Shave Ice at Donut Star

Did I already mention how damn hot it was?

What better way to beat the hellish temperature than with something icy cold and sweet?

Darlene's post on Donut Star piqued my interest to try this place out (Plus, she has more info and better pix of the interior than I do). And another bonus,this place was right up the street from M-Theory where I just scored a two-fer, so fkn' A man!

My mouth was watering like Kang and Kodos just looking at this sign...

There's the bottles for shave ice flavors as well as a big fridge full of beverages.

There's donuts on the far end. They also serve breakfast items, boba and smoothies (including taro flavor! Ooh yum!).

The large shave ice was $2.99. Not knowing how huge they really were, I ordered a large for EACH of us. Man, the owner must've thought we were pigs or something. He went to the back and emerged with a thickass puck of ice before placing it in his industrial strength ice shaver. This machine certainly beats the crappy one we got at Seafood City for $6.99! For one thing, this machine shaves the ice very very fine and there are no crunchy ice granules like the kind you'd get in a "snow cone".

Here's a closer look at that sign:

TC was very smart. She chose three different flavors that were three different colors: Blue Raspberry (blue), Kiwi Strawberry (red) and Watermelon (green).

The resulting effect was a rainbow of shave ice heaven - the colors melded beautifully into each other like day old chicken adobo sauce on rice. On the other hand, my three flavors (Pina Colada - yellow, Mango - orange, and Tiger's Blood - red/fruit punch) were too close in the color wheel to make the rainbow effect. I was originally going to get the Passion Orange (reddish orange) flavor but changed to Tiger's Blood at the last minute just so I could get a more vibrant color in there, but also because I wanted to have a "gory" sounding flavor.

Despite our rather valiant efforts to conquer this mountainous conconction, we were only able to polish off the top mound. The thought of trying to finish this off was just too much for both of us.[Note - TC's bag is my old Tokidoki - Fall 2008 LeSport Sac; print pattern "Trasporto"; bag style "Graziosa" messenger bag. Lucky her, I gave her my old bags when I got a few new prints earlier this year]

I remember when going to Hillcrest was an "adventure" back in high school. The movie theatres were an empty dirt lot. Corvette's was still there and so was the skanky men's clothing store, International Male. Ralph's Hairplace was also on University (between 4th and 5th) and was a cool place to get an edgy haircut. Times has changed over the past two decades!

Quick story about International Male - One of our friends' dad was a mailman who used to "borrow" (and not return) catalogs and magazines. Those included Victoria's Secret (featuring a very young pre-Axl Rose Stephanie Seymour) and various Playboy issues. One catalog that I remember was International Male. I remember going through the catalog and realizing the clothing was geared towards gay men. There were lots of beefcake featured on those pages modeling skimpy articles of clothing like the "Onion Skins" shorts (tiny short running shorts that leave nothing to the imagination, like really thin Daisy Dukes for men)!!! So yeah, there used to be two locations of International Male - one was in Hillcrest and the other was in Point Loma on Midway near Aaron Brothers. Both are now gone but the catalog lives on in the internet...

I couldn't leave Donut Star without getting a few donutz so here are three that I chose - the pink sprinkled one was for TC (I called it the "Lardboy" named after a similar looking donut in "The Simpsons"), the Chocolate Old Fashioned was for Bert and the broken Old Fashioned was mine. These were waaaay better than the shitty one's we got at KD's DoNuts (I still haven't put up that post yet).

I'm so glad we tried this place for their shave ice! Can't wait to go again!

And a few last words from our sponsor:

I loved it when the Devil sliced off Homer's nose and mouth and placed it into the "Hot Dog Meat" pile!

M- Theory Revisited

After our small sushi lunch, we headed up for dessert. But first, we stopped by Mission Hills so I could check out M-Theory once again. I was just there a few nights ago for Paul Horn's book signing for "Cool Jerk". Since I spent the majority of my time yakking to Darlene and Paul, I didn't have much chance to really peruse their stuff. The sweltering and hair withering 100+ heat was upon us as we hastily shoved quarter after quarter into the parking meter.

I ended up buying a couple of CD's. They actually had a sale, "Buy one used CD, get one FREE" - so hell to the fkg yeah, I was going to find myself 2 CD's come hell or high water! By golly, by gum!

TC on the other hand, was not as enthused about being in M-Theory as I was. There was no (gasp!) Justin Bieber here or Camp Rock stuff (thank God!) or (cringe) Jonas Brothers. As hard as I am trying tocontrol, train,*cough*influence* her musical tastes, I must grudgingly accept the fact that she is her own person and will like music to piss of her parents just like I did when I was a kid. Except mine was vaguely satanic heavy metal and misognyistic hard rock and hers is sanitized Disney shit. I think every child should be raised Disney free, or at least Hannah Montana free. Why oh why can't she just like harmless and family friendly bands like Slayer and Megadeth??????

So, while I was scouring the used CD bins, she ended up seeing several CD and LP albums with the F-word as well as male and female frontal nudity. Nice. How's that for an eye opening and educational experience for ya. There was also a CD we saw with the band name of "The Test Icicles" but from far away, it looked like "The Testicles". (Cue Beavis and Butthead laughter here)

OMG, it's the Sausage King store! Dennis from A Radiused Corner just blogged about this place!

Love this sign!!!! I must go here when it's open next time!!!! They also have a menu item called, "Meat Salad"!!!

And here's what I think of when I hear the words "Sausage King" (and please get your mind out of the gutter, I will not be featuring a porno clip featuring John Holmes):

 "I weep for the future!" Haha, I remembering nearly pissing my pants when watching that movie years ago with Astroboi and N! "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" never gets old!

And check this out:  Here's a seemignly mock "vintage" Abe Froman commercial...Apparently, Abe Froman must be a real person! Or NOT!!!!!!

Here's the exterior of M-Theory. If you were an attentive reader, you already saw the interior shots in my previous post on M-Theory a mere few days ago.

Here are the cd's I bought, The Smiths' "Louder than Bombs" (music to mope to) and Brian Setzer's "Ignition" (very cool driving music). The red table is courtesy of Donut Star (next post).

Doood, it was so fkg hawt so we headed over to get some shave ice up the street...

Post Script - Just so you won't think I'm a terrible parent, I hope you all realize I'm just kidding about Slayer....

but not Megadeth!

California Sushi

The food adventures of CC and TC (since we're both on vacay!)

Earlier this week, it was one of the hottest days of the year - ironic that it's been hotter this fall than it's been all summer! When TC and I left the house that morning, it was 107 in our back yard!

Instead of Italian food we ended up trying this Mexicanified sushi place in Eastlake, California Sushi. Plus I wanted to use my coupon. I'd been to California Sushi before, but it was the original downtown Chula Vista location.

It was dead when we got there. There were only three people working: the sushi chef who was talking to a female employee and a male waiter.

We wanted something really light today...

I like how they named their rolls after places in San Diego...

TC chose the California Roll - a rather pedestrian and safe choice for the child, but not unexpected.

She also chose the Crunchy Roll which had tempura battered shrimp with avocado and cucumber. There was a lot of Panko crumbs on top. She likes the crunchies....

Now can you tell what this roll is?

C'mon, take a guess....

Pause...

Well, it's kind of hard to tell since there was SO MUCH FUCKING SHREDDED BONITO FLAKES ON TOP OBSCURING THE ROLL! OMG, WHAT THE HELL, THIS IS LIKE THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY SPRAYING WHIPPED CREAM ALL OVER THEIR DESSERTS!(And if you must simply know...this was the Salmon Skin roll)

This kind of reminded me of how shitty wedding dresses are piled on with lace appliques, sequins, pearls, and shit hiding the crappy worksmanship underneath. Well, the sushi roll itself wasn't crappy but the presentation was. Kind of like how Kemo Sabe overdoes their garnish on their food.  I've never had a salmon skin roll with this much fluff on top!

Luckily my coupon gave us 20% off the sushi order, but it still wasn't cheap enough to justify going here. The waiter was really nice and so was the chef so it wasn't completely that bad, but I could get better sushi somewhere else.

P.S.
I really don't like the Cheesecake Factory. I just remember going there several years ago with the Educator GF's and the dessert looked like this:

And here is my accompanying text (circa January 2008):

"My friends ordered two desserts - the Tiramisu, seen here in this horrid photo. Can you even see the damn thing? It's buried under all those vestigial squirts of whippped cream. Totally unnecessary, like they're hiding a bad mistake. Almost reminiscent of cats burying their clumpy little dumps. Sorry, bad comparison. This was really a travesty and to be honest, I'm not a fan of Cheesecake Factory, stemming from my disdain for chain restaurants that serve soulless food to the masses. Maybe this is someone else's idea of what a fancy dessert should like this but sheeyit people, there could be anything under this mess."

I still feel the same way!

Cool Jerk book signing @ M-Theory

Before the complete fuckfest of fuckery that led us to missing out on Mariposa Ice Cream, we made a quick stop just six blocks away to the cute neighborhood of Mission Hills where there was a book signing by local comic artist, Paul Horn ("Cool Jerk"). We parked by the Mission Hills Public Library where I saw this cool sign celebrating Banned Books Week which is from September 25 to October 2! Let's celebrate!

Most of the books I like are on that list (the Harry Potter (series) by JK Rowling, "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier, the classic novel beloved by anti-social misfits and serial killers,"Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger, and lastly, the Captain Underpants series (hey, I have a 10 year old kid that thinks these are hilarious; she has since graduated to Stan Sakai's "Usagi Yojimbo").

The book signing was at M-Theory Music, which used to be located in South Park several years ago. I thought this was a rather cool choice to have a book signing.

Although we missed the Tabe BBQ truck earlier (please read about it in Darlene's post, "Music, Comics, Food"), I was glad to see there were some books left. I intended to get his whole Cool Jerk collection. If you bought the first three, then the 4th one was free! As Eddie Murphy would say, "Chopsticks, 29 cents...What a bah-gain. Ah think ah will buy some! Now that is a bah-gain for me!" (from his first comedy album, "Delirious" for those of you that don't get it).

By the way, Paul is the husband of Darlene from the blog, My Burning Kitchen; I finally got to meet both of them that evening. It was so nice putting faces to the names. Darlene is as awesome in person as she is on her blog. And, she's cute as a button too! She was also kind enough to give me a little food gift, which I'll blog about in a future post...Oh yeah, Paul was cool too!

How many of you have met any readers of your blogs? I've only met a few and so far, they've all been pretty cool people. No budding Jeffrey Dahmers or axe murderers (I hope).

Here's Paul signing my books...he even drew the different characters for me! I wanted to squee so badly but refrained from completely geeking out.

I felt like a total fangirl yattering to him about my love for Berkeley Breathed's "Bloom County". If it weren't for that strip, I wouldn't have given a flying fk about politics back in the 80's (Iran Contra scandal anyone?).  Bert used to give me Opus stuffed toys as gifts when we were in high school and college. He even gave me a Bill the Cat stuffed toy and one of my most prized possession, the Opus the Penguin phone!

TORC looking at CD's with one of the employees. She ended up buying a Smiths CD (I think it was "Hatful of Hollow") because it had the song she was looking for, "Reel Around the Fountain". TORC, if you're reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong!

I will definitely have to come back here to look around in more detail...we stayed only long enough to chat and get the books signed. It was nearly 8 pm so Darlene and Paul were just wrapping up as well.

And before we go, here's that Bill the Cat stuffed toy (this image isn't mine but one I found through Yahoo). My Bill the Cat doesn't have a bandanna around his neck or a stain on his belly! Can you believe this shit is going for $80 online? Bill has scraggly hairs all over his back too, funny. "Ack!"

And here is that Opus phone I was talking about. OMFG, it's going for $120 on ebay! Yikes! Too bad mine isn't working anymore! But even then, I wouldn't sell it!  Isn't he cute? When you lift the phone from his back, his head turns! Sadly though, my Opus phone now resides in a lonely dark corner of TC's closet. Maybe I should get it fixed and put it in our living room. Now that'll be a conversation piece or an eyesore depending on whose side you're on. Not as bad as a "Leg Lamp" though, eh?

As mentioned earlier, Mariposa was a bust so we'll have to go there another time!

Tapas Picasso

This past weekend, we celebrated the early birthday of the Educator GF's group, TORC (The Other Rock Chick).  Unfortunately, one of the four was ill, Knitting Diva (KD), so it was just me, TORC and Divalicious that evening.

Graffiti on the side of the old Corvette's wall on 5th Ave in Hillcrest. We made a left at Washington to head down on 4th...

We had early reservations and being the lazy asses and suckers for convenience that we are, opted to park in the structure across the street from this building, rather than park several blocks away. As you might know, parking on a Saturday night in Hillcrest isn't that much fun. So, the $5 was paid for our spot and we jaywalked across the street to Tapas Picasso, which is right next to Kip's place, which used to be India Princess.

Ooh, $5 tapas...but are they any good? We shall see...

We chose to sit in the back since it was pretty damn hot up by the windows. The owner and his son were the only one's working....very charming he was.

Their menu which can also be viewed online here (turn off the sound if you don't want to hear the Spanish guitar).

It was just us 3 chicks but we were here to do some damage! They had a regular priced tapas menu plus a limited $5 tapas selection.We chose a few from each.

Here were more specials...all of which looked pretty good!


We sat by this awesome purple painted wall.We found out that most of their tapas were from Northern Spain and that the owner's wife was from the Basque region. TORC asked the son if he spoke Basque and he replied that he could barely get by with his Spanish.

We ordered a medium pitcher of sangria - this was not too strong either. We weren't quite buzzing but I noticed that even after we took a few sips (like maybe less than 1/4 of the glass), it was instantly refilled. In the end, we didn't finish off the pitcher otherwise we would have been stumbling out of that place like Barney Gumble.

TORC chose the shrimp croquettes - the owner told us to use our fingers when eating these because they were "delicate". He was right because I took one bite and it practically fell apart. These were so good!

This was on the $5 menu - Potatoes with alioli (there was a tiny bit of a kick to these). The potatoes were crisper and cut smaller than the version at Costa Brava.

TORC also chose the Jamon Serrano which went well with the small bread slices they gave us. The photo I took of the bread didn't come out so well, so you will have to imagine what they look like.

I chose the Chistorra sausage; I remember buying a few packages of these last year at the now defunct Ole Ole Spanish store in Bonita. It was $2 cheaper there than at Pata Negra so I stocked up! These were nice and meaty - see the flecks of fat? Spicy too!

Here's a bite of that croquette with a tomato based sauce

I also chose this tapa - Octopus in a spicy almond tomato sauce. This was so good - you could taste the ground almond bits as well as the garlic! The octopus was also tender!

D chose their Paella Valenciana...when I started to take a photo of it, the owner pretender to shield it from me, the "Paella Papparazzi"! He was pretty funny, cracking jokes with us the whole evening.

For dessert, TORC chose the Sherry Flan which was garnished with mango sauce and fresh berries. It had an interesting flavor to it...never had flan sherry before until that night.

We were saving some room for ice cream later that evening at Mariposa on Adams.

However, Mariposa was not to be. It turned out that the Normal Heights Street Festival (or Street Fair) was happening that night! The streets from 32nd to 37th were blocked off. Mariposa was by the 34th block of Adams, so we ended up going back to me place where TORC opened her gifts.

In my abode, we polished off a bottle of Orangina soda (As a joke, I pronounce it, "Orange-EYE-NA" much to TC's mortification, rhymes with "vagina") and we had a few of the paletas from Oasis. TORC had the Strawberries and Cream, D had the canteloupe (which she loved!), while I had the banana paleta. Must stock up and get more of those!

TORC's other birthday outings
2009 at Urban Solace and Heaven Sent Desserts
2007 at Villa Capri with dessert at the now defunct Kona Pacifica Cafe
I don't think we went anywhere in 2008 because I was still recovering from my treatment at the time...I remember it was a hot summer tho'!

TORC is an awesome friend - articulate, charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and most importantly, one who shares/tolerates my musical tastes and encylopediac knowledge of all things trivial related to music and pop culture. Ha ha. Seriously, I think she even surpasses me in knowledge...So I don't feel like I should hide any of my eclectic musical selections with her. She does not cringe or wrinkle her nose with abject disapproval when Iron Maiden, Rick James, or Ultravox is blasting. Happy (early) Birthday TORC!