Night out: Mongolian Hot Pot

Rommel started getting sick yesterday and has been craving soup. I had a great workout tonight and didn't feel like cooking. So perfect occasion to go out for some Mongolian hot pot!

Rommel stayed in from work today to rest and cleared up his sinuses with delicious steamy and spicy soup. He said he's feeling a lot better tonight.

Our usual spot for hot pot is Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot.

They basically have a big pot of delicious broth on a hot plate at your table. You can order thin sliced meats, seafood, veggies, tofu, noodles, anything and they will bring it out on a tray to cook in the broth yourself. It's kind of fun. And makes you eat more slowly because you eat, cook, eat, cook, and repeat.

We got half spicy half regular broth. We both love spicy (even more so when we're sick!), but sometimes the spicy broth gets too spicy when the chilies have been simmering away the whole time you're eating. So I like to mix in the regular broth every once in a while.

They had a weeknight special: huge combo platter for only $15 each! We got one beef platter and one lamb platter. It also came with some meatballs, fishballs, shrimp balls, a few fish fillets, enoki mushrooms, tofu, lotus root, corn, kabocha squash, noodles, and a LOT of greens. They even added extra veggies for us when we asked. We also subbed the regular noodles for shirataki noodles for an extra buck.

This is just one of the two platters we ordered! Look how huge it is! It looks like a lot of meat but it's actually sliced very thin and rolled up so it's not too much.

It is so big. We honestly should've shared just one. We would have still been full and would have leftovers.

To keep it a little more on the healthy side I mostly just had lots of broth, veggies, seafood, shirataki noodles, and a tiny bit of meat.

They come around and keep filling your pot with more broth so it's easy to fill up on that and still have a lot of broth and extra fillings for leftovers.

We have three giant tubs filled with leftovers. There is way more than enough for us for lunch tomorrow and I even set aside a separate container of the regular not-spicy broth for my mom.

We didn't want the corn (high glycemic) or meatballs (usually has lots of starchy carbs to hold it together) so we put that in the container of leftover soup for my mom.

We stopped eating 4 hours ago and I am still so so full.

My tummy is happy. :)

Good workout and good food = good night. The only bad thing that happened tonight was I slurped up a noodle and it splashed chili oil right in my eyeball... OH MAN SOOOO PAINFUL. Food was so worth it though.

Awesome Beach Weekend (and yummy gazpacho)!

The weather in San Diego this weekend was ridiculous.... San Diego's real summer is usually  mid-August through October anyways, but this past weekend was BAD. 105 degrees even along the coast... WHICH NEVER HAPPENS IN SAN DIEGO. When you live and have grown up in San Diego in a neighborhood that is only 2 miles from the ocean, the only bearable temperatures are from about 73-80 degrees. Also, Carlsbad (the city I work in which is also along the coast) reached record high temperatures this past weekend.

Of course, when you live so close to the beach and you can't stand to do anything at home but sit and sleep in front of a fan (I've never lived in a house with AC because we've never needed it), so of course we must spend our weekend at the beach.

My regular beach spot is Del Mar Beach because it's the closest to my house and always so clean and pretty, but I knew this weekend was going to be crazy crowded there.... Luckily, I learned of a lesser known beach just a little north of Dog Beach in Del Mar. It has a little hidden away parking lot (that still had lots of empty spots!) and there weren't that many people over there either! And the beach was warm but still had a pretty nice breeze. It was PERFECT.

Not too many people!

Look what I found! Part of a lobster tail shell

We set up a mat and some umbrellas and spent our day boogie boarding, walking, reading, and napping. We packed a couple giant frozen water bottles, sliced celery and cucumbers, lemon cilantro hummus, baba ghanouj, nuts, and fruits. I also made a cucumber mint gazpacho the night before that we brought to the beach. It was so refreshing and perfect for the hot day! I made it by basically blending up some peeled cucumbers, plain nonfat yogurt, jalapeno, red onion, mint, olive oil, and a little water to thin it out to the consistency I wanted. I let it refrigerate overnight for the flavors to come together, threw it in the freezer for an hour before we left for the beach, and topped each of our cups of gazpacho with grape tomatoes and mint. Definitely making this sometime again on another hot day.

Adventures later that night included Louisiana-style boiled shellfish at Crab Hut (I was craving crawfish from finding that lobster tail shell haha) and a cigar lounge with my boyfriend. New discovery: cigar lounges are actually kind of fun. Even better discovery: a cigar, coffee, and dark chocolate taste AMAZING together.

I got a short little baby cigar haha. My boyfriend laughed at me because I'm pretty short and the cigar is called Short Story...

I felt bad for my dog because she was locked up in the hot house by herself while we were at the beach - we did leave the windows open and fans on for her though - so we took her to dog beach the next day :)

Then we took her to lunch at Station Sushi in Solana Beach after. Dogs are welcome on the patio!

Zoey likes going out to eat too!

HUGE protein roll - no rice! MMMMM