Last Chance on the Stairway

Duran Duran never made a video for this song, but this is my FAVORITE Duran Duran song, from their album, "Rio". Nice tasty and funky bass here.

Whoever this guy is on YouTube, he's really good with that bass! Poor John Taylor. He never got the props he deserved for his bass playing. Being in a pretty boy band kind of overshadowed any musical skills he had.

Various food items

Here are some citrus fruits waiting to be eaten...at 12 o'clock, one of our freakish lemons from our backyard. Our tree finally had a lot of fruit this year. At 5 o'clock, tangerines and kumquats. The kumquats were FREE from Bert's co-worker (backyard too). At 8 o'clock, more kumquats and one lone kalamansi fruit from our pathetic tree. The kumquats are surprisingly good. I never knew you ate the SKIN, which is very sweet. The fruit itself is very tart! Yikes!
Kumquats...

These are North Italian prune plums. They are quite small and were $1.99 lb at NPP. These 3 were about 80 cents. TC liked them! I never had a chance to try it. Will buy more next time.

Never tried this brand before. I was happy to see that NPP had Filipino (or shall I say "Philipino") food items in their freezer section.

The most expensive item we bought at NPP was this:

Magnolia brand ice cream! This size was $8.99. It's $1.00 less at Seafood City but we save $$$ on the gas to drive to National City since NPP is just 2 minutes away.

These are tea biscuis from Turkey:

They are dry and twice baked. I ended up slathering Nutella on these crackers. The crackers you see below are Marias biscuits from Spain. These are so good with Nutella as well as that caramel spread you can buy at Latin food stores.

Dry biscuit:

Bert bought some Lavash to eat with a spread made by his Russian co-worker's wife:

These would make good wraps for salads and sandwiches:

This is not really the mustard. It's just the jar used to hold this incendiary vampire repellent known as Russian salsa. Okay, that's not what it's actually called, but you could do a number on someone by breathing on them after eating this...

Can you see the garlic pieces? That's chopped, raw garlic. There are also tomatoes and onions in there. I'm not sure what else is in it, but it's pretty good. It smells quite strong.

Mmmm....

Yeah, a lazy post, but I wanted to crank it out.

Tomodachi

I'm finally posting this on 3/5 instead of the February date you'll see at the bottom of the post. It was raining that weekend. After church with Bert's mom, we went out to lunch at the local sushi place in Otay Mesa, Tomodachi. This is located right off the 805 and Palm Avenue exit. It's behind the KFC and next to a bagel place. Here are some reviews from Yelp.
This place has been around for about 3 years. The sushi guy is the parent of one of TC's classmates. Didn't realize it until I saw him at a school function. Anyways, if you are a sushi connoisseur or are expecting really high quality stuff, this isn't the place to go. It's middle of the road and the prices are decent. When we got there, the place was empty. When we left about 1 hour + later, more people showed up. One girl had her 18th birthday party celebration there that day.The waitresses are nice and the service was attentive. It's quite large in this place. They remodeled the booths on the perimeter recently. You can't see them in this photo, but the booths are now elevated on a platform.

When you walk in, all along the left side of the wall are dozens of photos of the customers and their families. My sis and her friend are up there somewhere. Many of the rolls and specials are named after their customers.

You could see the booths on the far wall in this pic. They are elevated. Before, it was just a regular table with chairs. The booths add a nice touch. You also get a stupendous view of the cars exiting the offramp from the 805 to Palm. Nice. I remember, this used to be a haircut place.

For starters, we had the edamame, which was a nice warm snack for a cold day. Plus, we wanted to eat something green and healthy.

This was the Salmon Skin roll. But you know what, they didn't really have any salmon skin in there. It was salmon and no crunchy salty skin!

I believe this was the shrimp tempura roll...eh...not that great. It didn't even have the shrimp tail sticking out on one piece. : (

Iceberg salad with ginger dressing...

TC's Beef Sukiyaki rice bowl. This was a regular item, not a kid's meal. We knew it was too much for her to finish, but we wanted her to have salad plus vegetables instead of some fried crap. This ended up being her breakfast and part of dinner the next day. She even liked the tofu. There's a ringing endorsement for you.

This was the Special California roll. It actually came without the fish eggs on top. I had to ask for it after I realized it was missing. I thought they served the eggs wrapped on the outer layer of rice. So, they just dumped a lot of it on top of each piece, which was fine with me! More masago for me!

Bert's eel roll. I'm not a fan of eel, so I stayed away from this:

This was the Seafood Bento which Bert and his mom ordered. The fried stuff you see were fried fish, scallops (one that I bit into was so watery, gross), shrimp and those fake crab sticks. Disappointing. There were 2 kinds of pickled vegetables, a tartar sauce, rice and salad.

Anyways, that's Tomodachi. They have other items on the menu, the standard stuff like Bento Boxes, the regular rolls of sushi you see everywhere plus teriyaki this and that. Regular Japanese fast food type stuff but in the local neighborhood. A nice option if you don't want to eat at a burger joint, a taco place (and there are a lot down here in my old neighborhood) or Filipino food.

Answer to Greenbox #12

The answer is:
Near the corner of Coronado Avenue and Saturn Blvd, next to the side of Victoria's Mexican Food.

Nuggets

At TC's potluck, there was a plethora of good food, like two kinds of sio pao, pancit, broccoli beef, pancit palabok, and chicken wings. But did I go for those dishes? No...I spied 2 containers full of these...
Yes, the antithesis of all that is good food, the Chicken McNugget. Preformed and highly processed chicken parts, shaped into nuggets and fried, and of course, devoid of any discernable nutritional value. I know how they're made and how they're bad for you. But I haven't had one of these in years! Dammit, I just had to have one...
with Sweet 'n Sour Sauce!

and another!

I scarfed down four, along with fried rice and a couple of chicken wings. Having satisfied my craving for McNuggets (and the other greasy foods), I slowly realized I would have to "pay" for this greasy treat later...on the throne!

I.B.

While waiting for TC's class to get out, Bert and I did an impromptu car tour of Imperial Beach. Here's the site of the old Marian Catholic High School on Coronado Ave. The "new" Marian High is now Mater Dei High located in the eastern portion of Chula Vista. I remember one of our high school teacher's son, was kicked out of Marian and transferred to our school. The transgression? He had defaced the Virgin Mary statues! Dude was hard core! No wonder they kicked him out.
Heading west on Coronado Ave towards I.B. , known more recently as the setting of the TV show, John from Cincinnati .

Nearing the Pacific Ocean. The Tijuana Estuary near the Border Field State Park . This is just yards away from the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. Mexico border.This was a cool art piece called "The Sweet Spot". We just happened to see this at the right angle, where it spells out "ART". If you see this sculpture from other angles, it just looks like three long red poles that are wierdly twisted at the top. Very cool indeed.

We made a right on Seacoast Drive and saw this quintessential Southern California sight. It really was a nice day - low 70's. Perfect for hitting the beach.

Passing by the I.B. Pier.

I forgot what street this was, but it's near Camp Surf, which is a YMCA-run camp on the beach. I've chaperoned a few retreats there with students and it's pretty primitive. I also forgot what that large circular structure was, but it's on the Strand and on US Navy Propery

After this ten minute drive through the main parts of IB, we headed back to pick up TC and take her to dance practice. They are now doing weekends in order to prepare for the Junior concert in May. Her new dances include a mountain dance, "Benguet", a Spanish influenced dance for the Maria Clara Suite, "Mariposa", and a new song, "Ikaw ang Mahal Ko" (yikes, we have to phonetically learn the words too so we can help her practice and sing it).

Three

There's a little island of a strip mall on the corner of Coronado and Saturn Blvd in South San Diego. It's in the parking lot of Albertsons (which used to be the old Alpha Beta back in the day). Bert and I were killing time and decided to check out the little mom and pop places. There are 3 Filipino places in that tiny island. Here's one of them...we wanted to check how much their pan de sal was since we needed to bring something to TC's dance potluck. It was $1.75 for a dozen. Instead of getting pan de sal, we got some snacks instead. Wait a minute, this was not where we got our snacks. We bought garlic corn nuts here instead. The photo is out of order and I'm too lazy to change it.
These snack pics are from the "Oriental FoodStore" (nice outdated term there). There are two cramped aisles jam packed with snacks and foodstuffs from the Philippines. I didn't see any instore cameras, so I snapped away while the owner was ringing someone up. My back turned to her, of course. She was selling Lotto tickets to an elderly Mexican woman who only spoke Spanish.

Down at the bottom, can you see it? The Boy Bawang? Garlic corn nuts!

Wanna be Ritz crackers:

I love Sky Flakes crackers!

Ahh, the flavors of my youth. Ajinomoto, otherwise known as MSG. My mom used to have a big ass jar of this stuff in the pantry.

The coveted corn nuts.

Corny, garlicky and salty goodness:

Crunchy kernels of tooth cracking enjoyment:

Filipino breath freshener! Just kidding. Don't send me angry emails! This kicks ass on real corn nuts.

My husband's favorite, Butong Pakwan (aka watermelon seeds).

He also likes Nagaraya Adobo flavored cracker nuts. It's the shell that makes this snack so tasty. I like the Butter and Garlic flavors.

I threw out an old Oyster Sauce that was hiding in the back of our fridge. It had expired more than a year ago. Yuck! I haven't cooked with it in that long I guess. I hadn't tried this brand of Oyster Sauce before, so I gave it a go.

While walking to the last Filipino store, there was a Bargain Stores that had these t-shirts out on a display table...makes great gifts!
Not.

This was the store where we bought the snacks.

We bought this Sarsi (wanna be Pepsi) soda at either the first store or the last store. I think it's overly sweet, but we bought it out of curiosity. One of the songs TC had to learn for one of her performances was "Manila" and there's a line about "Sarsi root beer" in there. Well, this isn't root beer, but cola.

The last store. Now this was pretty damn small. I didn't even want to take photos in it! When you walk through the door, there's no space to move around. It's so tight in there. You only have room to look at their display cases filled with food items. There's a refrigerated case and a kitchen taking up most of the space, in the back room. There's just one table inside and it was occupied by a Lola and her grandkid. The cashier is also right there, in your face, watching your every move. I dare not whip out the camera. My husband said it was just like a real sari-sari store in the Philippines. They had a little bit of everything in there.

We ended up buying 2 dozen pan de sals here, same price as the first store, $1.75 for 1 dozen.

It was kind of cool to have three Filipino places in such close proximity. They're nestled between a beauty salon, the Bargain Store with the witty t-shirts, a laundro-mat and a liquor store. There's something for everyone. The first photo, Lisa's Bakery was the most spacious. They mostly served food from steam bins and had a few bakery items out like pan de sal, various rice cakes and ube. My favorite store was the Oriental Store. I loved the variety of snacks. There were also frozen items and a few fresh food items jam packed in there. We just may go again next weekend to see what's new!