Let's Take a Moment to Relax

Monday my kids and I slept in (7 am, so that’s an extra 15 minutes!), made waffles, and didn’t get out of our pajamas until 11. We went on a bike ride (they rode and I ran along-saying “you can do it!”), and spent the afternoon with friends.

The first day of spring break was one of the best days we’ve had in a long time. We just relaxed. There was almost no whining (except for the last half of the bike ride), no one threw themselves on the ground crying and they ate every meal I fed them.

I think they were just happy not to have to be anywhere. I don’t feel like I over schedule my 4 and 6-year-old boys, but with school, sports, and friends there is a lot going on and they’re exhausted and I’m exhausted.

I’m pretty stressed out about what I need to be doing for my business and blog and how there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it. But I wanted to take this week and just be with my kids, like when I was I was a full time stay at home mom. I forgot how hard it is. And how much there is to do. We spent 2 hours cleaning the boys’ room and it’s not clean. I had a list of 10 things to do today and I was able to get 2 of them done with the kids home. And I’m still not done with my taxes.

I might be behind, but at least my kids are having a nice week. And so am I.

Bobby Flay and Green Chile Enchiladas

new mexican green chiles mom blogger los angeles

A couple of years ago, three journalism friends and I went to Vegas. I really wanted to try Bobby Flay’s restaurant Mesa Grill, but one of the women didn’t want to go because she loves Anthony Bourdain and he doesn’t like Bobby Flay. Normally I’m all for irrational hatred of celebrities, but the menu looked so good. We strong-armed her into going, but it didn’t stop her from berating “The Flay.”

Once we got our food she couldn’t help but shut up. She thought it was fantastic. We all did. She ended the meal by yelling, “I love the Flay.”

And now, after meeting him, I do, too! On Monday, The Flay was shooting a video for Hellman’s mayonnaise with a young mother who needed help finding a quick meal for her family.

After the shoot, I was able to ask Bobby some questions. I always make the same things. Green Chile Enchiladas, picadillo, calabasitas, and they’re all the dishes my mother made me growing up. I asked him what I could to make my meals different, more interesting?

He started with the enchiladas and recommended I try adding tomatillos to my green chile sauce. The result is tart, not hot, he said. “It gives it another dimension.”

I decided to try out the recipe on Wednesday. It gave me an excuse to go to Top Valu in Culver City, the best Mexican grocery store around. (I got a bag full of produce for $8!). I bought green chiles, tomatillos, onions, garlic, and cilantro.

new mexican green chiles mom blogger los angeles

The Flay gave me general directions, but this is what I ended up doing and the enchiladas were very good.

Ingredients:

1 lb pork shoulder, cubed

½ medium onion, diced

1 tbls minced garlic

Chicken stock, enough to cover the pork in the pot

1 lb. tomatillo chiles,

1 ½ pound poblanos chiles

One onion, cut in strips

5 garlic cloves

1 bunch cilantro

6 corn tortillas

Jack Cheese

Directions:

Cook cubed pork, minced garlic, and diced onion in chicken stock, filling until stock just covers the meat and vegetables. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 2 to 3 hours. (I did 2)

Lightly spray or grease long pan with olive oil. Cut pasillas in half and take out top and seeds. Clean tomatillos(they’re sticky and look like small green pumpkins!) and cut out the top. Spread the poblanos, tomatillos, onion and garlic on the pan and roast at 450 degrees for 10 minutes turning once or until the chiles start to turn black.

While that’s cooking, pull cilantro from stems. Take pork out of the liquid and shred.

Once the vegetables are cooled, puree the vegetables in a food processer with the cilantro until it looks like this:

Lightly spray corn tortillas on both sides with olive or corn oil and bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes or until soft.

Once the tortillas are cooled, place the pork and a spoonful of green chile sauce in a line on the center of the tortilla and roll. Place in a 9 by 3 casserole dish. Repeat with the rest of the tortillas placing the enchiladas close together. Sprinkle with Jack cheese and then pour green chile sauce over the top until covered.

Bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted (about 15 minutes). Serve with beans or rice.

Bobby said the leftover sauce can be saved and used for other dishes. Tonight we had the sauce as salsa over tacos made with the leftover pork and sautéed garlic spinach. He suggested mixing it with mayonnaise and using it on fish or making a salad dressing out of it.

I can’t wait to try those. He also gave me a good suggestion for making my picadillo more authentic. I’ll try that next week. 

Running Is Making Me Hungry

I started running again, which means my metabolism is going crazy. I’m sore, sleepy, and starving. I ran 4 miles on Friday, 3 on Saturday, 5 on Sunday, and 4 on Tuesday. That was a lot of running for me and I ate everything in sight. (See this LA Times article about my condition, which is called “Compensator.”)

When I run, I feel justified in eating what I want. On Saturday, I had been good in the morning, but friends and I went on a last minute “moms’ night on the town” that started at Melrose Bar and Grill in West Hollywood. It was my second time there and the first time the server was so rude I thought I would never going back. However, on Saturday I did go back and we got the same server, but she was working the bar. She was actually very pleasant this time and even chatted us up. The appetizers were good and I thought about the turkey burger I had the last time around (fabulous, melt in your mouth burger), but we decided to go somewhere else for dinner.

Google Maps was no help in finding the restaurant we were trying to get to, so we ended up stopping at Jones Hollywood. There was an hour wait for a table so we sat at the bar where the crowd was young and hip. My friend used to hang out at Jones back in the day and so she was happy. We got a couple of side dishes and some wine and took in the scene; which was a lot of Hollywood types looking to hook up. It was fun, and I loved the red couches and dark colors. I also loved the wasabi mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach, which was a little sweet and cooked perfectly. I really wished I’d ordered a full meal because everything we saw looked so good.

On Monday, I had a fabulous day that I will write about at length tomorrow. One of the highlights was stopping by Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills and trying their new gluten-free red velvet cupcake. I’ve had cupcakes there before (I can have gluten, but my husband has celiac so I cook and bake gluten-free) but now their very best cupcake is the gluten-free red velvet. It was fabulous. My husband thought it was really good (but claimed that my gluten-free cupcakes are better).

That night the husband picked up Zankou Chicken, one of our favorites. We always get the rotisserie chicken roasted in a garlic sauce because it’s the best chicken I’ve ever had. Garlic paste comes on the side and it’s incredible. It’s a secret recipe, but I think it’s mayonnaise, butter and garlic. Some people think it’s lard, garlic and lemon. Whatever it is it’s fabulous. The hummus is creamy, and delicious and my favorite in any restaurant. Even the white rice is good. What I appreciate the most is that my kids like it and there’s no crying at the table because they’re too busy eating. And everything is gluten-free except for the pita bread, of course, and the tabouleh.

No amount of exercise was going to burn off Sprinkles and Zankou, but I tried anyway on Tuesday. Unfortunately, circumstance led us to another meal-not-made-by-mom on Tuesday.

I had to get new tires (Damn you Toyota and your faulty, shredding tires. Like you don’t have enough problems!) so we stopped for dinner at Natalee Thai Restaurant. I thought it was great, but it’s only earned 3 stars on Yelp. My kids had glass noodles and chicken and were so happy. I had vegetables in red curry (pictured top right) and asked for it really spicy and by God, it was really spicy. So good. We also had the Spicy Beef pictured here. Everything was good and the server was great. She brought the boys extra lemons and cherries and got our crazy kid order exactly right.

Well, I’m off to exercise once again. Hopefully I won’t chase that with any more cupcakes. But you never know.

Downtown LA – Finally

Our family has lived in Los Angeles for 4 ½ years now and we’ve visited neighborhoods from Santa Monica to Silverlake. But one area that we never manage to get to is Downtown.

For the husband’s birthday, we decided to take ourselves out of the westside and into the

center of the city. Our extremely patient and generous friend agreed to watch our boys (along with her 2 boys) for our 18 hour downtown adventure.

We started at our hotel, The Omni in California Plaza. We got a good deal on Expedia that included parking and a deluxe breakfast. The hotel was beautiful and our room was in the corner with a view of California Plaza. It’s more of a business traveler hotel, but it was great for us with a clean, comfy room in a convenient location.

Our plan was to spend the afternoon walking around and doing a mini pub

crawl, but the weather wasn’t cooperating and it was pouring rain. We took the hotel car to The Must Bar on 5th and Spring and considered never leaving. We loved it there. We sat at the bar and the husband ordered a black sangria and I had the Allagash beer recommended by the bartender (they had gluten-free beer, too!). The menu looked very good, but we had dinner reservations so we tried the cheese plate. The best thing about the cheese plate was that you could order whatever you wanted, it wasn’t already made. We got a robusto (aged gruyere), manchego, figs, and smokey bacon jam. If you haven’t tried bacon jam you must try it. Here it was what tasted like bacon in a small bowl of warm honey. (I had it at The Six Restaurant in West LA and it was more like a salsa and also very good).

The guy sitting next me had a lovely plate of what he said was salmon on polenta fries (Not Yo Mama’s Fish Sticks, salmon with scallion grits) that he orders every time he comes. And that’s what I loved about the place. Everyone seemed to know each other, but were welcoming just the same.

We reluctantly left there and walked up 5th Street to Grand to try a well-known LA restaurant, the Water Grill. A friend recommended it and said that it’s consistently good.

I’m always skeptical of restaurants that appear in tourist guidebooks, like this one, but I needn’t have been. It was fantastic. We started a sampler plate of oysters and I don’t know what I loved more, the oysters or the sauces to go with it. Our plain salad of mixed greens was ok, but pretty salty, however the main course more than made up for that. I had the Nantucket Bay Scallops with Kurobata Pork Belly. The pork belly was the melt in your mouth kind and the scallops were perfectly cooked. They were lying on top of creamy polenta, which is always good. And it was.

The wine list was way overpriced so we both got single glasses of wine. I think the desserts were the best part of the entire evening. We shared a budino and a scoop of salted caramel ice cream. I think I gained 5 pounds on the dessert alone, but it was so worth it. The budino was rich and delightful I can’t stop thinking about it.

After dinner we had nice walk back to our hotel and our downtown adventure was over. It was 10:30. Ok, maybe adventure is a bit of stretch, but we had a great time.

Gluten-Free Beer and Curry in a Hurry

I’m finally over my sinus infection/malaise and had a great week. Monday was the husband’s birthday so the boys and I took him to West4thJane so he could order a beer. That might not seem like anything special, but he has Celiac Disease and can’t just go to a bar or restaurant and ask for a Boddington’s. He had a Green’s Endeavour Gluten-Free Dubbel Ale. It was quite tasty, as was the dark ale I had from the tap (not gluten-free). The boys had a great time playing the Connect Four game and they devoured their burgers.

But it was Wednesday that I’d been looking forward to for weeks. Disney’s Family.com hosted a group of bloggers to visit Burke Williams Spa in Santa Monica. I walked in and was whisked away for a chair massage that my back desperately needed. After that it was a tour of the new additions to Family.com.

The site now has a health and beauty section and a food section with recipes for kids and adults. The food section looks great with recipes to make with your kids and other quick and easy dinners to make yourself that don’t result in you telling your children to put the knife down and step away from the counter. I had our playgroup over yesterday and I wanted to make something different. We’ve been getting together for almost 4 years now and they’ve had all of my staples – green chili chilaquiles, black bean chili, gluten-free lasagna with sweet Italian chicken sausage, and all of my gluten-free baked goods.

I chose to make Nigella Lawson’s Curry in a Hurry. It was very easy to make and nice to look at. It was good, but I, and my guests, like things pretty spicy. It called for green curry, but I ended up adding a fair amount of chili powder. My husband tossed in yellow curry as well, which changed the whole dynamic of the dish, but it was still delicious.

For dessert, I served these mini gluten-free vanilla cupcakes. Later, after everyone had left and the kids were asleep, we piled the dishes high in the sink and sat down on the couch to watch (and sleep through) a movie.

Roasted Chicken with Green Garlic

A friend stopped by my Gluten-Free Goodies booth at the farmers’ market today and told me about Green Garlic.

You can only get it for a very short time in the Spring and only at farmers’

markets. It looks like a leek and when I went to buy it I checked with the seller to make sure I had the right root vegetable.

He said to use it like garlic, except you can use the entire vegetable, stalk and all. It has a milder taste, and my friend suggested making aioli, which I thought was a fantastic idea. But I forgot to buy eggs so I had to scour the fridge to see what we had.

The 6-year-old and I bought a free range chicken yesterday and were planning to roast it. I couldn’t find a recipe for Green garlic and Chicken so I turned to Twitter. Amelia of Eating Made Easy saved the day with a great recipe.

She said, in 140 characters, to cut the green garlic in half and place it in the cavity of the chicken along with two lemon halfs. I cut up a bulb and rubbed it on the chicken with olive oil and fresh rosemary from our yard. I sprinkled sea salt on the chicken and roasted it at 400 degrees for about an hour. It was wonderful. The chicken was tender and moist with a light flavor.

I served it with Red Chard that I also got at the farmers’ market. I cut up the rest of the green garlic (once again, stalks and all) and sauted it with olive oil. I added freshly washed, so still slightly wet, chard (I got this from Epicurious) and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. It was very nice.

Then I cheated and rounded off the meal with Trader Joe’s Frozen Mashed Potatoes (they’re really good!) and a sparkling wine.
The best part is that the husband I had dinner after the kids went to bed and were able to have a lovely meal together. Fabulous.