Date night..

..married style.

I remember way, way back before Nadim and I had any kids, before we were married, back when dates used to be romantic.

Dates like

..eating at the Cottage in Laguna Beach and kissing on the cliffs

..kayaking around Newport Bay

..a road trip to Las Vegas

Now our dates consist of shopping at REI then Lowes.

When confronted about our trend in date nights, Nadim responded,

"Well, their functional dates."

Functional dates?  What??

This is something only a man would say - functional dates.

Please.

At least I got to eat dinner at Zankou chicken.  I wrote a blog about Sarkis Pastry that mentioned Zankou Chicken here if you want to check it out.

Zankou in all its glory

So Zankou is in Anaheim in a heavily Middle Eastern area, so if you want to pick up a hooka or supplies to make Lebanese coffee, you are good to go :)

Order at the counter and wait for your number to be called

 Sometimes it is tricky to get a table in Zankou, once a whole soccer team came in at once. 

Here come the chicken plates

Part of the charm of Zankou is the wide range of people that come in to eat.  It's like the United Nations in there.  I don't know, but I think getting enemies to sit down at a table and eat some delicious Zankou, might solve a lot of the world's problems.

All this goodness is right underneath the Arabic bread

So on the chicken plate you get - roasted chicken, hummos, pickled turnips (the pink sticks), tomatoes, peppers, arabic bread and the garlic paste.  The garlic paste is UNBELIEVABLY good.
 

This is how you do it - Lebanese style :)

If you want to eat Zankou like a regular this is how you do it..

Rip off a piece of arabic bread (also known in America as pita bread), open it up and put in a pickle, some chicken and glob garlic paste all over the top.

Eat and repeat.

Zankou chicken almost makes up for my functional date night, almost but not quite.

I think next date night, I'll be in charge :)

Happy Sunday!

Happy Valentines Day!

or Telenovela Hair day, depending on how you look at it.

Valentine's gifts

For me, once you've been married for more than a decade and have multiple children, the hearts and flowers stuff seems to lose its charm.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVED coming home after volunteering at the elementary school this morning to find a bouquet and romantic card waiting for me.  But Valentine's Day gifts aren't the end all.

What really counts with me, is the day to day stuff... cleaning up after dinner, putting away laundry, tackling jobs around the house, spending time together laughing... those things are my daily Valentine's gifts.

This weekend we have a date set at the Crow Bar and Kitchen in Corona Del Mar, this really isn't a "Valentine's Date", just one of our regular night's out together.  The Crow Bar is one of my favorites!  Since this date is slightly more upscale then dinner at Zankou Chicken and shopping at Lowes, I decided to book myself an appointment for some beautification.

I love getting my hair done, it is one of my favorite Mom treats.  Adolfo, my trusty stylist, always manages to tame my mop of hair and today I'm a Telanovela star.

Have a great day!