The Honorary Slim Pickens Issue...
For those of you familiar with his work (our very favorite: "Dr. Strangelove"), Slim Pickens was one of the great character actors of our time and we dedicate this issue to him...
We don't know if he's dead or alive and this issue really doesn't have anything to do with him but it is indeed some slim pickin's this month.
OK, it was a very little joke...
What's in a name?
My Bad: Vaquero Carne Asada (formerly El Barrilito):
It's Vaquero's, not Vasquez...
Their other San Diego area outlet is on Lisbon Road (just out of the downtown area) and I met one of the owners (Victor) on approximately my 5th or 6th visit there (nice guy). He says they're almost ready to open another outlet in Arizona. He also tells me that he started out as their accountant.
We've now been there at least 10 times and also tried out their Nachos (too big to finish for less than $7 and their Carne Asada Burrito (also huge for less than $4). I'm not much for nachos where they're all slopped together in a heap (we do them separately here), but the Boy says they're great and I do have to admit that the burrito was good, especially the meat. All 3 of us ate parts of the burrito (it's a meal in itself).
And the place we had the attempted cheese steak at a couple of months ago is Voltero's Deli (drove by it again recently and made it a point to get the name this time).
And the place serving the wretched attempted Japanese food in the mall is called Teriyaki House (it's right next to The Dog Out, my only real reason to ever go to the mall (as you may have guessed, I'm really not a mall guy).
Rotisserie Hell:
20 February: We did our third chicken (A New Record!) for a full 2 hours (great skin) today and it's still going.
Incredible!
We invited Wild Bill over and we had garlic rice, green beans with bacon and sautéed onion and asparagus.
PF Chang's China Bistro:
It was the wife's 31st Anniversary and I decided to take her out for dinner.
As you may remember, we tried to eat here on the wife's birthday, back in January.
Tonight, we had the Spring Rolls, Prawns in Oyster Sauce, Orange Peel Beef and the Kung Pao Chicken. All were adequately done but nothing was much more than competent (we were somewhat disappointed). Maybe they just spent way too much on the design...
And we were not too happy with a few other things such as the fact that I ordered an iced tea but it was that artificially flavored raspberry crap when it got to the table (I refuse to drink that junk) so I had a Coke. And they were out of Oolong or any other black tea (except for the decaffeinated stuff) so the wife had a water and Boy had a Coke.
Then there was the piece of rice in the wife's fork (before we had eaten anything)...
Total was $46.01 plus tip ($7).
The wife said the only way she'd be back was if someone else was buying...
Overall, the place was extremely noisy and having to wait quite some time for our table after I had made reservations was more than absurd.
As Jerry Seinfeld would say "They know how to take the reservations, they just don't know how to keep the reservations..."
Souplantation:
This is a chain of several different names (Souplantation, Fresh Tomatoes and Garden Fresh) located all across the West and into the Mid-West and essentially, they're all huge salad bars with soups, pasta, breads and desserts.
I may have mentioned them before, when we first got here.
It's by no means anything more than that but they do it well and it's reasonably priced.
It's one of The Boy's favorites (the wife likes it too) but I've only been there 3 times in the 9 months we've been here, and generally out of desperation as I can't think of anything else that'll fit with my dinner that day.
This time, I found myself there because the local Arby's is horribly understaffed and rather than stand in line for 15 minutes just until they got around taking my order, I jumped back into the Boy's Scion and drove down the street.
I had considered a hot dog at the mall but the parking is horrible there on the weekend (besides, we're having our Italian Sausage Sandwiches for dinner tonight), then immediately rejected the Carl's Jr. and McDonalds as I passed by (too much like my dinner, meat on a bun), then found myself heading up the hill towards La Mesa. By that time, I'd realized that a good salad would help assuage any guilt about my dinner tonight.
I had a salad consisting of a bed of lettuce, slivered carrots, cucumbers and radishes, some garbanzo and kidney beans, sliced black olives, cherry tomatoes, a few herbed croutons, some shredded cheddar cheese, a sprinkling of sunflower seeds and a good healthy scoop of their blue cheese dressing. I also had a couple of small glasses of iced tea, a bite out of a muffin (too sweet), a bite out of a corn bread muffin, 2 bites of their chili (it was lukewarm), a small slice of very mediocre pizza, a sliver of foccacia and a small brownie for just over $9 including tax.
See their web site here: www.souplantation.com
Wild Bill's Sand Scallop Supper:
Wild Bill is a serious fisherman and virtually every photo is his scrap book features a fish of some kind, most of them fairly large.
There are also a few photos of his old fishing boat, a newer boat he had, his Toyota Land Cruiser to tow the boats with, a few deep sea fishing excursions with his son and a couple of other subjects, but mainly it's a fish thing with him...
Recently, a friend of his who seems to have an unlimited supply of sand scallops gave him a bag full of them, maybe a dozen or more, which he in turn, gave to the wife to try out. They're fresh out of the water somewhere up near Carlsbad, where a number of Wild Bill's friends live.
He has other friends up on the Oregon border and fish seem to play a large part in that scenario as well.
She steamed them in white wine with lemon juice, garlic and butter with a side order of pasta and the same sauce we make for our excellent Italian sausage sandwiches (which I had that night). The Boy was at one of the local casinos with friends from his last job so he missed it all.
She says they were great (I don't eat things with the texture of snot), and Wild Bill brought a much larger bag of them over for dinner tonight.
Of course, the Boy is also a great fan of clams, oysters and various other shell fish and they're going to have a different pasta dish and the wife is thinking about various dipping sauces such as wasabi, horseradish, Tabasco, etc and some chopped parsley and tomatoes for the garnish.
Personally, I'll be having a few jumbo prawns with home made french fries and tartar sauce...
Tokyo Tempura & Sushi:
Speaking of prawns (which I didn't get that night as I came down with a cold and ended up having chicken noodle soup), the Boy and I went to the local (El Cajon) Long John Silver to have their jumbo prawn special. Unfortunately, the place was filthy, there was no parking at the mall and we ended up at a place Lee recommended, right next to the Hertz car rental office. It looked like it had been untouched since it was first opened sometime in the 1960's, it smelled like fish, and we ordered the safest thing on the menu: tempura prawns and vegetables with Cokes.
It was mediocre at best and the total was just over $16 for the both of us.
A 1 Star rating on the Renaldo scale, for those of you who know what that means...
Our annual purification fest:
After taking the entire month of January off, I had my first beer relatively late on the night of the 1st (and it was good).
I had bought a 12 pack of Heineken for just this occasion and had one served in a pilsner glass so it could breathe properly.
And we had put the beer in the refrigerator several days earlier so it was at exactly the right temperature, just above freezing.
I generally take off the entire month of January every year, sometimes even longer.
Part of it is that I then allow myself to drink anything I want the next month (to see how far in the other direction I go).
The next night, it was followed by margaritas, made from the leftovers from the wife's birthday back on the 16th of January.
She makes a mean margarita but I can't take the tequila anymore.
I had a couple more beers over the next few days (Wild Bill helped me kill the 12 pack when he came over for dinner a couple of times).
Then I bought a bottle of Chivas Regal and tried another Karl Strauss Amber Lager (I had one months ago, when we first got here).
After my second tasting, I decided it was pretty good and bought a six pack.
The wife tells me that this is a very popular beer here and that they serve it on tap at the country club.
On the night of the 9th, I had a Bloody Mary, a couple of beers and later on, after Wild Bill had left, a couple more shots of Chivas.
Needless to say, I had a nasty hangover the next day and will go back on the wagon again soon....
And we had pasta with a bottle of red wine; Director Francis Ford Coppola's Rosso (2002), a blend of Zinfandel (49%), Syrah (28%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (23%) for $9.99 a bottle (not bad!).
Speaking of brewskies:
My neighbor belongs to a local microbrew club and makes his own stuff.
He says I should go with him to one of the meetings (count me in!).
He's got a couple of brewing machines he rolls out onto the driveway every once in a while to mix up a new batch.
The one I'm most familiar with stands close to 10 feet tall (it's gravity fed) and has four 15 gallon kegs, 4 large propane heaters, a large portable propane tank and is temperature controlled so it holds exactly the right heat during the process.
He also tells me that there's a local liquor store specializing in microbrews from all over the West Coast, a place I'm going to have to check out soon. He also tells me that it's owned by a couple of wacky Iraqis...
A few days later, I discovered that liquor store on my own (their sign advertises an extensive assortment of microbrews and imports) and I bought an Alpine Irish Red (a local microbrew). They don't have the Sudwerks Wheat Beer in stock but one of the owners tells me he can get it. It's a huge store, beer-wise (literally hundreds of different beers in stock) including import Lowenbrau, my favorite for much of my life. He also tells me that they own a couple of others locally including a Bev-Mo (Beverages & More, a franchise).
Alesmith Grand Cru:
I am in the process of tasting all of the San Diego County microbrews and made a trip down to my favorite liquor store (Windy City Liquors on Broadway) this evening for another selection. The owner pointed me at the Al Smith section (he's Iraqi so there was something lost in the translation) and specifically, their Grand Cru. I'd never heard of Al Smith even though I've been reading the local paper for the last 4 years (3 years over the internet, before we moved) and thought I was familiar with most of the brands made here. It turns out that he was talking about Alesmith and it's quite an award winning company. And it also turns out that the owner is a relative of Sam The Cooking Guy.
They advise you to age the Grand Cru another 6 to 24 months but the longest a beer ever lasted around here was a week at the most, so...
It was also $9.95 for a 750 ml size bottle (!) wrapped in gold foil at the top, just like bubbly.
It was an extremely stout and dark beer, right up there with Guinness, high alcohol content and certainly the most expensive beer I've ever had.
They have at least half a dozen other varieties and we will get to them all by the time we're done.
See their site here: www.alesmith.com
Karl Strauss Red Trolley Ale:
Wild Bill is supposed to come over for dinner tomorrow night (rotisserie chicken, garlic rice, green beans and asparagus) so I stopped off to grab a six pack of another San Diego microbrew and this is what the guys there recommended. I have to admit that it's also a pretty good beer but I am somewhat put off by the fact that both it and Karl Strauss' Amber Lager have twist-off tops, something the beer purist in me is having a hard time dealing with as real beers require a bottle opener...
Import Lowenbrau from Munich:
I picked up a six pack of the import Lowenbrau (from Munich, not the Swiss variation I got at George's U-Save Liquors in Suisun) and have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it: it's good to see an old friend again. I must have been a Lowenbrau guy for at least 15 years of my life, until they sold it to Miller, who played with the formula and drove it straight into the ground. It's still the great beer it's always been (except for the Miller version) and it's not that much more expensive than the Heineken but my beer drinking habits have changed over the last few years, since the virtual explosion of microbreweries everywhere, and I estimate I now drink one of them (a microbrew) approximately 40% of the time, with the old standard (Heineken, and now the import Lowenbrau) the remainder of the time.
And I bought a second 6 pack on the 26th, even though I'm going back on the wagon in a couple of days.
Totals:
Cumulatively, we went through 24 Heinekens, 7 Karl Strauss Amber Lagers, 6 Karl Strauss Red Trolley Ales, 12 import Lowenbraus, a liter of Alpine Irish Red, a 750 ml bottle of Alesmith Grand Cru, the vino, 2 fifths of Chivas Regal, half a pint of Jim Beam, a third of a bottle of tequila and enough vodka for a serious round of Bloody Marys (that's approximately $130 worth of beer and hooch in a month).
I still have half of the second bottle of Chivas left (it's absolutely wonderful when you sauté mushrooms in a shot of it)...
It was good while it lasted but I'm an old man and can't take it anymore and I'm going back on the wagon, at least for a while...
