Food – Stay Golden Mama

Dirty 30 Birthday Dinner + Pablo Y Pablo Restaurant Review

If you follow me on IG, you know that I turned 30 on Monday. Welp, I am officially 30. I’m in a whole new decade, y’all! I can’t believe that I have bid adieu to my 20’s and I am walking into my 30’s like heeyyyyyy! I had some mixed feelings about turning 30, which we can discuss in another post. I will be following up this week with some sentimental things I have learned – so don’t you worry!

For my birthday this year, we decided to be thrifty-ish and pick up a gift card from Costco. They sell these great restaurant group gift cards where you can get $100 in gift cards for $80. $20 off? Yes please!

We decided to try out a new restaurant in the area, Pablo Y Pablo. It is nestled in the trendy area of Wallingford, Seattle. We even got my sister (affectionally known by Gia as Titi) to watch Gia for the night. We had the whole night to enjoy some adult time!

The restaurant was GORGEOUS! The restaurant boasted a gorgeous sprawling patio and a modern, yet comfy interior. I did not get a change to take a photo of the outside, but I did convince my boo to take 50 pictures against the side of the wall. Blogger friends, you KNOW the struggle. He was so patient with me, here is the one I liked best 😉

First, we had to start off with some dranks. I love some smooth and tart margs, so I started my journey to 30 with a strawberry basil margarita. YOU GUYS, BEST DECISION EVER. The strawberry was not overpoweringly sweet and the basil did a great job of balancing the tart flavor. I may have had 2 of them. It was my birthday, I swear I’m not a lush! Okay, I’m a lush. Richard had a Paloma, but I think he liked my drink better haha.

*They don’t get much prettier than this!*

Soon after we got our drinks, we received our appetizers. Richard saw halibut ceviche on the menu and was like “you already know what time it is”. It was sooooo good. Tender fish and super fresh ingredients. Served with homemade tortillas chips and filled with cucumbers and fresh red onions – it was perfect to start the meal. We also noshed on some guacamole (too many jalapeños for my liking) and more drinks. We were so excited that we could started nibbling before a photo! Big blogging no-no!

We finished up our apps and then anxiously awaited for our main course, some gourmet tacos. Pablo y Pablo’s menu focused on delicious and approachable tacos. They were categorized in 3 ways: land, sea, and baller. Obviously, I wanted all of the baller tacos! We agreed on softshell crab (baller), braised chicken (land), shrimp (sea), duck carnitas (land), pork belly banh mi (land) and a veggie taco with sweet potatoes and cabbage.

My favorites were the softshell crab and the veggie taco. Each taco had its own special set of unique ingredients. I was floored by the quality and sheer yumminess of each taco. I really think you could order any taco at this place and be impressed.

Post tacos, we decided to indulge in some hot and flaky churros y chocolate. I am not usually a churro fan, but these ones had me shook. I feel like churros (Costco, I am talkin’ about you) are usually stale tasting or just are too sugary. Not these churros though. They were so fresh and very lightly sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Pure prefection. I also failed to get a photo of these because we ate them too fast. Dang.

The Ratings:

Ambience: 10/10 – Beautiful setting with modern and warm decor.
Drinks: 9/10 – My strawberry basil margarita was pureed heaven, but my blood organge margarita left something to be desired.
Food: 9/10 – Everything was fab. It is just hard to give 10/10!! I feel like 10/10 is what you dream about.
Service: 8/10 – As I mentioned before, it may have been slightly under-staffed because we had a hard time finding our server at times.
Crowd: 10/10 – Diverse upper 20’s semi-hipster crowd. Not too busy for a Saturday night. There was no wait either!

Overall, I would rate this restaurant 9/10. Maybe even a 9.5/10. They lost a point because our server was hard to find a few times. I definitely recommend trying this place out and ordering some baller tacos! It is the perfect spot for date night or ladies night out.

Hope you are blessed with some tacos in your life soon!

xo,

Simone

I Can’t Eat That!? My Surprising Food Sensitivity Test Results

Let me start off by being basic and saying…”I LOVE FOOD”! Yes, just like Oprah and her bread.

Unfortunately I have noticed that a lot of the foods I love don’t love me back. From my love of cheesy garlic bread to every carb under the sun, I frequently experience stomach probz.

So when my workplace announced that they were bringing a Mobile Medicine service to do wellness and food sensitivity tests, I thought… why not?

I honestly was pretty nervous about my results. I really truly very much love to stuff my face with pizza and I knew that I would be sad if I told me that I was sensitive to my favorite cheesy vice.

My job hired Mobile Medicine to come in and conduct these wellness and food sensitivity tests. They came in and our blood, then came back to read our results with us in person (individually, of course!).

Here is an explanation of what the test detects, in fancy doctor lingo.

“Blood tests measure the presence of IgE antibodies to specific foods. (IgE, short for “immunoglobulin E,” is the antibody that triggers food allergy symptoms.) In the past, these tests were called “RASTs” (which stands for radioallergosorbent tests) because they used radioactivity, but modern tests do not.” – Foodallergytest.org

I was so scared when the doctor was reading my results to me. I was thinking, “please Lord, don’t let it me be sensitive to everything!”. My doctor was awesome. She went through the results of my test while I held my breath. She handed me a paper that showed my lab results with the most sensitive foods highlighted in red. Here is an example results sheet below. These were not my results, but wanted to show you what a sample report looked like.

Dr. McMurray helped me decipher my results. Basically, I am sensitive to the following:

rice/oats/grains/gluten,
dairy
almonds
cashews
pineapple
clams
kale
yeast
mushrooms
Oh yeah and eggs. Yes people, you heard it correctly. I said E.G.G.S.

I was devasted.

I eat eggs every.single.freaking.morning. Scrambled eggs on the weekend and hard-boiled eggs at work on the weekends. I was SHOOK by these results. Eggs turned out to be the food that had the highest sensitivity for me. So sad. I immediately though “if I can’t eat gluten, dairy or eggs, what the heck do I eat?” Ugh. So many emotions.

Luckily, Dr. McMurray came prepared with recipes tailored to my new restrictions. There were quinoa hot cereal and tofu scrambles galore. Ha-lay-loo. This women knew her stuff!

Honestly, in my heart I knew that I already I DEFINITELY had a sensitivity to dairy and gluten. Possibly almonds too. But eggs. Lordt, that was too much. Dr. McMurray recommended that I do the elimination diet, which would mean I needed to eliminate all the foods that came up with sensitivity results for 4 weeks, then introduce them back one by one. Every 2 days you test a new food and wait 2 days for a result. Sensitivities can include sluggishness, skin irritation or acne, stomach pain, gas, diarrhea, etc. She recommended logging how I felt after introducing each food.

February is a busy month for me with a trip to the Bay Area planned, Valentine’s Day and my beau’s birthday. Basically it would be hard for me to have a strict diet at this time. So I made the decision to try the best I could to avoid my food sensitivities until March, when I would go hardcore and start the true elimination diet. The cool part is that I am pretty convinced that I will lose around 5-10 lbs!!! I want to lose 14 more lbs before my big 3.0. this year, so bring on the spinach!! I want to be more fit than I was before I got pregnant.

Gabby is always goals! Hoping I get a six pack like hers after this elimination diet. A girl can dream, right!?

I do want to talk a little bit about the validity of the test. Some say that the test has 30-50% margin of error. My dietician friend said that the results also are dependent upon the health of your gut. So if things are off and the wrong bacteria is in your gut, then you could test more sensitive for certain foods. She said the truest indication of sensitivity is the elimination diet.

I am glad that I decided to take this test, even thought it will make breakfast a bit of an initial struggle. I know that it will make me feel better to try to eliminate these foods for a month, but jeeeeeez it will be some work! I will keep you guys updated with the recipes I end up trying how my elimination diet turns out!

I would love to hear if any of you have tried an elimination diet or a food sensitivity test!

Simone