Gore Bay - Rocky Raccoon Cafe

After the Manitoulin Chocolate Works, C drove us to Gore Bay. There was a restaurant she'd heard of that she wanted to check out, the Rocky Raccoon Cafe. I thought the building was cool - octagonal with a cupola on top and a deck that went all the way around the second floor.

Despite the folksy sounding name (and one of the worst songs ever by the Beatles; sorry, I'm just not a Ringo fan)...

the Cafe offerings looked promising. Turns out that the owner is from Tibet and his culture is reflected in the Pan Asian touches. This is probably one of the few restaurants on the island offering ethnic food. Most of the places here, don't get me wrong now, are mom and pop eateries serving your regular diner type food. This place had a touch of the exotic.

I love how raccoons look, especially their masklike facial markings. I like the scene from "Elf" where Will Ferrell comes across a raccoon in the forest and tries to befriend it. The raccoons rears up on its legs, hisses and attacks him when the Elk tries to "hug" him!  Back to the painting, I wonder what that white animal is?

No one was here when we were there, except for the workers.

That's part of my hair and eye (cut off). Bert and I checked out the back deck. Gore Bay is a town but is also part of Lake Huron's North Channel. To refresh your memory, Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world (in Lake Huron). During the summer, the town is busy with tourists and boaters who dock here.

A nod to the owner's heritage:

Also seen in some of the decor...

Hey, I wonder what that last one's about?  We didn't order it but should have!

We actually didn't eat lunch here but a quick snack. C got an appetizer for her daughter while several of got some smoothies...

The steps leading up to the cupola...

which had a beautiful view of Gore Bay...

TC's mango lassi:

C's vegetable samosas for her daughter. The sauce was tamarind.

Cool line of flags...

Off to another part of the island...

Tokidoki for Sephora - The Robbery Collection

I'm such a sucker for Tokidoki. This is the second collab from Tokidoki for Sephora, the Robbery Collection. I have the first one (forgot the print name) but it's the hanging travel bag and mini cosmetic pouches. These are just the set of three pouches. I didn't need another hanging travel bag.
I love the little thieving characters on there. Instead of Chanel No. 5, it's Tokidoki No. 1! The diamonds have smiley faces. There's a set of lips with vampire fangs too! Do you spot the "Mona Lisa" getting stolen?

So cute!!! I use the smallest travel pouch to hold my coins and the medium/larger ones to hold receipts.

Back view:

In addition to the travel bags and makeup pouches, Tokidoki also has a line of makeup for Sephora. The packaging is cute but I didn't want to spend $$$ on the makeup especially since the colors are a little too "wild" for me. Purple mascara? Bright green eyeliner? Pink and turquoise eyeshadow? Uhhhh.....NOT.

Back to Manitoulin Island! M-Chigeeng - Lillian's

Finally, back to Canada or more specifically, Manitoulin Island!

The last post I did was the Manitoulin Chocolate Works...This post should have been BEFORE that. But that's besides the point now, eh.

Looking at my old photos, we went here, to Lillian's, a First Nations crafts place and gift store). This was right after breakfast and BEFORE Bridal Veil Falls. Lillian's is in the small town of M'Chigeeng.

We were all jammed into C's mini van with one person, TCS (The college student) without a seat belt! Shhh! Don't tell!

I didn't take any photos inside but there were a lot of leather items (clothing, shoes), beaded items (jewelry and clothing), moccasins, feathers, beads and kits for making dreamcatchers. There was also a back room which served as an exhibit for these rare porcupine quill baskets as well as dolls. One of the main tribes on the island is the Ojibwe.

There was a Tipi outside with a totem pole.

Bert, TC and I ended up going here a few days later...

After checking out Lillians and buying some earrings (beaded spirals and porcupine quill drops), we went to Bridal Veil Falls in Kagawong, and the Manitoulin Chocolate Works (also in Kagawong). The next stop on our day long adventure was Gore Bay...

Fred Rohr's Drop Anvil Hammer

Right next to the Chula Vista Heritage Museum is Fred Rohr's Anvil Drop. Rohr is the namesake of the former Rohr Aircraft, located off of the 5 and H Street. Established in 1941, Rohr was once Chula Vista's largest employer. During WWII, the factory was busy making much needed airplane parts.

Rohr laid off thousands of workers in the early 90's (during the Recession). One of them was Mr. Drummer's dad. Rohr is now home to Goodrich Industries.

This drop anvil was installed in 2008 as a memorial to Rohr's contributions to Chula Vista and the aircraft industry.

(info reprinted from "Aerospace tool marks impact left by Rohr " by Tanya Mannes; online article for SignOn San Diego, dated March 6, 2008)



"Drop hammer machines were once used mainly in steel production. In the 1930s, Rohr developed the first drop hammer for shaping sheets of aluminum, the enclosure surrounding jet engines, Watry said.



The drop hammer exerts 5,000 pounds of pressure, said Goodrich company spokeswoman Valorie McClelland. To operate it, a person steps on a foot lever, and the top drops with a booming noise.


When Rohr opened his Chula Vista factory, the drop hammers helped him get government contracts for producing “power packages” – the parts attaching a bare engine to a wing – for the B-24 bomber.


The technique was considered modern at a time when many sheet metal parts were formed by hand using wooden form blocks and hammers. Word of Rohr's new metal-forming concept spread to the Boeing Airplane Company, which invited Rohr to set up a drop hammer line.


Goodrich still uses drop hammers, McClelland said, although most of the metal shaping work has been converted to hydroforming, which uses a high-pressure hydraulic fluid, and superplastic forming, which uses a very high temperature."

Bert really enjoyed this. It's pretty unusual to see something like an anvil in the middle of this area.

Until next year's Lemon Festival!

This is called clearing out the backlog of posts! Trying to search for more OR maybe I should just finish the Canada ones! Ha ha.

Chula Vista Heritage Museum

[The museum was damaged two years ago as of 2016 and subsequently torn down]

Talk about an oldy moldy post. This one's from a few months ago (from when we went to the Chula Vista Lemon Festival) and it got lost in the queue. I believe I posted on the food already.

This was the first time we'd been to the Chula Vista Heritage Museum even though we drive by it everytime we're in downtown CV. Admission is free, so yay. This on on Third Avenue in the historic downtown area, near Memorial Park and down the street from La Bella Pizza Garden.

The ongoing exhibit was farming in the South County.



Funk's Hybrid Corn?

Farming implements...

The area near us, Otay Ranch used to be a huuuge cattle/sheep ranch and until recently, you could still see the cows grazing there. No more. Just a ton of homes now. Foreclosed ones. Wut????

Vegetable labels on display and photos from the past.

There used to be a farm at the foot of Main Street in Chula Vista (right before you reach Palm Avenue). The junk yard used to be there too. Now it's a strip mall with Kohl's, Baby's R Us and Petsmart.

I love these vegetable label with their vivid color scheme and bold graphics.


Next up, Fred Rohr's Anvil Drop!

Dinner and Dessert...

The day after Black Friday, I had a bunch of errands to run that took me all over San Diego. On my way home, feeling tired and bitchy and not wanting to cook, I stopped by Luigi's on El Cajon Blvd. I thought these boxes would look nice under the Christmas tree before I horked 'em down. Well, I didn't eat the whole thing, alright. I know how to share!

I got six different slices...a few of them are repeats from my previous visits to Luigi's. That way, Bert and TC could also sample the other types of pies.

From 11 o'clock - Three Meats, Ricotta with jalapeno and pepperoni, 3 cheese with Spinach (ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan - my favorite), Pesto with Chicken and roasted red bell peppers...

Here's a slightly diff't view. The other two kinds are the Pineapple Ham (far left) with the Combo next to it. The smell of the pizza was driving me nuts on the way home, as the box emanated the heavenly scent of warm pizza throughout my car. Better than those air fresheners man! They should make pizza scented car air fresheners.

I also picked up a couple of cupcakes from Eclipse next door. On the left is the PB Banana cupcake covered with dark chocolate ganache. The center was infused with intense banana and caramel flavor. So good! Topped with a dried banana slice.

Next to that was the Sea Salt Caramel cupcake - This is one of my favorites despite the lavender that's mixed with the sea salt. I don't really like lavender because it reminds me of Johnson and Johnson's Nighttime baby lotion. We used to rub that on TC when she was a baby to soothe her. I hated the smell. But the lavender flecks here aren't that noticable to make me feel like I am consuming baby lotion, therefore the awesomeness of the salt mixed with the dark chocolate is enough to override that feeling for me.

I sliced up a few pieces in thirds. That way, I could sample more of the flavors, haha. I really really love that Ricotta Spinach pizza! They didn't have artichoke that day either. The 3 Meat wasn't so bad either!

Bert and TC were out late that evening so they the rest of the slices and the cupcakes when they got home. They're lucky that I didn't tear through the box like Dom de Luis in "Fatso" because, I really wanted to. But of course, I have an off switch and a bit of decorum, so yeah, they were able to have their share!

Bronx next time!

Thanksgiving Lunch...

Dude, I should have posted this last week. I'm late to the party, as usual.  On "Black Friday", we stayed home to put up the tree, decorate it as well as the house and all that holiday blah blah. We've never gone out hunting for deals on Black Friday because yours truly is pretty anal. Meaning, I get the majority of my shopping done throughout the year, finishing it mainly in October.

So yeah, fk all those crowds and the mall and that infernal Christmas music. "Simply having a Wonderful Christmas time!" You know I love you Paul, but I FUCKING HATE that song almost as much as I HATE KENNY G!

The night before Thanksgiving, I made some Cranberry Orange sauce:

It's pretty damn easy. In fact, here's the recipe:

CRANBERRY ORANGE SAUCE

Zest and juice of 1 orange
1/2 cup of sugar
Pinch of salt
1 bag of fresh cranberries (rinsed)
1/2 cup water

In a medium saucepan, zest the orange and juice it straight into the damn pan.
Add the water, sugar and salt as well. Let it dissolve. Takes 2-3 minutes.
Add the cranberries and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer until cranberries burst and juices thicken. Takes 7 or so minutes.
Add more sugar if want it sweeter.
Let sauce cool to room temp. before serving.

And if this weren't enough, I also made Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots!

I didn't make these for my mom, but rather for Thanksgiving dinner with Bert's side of the family. I made the sauce, the carrots and the onions (recipe to follow) for the dinner sides.

Here's the recipe for the carrots. The original recipe asked for those gross "baby" carrots, but I used regular ones that I handchopped. I also doubled the recipe but cut back on the sugar.

BROWN SUGAR GLAZED CARROTS

•1 lb  carrots


•2 tablespoons butter

•1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

•1 cup water

•dash salt

•pepper, to taste

Preparation:

In a medium saucepan, combine the carrots with remaining ingredients. Stir to blend ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and continue boiling (uncovered) for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until carrots are tender and the liquid has evaporated.

To make it pretty, I added chopped chives but you can use whatever herb you want, except marijuana. Unless you're into that thing.

Not shown are my Caramelized Onions which were pretty damn good, I must say.

The recipe for that is a no brainer:

CARAMELIZED ONIONS:

Ingredients:
Onions (duh) - about 8 - 10 big ones
Olive oil and/or butter (eyeball it and choose your vice)
Fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Directions:
Peel and cut the onions in half. Then slice thinly.
In a large pan, add the olive oil or butter (not too much).
Use high heat at first then reduce to medium high.
Stir until onions are soft and golden brown.
This may take about 30-40 minutes.
If the pan starts getting dry, you can deglaze it with a bit of white wine or chicken broth

Optional - You can also add some fresh thyme leaves to this.

Have fun standing there like a barefoot and pregnant 1950's housewife breathing in onion fumes and getting onion smell in your hair. Trust me, it will be worth it. Your guests will love it.

You can also use these onions as a base for French Onion soup. Just add beef broth, top with a big crouton and cheese. But otherwise, it's great as a side with turkey or ham or whatever meat you're having.

So, on to the actual FOOD we had at my parents' place:

There's the turkey plus the sides: stuffing, mashed potatoes and WTF - opo squash with ham, shrimp and glass noodles. I think my mom wanted something Filipino in here! Not pictured is the canned Cranberry sauce sliced in nice circles. :)

How about some gravy? My dad is a former Navy cook and likes to make food for big parties. He's used to that. I like my parents' serving and chafing dishes! Nice!

My mom ordered fried shrimp from the local Chinese place. All the nephews plus TC attacked this! The photo is out of whack - still trying to figure out this new camera!

My mom also made sauteed bittermelon with onions, tomatoes, bits of shrimp and and pork chicharon. The bittermelon is from their garden. This and the opo squash were the only "green" vegetable offerings.

This was also really good - Macaroni salad made with mayo, diced red and green bell peppers, chicken, diced pineapple and cheese. Sometimes my mom will include sweet pickle relish, but didn't since she used two colors of diced peppers. This was one of my favorite sides of the day!

One of the main dishes was the glazed pineapple ham...

And of course, the turkey complete with rice stuffing, made by my dad. Some of us got the skin but it was hit or miss. Some pieces would be nice and crispy while some were rubbery or plastic-y in texture.

Here's a closeup of that rice stuffing spilling out of the cavity. Doesn't that sound appetizing? Body cavity? I love this stuffing - my dad puts in bits of sausage, giblets, hot dogs, and onions...There's probably more ingredients but I can't think of them right now.

They also had a fruit platter which included persimmons, pineapple, grapes, mangoes and avocados.

My bro brought pumpkin pies...I didn't include the pix of my desserts since I posted previously on them (Mini Nutella Cakes and Blueberry Turnovers). I skipped out on the pumpkin pie since I don't like pumpkin.

It was a nice and relaxing Thanksgiving spent with the immediate family. TC and the nephews had a blast playing at the nearby elementary school's parking lot. It's bigger than our backyard with more freedom to throw or kick balls, and ride their bikes, scooters and skateboards. They also brought my nephew's hockey sticks and goal posts so they could do roller hockey. Fun! The next big Holiday food fest will be Christmas! I want to try out several new dessert recipes (still plotting in my mind).

Hope you all had great Thanksgivings with your respective families and friends as well!

Mini Nutella Cakes & Blueberry Turnovers

As you may recall from previous posts, I admitted that I'd never baked a turkey before. Since I didn't have "Bird Duty" (that would be my Dad then), my mom told me to make some desserts. Instead of my usual Lemon Cheesecake Bars, which everyone likes (see the recipe here complete with step by step photos from my defunct recipe blog), I decided to try a new dessert recipe.

This recipe comes from SD foodblogger Kirbie of the awesome blog, Kirbie's Cravings. She is truly gifted when it comes to baking sweets plus she has the cutest pans and molds EVER! So, thanks Kirbie! This recipe was a hit!

Mini Nutella Cakes (Check out her post since it has way better photos!).

There's only 3 ingredients - Nutella, Flour, Egg, and if you want to top it off, you can use actual Hazelnuts or in my case, chopped chocolate. As an experiment, I used this Philippine chocolate tablet, Antonio Peuo brand (seen in gold wrapper below). I didn't really like it because it looked and tasted like a chalky version of chocolate. I only used it for half of the mini cakes and used mini semi-sweet chocolate chips for the other dozen.

I doubled the recipe so it was 1 cup of Nutella, 2 eggs and 10 tablespoons of flour. Whisk the eggs and Nutella first. Then add the flour little by little. Drop into the mini muffin liners. Top with nuts or chopped chocolate.

Here's the batter without the toppings...

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  Cool on rack first or enjoy while still hot and fudgy inside! My husband loved these and so did my nephews! Mini Nutella Cakes FTMFW!!!  Can you see which mini cakes had the mini chips and which had the chopped chalky chocolate? :)  And even though it was Thanksgiving, I used my Christmas print mini cupcake liners!

The other dessert I made was a variation of my Blueberry Strudel. Instead of using the large puff pastry sheets, I used a ready made package of 8 puff pastry squares (sorry, don't remember the brand) from North Park Produce. This brand had 8 ($3.99) while Indo-European brand has 10 ($4.79).

I also topped each turnover with a sugar, butter and sliced almond crust. I skipped on the lemon sugar glaze, otherwise it would have been sugar overload!

Blueberry Strudel (adapted for turnovers):

Ingredients:

1 pack of 8-10 Puff Pastry squares.
Make sure you defrost the squares ahead of time - it takes about an hour.
Filling:
1 8 oz block of softened cream cheese
1 cup of sugar
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1 egg yolk, beaten (in another bowl, beat another egg yolk to brush on top of pastry before putting on topping)
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries (I used the organic wild blueberries from Trader Joe's but any brand would do, I'm sure)

Topping:
2 tbsp softened butter
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup sugar

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 375 F.
 

2.Defrost the puff pastry on a parchment-lined baking sheet and keep cool.

3.In a medium bowl, combine the softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar, 2 tsp of vanilla and 1 of the egg yolk.

4.Gently fold in the blueberries.

5.Spoon the filling onto the middle of each puff pastry square.

6.Brush the edges of the pastry with beaten egg yolk.

7.Fold diagonally, making a triangle and seal well by pressing with a fork
8.Make 2 slashes on top of the pastry to allow air to escape.

9.Brush the top with extra egg yolk.

10.In a small bowl, combine the softened butter, 1 cup of sugar, and almonds until the mixture is crumbly.

11.Press the topping into the dough.

12.Bake for 35-45 minutes.

13.Cool.

It's better when the filling is more firm, rather than runny. You can fill the squares a little bit more. Also, if the puff pastry isn't totally softened, you have better control when folding it over and sealing it. Mine was kind of soft so the filling oozed out. I ended up making another batch because I had another package of the squares.

Also, portion wise, you can cut these turnovers in half if you want to serve them as part of a dessert buffet. I think that one bigass piece would be too much if one wanted to samply a variety of desserts. If you are just having one main dessert, then one intact piece would be fine, I suppose. I thought about cutting the puff pastry squares diagonally (ha ha, "Diagon Alley", Harry Potter joke, sorry!) but you wouldn't get as much filling and there would be way too much crust to ratio filling. And another reason I didn't do it was because it would be twice as much work! Easier for me to cut the big pieces in half.

I just had to recycle this video from my older post! Lardass Davy Hogan from "Stand By Me" (the clip is narrated by a very young Wil Wheaton)!


Currently listening to the Cure compilation, "Staring at the Sea - The Singles" - song on right now, "Jumping Someone Else's Train".