Today’s Friend Favorite is MOST CERTAINLY a Favorite Friend and an amazing mom!  Not only is her son darling, her home design eye to die for, she keeps a beautiful garden and makes most food from scratch, and works full time carrying on conference calls late into the evening on the other side of the world!  She is a master at managing A LOT!  She is also the queen of wonderful resteraunt receommendations!  Here are a few of her Orange County pics…so sorry for all of you that don’t live here!  You will most certainly have to visit to try these out!  I can speak for Bear Flag as I’m a regular there – AWESOME!

Meet my amazing mom friend with  a few of her Favorites!

Ah, the weekend. So much to love about that.  One of my favorite things about the weekend is that, other than breakfast, I do not cook! This weekend we decide is fish taco weekend.

We will eat nothing but fish tacos this and share with you our favorite local finds.

Saturday the weather is nice so we hop on our bikes and ride down to Bear Flag Fish Company for some fish tacos. They make a small plate for kids called the Guppy Special (panko crusted Basa fish on top of a grilled corn tortilla).  They make great salsa and serve it with El Toro Bravo chips.

Sunday the weather is a little wet, but not enough to deter us from more fish tacos.  La Sirena in South Laguna has a wonderful menu full of fresh, organic, local and sustainable ingredients.

We call in our order for pickup on the drive south - wild salmon tacos.  We pick up our order and drive across the street to the Montage Resort.  There is a parking garage on the south side of the hotel.  We set up dinner on a bench overlooking the sea and sit for about five minutes to eat when our son discovers the rabbits grazing on the grass at sun set.  The chase is on!

For additional resources on great fish to eat, check out Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch.  Here you can search on types of fish to see how they rank: best, good or avoid.  Plus they give you the reasons for avoidance (such as high mercury content) and suggest better alternatives.  They even have an iPhone app for fish advice on the go!

Happy Tacos!

***Sounds like a perfect weekend!  Thanks for the great tips!  Bear Flag is one of our families favorites as well.  They get pretty busy so we like to call our order in there as well to keep the wait time for the Littles to a minimum.  Nice to have it waiting for us, even if we are eating there.  Love the idea of tacos over looking the view at Montage (Don’t even get me started on how fabulous their spa is!!).  Will definitely be checking that out!!  Thanks for the tips!  Also the Weekly Menu and Shopping list for next week are posted.  Enjoy!