Valentine's Day 2019

Picked these up a few days prior...

The new ladybug and the Happy Heart crystal Pez...

Return to Brooklyn Girl

This past weekend, tradition reigned once more...

We met up at Mr. TJ's house for some light appetizers and Kir Royales before heading off to dinner and prom...

over in Mission Hills...

Negociant

After my visit to Grinds and Vine Coffee Bar during the last week of vacation...

I thought I'd take up manager Brian's invitation for a wine tasting...

Now this isn't something I normally do and I wasn't going to do it alone, so...

A duo of desserts at Juniper & Ivy

From Harbor drive up to Laurel..

I'm not sure what species those primates are (not gibbons, maybe howler monkey?) but this was at the train stop.

We lucked out by finding parking on Kettner not even a block away from our dessert destination...

Birthday dinner & dessert for Mr. TJ - Parkhouse Eatery, the Old Trolley Barn Park, Holsem Coffee & free desserts

Every summer, MFH, La Ley and I meet up with our good friend Mr. TJ for his birthday...

He is the best host ever, serving various meats and cheese, peach salsa, chips and homemade guacamole along with blood orange mimosas before our trek to this neighborhood...

Our first choice, Burnside in Normal Heights is CLOSED on Mondays, $#%@  so Mr. TJ suggested Plan B...

Appetizers & drinks @ Sea 180 Tavern

In early May the day it rained super hard, MFH and I headed over to Sea 180 Tavern...


It was our association's end of the year party...

Brooklyn Girl

A few days ago, Mr. TJ, La Ley and I met up for drinks and appetizers at Brooklyn Girl

before heading over to the Prom nearby...

Seafood Friday #7 - Classic Old Bay Crab Cakes

Alas, this is the last Seafood Friday for this year since Easter is this weekend.

I recently picked up a couple of packets of Old Bay crab cake seasoning packets (only $1.50!) from I don't remember where...

Return to the United Portuguese S.E.S. Market

Seen in Point Loma few weeks ago during the break, mayoral signs. It's down to two candidates now for the runoff in February...

Faulconer is the top contender and the Republican choice...

Now this guy didn't make the cut. Plus, he flip flopped his political party! WTH...

We live in Chula Vista, so we can't vote for the Mayor of San Diego...

Somewhere in the hills of Point Loma, a sign for the other mayoral candidate, David Alvarez, who is a Democrat.

I was actually surprised to see an Alvarez sign here since Point Loma is pretty white and conservative. Many of the Alvarez signs I've seen are south of the 8.

After the fiasco that happened earlier this year with Bob Filner, it will be great to have a new mayor who isn't a lecherous pervert! It could be worse, we could have a crack smoking foul-mouthed mayor like Toronto (sorry my Canadian friends)!

But enough about politics, TC and I were here to pick up a few items from San Diego's only Portuguese market...

Anniversary Dinner @ West Coast Tavern

Now on to our "real" anniversary dinner...

Bert wanted me to choose a place and I thought it would be fun to go here since we could catch the tail end of happy hour...

Osteria Origano

This weekend, I met up with a few of my co-workers to celebrate the retirement of our former co-worker, MFH...

We all met at the beautiful home of Mr. TJ who lives in the historic neighborhood of Talmadge, where he whipped up a few drinks before we headed out to our first stop...

Kiwanis Club of Chula Vista 12th Annual Wine Tasting Social

Last week, I attended this event...

Roped and cajoled into going by my gym gal pals, they promised it would be a fun event. Anti-social me contemplated the idea of just donating my money towards the price of the ticket but not actually going, but their cow-eyed pleas and incessant begging won me over...

Toast Enoteca & Cucina

Sometime last week, we used another one of my older Groupons - this one was for Toast Enoteca and Cucina in the East Village. Last time Bert and I tried coming here, it was a weekend and they were not open for lunch. Bert took the day off to be with me during my birthday week, so off to lunch we went!

We were the first customers there that morning. It was only11:30'ish.


The water in that cool dispenser is for rinsing your wine glasses between pours.

You can check out their menu online here:

In the middle of the restaurant is their Enomatic wine machine. There are different bottles with different price points. You can buy a card with a set amount, say, $10 and then insert the card for a 1 oz. pour of a certain wine. This way, you can sample many different kinds of wine rather than committing to a bottle or a glass.

This machine had the reds...

while this smaller one on the side had the white wines...I ended up gravitating towards the whites since the reds were too strong for me.

Bert got us each a card at $10 each. I'm not much of a drinker so I didn't think I'd need a $20 card!

Here goes!

I think I ended up getting about 6 or 7 different wines - pretty much the spectrum of the white wines. I don't remember what they were called but some were better than others. I really love the smooth and fruity ones.

Below is our Octopus and Potato salad which is one of the house specialties.

This salad was fantastic! Everything was fresh! The cucumbers, the spinach, tomatoes, arugula and the thinly sliced octopus was so tender! The potatoes were cubed and lightly fried (or maybe pan roasted?). The dressing was olive oil and salt. Very simple. Thank goodness no disgusting vinegar to mar the flavor. According to our server, this salad won a prize in some food competition!

Woo hoo, wine!

I had the beef panini which also came with mushrooms. My only complaint about this was that it was in dire need of some sort of sauce. The beef was also cut into small pieces so that when I bit into it, some pieces would fall out. This I did not like.

Bert had the Chicken Breast panini which also had pancetta, tomatoes and lettuce within. Another item he had in his panini that made it much better than mine was cheese!

We had such a fun time here trying all of the different wines. Our server was great and the manager, Carlos was also super nice and attentive to any questions we had about the ingredients of our dishes and the types of wines offered.

Next up, dessert!