Plated Meals Week March 21st and 50% Off Promo Code

Plated sends you the fresh ingredients to make meals at home, all sent directly to your house! It's so convenient and even on the busiest nights, it's so easy to make a home cooked meal in about 30 minutes.

Plated lets you pick your delivery day, Tuesday or Friday, and in some locations they also offer Monday delivery. It's overnighted via FedEx, and usually arrives fairly early in the day, plenty of time to prepare it for dinner that night.

I decided on the Chicken Tostadas with Avocado Dressing, and Shepherd's Pie with Ground Beef and Vegetables.

Veronica Belmont #NOM05 Quarterly Co. Box Review

Even though I didn't get photos of this box when it arrived back in September, I wanted to do a review for it and include a photo of the Veronica Belmont Quarterly Co. #NOM05 box. This was the last box that was the original $25 for a box every quarter, or every 3 months. This subscription has since gone up to $50 every quarter. I have loved every one of these boxes, and I highly recommend Quarterly. They have all kinds of curators to chose from, great customer service and I think they're pretty close to what Fancy offers with their boxes. High quality products and a good value with each box.

Photo Credit: Quarterly Co.

The New Spot Restaurant Review

I'm in San Francisco again visiting the boyfriend, and he was craving burritos today so we normally go to Papito which is right near his apartment (and they have fried chicken burritos and tacos, what!?). But, we decided to try a new place, called The New Spot (hah!), which is also right near his apartment. It's located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, and I recommend the restaurant! It doesn't seem to be too busy, but it's just a walk up to the counter and order, then sit wherever you'd like kind of place. B got his burrito and I got the nachos which were a very good idea.

Plated Meals Week January 7th and Promo Code 2 Free Meals!

My first Plated meals arrived! Plated is a service similar to Hello Fresh, where you pick certain menu items each week and they send the fresh proportioned, ingredients to your door. All you need are a few staples like pepper, salt, and oil and you can make the meals within 30 minutes. I had another discount code for this, and since Hello Fresh doesn't deliver to my area, I tried Plated. For this week's meals, I decided on:

Guacamole!

Guacamole is one of my go-to favorite easy snacks to make. If I don't want to cook something, and we happen to have avocados and tortilla chips laying around, odds are we have the rest of the ingredients! Super easy the way I make it, and very tasty! Sometimes I mix it up and make some pico de gallo to add to the mashed avocados, other times I take the simple route (which is my go-to recipe) and just use some pre-made salsa, and jarred jalapeño slices.

Selland's Market-Cafe and Adanberto's

B and I decided to go hiking out in Coloma, but before we went, we were hungry! Selland's has been on our to-eat list, so we stopped by to grab some food before we went. We didn't order anything too exciting, but it was all very good! I got a small Mediterranean salad, which was full of red onion, cucumbers, kalamata olives, feta cheese, and bell peppers. It was very refreshing, and just what I needed.

B and I both ordered a BLTA, which was kind of messy, but very delicious. I am so proud of him for eating the tomatoes on the sandwich, normally he picks off the tomatoes on burgers and sandwiches. He's more recently started to just eat it instead of freaking out about it. I attribute this to my foodie influence of course. 

I had 2 of their lemon cookies for dessert, which I devoured before they could be photographed, sadly. But I highly recommend them! Order them! They are wonderful : )

After hiking, B and I went back to my place, started drinking, and eventually got an inevitable carne asada fry craving. We had to go try the only place nearby that's open all night, and has carne asada fries, Adanberto's. I have explained the trick to carne asada fries in other posts, but I'll re-explain here. You pour 4 containers of hot sauce all over the fries, then proceed to double-handed stir. (In our case, we each stir with one fork.) Then eat with a fork. 

Now, these carne asada fries were not as good as my favorite place in San Diego, Cotixan's. However, they were good enough that come another drunken night, I may go back and get some. Cotixan's are better mostly because they make their own hot sauce in giant containers that is delicious. I will say though, that the carne asada on these fries was a little better quality than at Cotixan's. 

San Francisco Food Tour, Part 2: Food Truck Edition!

Hello everyone! Welcome to my 100th post! This is a very special one, and one of my favorites. Food trucks! I have been on a recent food truck quest, and my hometown doesn't really have many food trucks, i.e. 2 : ( So, I went to visit B, and we decided to take public transit from his house, to San Francisco (about a 30 min drive normally) and try a bunch of local food trucks. It was so fun! I scoured through Twitter, and found some of the best ones, and we discovered some along the way that were big hits as well. The first we tried was the Chairman Bao truck. This is one the most popular trucks in the city, with 2 trucks roaming all over the Bay Area, and over 10,000 followers on Twitter. We had decided beforehand to get a bunch of food from varying trucks, and share it so we each got to try everything. Here's the truck:

We settled on the baked Spicy Chicken with Toasted Sesame Puree, Pickled Carrots-Cucumber and Cilanro bun....

...The baked Coca-Cola Braised Pork with Savoy Cabbage, Yellow Mustard Seeds and Kewpie Mayo bun...

...and the steamed Tender Pork Belly with Tumeric Pickled Daikon and Green Shiso bun.

I was kind of sad to hear they sometimes have a duck bun, that wasn't on the menu when we visited, but I'll save it for another time! The food was amazing! So flavorful, and thoughtful when it came to the ingredient combinations. We tried everything, but I sort of kept the pork belly bun and the braised pork for myself. They were too good to give up! It was so nice out that we decided to sit on the grass in the mid-day sun and eat our food, so sorry for the photo quality. It was kind of windy too, and I almost decided to move to the car, but we had already started eating. There was no way we were moving until we finished eating!

I was really glad the Chairman truck was my first food truck experience, because it was such wonderful food. The buns were so soft, and the baked ones were perfect if you wanted a big sandwich, and the steamed were perfect for trying everything on the menu. 

We then roamed around the city for a while, to get our appetites up again, and we were waiting for Off The Grid to start. Pretty much everyday of the week, lunch and dinner, Off The Grid organizes several trucks to get together at a certain place in and near the city and serve food for a few hours. It's a great way to be able to sample several trucks at once, and you can compare menus and decide what you want to try the most. I highly recommend bringing a friend, so you can get a bunch of different items and share. It's also nice to be able to have each of you get in different lines, so you get all the food at about the same time. That's what I B and I did, and it worked out beautifully.

The next truck we tried was the Hapa SF truck. I ordered the lumpia, which I've had homemade before that was hard to beat. The lumpia at the Hapa SF truck, was delicious and it came with the right sauce for it. B and I scarfed those down in a minute flat! Here's the truck:

Here's the wonderfully flavorful, crispy lumpia! They were kind of small, so don't share with too many people!

Once again, I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get a chance to try their other menu items. Next time! If you've never had lumpia, I recommend finding an authentic Filipino place and try them. I think they're better than even great egg rolls, when done right. You definitely need that sweet-spicy chili sauce to dip them in.

The truck that B was waiting in line for, while I was getting lumpia, was Señor Sisig. A little side note: B and I had a huge love for what are called carne asada fries in San Diego. Our favorite place was Cotixan's (warning, Flash site) and they are a huge portion of french fries, guacamole, sour cream, cheese, pico de gallo and carne asada. The key to them though is that they make their own hot sauce, and you add a couple of those all over the fries and stir it up, and eat with a fork. It's definitely a two person affair trying to finish this huge serving, but it's the perfect drunk food, especially since mexican food is mostly open 24 hours in San Diego. Back to the food trucks: We zeroed in on these because we have been crazily missing carne asada fries. The item we ordered from Señor Sisig, was the Sisig Fries. They were kind of similar to carne asada fries, not quite as good, but still delicious and they were consumed within minutes. Here's the truck:

Here are the fries:

The fries consisted of french fries, nacho cheese, sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo, jalapeños, and pork. These are not made to be "mexican food", they are Filipino food. I did enjoy the nacho cheese sauce (it's one of my guilty pleasures) and the jalapeños were a nice touch. It was missing the hot sauce that I used to get with carne asada fries, but these were very tasty! I would definitely order them again.

B had ordered his own main dish much earlier in the night, and I was still trying to decide on what my main dish of the night would be. The truck I decided on was still kind of setting up, when many of the others had already opened and started serving. I was so glad I waited because I discovered this gem: Koja Kitchen. It was the highlight of the night. I still couldn't tell you if it was better than Chairman Bao, but they were so close. I had never tried kimchi before, but Koja Kitchen introduced it in a way that was so amazing, and my preferential way, on fries! They had a few delicious looking menu items, but I noticed they have something called the Kamikaze Combo, which was a combination of their Koja BBQ Beef and Rice Patty sandwich, and their Kamikaze Fries, and a drink. I ordered the combo, because everything looked so good! Here's the truck:

I upgraded my Koja, to the Korean BBQ Short Rib Koja. So good! The rice patty "buns" tend to crumble a little, but they are kind of crispy, and I just used a fork and ate the koja right in the wrapper.

Kamikaze Fries: Crisscut fries topped with Korean BBQ Beef, sauteed onions, kimchi, green onions, and drizzled with their signature sauce and Japanese mayo. These were amazing, and I can still taste them every time I look at this photo. They haunt my food dreams...in a good way : D

B and I sat and decided we needed dessert before we were done with our food truck tour. I had taken a mental note of what each truck had while I was deciding on dinner. I noticed Koja Kitchen had a wonderful looking dessert called the Mochimisu. It was tiramisu using mochi for the chocolate part.

The thing I loved about the Koja Kitchen truck, besides the amazing food, was their truck. They had some great ideas about promoting their food right on the truck itself, that really drew people in to order from them. They had a few LCD TVs on the side of the truck, 2 with a photo of the menu on them, and the other TV had a photo slideshow of the menu items. It was great, because you got to see the food, not just read the menu description. They had nice professional photos taken of their food items, and it really made me want to order from them. More food trucks should take note and do this where possible. Or at least have photos on their site. Either way, works for me. I'm more likely to order from a truck if I can get a visual sense of the food. If I imagine it looks good, I'll order it. Also, sauces. If you have an original looking sauce on your food, I will probably try it. I love sauces. Anyways, I digress.

Overall, the day was successful! We had some amazing food, and I would try any of these trucks again. Go track down your local food trucks and do a tour! You won't be sorry! Some of the most original cuisine is no longer in a restaurant, it's on a truck.

White Chicken Enchiladas

Once again, sorry for the lack of posts lately. I could say I've been super busy or whatever, but I haven't. Really, I just haven't been cooking a lot lately. My incomplete recipe collection is only on my iPad right now, and I haven't finished porting it to my computer. But I made these a while ago, and I'm finally getting around to posting it. I took these photos with my new iPhone 4S, so a many of my future posts will be with photos from that. And they look quite lovely, so no complaints here.

I had this craving for enchiladas, and went searching for a recipe that used ingredients we had. This is what I came up with and it was so delicious! It made a ton, so we had this a few nights in a row. I just served it with some store-bought Spanish rice. I highly recommend this recipe, and it would be amazing, and easy with rotisserie chicken.

Here's the recipe adapted from Pioneer Woman

Prep Time: 45 min | Cooking Time: 30 min | Difficulty: Easy | Serves: 6

Ingredients:
2-½ cups Cooked, Shredded Chicken
2 cups Chicken Broth
3 Tbsp Canola Oil
12 Whole Corn Tortillas
1 Whole Large Onion, Diced
3 Whole 4 Oz Cans Whole Green Chilies,Diced
1 Whole Jalapeno, Seeded And Finely Diced
1 tsp Paprika
½ cup Heavy Cream
2 Tbsp Butter
2 Tbsp Flour
1 cup Sour Cream
2-½ cups Monterey Jack Cheese, Grated
Salt And Pepper, to taste

Directions:
1. Heat 2 tablespoons canola oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Fry tortillas for no longer than 20 seconds, just to soften (do not allow to become crisp.) Place tortillas on a large towel or stack of paper towels to drain.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon canola oil in separate skillet over medium heat. Add onions and jalapenos and saute for 1 minute, just to start the cooking process. Add chicken, half of the green chilies, and ½ teaspoon paprika. Stir together. Add ½ cup chicken broth and stir. Add cream and stir, allowing mixture to bubble and get hot. Turn off heat and set aside.

3. In a separate large skillet, melt butter and sprinkle in flour. Whisk together and cook over medium heat for one minute. Pour in 1 ½ cups chicken broth. Whisk together and cook for another minute or two. Stir in the other half of the chilies. Reduce heat, then stir in sour cream. Add 1 ½ cups grated cheese and stir to melt. Add ½ teaspoon paprika. Check seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.

4. To assemble, spoon chicken mixture on top of tortillas, one by one. Top with plenty of cheese and roll up. Place seam side down in a 9 x 13 casserole dish.

5. Pour cheese mixture all over the top of the tortillas. Top with extra cheese if you'd like, then bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Sprinkle generously with chopped cilantro.

Beefy Crunch Burrito

You may remember not that long back Taco Bell had a special burrito by the name of the "Beefy Crunch Burrito." I was never a big fan of Taco Bell until they paired this burrito with the $5 box for the Super Bowl. It had their taco meat, nacho cheese, sour cream, mexican rice and Flamin' Hot Fritos inside. It was my favorite item and so I wanted to see if I could make it at home. I succeeded and it was delicious, but quite time consuming. They have since gotten rid of this tasty burrito, so I may have to make it myself again sometime. I'm not going to post a full recipe on this one because I had to get recipes for all the different parts of the burrito. So, go ahead and pull your favorite recipes yourself for each component. 

Here are the basic components...


Ingredients:
Cheese sauce
Sour cream
Taco seasoned ground beef
Flamin' hot Fritos
Mexican rice
Burrito size flour torillas


Directions:
1. Prepare all the components and warm the tortillas


2. Spoon some taco meat into the tortilla along with some cheese sauce, sour cream, mexican rice and sprinkle a few Fritos into it.


3. Roll into a burrito and enjoy!

Chimichangas

I've never had a chimichanga before I made this recipe. Boy, was it worth the wait! I substituted the refried beans for mexican rice inside the chimichanga, but adding both would probably be delicious too.

Here's the recipe adapted from the Food Network.


Prep Time: 20 min | Cooking Time: 30 min | Difficulty: Easy | Serves: 2


Ingredients:
1 Tbsp Unsalted Butter
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
½ White Onion, chopped
1 ½ Cloves Garlic, chopped
½ Jalapeno Pepper, diced (remove seeds for less heat)
¾ tsp Chili Powder
¼ tsp Ground Cumin
⅛ tsp Ground Cinnamon
Kosher Salt
½ small Tomato, chopped, plus more for topping
1 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Cilantro
1 ¼ cups Shredded Rotisserie Chicken
2 Tbsp Sour Cream
½ 15-ounce Can Refried Beans
2 10- Inch Flour Tortillas
½ cup Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese, plus more for topping
Mexi-Sauce, for topping (see below)
Shredded Lettuce, for topping
Mexican Rice, for serving


Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Melt the butter with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a skillet; transfer to a bowl. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoons oil in the skillet. Add the onion, garlic and jalapeno and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the chili powder, cumin, cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon salt; toast 30 seconds. Add the tomato and cilantro and cook until slightly dry, about 2 minutes. Stir in the chicken and sour cream and warm through. Remove from the heat.


2. Brush a rimmed baking sheet with some of the butter-oil mixture. Spread 1 tablespoon refried beans down the center of each tortilla, leaving a 2-inch border on both ends. Top with 1/2 cup chicken mixture and 1/8 cup cheese. Fold in the ends and roll up.


3. Put the chimichangas seam-side down on the baking sheet; brush with the butter-oil mixture. Bake 8 to 10 minutes per side, brushing again after you flip. Top with the sauce, more cheese, lettuce and tomato. Serve with rice and the remaining beans.

Make Chi-Chi's Mexi-sauce:
Saute 1/4 cup chopped onion and 1 chopped garlic clove in a skillet with vegetable oil. Add a pinch each of chili powder, cumin, sugar and salt; cook 30 seconds. Stir in one 4-ounce cans chopped green chiles (drained and rinsed); cook 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup chicken broth and simmer until thickened, then puree. Stir in 1/8 cup chopped cilantro