Wednesday June 16, 2010

The jacarandas are in full bloom all over town and they are so beautiful! I used to have one in my yard at my old house and when I went to Africa in ’08 my sisters were very impressed that I knew the name of the tree when the safari guide pointed it out. It is about the only thing I can identify in the botany world, so don’t be too impressed. Anyways, I liked this pic that I snapped the other day.

For dinner I met Claw at Oceanaire in hopes of seeing caviar on the menu but I was sadly disappointed. Again. I don’t know what the deal is…they used to have it all the time. We sat at the bar and ordered some oysters, shellfish platter and a crab cake. Surprisingly enough we actually had some things to talk about even though we saw each other 3 days ago. I love that I have a downtown buddy who appreciates fine dining.

I had the bartender take a picture of us and his idiot co-worker was being a super douche and ruined it. Yeah, that’s awesome customer service, you are lucky I am in a good mood you little twit. People lose limbs for doing that shit.

It looks as though we are legitimately on a date. Funny story about us. About a year or so ago we got into it during a party at our friends house. I can’t really tell you how it started or why it escalated but it ended with “Laura, all you ever do is talk about yourself.” Oh ok Sean. I will leave now because obviously this house is not large enough for both of our egos. I am not even sure what it was about. I think it started with him complaining that we didn’t have enough 20-something girls on NA’s site and that I needed to do something about that. And when I began to argue with him and prove to him statistically that he was wrong, it went sour and he told me I was terrible at customer service. Hey, last I checked you were not a paying customer with that free password I gave you so shut the fuck up. I think after that he was trying to sleep on the sofa during the party and I was showing someone pictures from a vacation I went on…which is why I think Mr Grumpy Pants said I always talked about myself. I dunno… he might have an entirely different story of what happened. It’s all good now and I love hanging out with him

When I got home I discovered that my miracle berries (Synsepalum dulcificum) had arrived in the mail! I saw the owner of Moto tweet about it the other day and I, of course, had to check it out. Mberrys is the name of the company distributing these strange little berries… basically they make sour and bitter things taste sweet. First I opened the ominous package shipped from a woman in Puerto Rico…

…and then the package with the tablets for easier consumption. Apparently you eat the tablets with lemons and they magically turn into lemonade in your mouth! Look here it suggests that you eat it with cheese! I actually don’t like Swiss cheese so I am curious to see what it does…

It looks like I have some experimenting to do. It doesn’t feel right to do this without Chris so I am hoping he gets his busy ass back to San Diego and returns one of my calls or texts soon. I can’t try it without my food nerd friend. Plus I really have no idea what to cook with the actual berries.

Saturday May 8, 2010

Chelsea Handler was supposed to be signing books at a bookstore in La Jolla at 3pm and I was pretty excited to go meet her and tell her that we were soul mates. When I looked online to get directions they had switched the time to 5pm and I couldn’t go because I had dinner plans at 5:30 pm with some friends who were going to her show downtown at the Civic Theater. I was debating about going to the theater around the time the show would end to be first in line but figured I would bring the book out with me and make a game time decision.

Dinner was at Oceanaire with Chris, Rich, Dusty, Michelle, Sully and Erin. The main reason I was going was to order the caviar and they were out of it tonight. Apparently a huge party ordered all of it last night. I was pretty annoyed.  I settled on the crab cake appetizer which is one of their signature dishes and totally amazing with huge chunks of crabmeat…It’s served with an aoili sauce which was pretty bland, but the crab cakes were great on their own.

I opted for the prix fixe menu for $29 bucks (Laura on a budget changes from day to day, food item to food item!) New England clam chowder with tons of bacon in it: (here I have been trying to avoid bacon after my brother’s heart attack and they put in there without me even knowing!)

The others had ordered a bunch of oysters and the one I ate was utterly disgusting. It was way too fishy and left the worst after taste in my mouth. I don’t know what it was called, it was small and nasty.

I had the arctic char (I don’t even want to admit this but I had a brain fart and thought I was ordering a white fish and was shocked when salmon showed up. What an idiot!) Their fries need some truffle oil in my opinion. But then again I think everything needs truffle oil.

For dessert I had the blueberry cheesecake. Nothing special.

After dinner they all had to race off to the show and I met a very drunk and belligerent Mike from Tivoli at Red Pearl Kitchen with none other than the mom of Chloe the French Bulldog! No pics, they were a hot mess after an all day pubcrawl. I walked over to Quality Social to meet up with Danielle who was supposed to be working tonight. To my surprise she was sitting on the other side of the bar and had the night off! (Yes we had “pickle backs” and they were delicious) Danielle used to work at Naughty America but quit a few years back and we had drifted apart. It’s good to have her back in my life. As I get older and now that I have some free time I feel the need to connect with certain people. I was so busy for so long that I lost touch with a lot of special people in my life. I don’t want to get into the personal details of her life, I will just say that she had an experience about a year ago that made her reconnect with her Mom and it really made me happy to hear about it on the eve of Mother’s Day. Life is too short. If you don’t have a relationship with your parents, look inside of yourself and figure out why. See if you can’t be the bigger person and change that because they won’t always be around. Don’t put yourself in that position of regret and guilt.  

We walked over to the Local to meet up with the crew after Chelsea Handler’s show. It was more important for me to hang out with Danielle then to stand in line to meet Chelsea and I don’t regret it at all. All of my friends in the other circle call her Goldie Hawn

Chris and Dusty looking silly.

Danielle and I walked to La Puerta for one quick drink because she was supposed to meet up with some cute boy but since he wasn’t there we took off. I was asleep on the couch by 11:40 in the first segment of Betty White on Saturday Night Live. oops