point that she couldn’t eat them (despite asking for them to be bien cuit). She ordered steak a couple of times, too, but the restaurants we visited preferred fattier, more flavorful cuts of meat than she is accustomed to and so she would eat only a few bites. She didn’t complain or whine, though. Perhaps because we made up for what she lacked in dinner by always ordering dessert.

Chai Lattes. I don’t drink coffee, which is a hard line to hold in Paris. Especially because I still require caffeine or I get a terrible headache. Several cafes – though not all – offered chai lattes, so I was able to sample a bunch. Sadly (and this feels like true blasphemy), none of them can hold a candle to a Starbucks chai. (We did not go to a single Starbucks while in Paris, just FYI.) My best guess is that there is a tendency to use excessive milk in the Parisian chai, because they all tasted weak and overly milky. The best one I drank had lait du coco instead of lait normal, but it took me a while to figure that out and then not every café had lait du coco. When there was no tea to be had, I simply drank Coca-Cola Zero. Once, in desperation, I even had a café crème. Which I paid for by feeling jittery and anxious all day, yay.

As with our trip overall, the culinary wins greatly trumped the fails. We ate well, some might say gluttonously luxuriously. Carla did not waste away to nothing, and, in fact, ate more than just croissants. Not a lot more than just croissants, but more. I’m calling that a win.  

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Paris Woot-Woots and Womp-Womps

Oh hi. Yes, we did go to Paris several weeks ago and I am only just now getting around to posting about it. We had a terrific trip and I am still basking in the glow of what really couldn’t have been a more perfect vacation. 

If you are looking for gorgeous photos of Paris sites, please refer to Elisabeth’s blog; she was in Paris right before we arrived, and in fact overlapped with us for one day, during which I got to meet her and her family in person!!!! (As with every blogger I’ve had the luck to meet in person or via zoom, she is both exactly like she is on her blog and also somehow more delightful and more beautiful offline.)                   

If you’re looking for some hot tips about what was good and what wasn’t good about our visit, you are in the right place. Below, I’ve lined up my landslides and letdowns.

Woot! Woot!s

My husband. Oh my goodness, my husband is a ROCKSTAR. He planned the entire trip, securing our plane, train, and Metro tickets; finding a hotel; researching when and how to obtain entry to the sites we wanted to see; planning day trips and booking travel to and from each city; creating an itinerary that hit all our must-sees without overloading us; securing tickets at the ideal times on the ideal days for each site; figuring out what to do about cell phone service while we were in Europe; and then getting us to each place in the most efficient and pleasant way possible each day. It was so much work and I did none of it. All I had to do during the planning stages was occasionally weigh in on things, suggest potential activities, and offer moral support. All I had to do during the trip itself was show up. It was fabulous. I don’t think I could ever have come up with such a well-planned vacation on my own. Oh also: his French is leaps and bounds ahead of mine, and at one restaurant, the server asked us where we were from. (I find this a difficult question to answer, by the way. I feel like we wear our Americanness like a glaring red-white-and-blue baseball jersey. I always want to respond with the name of our state, but my husband always simply says, “We’re from the United States.” That does seem to do the trick.) When he told this server we were from the States, she shook her head in disbelief and said, “But your French is so good! Your pronunciation is excellent.” Way to go, husband! 

On the train!

Carla. You guys, Carla was a superstar traveler. From the instant we left the house to the moment we returned to the States, she was excited, curious, eager, and game for anything. She loved all the museums we visited. She enthusiastically listened to a (quite long and somewhat boring) audio tour of Chateau de Fontainebleau. She put in 7 to 10 miles of walking, from about 7:00 am to 10:00 pm (on average), for eight consecutive days. She ate (some of the) food. She went into every church and cathedral I wanted to peek inside. We had occasional mother/daughter conflicts, but beyond that, she did not whine or complain at all and in fact seemed delighted by and interested in everything we saw. (With the possible exception of the churches. She was into them when we were inside, but when we expressed interest in yet another church, she voted against going in.) I want to go on all the trips with her. (She has suggested Australia as our next big vacation; my husband and I are less enthusiastic, simply because of the lengthy plane ride.) 

AirFrance. We flew AirFrance to and from Paris, and it was a fabulous airline. My husband found a ridiculously good deal on premium economy seats, and I was all set for American-style premium economy, as in, economy seating with slightly more leg room. But no! AirFrance premium economy is just a step below Business Class! We got to hang out in the AirFrance lounge before our flight. We got priority access to the security line and priority boarding. We got pillows and blankets and cute little dopp kits each way, we got Champagne just after each takeoff. We had nice roomy seats that lay back. It was one of the best flying experiences I’ve ever had. 

Our Louvre Tour Guide. We decided that we wanted a tour guide for the Louvre, because a) it’s so big and overwhelming, and b) we wanted to skip the line. My husband found a tour company online (don’t ask me how; he did a ton of research) who offered a three hour “Louvre highlights” tour with a maximum of six people. Our guide was so sweet and knowledgeable. He showed us a great mix of the heavy hitters (the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and others) and less popular but still impressive paintings and sculptures. Then Carla wanted to explore more of the Egyptian wing, which we’d glimpsed at the beginning of the tour, and we found a few other things my husband and I were interested in seeing, and then we were done. We got to skip the long lines to get into the museum, we got to see a nice mix of artwork, and we didn’t get overwhelmed or lost. I would totally do a guided tour again.

Strasbourg. One of our day trips was to Strasbourg, and oh, what a charming city! We had uncharacteristically sunny warm weather, and had a wonderful time seeing the cathedral and exploring the city via a Rick Steves guided walk. We stopped for an outdoor lunch alongside a canal where I had the most delicious spaetzle with mushrooms paired with a crisp and summery local Riesling. 

The Eiffel Tower. My husband and I were happy to take Carla to the Eiffel Tower, because it was her top priority for the trip. But he and I wouldn’t have gone without her. I wasn’t exactly dreading it, but I wasn’t looking forward to it either. (By the way, if you want to skip the big line without paying ridiculously overpriced fees for a “skip the line guide,” you have to get tickets exactly 60 days in advance, at midnight Paris time. I am very grateful to my husband for figuring this out and staying up to get the tickets!) Carla wanted to go all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I’m not a huge fan of heights, and I already did the Eiffel Tower a million years ago with my high school French class. But oh was it ever worth it! I should have known by now that an experience completely transforms when I see it through Carla’s eyes. She was excited and quite nervous about the height and yet so determined to make it work. We had perfect weather, we had glorious views, and Carla loved it. The Eiffel Tower wowed again when we saw it from the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night. At dusk, the whole tower lights up, but then it also sparkles every hour on the hour for about five minutes. My husband took a video of the instant the sparkle started and he caught Carla’s face when she saw it and it was priceless. One of those moments I think I will remember forever. I hope she remembers it too.

Art!: I have had the immense privilege of visiting the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou Centre, and many other art museums in Paris and around the world. This trip, we went to the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay and I kind of expected the experience to feel a little “same old, same old.” But it wasn’t. I found the museums so moving. Some of the art we saw was three thousand years old! Can you imagine? That people so separate from us in time and manner and lifestyle felt the same drive to create? That other people saw these creations and deemed them valuable enough to save, over millennia? That still other people erected buildings for the sole purpose of housing these works? That millions of people flock to monuments to art to see these ancient and modern creations to this day? It feels so precious and human, this desire to create, to translate experience and emotion into marble or paint so that someone else might know it too. 

Our Hotel. We picked our hotel purely because it had a separate but connected room for Carla. The rooms were massive for Paris, giving us plenty of privacy. We each had a mini fridge that the staff refilled with complementary waters and sodas and juice each day. The beds were comfy, the rooms were pretty quiet. The showers had very decent water pressure, and very minimal temperature issues. The staff were friendly and helpful and the hotel and surrounding neighborhood felt safe. We were within easy walking distance of several Metro stops. The main floor of the hotel doubled as a breakfast restaurant, and we were able to use the tables and microwave in the restaurant space on the evenings we didn’t make it out to dinner. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t right in the middle of all the Paris action, but it was comfortable and spacious and suited our needs perfectly.

Paris Fashion. While I was arrayed in stereotypical American Middle Aged Mom Wear, I got to admire all the extremely fashionable Parisiennes strolling around the city. The in-style, insofar as I can tell, is something along the lines of wide-legged jeans paired with an ankle-skimming black trench coat. The coats have belts, but are rarely worn belted. I did not see a specific single type of footwear – there was everything from heels to boots to sneakers. I do think the sneakers were mainly white; I didn’t see a lot of bright colors. Hairstyles, as in the US, seem to veer toward the long and lightly wavy. Everyone was impossibly chic, which I suppose is de rigueur for Paris. I would have gladly sat at an outdoor café all day long, watching all the beautiful people live their lives. 

Rick Steves. I would be remiss not to give a shoutout to good ol’ Ricky, who provided many restaurant recommendations, pinpointed bathroom opportunities, suggested multiple points of interest, and created interesting, detailed walks for us to follow.

Womp Womps

Bruxelles. None of us had ever been to Belgium before, and Brussels is within my range of acceptability for day trips (two hours), so we decided to go. I had no preconceptions, and I’m kind of glad because I fear it would have been a disappointment. On the pros side, our train trip was easy, we had good weather, and the city is beautiful. On the cons side, I have never been to a busier, more crowded place in all my life. There is an adorable main square in the old town and it was crammed with people. CRAMMED. Everywhere was jammed with tourists. Even though our surroundings were lovely, I felt overstimulated and panicky and overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t let go of Carla for an instant, or she would be swept away by a tide of tourists. Even when we left the old town to explore some of the area up-hill, there were still crowds and crowds of people. The touristy sites weren’t particularly noteworthy, either. I mean, the Grand Place was impressive, but the Manneken Pis was tiny and dressed in a firefighter costume, the Royal Quarter was under construction, Jeanneke Pis was tucked into the end of a narrow alley full of drunk college students, the Atomium was too far away for us to visit during our quick visit, and the local food was both stressful and disappointing. I’m glad I’ve been there, but I can’t say I enjoyed it very much at all. The best part was probably the random cat we met, hanging out and accepting pets outside a restaurant. I know it was a highlight for Carla. Not just of Brussels, but of the entire trip.

My Skin. The combination of traveling, eating a bunch of restaurant meals, and spending all day walking and sweating was not kind to my face. I had horrible breakouts pretty much every day. 

eSIM. My husband and I decided that it made the most sense for him to pay the daily rate ($12, I think?) to maintain his regular phone service while we were in Europe. He had to be available in case of urgent work issues, plus he had all the details of the trip on his phone and he is hands down the better photographer. But we also decided that I would get an eSIM while we were away. It’s hard to remember why, now, because it turned out to be so useless. I think partly because we wanted to have a French phone number for Carla to keep on her person in case she got separated from us. In any event, it sucked. I had horrible service almost the entire time. It kept cutting in and out and even when it worked, websites took forever to load, if they ever did. We did use it twice, to make dinner reservations. (I called a French restaurant and made the reservation myself, in French!) But other than that, it was a waste of money. 

WiFi. Our hotel supposedly had WiFi, but it was both patchy and horrible. By this I mean that it was nearly inoperable the entire time I was there – I could not connect to the internet pretty much at all. On the rare occasion when my phone would show a few bars of connectivity, and I would connect to a blog or my email or a news story, it would quickly cut out. Some i-messages worked, but not all; WhatsApp worked occasionally. I could not send photos via text. Between the eSIM and the WiFi, I was usually able to jot out a quick email to my parents about our day, but that was all. I lost my Wordle streak. Oh well. I didn’t really miss my phone, except I would have liked to keep up with everyone’s blogs better. I still feel very behind!

When I weigh the highs against the lows, the highs win by a landslide. It was a wonderful vacation and I feel so grateful that we were able to make it happen, and that everything went so smoothly. (Once again, a major shout out to my husband for ensuring that our experience was so effortless and fun!) 

You may notice that I haven’t talked much about the food. Don’t worry (or, perhaps, do?): I am planning a whole post about the food wins and losses of the trip.

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Dinners This Week

I overheard the cutest conversation between my husband and daughter yesterday. We were gearing up for a trip to Target, and I’d mentioned that I wanted to see if Target carried my favorite yogurt. (Unlikely.) Then I went into my office to contemplate the depth of the sea surf endlessly through the muck of the internet do some work. My husband was looking through the fridge and asked Carla what kind of yogurt I eat. She said, “Fage.” (Rhymes with sage, to her.) And he said, “The cherry kind?” (Which, YES! Good job, team!) But then Carla said, “Wait! She had yogurt this morning!” and I heard her run to the garbage can to see what I’d eaten. (It was Chobani less-sugar vanilla cinnamon, because I was out of the cherry Fage.) I could have corrected them, but they were so obviously trying not to bother me and it was adorable to listen to them use investigative reasoning to figure it out. I don’t think Target carries cherry Fage anyway. 

This is a short week of school for Carla and a call week for my husband and I have multiple freelance projects due and also multiple appointments and I am volunteering at a school event AYIEEEEEEE so we’re starting the week with a surge of Panic Energy, which admittedly can be quite helpful if you can ride the wave rather than allowing it to drown you.  

Probably I will be eating nothing but Ham Sandwich this week – and butternut squash soup with cannellini beans, of which I made a vat yesterday – but if I DO get it together enough (ha) to make some real meals, these are the ones I’m contemplating.

Dinners for the Week of February 19-25

  • Spicy Caramelized Shrimp with Lemongrass: This sounds different and tasty. I will add some sort of veggies to it – most likely bell peppers or sugar snap peas. But I bet edamame or asparagus or even zucchini would also be delightful. 
  • Lemon Chicken: I will use chicken breast and make this in the air fryer. Probably I’ll serve it with couscous and either zucchini or broccoli.
  • Stir Fry: The Birchwood Pie Project recommended this stir fry sauce, and I’m always up for a good stir fry. If my husband makes it home in time, I’ll make it with chicken; if not, I’ll probably skip a protein and stick with veggies. 
  • Coconut Curry Salmon: This sounds so good to me right now. I would substitute chicken for salmon if my husband is home for this dinner. Rice and something green on the side. Peas would be good with a curry sauce, so maybe peas.
  • Tacos: I want tacos for my birthday, so that’s what I’ll make for my birthday! I also plan on having a big frothy margarita. YUM. If I am feeling fancy, I might make some lemon curd filled cupcakes as well, but after the cookie extravaganza of Valentine’s Day, I may be okay to skip a baked good.

Just a reminder: if you want to participate in a little book giveaway, make sure you leave a comment on this post by midnight PST tonight. And “tonight” could mean Monday night, the day I am posting this, or it could well mean a different night, based on whenever Feedly decides to list this post, so I will base “tonight” on the latter.