Takeout Food

Frozen yogurt isn't just a substitute for the ostensively less-healthy ice-cream—it's a food with its own sort of subculture, centered around slathering your bowl of yogurt with numerous toppings and add-ons, from fruit to cereal to chocolate to nuts to candy to… almost anything . We've been to the recently opened Twisters frozen yogurt shop in Novato a few times, and have found that it satisfies the frozen yogurt (and topping) craving.

Twisters opened up this spring in the San Marin Plaza shopping center, at 109 San Marin Drive in Novato. It always seems to be busy, most likely due to a prime location at the confluence of a busy high school, elementary school, and swim/tennis club. At Twisters, it's all about self-serve. You grab a bowl, available in numerous sizes, and fill it with your non-fat yogurt of choice. Then take your bowl over to their huge variety of toppings and pile on the chocolate sauce, gummi bears, Froot Loops, jimmies, peanuts, and what-have-you.

The catch is, you pay by weight. Weigh in your concoction at the cash register and pay 47¢ per ounce for your yogurt and toppings.

I think most parents of young children will agree with me when I say that sleep is a precious commodity. In fact, I think much of the sleep that I think I've had in the past few years was in fact not sleep at all, but "liquid naps" in the guise of coffee and other caffeinated drinks. Yes, coffee and tea in all their forms keep many of us moving through the day.

Often, it's impractical to drag the kids into a coffee place, or perhaps you want to pick up a latté when they're asleep in their car seats. This is where the amazing phenomenon that is drive-through coffee comes into place. There really aren't many drive-through coffee joints in Marin, perhaps because we're less into the whole suburban drive-to-Walmart culture, but they can be found at convenient locations throughout the county. Of course you can always get your caffeine fix via the McDonald's drive through—after all, they make espresso drinks now—but chances are you'd rather get your coffee from someplace dedicated to the craft of making it.

It's been a few months now since the new Hamilton Marketplace shopping center was completed, and slowly but surely new tenants are starting to occupy all of the spaces. There are a few restaurants in the mix, notably the recently-opened Sonoma Latina Grill and Toast.

We had a chance to check out Sonoma Latina Grill for lunch the other day. It's kind of a hybrid Mexican/California place and definitely a step up both in price and quality from your typical taqueria. Quality of food is really the emphasis, with fresh organic produce, handmade tortillas, and locally sourced meats and cheeses being the order of the day. Sonoma Latina Grill's other standout feature is their wood-fired grill which they use to cook meats and their signature flatbreads. The restaurant is owned by the Tamayo family who run La Tortilla Factory in Santa Rosa. Apparently this is the first in what they hope is a regional chain of restaurants and has the well thought out design and stylish decor befitting a flagship location.

When you're just too fried to cook dinner but don't want to deal with the whole restaurant experience, that old standby, the rotisserie roasted chicken, is often a great choice, especially since its something that everyone in our family will eat. While most of the supermarket versions are, to put it mildly, unappealing, there are at least two great places in Marin that specialize in tasty roasted birds.