Friday, January 17, 2014

San Diego - Enough Leftovers for 2 More Days

We’ve spent a month or more in San Diego for the last 5 years and thus have eaten breakfast out many times. Well, at least 20 times (once a week for 4 weeks for 5 years) though I’d venture to say we might have broken our usual routine and had breakfast out twice some weeks. One of our favorite places is the Mission Cafe on Mission Avenue in Pacific Beach. Cosmopolitan atmosphere, down home service and the food - absolutely delicious. Pricey? Well for these two Iowans, it is California pricing, which means pricey though I’ve read some other reviews of the restaurant that say it is nicely low cost. They must be comparing it to a steak dinner with wine is all I can say. But, we’ll pay the price because the food is so good.

Parking, now that’s another matter. One one side of the street there are signs that read: ‘NO PARKING, Mon - Thursday, 8am - 10am, street cleaning’. On the other side are signs that read: ‘NO PARKING, Tuesday - Friday, 8am - 10am, street cleaning’. Other signs that say ’15 minute parking’ are interspersed on both sides of the street. Well, it is a beach area and there are lots of people streaming through. Well, we parked where lots of others were parked under the Tuesday - Friday sign and asked in the restaurant what this all meant. The guy inside didn’t know but our waitress did: Mon - Thurs means: ‘Monday & Thursday’ while ‘Tuesday - Friday’ means: Tuesday & Friday. That’s a dot not a dash between the days. Oops. Right then and there we should have rushed out to move our car. It was Friday and we were under the Friday sign.

Nah, let’s take a chance. We ordered and had a delightful meal, rosemary potatoes, rosemary bread with home-made blackberry jam, and scrambled eggs. Huge portions and we’ve got a take-out container in our refrigerator to attest to that. So do the people on either side of us in the restaurant. The rosemary potatoes are an especial signature dish for this restaurant and, I’ve got the recipe here:

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ROSEMARY POTATOES

4-5 small red potatoes, washed
3-4 T olive oil (I used 1T and olive-oil flavored Pam)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped coarsely

Cube the potatoes fairly big (ours in the restaurant were red potatoes though russets might also work and I tried the gold potatoes today with great results), put them into a saucepan, cover with water, bring them to a boil and boil for 5 - 10 minutes until they can be pierced with a fork. Let them sit out on the counter until they are cool. Important step and don’t leave this one out. Cool, not kinda warm, not tepid, but cool.

Heat the oil in a saute pan to medium high, add the rosemary and then the potatoes in a single layer covering the bottom of the pan. Let them cook until they are getting crispy on the bottom then turn them. When they looked cooked, smash them a bit with a fork for some potatoey goodness to come out. Cook on this side until crispy and then serve. The recipe calls for salt and pepper and The Mission ladled the salt on. Try these without for real potato taste.


A variation of these is when you remove the potatoes from the boiling water, smash then a bit so they are about 3/4 - 1” thick. Cool and fry in Pam.
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OK, now you can close your eyes and imagine that you are on Pacific Beach at one of the iconic restaurants and eat up. Oops, you’ll probably also need some rosemary bread too. And, that was our breakfast. Delicious, and the coffee was hot and also delicious. But, boy, do we ever have leftovers. Enough for another breakfast for both of us.

Hey, what’s that driving by out the window? Looks like a street sweeper. Sure enough, when we got back to our car - there was a little billet-doux from San Diego. Not a ‘Welcome to San Diego’ for visitors, not a free coupon for the local trolley but a “PAY UP OR ELSE’.

Pretty expensive breakfast but now we know the routine. I guess we’ve been lucky in our previous visits to this area and have never gotten a ticket - must have parked on the right side of the street purely by chance. But our ignorance of the signs caught up with us this time. On the other hand, we’ll never be caught again. And we moved our car to a parking lot about a mile down the beach.

But, time for our daily walk - and here we can walk along the beach.
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Could anything be better? Volleyball in full swing,
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surfers out waiting for the right wave.
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Some actually found the right wave.
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And, some didn’t.
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Lots of others walking and biking. And, all of them tourists. We found a guy in a Minnesota sweatshirt who actually knew about our video store in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota and we found another guy in an Iowa Hawkeye shirt.

We also saw the Privateer heading out for another whale watching cruise.
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Back to the RV where Gary started another laundry (seems that we do laundry every other day) and I tidied up the Jeep for tonight when we pick up my aunt for dinner. Gotta have a clean car for her. The car is clean, we took our showers and picked Marilyn up for dinner at the Athena, a Greek restaurant between her home in La Jolla and our RV in Pacific Beach. And a wonderful time was had by all. Seeing her is one of the best things about San Diego. And seeing my aunt Betty is one of the best things about Central California. (Hi, Betty.) And, we get to see both this year. Last year we saw only Marilyn and that was only for one several hours since we headed back to Iowa rather abruptly.

Both Gary and I ordered the chicken kabob which comes with rice pilaf and briyani (a mixture of peppers, squash and onion in a tomato base). We should have shared. As it is, we have enough leftovers for another dinner.

After we dropped Marilyn off at her home we continued up Mt. Soledad to view the full moon and the city lights. I hadn’t taken the tripod, not knowing that we’d be driving up here so the pictures are a bit blurry but, oh, what a beautiful sight: the city’s lights, the moon’s glow and the ocean’s darkness.
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And, did I mention that we had leftovers?

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