[Something that would surprise people about me..]

As much as I am a foodie(and I really am!) sometimes I really do get a feen for something kinda base..like a Filet O Fish sandwich.I LOVED Filet O Fish when I was a kid.

The other thing I always want(but have been talked out of it most of the time) is a store bought  birthday cake.I always LOVE the look of the cakes that they have at Costco.

I've always had a pretty refined palate from a young age..when I was 3 or 4 years old I went to preschool. My teacher Mrs. A would give us the choice of peanut butter and jelly or tuna fish for lunch and I always had tuna fish, which I loved(and Mrs. A loved it because she didn't have to eat a whole can of tuna fish  by herself.)

My mom tells the story of when some friends of the family brought over an octopus that they had caught. I actually ate it(and liked it)-and in fact my mom looked over at one point and I had a tentacle hanging out of my mouth!

I am NOT a picky eater(I think we may have established that in one of my earlier blog posts about food).There are hardly any vegetables that I don't like(and I'm always game for trying new ones!)

[Restaraunt review:Bagby Beer Company]

So I went to Bagby Beer Company for dinner tonight. It's a new(less than a year old!) restaraunt within walking distance of my house. And yes, they have beer. They have a selection of beer for just about any type of taste(I did not have the beer on this visit but will definitely be going back as I see they have samplers of various types of beer..Gotta love that!

The decor is very simple. There  is a long bar, several communal tables, and a large outdoor area  for when the weather is nice(which it almost always is around here!)

Now!To my dinner! I ordered a turkey burger which was served on a pretzel bun.They served it with a tomato jam, and a horseradish mayo.It was TASTY. They serve it with big, thick cut french fries. I had iced tea.

Pricing?It was a little on the spendy side(almost $20 for dinner) so it will only be an occasional treat, but I do want to go back and try a couple of the beers.

[Restaraunt review..haven't done one for a while!]

We went to a place called Urban Pi the other day. It's design-your-own pizza(this is your design..could not resist making a Hannibal joke.Not even sorry. ;) ) They have the pizza dough on wooden boards and you just order a pizza and add whatever you want on it.

I had a margherita pizza(red sauce,mozzarella and basil and roma tomatoes.) I could have gotten anything else I wanted on there-I think the next time I go,I'll load it up a lot more. They also have salads, and mac and cheese(which was REALLY good, I tried it!) and dessert.

One of the interesting things is that they have fountain drinks made with cane sugar-the cola is good, albeit not particularly sweet. they also had a ginger soda(which was good but burned my throat) ,root beer, and a blueberry soda(which I tried-I liked it but I suspect it's the sort of thing you'll only like if you like blueberries which I definitely do!)

[Well we're certainly not starving!]

My brother and his wife and my nephew are in town so that means a lot of good meals.Tonight, for instance we had a chicken tortilla casserole(a longtime favourite of the family) and not one but two desserts(a cake and  caramel pecan bars which were SO sweet but so delicious!)

Then tomorrow, my mom, sister-in-law and I are going to go out for breakfast at a new coffee place around the corner. Then in the evening we're going out for Mexican food(at one of my favourite restaraunts, TBH)

Yesterday my dad and I went to Costco and bought a heat and eat pizza and it was good, albeit rich(it was a meat  lovers-with pepperoni, sausage and salami. I should have just had one slice.As plain as it is, if I had to do it over, I would get a cheese pizza(my 14-year old nephew's preferred pizza)

(When I make pizza at home I usually make either cheese pizza or margherita(cheese, red sauce-I use marinara instead of crappy pizza sauce) and basil.)

[Only just getting this in on Sunday]

I had one specific thing that I wanted to talk about and now it's the end of the day and I can't really be bothered, so I had to think on my feet a bit.

Oh!I tried a new recipe from a Cooking With Trader Joe's cookbook..Go Go Mango chicken.Literally all it was was mangoes, pineapple salsa and chicken breast.Really really good.

You don't have to use ingredients from Trader Joe's(for those not familiar, Trader Joe's is a specialty grocery store. It's known for having good prices and a really good selection of a lot of different things),but there are some things that are specific to Trader Joe's that you can only get there.

One upside of the Trader Joe's cookbooks is that the recipes are relatively easy-I am not a big fan of recipes that have a ton of ingredients and a ton of steps.Simplicity is a good thing where cooking is concerned.

Mind you, you're reading the blog of someone who has several of her favourite recipes memorised(Shepherd's Pie comes right to mind-it's easy to make.I've actually made a tweak to it in the past few years-I use fresh, sauteed mushrooms instead of jarred mushrooms which-for some reason-are difficult to find. The fresh sauteed mushrooms taste so much better in there, in my opinion.(I also use Durkee onions-like what you put on top of green bean casserole) because I hate cutting onions.

[Panca]

A couple of days ago, my parents and I went to Panca, which is near where I live in Oceanside.It's in a small space-where Beach Break-which moved several doors down-used to be.

My mom and I ordered the chicken, which  comes with a choice of a side(my mom had the rice and I had fries) and my dad had a sandwich  also with rice. You get a salad too, which has this really good dressing on it.

The chicken was SO good, very flavourful and VERY moist.They have a rotisserie so I'm guessing that what  doesn't get sold as 1/2 and 1/4 chickens get turned into sandwiches and salads. And pretty reasonable,pricewise.

[weird food combos/seriously considering starting a food blog]

A friend of my mom's was making a dish the other day that had olives and grapes.Which sounds really strange to most people, but sounded delicious to me! Salty and sweet? Yes please!(It  must be said that salty and sweet is one of my favourite combos of tastes-I lovelovelove kettle corn,especially the kind you get at the county fair. It's so good-salty in one bite and sweet in the next-heaven!

I love bacon, but don't eat it a lot because I know it's bad for me. I do really like the salty-sweet-savoury combo of..a  French Toast and bacon sandwich.With a little bit of syrup drizzled on the bacon.If you haven't tried it, you really have to. As I said, NOT the sort of thing that you can eat all the time-an occasional indulgence if you will ;)

Earthy tastes are a favourite of mine-hoisin sauce which I like to put in Pho(Vietnamese noodle soup-another thing that you really should try if you haven't-most pho places are really not anything special, but they are inexpensive, and when you order a "small" bowl of soup, it's always really big.

Food fads aren't really my thing, but there have been several that I didn't get at first but when I tried them, totally got it.The first was salt caramels(going back to my love of salty and sweet!).It didn't hurt that I love caramels. The saltiness is pretty subtle, but it's there. The second was dark chocolate with chili in it. That is also surprisingly good.
==================================
I write about food enough that I have been thinking that it might be a good idea to have a separate, food blog where I talk about food, share recipes,that sort of thing. I'm not 100% sure that I am going to do it, but if I do, I will let you know. I would also post restaraunt reviews on there as well.

[not new to me..the new look is,though!]

My mom, dad and I went to Point Loma Seafoods before we dropped my aunt off at the airport(she was going back to Colorado).

I've been going to Point Loma Seafoods for years..It's a great place, but the way you order is a bit haphazard(it's hard to explain unless you've been there)and the side room and outside tables-and some areas nearby-are the only seating.

HowEVER, they recently remodeled, and it looks *amazing*-very open and bright, and lots of space-you could see how there was plenty of space to move in there even when it's crowded. They made the side room open and brighter, and they also have seating upstairs too.

The food is just as good as I remember it,too. My mom,dad and aunt all had the tuna sandwich and I had the fish and chips(which was delicious-it's my second favourite fish and chips in San Diego-the first is at Anthony's which is nearby-Point Loma Seafoods-I am a creature of habit in that respect-at both of those places I always order the fish and chips.)

The next time I go to Anthony's,I'll have to do a little write up on it;it's one of the oldest, most established restaraunts in San Diego;some say it's touristy;I've been going there since I was  very young, and I have yet to be disappointed(mind you, as I said, I only order one thing there;that *could* have something to do with it.

[food post]

I just got Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything for Christmas and I love it. I don't know how many recipes in there I will actually wind up trying,but I have already tried one(chocolate chip cookies) and they came out really well.

For me, it's about trying new stuff-I have a lot of things that I cook that are favourites of the family(Shepherd's pie is one of them-and my mom's  chicken tortilla casserole which I have started making among others.)

Bittman's book is good because there are not a lot of steps in a lot of the recipes(for people who  are more visual, there is a iPhone/iPad version of How To Cook Everything!) I'm glad that that exists.

Something you might not know about me:I am an experimenter. Yes, I do like recipes and recipe books, but I sometimes like to get in the kitchen and throw a bunch of ingredients together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

When I was first learning how to cook, I did a lot of that. My mom was trying to be nice so she held back her feelings about some things(though I remember one dish that I made that had too much cumin in it. *that* I can't blame her  for not wanting to eat it.Even I didn't want to eat it, and I love my own cooking.

 One of the first things I learned how to cook was grilled cheese sandwiches, and whilst I make an amazing grilled cheese now,I had to burn a lot of them before I got  good at it(my mom used to burn grilled cheese sandwiches when I was a kid-she would have to scrape all of the burnt parts off. So it's not just me!)

[everyone knows i'm a foodie..]

I went out to a dinner with some friends of ours- a Thai restaraunt near where the friends live. We were actually late because the traffic was really bad.

Anyways,the food was really good-we had two soups to start with-a sweet and sour soup and a won ton soup which was really good.

I had Pad See Ew. Now, there's a story behind my ordering that:A online friend of mine has been raving about how good Pad See Ew is for some time. I'm a creature of habit when it comes to restaraunts,and I tend to order what I like.

This time though,I branched out(and I am glad that I did!) Pad See ew is noodled, big thick wide noodles, eggs,carrots,broccoli,and soy sauce(oh and a protein(chicken, beef, shrimp, etc.) of your choice . I had the shrimp and I really liked it(but I like shrimp anyways-always have!) I would definitely order it again.

We got an interesting lesson in how spicy to order our food-several people had a spice level that was 3 or 4-which  was plenty spicy enough for them but not so much that they couldn't eat it. But I think it varies wildly-you could go somewhere else and order a green curry that is a 2 and it's quite spicy. I remember going to a Thai restaraunt in the Gaslamp downtown where my mom ordered a papaya salad and it was too spicy for her(I, on the other hand would have loved it. I have a high tolerance for spice!)

[tastes great!]

I had a cup of French Roast coffee from Whole Foods recently-it had a lot of flavour going on:cocoa-ey, but with a sort of smoky finish. I wondered if that had anything to do with the fact I put agave(which I'd never tried before!) in it..it drew out the flavour, maybe?

Then, when I was visiting my brother we went to a restaraunt that served fried chicken with honey on top of it, and cheese grits. It was an amazingly delicious combo!

Also, Canes' chicken..their Canes sauce is *addictive*. And all it is is Mayo, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. My sister in law was worried I wouldn't like it, but I totally did!

Hoisin sauce is another favourite condiment of mine. It's a standard at Vietnamese restaraunts..I like to put it in Pho..gives it a pop of  flavour along with the wedge of lime. I love the salty/sweet  thing that Hoisin's got going!

I  have tried Ethiopian berbere spice a couple of times.. I love spicy food, but that..it just keeps going and going.

[my new favourite thing]

Youtube user You Can Call Me A's American junk food reviews(she's in the UK and buys them off a UK website which sells American junk food(candy,drinks, chips and the like)

She's tried(among others):

Jolly Ranchers( she didn't care for the apple ones-funny because apple(and watermelon) are my favourite flavours.

Mike and Ikes

Kool Aid(which she didn't like)

Pop Tarts

Combos

Jiffy Pop(I LOVED Jiffy Pop when I was a kid but there was always  some of it that got burned no matter what!)

Moon Pies(which she said were soggy-well, the cake/cookie part, which I agree with.)

Candy Corn(which I don't think are special because you can get them for *every* holiday now, not just Halloween!)

[what's in my fridge, and a few other things]

Things that are (almost always) in my fridge:
Snapple
Sparkling water
Orange juice

Cheese
Cold cuts
Yogurt
Milk

In the freezer:
Ice Cream
TV Dinners
Ice

I'm starting to feel like cooking again..the weather has cooled down,especially in the last few days and it's giving me some serious comfort food cravings!

[good eats]

My parents and I went to Tip Top  Meats on Sunday. I've been there for breakfast and for lunch but never for dinner.  My mom ordered meatloaf(she wound up putting a lot of it in a to-go carton), my dad had a sort of smothered pork chop and I had a New York Strip Steak with all the trimmings(including sauerkraut which was amazing..I seriously have never tasted anything like it!) and a beer(I chose a tangerine wheat beer which was REALLY good!)

Oceanside,where I live, is beer central Actually, San Diego in general is known for its beer. But Oceanside has a ton of brew pubs, with more opening every day. I wonder how many of them Oceanside can actually support-sure, Oceanside is a big town and we have a lot of people here for the summer and of course we have the marine base  -and there are people who come to Oceanside for the day(and who can blame them!)

If anything, I would like this area to have some more  variety in restaraunts(we have a restaraunt that serves Peruvian style chicken-something to do with the spices they use on the chicken I believe), because there are plenty of breakfast places, and lunch places(and combinations of both). I can leave most of the taco shops in town(though Anita's, which is within walking distance of my house) is REALLY good-I have never been disappointed by anything that I've had there.

I love Ruby's(and yes, I know it's a chain..I love Johnny Rockets for the same reason though I don't get to hit up a Johhny Rocket's that often, and  I take advantage when I do..)