Andrew and I like watching Joshua Weissman’s cooking videos. On a podcast, Joshua was talking about when working in fancy restaurants if a customer would say, “compliments to the chef”, the kitchen would erupt into cheers. I’ve been thinking about celebrating that and how that feeling to me is like someone’s favorite sports team winning a game or Dwight when the firetruck arrives. Just a solid, “yeah!” feeling of doing something that crushed it.

I loved hearing him talk about it. If I wasn’t an eating disorder dietitian, I would’ve been a chef. Even though I’m not creating food in a restaurant for strangers, I still get to create food for my family and I view the work I get to do as a dietitian the same as being a chef – allowing food to become an enjoyable experience. I don’t expect everyone to turn into a foodie as a result of eating disorder recovery. However, being able to experience pleasure when eating food is something that is good for everyone and something worth taking steps towards.

All that to say, here are some head-over-heels moments I’ve had with food lately.

Almond croissants. Houston has so many places with excellent, freshly made almond croissants. I joke often that Houston doesn’t have a ton going on in the nature department, so the food has to be excellent here…and it is. Be it cheap food or expensive food, Houston is a great food city. There is a new restaurant/shop development that is going in right by us and restaurants keep opening…and then not making it, so they close. I’m like, “what are we waiting on Tex-Mex restauranteurs? We all know it’s gonna be the Tex-Mex restaurant that stands the test of time.”

Dipping spices and more. I finely chop up things, put it in a bowl, pour olive oil over it, and then serve it with bread to dip in it. This one here was finely chopped: roasted pistachios, parmesan, chives, cilantro, red onion, salt and pepper. This combo mixed with olive oil (with rosemary instead of cilantro) is also incredible as a pizza base.

Nutella crepes. I’m going to share the recipe we’ve been making soon. We’ve made so many nutella crepes over the past year. I love it because the batter is so simple to make and we nearly always have all the ingredients on hand. Also, if we only have one serving of leftovers that I’m not that excited about, Andrew is happy to eat the leftovers and me and the girls can have crepes for dinner. Everybody is happy.

Sometimes I like making it special for the girls (or maybe it’s just special for me to do something special for them)…

Vietnamese food. We’ve had several great Vietnamese restaurants open around us. I’m down for a pork banh mi anytime.

Inspired by that, one night I made banh mi bowls using this banh mi meatball recipe, brown rice, carrots, mint and cilantro. Andrew and I both loved this.

Southwestern Chopped Salad. The salad dressing for this recipe calls for 100% greek yogurt, which doesn’t appeal to me from a flavor perspective. So I did half greek yogurt and half sour cream. This was surprisingly good! Even better when paired with a beer. Super fresh. Don’t leave out the cheddar cheese! I feel like it made it what it was!

Recipes I’m eyeing to make soon include:

mini baked potatoes (I think the girls will get a kick out of them…or maybe just I will lol)

goat cheese bites