Recent gifts, some food related...

This summer I was able to enjoy the company of good friends in various settings...

Earlier today, we met up with Wandering Chopsticks, after a three year hiatus...

We lunched at Kafe Sobaka in Golden Hill (post will be forthcoming). We also exchanged gifts (I finally gave her the homemade Oregon plate stand I made several years ago) and she gave me this beautiful handembroidered silk  bag that I won on her blog back in 2011. I love the fact that there is a zippered pocket inside!


As a belated graduation gift for TC, WC presented her with this awesome Rainbow Donut from the Donut Bar. Earlier today she scored the last Wonder Woman donut. The Donut Bar was doing comic book/pop culture themed donuts in honor of the Comic Con (Iron Man, Hello Kitty, Spiderman, etc), which is now over as of today.

Inside the black silk purse was a package of purple wheat noodles from Singapore. Can't wait to try this! She remembered my favorite color!


She also gifted me her LONE purple tomato from her garden.

Such lovely colors!

She recently read my Au Coeur de Paris (Garden Grove location) post and knew that I had missed out on their pate chaud. Well, she brought me not one but TWO pate chaud which were also filled, banh mi style along with the little pork meatball inside!  Toasted later on during dinner, these were delicious bites of  buttery and flaky goodness!

That was the most recent lunch meetup.

Now let's rewind to the beginning of summer vacation when I met up with Kirbie. We had lunch at the relatively new Cafe Cantata in Del Mar with both of us braving crappy SD Fair traffic on the 5.

We both exchanged food gifts (cookies from the Brown Butter Cookie Company in Cayucos for her plus macarons from Renaud's in Santa Barbara). She is always so thoughtful and it's always exciting to see the assortment of goodies such as these rolled wafer cookies, PB Oreos (which were inhaled in 1 day by TC and the nephews; I only had two and ended up buying another package a few days later, haha), a Chia drink (seems like that is all the rage, this Chia seed stuff) which TC loved, artichoke dip, hot cocoa mix, various candies (a Lindt truffle, Japanese Kit Kats, and Hi-Chew candies from Costco).

Plus this, which TC also "claimed" and ate in about a day or less.

Earlier this month, we met up with the awesome couple that is the HORNS (Darlene and Paul) plus their dog, the Doctor at Station Tavern in South Park. Coming back from a recent trip to Tahoe, they gifted us with two bacon themed food items. The firstr was a chocolate maple bacon soda which we haven't tried...yet (but we will!). The second was a loaf of bacon chili cheeze bread (yes, there is a 'z' in there) from Bishop, California.

We toasted a few slices the next day for dinner. We could definitely taste the bacon and the nice gooey cheeze. The chili taste was not like "a bowl of chili" but more in the roasted chili peppers embedded in the bread.


TC and I also met up with the queen of picking great places to eat for lunch, Mary at Mamma Lina's where all spent a whopping $4 each for a tasty and filling lunch! She gave us a really cool assortment of snacks that she said she picked up from the H-Mart in Mira Mesa...A popcorn snack, a chocolate filled fish shaped cake, butter caramel corn puffs, crunchy freeze dried jackfruit (this was sooooo good!), canned iced coffee and a Korean lemon chewy candy.

The "story" on the Papa Puff bag was quite ridiculous! Who writes this $%#@! Ha ha! Also, Indian Bob isn't very PC, but he is a cute mascot none the less!

A few weekends ago, I met up with Dennis (I hadn't seen him since the end of '13) over at Micho'z in Hillcrest where we enjoyed Lebanese appetizers. I was the recipient of this really cool takoyaki ball printed tenugui, a square cloth with many uses, such as headband, or headcovering (if made of terry cloth which this wasn't), a souvenir or decoration.


During my last week of vacation, TC and I met up with Carol of CAB Cooks at Raki Raki (which I thought I blogged but apparently didn't, so that's coming down the pipe...eventually). She had a really neat assortment of Japanese and Korean candies for us...The one on the far left is yokan, a block of red bean paste. We recently enjoyed the 'pejoy' sticks (Pocky's friend it says on the box)...


Carol has mad skillz not just in cooking, but in knitting. This was a shimmery purple/silver scarf she made me in the same pattern as the one worn by Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series. Love it!

Just a few days ago, Cathy and her husband made the trek to Glendora on the first day that they started offering their peach donut. Strawberry donut season is now over. It's all about the peaches now! She just posted on it and my post will be forthcoming as well..>
Here's the peach donut in all of it's glory:


Plus some really nice big avocados she gave me, which we have been enjoying each day. We are now down to three!

I think it's really cool how we as friends and fellow food bloggers are so generous with each other. It's not like it's required or anything, but it's nice to share what we like or what we think one might like with our friends...I know that sometimes when I'm at an ethnic market, I'll see something and be reminded that a particular person likes that flavor or that snack (or would be open to trying something new).

I'm glad I was able to meet up while I had the time. Now, the weekends are my only free time and even those are already started to get filled with various activities not just for us but for TC...