Beach Birthday Week Dining Schedule

Our family is big into food, in particular eating as a group can make a meal that much better. So in preparation of a week at the beach we decided each of us would be responsible for one full day of meals. Those collective meals are definitely one of my favorite memories of the week. We chose the first day to be our day because we wanted to get it out of the way and be able to relax the rest of the week. All the meals were casual, relaxing, memorable, comfortably familiar and focused on all of Dad's favorite foods. Our breakfast was one of Dad's favorites - burritos!

We ended up eating breakfast every morning later than we normally do, because we were on vacation and we could! So we didn't eat lunch once that week, but we never missed a dinner! For our dinner we prepared another one of Dad's favorites - burgers! We had a build your own burger bar with different kinds of cheese, bacon, guacamole, roasted pineapple (which were the cause of Mike's seared eyelashes!), roasted hatch chilis, sauteed mushrooms and all the fixings (including various pickled items in case plain old pickles didn't cut it for you).

The next day it was Tri/Justin's turn, which started with a traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese, roasted potatoes and english muffins. For dinner we had terrific grilled fish tacos, made with local ling cod. Delicious!

We ate a lot of eggs on this vacation, almost everyday for breakfast. So the following morning, which was declared a free day to do whatever you wanted, we started our days with the leftovers from the previous two egg breakfasts.

We planned to have one day to ourselves smack dab in the middle of the week, which was great. And the following morning we were greeted with, you guessed it, more eggs in the form of an omelet station.

And delicious Bloody Marys.

For dinner that night we were treated to a paprika chicken meal. Served with olives underneath the crispy chicken skin, a cheesy broccoli mac & cheese and a raw zucchini salad. This was really delicious also.

Now by this time I'm sure you're wondering is this man is Asian? He sure looks it. Yes and he loves new foods, but by the end of the week we were all craving some comforting Vietnamese food, so our morning started with a delicious wonton noodle soup made with fresh crab and shrimp wontons. So good!

For our final dinner together we were treated to an epic do-it-yourself street rice paper rolls unique to the southern part of Vietnam - Bo Bia. Brought by the Chinese community, these rolls are totally different from typical rice paper or salad rolls. And it's always fun to see how well everyone's rolls come out.

We stayed very active the whole week to ward off tummy aches from all the snacking and big meals, and these meals and all the food was definitely a highlight of our time together for this special birthday beach bash!