Chula Vista Nature Center

Oh my gosh, I'm actually posting this on October 25th. I had the draft back in September and just found it. Here's the tram ride to the Chula Vista Nature Center where I took TC on our day off.
A sign we saw in the tram:

The marshland...that's the Nature Center in the distance:

TC loves hands on exhibits. Here are some shells:

The California Halibut...I wonder if this tastes good?

The Garibaldi - a territorial fish found off the coasts of Southern California. Bert saw these once when snorkeling in La Jolla. They zoomed close to his face and darted in and out of his personal space while making aggressive "clicking" noises .

Rosy Boa:

"No Dumping":

Who else but me would take a photo of a rusted propane tank?

View of Mount Miguel:

The Manta and Bat Ray Experience:

The back part of the Nature Center (facing East):

Burrow Owls:

While we were looking at the animals outside, we spied the tram on its way back. It makes runs every 15 minutes.

Turkey Vulture factoids:

There were a number of benches with mosaic designs.

Before going back, we decided to take the trail out to the coast. This was the sign we saw! TC was scared at first but since it was an overcast and cool day, I figured the reptiles wouldn't be out sunning themselves.

Wildflower:

View of the Coronado Bridge from the marsh. For someone like me who hates to be dirty or go out on nature walks, this was something else. Yeah, I'm a wimp when it comes to nature. Hiking is not my idea of fun, not like this was a strenuous hike or anything. But I enjoyed walking out here with TC and seeing the sights.

The shoreline with the Strand in the background :

Front view of the Nature Center:

A Cactus Barrel:

A fun day off spent with my daughter...

Carabao

One of the items (impulse purchase of course) I got at Vien Dong III today was this Carabao energy drink from Thailand:
I bought it for Bert - it was only .79. Who knows if it's any good or not? The other items I bought were mint, cilantro, green onions, two bunches of lettuce, and various noodle bowls plus a rice dessert (seen in my previous blog) for dinner at Lotus and Thor's.

Dinner with Lotus and Thor

Earlier this evening we had dinner at Lotus and Thor's place. Lotus made a batch of pork potstickers which were really really delicious. Here they are below. This was just one plate. We had two plates of this!
These were the fixings for the fresh spring rolls. From the top row - noodles, spiced marinated carrots, regular marinated carrots (for TC). The bottom row - mint leaves, cilatro leaves and two bowls of homemade peanut sauce courtesy of Lotus. The big container in the corner had green leaf lettuce. The bottom-most bowl had chopped peanuts for garnish and extra crunch. The cilantro was 3 for .99 at Vien Dong III in Linda Vista while the mint was only .59 a bunch! Not pictured - the marinated and slivered cucumber and fresh shrimp.

Lotus wrapping one of the colossal spring rolls:

Mmm...this was tasty.

More fresh spring rolls - these were surprisingly quite filling! Lotus also made some with chicken inside.

Our drink for the evening was "Lambrusco" - one brand that is popular (or is it?) in the U.S. is Riunite. Remember the commercial from the 80's? "Riunite on Ice - That's Nice!". This wine was light, fruity and a bit fizzy. It didn't even taste like wine. I ended up having 2 and 1/2 glasses. Thor and Lotus had a huge bottle and it was pretty much polished off that evening. Funny I've never had it before but I remember my parents buying it way back when because they were curious. And also because the commercial worked!

Lotus also made a Korean dish. Sorry, I cannot remember the name, but it was beef (roast) cut in cubes that she marinated in soy sauce with boiled eggs. She also put the meat in a pressure cooker which resulted in tender and soft chunks of beefy goodness. Lotus, what was the name of this again? Lotus said this was a common breakfast item in Korea.

Cross section of one of the spring rolls:

For dessert, I bought this black rice with coconut milk dessert from Vien Dong III (earlier that morning). It was made by Aroma Thai on El Cajon Blvd. This sweet rice dessert was topped with a sweet yellow bean paste and a smattering of sesame seeds. It was only $1.49 so I thought, what the heck. It wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be. We each had a spoon of it. I liked the topping. The rice was chewy but could have used more coconut milk and coconut shreds.

TC was a big help in the kitchen, helping Lotus cut and devein the shrimp. Yes, with a real knife. She also helped pick the mint leaves. I had her help me "season" my roasted potatoes several evening ago. She enjoys using the pepper and salt mill!

Purple Rice, Balboa Park & House of Turkey

After church the Fil Am group was once again asking for donations for their assorted pastries, donuts and homemade goodies. I chose to get the purple rice cake. Purple rice is also known as 'pirurutong'. I'm not sure if this was some sort of bibingka or not. The lola serving it knows my mother in law, so she gave me an extra piece ($1 donation)...It pays to know people in the right places! Ha ha.
This dessert was so good. You could taste the butter and the coconut milk in this! It was nice and chewy - I liked that she gave me a side piece! Yes! Crust!

Later that morning, we went to Balboa Park to catch the House of Pacific Relations event for today - the House of Turkey lawn program. We had several hours to kill so we took a walk in Palm Canyon, just a few steps away from the Organ Pavilion. There were a lot of squirrels out that day, climbing up the palm trees and scampering in the hillside.

One of the trees in the canyon. This wasn't a palm though. I think it was a type of Monstera.

Base of a tree near the exit of Palm Canyon(or the entrance).

The Botanical Garden...the largest wooden lath structure in the world.

Purple flowers in front of the Botanical Gardens...

Orchids...(sorry, I don't know what type these are):

This is the berry spike of the anthurium hookeri. Looks like a plant with some sort of venereal disease.

Another spray of beautiful orchids, I believe these are a type of dendrobium:

Here's a type of Coleus - these were quite striking. The inner part of the leaf was a deep eggplant color, almost black while the edges were bright green.

Here's another type. These were more reddish orange with lime green outlines on the leaves.

View from inside...

After having a few snacks and icy cold water, we headed back to the International Cottage area to seek real food at the House of Turkey booth. More on Turkish cuisine here:Their menu - you could see that the pita with hummus was crossed out. They ran out, so they subsituted baklava for the pita/hummus in the combo plate.

We bought one combo plate ($6) which had one piece of borek (not Borat), two pieces of dolmas and one piece of pistachio baklava, and a couple of pieces of pita (sans hummus).

We had a choice of either the spinach and cheese borek or the beef. The guy serving us preferred the spinach so we went with his choice. We've had it before at past food festivals at the park. I've got to ask my Turkish students to make some for me! The crust was nice and flaky with a tasty filling of spinach and feta cheese. I normally wouldn't eat feta cheese, but in borek, yes!

Look at the buttery goodness...

I also bought "Evil Eye " bracelets for myself and TC ($5 and $3 each):

Here's a cross section of the dolma. I didn't really like this because it was too oily.

Now these pistachio baklava were really superb. They kicked ass on the Greek baklava that Bert brought home from Astoria a couple of weeks ago. I mean, those were good, but these were so much better. I also like the shape of these, preferring to eat each corner at a time.

Check out the honeyed pistachio nuts nestled between the buttery phyllo layers:

The combo plate was polished off in no time between the three of us, so Bert went back to get another piece of borek - this time, we got the beef.

The first part of the lawn program had two guys singing Turkish songs with a guitar (or some other small stringed instrument). The first song was all right, but the next 5 sounded just like it - kind of slow and boring. No offense, I'm sure the songs were great but there was no variety in the rhythm or pace. As always, I joked to Bert, "Could you play 'Super Freak' by Rick James? Metallica anyone?" But seriously, those guys were good but I was okay with just two songs, not six of the same sounding songs. After that was a belly dancer (who danced with scarves and also a sword!)... What was cool was her first dance was the tune, "Misirlou", think the first song you hear when you watch 'Pulp Fiction'. Yes, that really cool surf tune by Dick Dale, but this was sung in Turkish and had those rad swirly guitars in it. Very very rad!

Sorry, it's kind of dark here. Lots of people were out that day...Lots of senior citizens and families were out there having a good time.

Before we left, we looked at the different cottages (Scotland, China, Norway, Sweden - we skipped the USA, and lastly Finland).

Each cottage was selling (or actually, asking for "donations") samples of their food. I don't know how "Finnish" this was. It was a cracker with a cream cheese artichoke spread garnished with parsley and served with a thin slice of banana nut bread. It also came with either coffee or pink lemonade. This was TC's snack before we made the drive home.

Finnish flag...

Charger game is on in a few hours. Bert plans to watch while I plan to either read or organize my sock drawer.

Answer

And this greenbox's location is...
Garnet and Lamont Street in PB.