Chinese Cabbage Salad

I picked up some Chinese Cabbage as a part of our CSA share last week. As I really don't eat dinner during the week, we need to eat our CSA share over the weekend. I did a quick google for chinese cabbage recipes and found a recipe on Cook's for a pretty simple salad - the cabbage and scallion, a dressing and ramen noodles and almonds that have been browned with butter as a crunchy topping. The salad was delicious and this was the first time I ever ate ramen noodles. They were pretty good as a crunchy salad topping, not sure I want them in my soup. We also had bone-in ribeye steaks that J cooked on the grill and a simple rice and bean side dish. The whole meal was awesome, including the Freemark Abbey Zinfandel we opened.

We spent most of the meal talking about our vacation in November, or should I say salivating over our vacation in November. We will spend the week in a beach house on Jost van Dyke in the Caribbean. I am so glad I turned J into a beach bum for vacations! He will enjoy his cubans and I will enjoy the sun. J's cousin is coming along to help with kidcare which really excites me about this vacation. Anyway, our meal fare will be nothing close to last night's dinner, but the sun and sand will make that OK.

Did I mention I had 3 helpings of the salad?

Cucumbers and Salt

Lately we have been getting 3-4 cukes per week from our CSA. Seeing as I am on a diet, I eat a cuke for dinner - dipping it in kosher salt. I also have a few glasses of wine to kill the "no eating" pain. Anyway, that is my dinner Monday-Thursday. I am living, eating and drinking larger on the weekends.

Beef and Bok Choy Hot Pot

I found this recipe and J cooked it last Saturday night while I tended to the boys. It was delicious! Now that we have our CSA pickups every Tuesday we need to be creative with our veggies and this recipe was definitely a keeper. Speaking of Saturday night, the weekend was nice. We are starting to get into a regular pattern with the kids, but I think we need to respect Rex's nap a bit more even if that keeps us in on gorgeous weekend afternoons. I guess we should utilize the deck a bit more. Rex is just such a better companion when he isn't tired and cranky. Dash is pretty much awesome all of the time at this point - sometimes I wonder how I have such a chill baby.

On Sunday we attended church - it was a bad start to the day. The church was not our speed. We followed that experience up with lunch at Starbucks and then attended an open house for an apartment in Harlem. If we didn't have kids I would probably drool over the apartment, but with 2 boys it is too small. The agent wants to interest us in a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment that is 1600 sf - very sizable by Manhattan standards. I really want 2 baths, but this apartment has 2 beds, living room with a dining area, open kitchen, library and family room with plenty of built-ins. Did I mention it is a fifth floor walk-up? Family of 4, strollers and 5 floors to haul our hit up - NO!