Category Archives: Food

Off Center Festival Party on the Plaza

Last night I went to the Party on the Plaza to kick off the Off Center Festival at the Segerstrom Center. Honestly, I’m not really sure what the Off Center Festival is, but the Party on the Plaza was free. There was a live band, La Santa Cecilia, that was entertaining along with three food trucks.

I shouldn’t have, but I ate at two of the food trucks. I had a pulled pork waffle sandwich from Waff-N-Roll and found it mediocre. Luckily, I went to Dogzilla for a Loco Moco hot dog that was simply amazing. It was a hot dog with spam, nori, gravy, a fried egg, and probably a few other minor ingredients I can’t recall – very delicious!

I don’t really know what the rest of the event is, but I had a good time chatting and eating food truck foods!

“Best Brownies” from Allrecipes.com

I meant to post about this but never got around to it. My friend kept talking about brownies a couple weeks ago, so it made me want brownies. I decided to use a recipe called “Best Brownies” from Allrecipes.com.

Most surprising to me was how few ingredients I needed. I guess it helped that I had baked the John Dies at the End Vegan Chocolate Soy Sauce Cupcakes back in October and already had a bunch of the ingredients.

I particularly liked the hint of honey flavor in them. It’s too bad I don’t have any desserts right now. Now I feel like something lemony.

Stir fry!

I made stir fry tonight that was pretty tasty! It had one drumstick’s worth of chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, onion, mushrooms, carrots, baby corn, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, pineapple, and Hoisin sauce. There should be enough leftover food to make more tomorrow, too!

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I had MLK, Jr. Day off, so I went to Zimzala for lunch after biking, working out, and doing some chores. (Funny, before posting this I noticed that my very last post was also about Zimzala.) I chatted with Andrew and had a delicious barbecue chicken flatbread.

Afterward I headed to the beach to walk in the water and lie in the sand. I brought some books with me and got a lot further in The Complete Maus. I also reread the Tao Te Ching, which is pretty short. There was also a decent chunk of time during which I did nothing but thought and listened to the water.

By the time I was ready to leave, I was getting a little hungry again. I grabbed a taco from Sancho’s Tacos, which is an amazing taco place just one block from Zimzala.

Oh, and when I heard some weird noise above me, I saw a squirrel munching on a nut. Cute!

Lunch at Zimzala

I had lunch at Zimzala today. My friend’s the Sous-Chef there, and I had something to bring him. Lunch was delicious, and I had a good time chatting over the food. I had a burger that I ate too quickly to photograph, but I did manage to get a picture of the amazing ice cream. The desserts are always great.

Because I was right there in Huntington Beach anyways, I went for a walk down the pier. It was a very nice day, and sometimes it’s good to do some nothing and clear your mind.

The water was looking beautiful too.

Some people were walking through a design in the sand. I assume they had just finished making it, but maybe they just found it. Anyways, it was a lovely day!

Christmas time!

Christmas time is always great! I hadn’t really talked about it yet at all, so I’ll mention everything briefly in this post! Even though I was taking my family’s presents to my aunt’s house, I kept them under my tree. I like having a lot of wrapped gifts under the tree.

I went to two Christmas shows. The first was the Aquabats holiday show, which I talked about previously. They played with Emily’s Army and Kepi Ghouli; it was a great show.

After I posted some photos of the show on Instagram, user gogo13band liked some of my photos. The user’s description says they’re the “literal brother band” of the Aquabats. I looked into them, and it turns out that the lead singer of the Aquabats’ brother is the lead singer of a ska band called GOGO13. They played with the Vandals and Knock-Out at “The Vandals 18th Annual Christmas Formal.” It was a great show too! The Vandals played music from their album Oi to the World!

Alex and Darnell were in Brea at her parents’ house, so I came to visit too. Devin and Lorena gave me a bottle Beet that they infused themselves! It came with recipes for two mixed drinks. That photo is of a drink called The Beet Goes On, which was great!

Alex and Darnell gave me cranberry orange bread and homemade lemon curd. Wow, it was all so delicious! I put blueberries in the lemon curd a couple times, but it was so flavorful and tasty that I definitely ate a lot without anything extra!

gem gave me a Snuggie and The Geek’s Guide to Dating. While I haven’t read much of the book yet, it’s pretty interesting and funny too. gem knew I wanted a Snuggie and called a bunch of stores trying to find one. She could only find one store that had any in stock, and when she got there, she could only find a single Snuggie. She told me I could exchange it because of the print, but I definitely wanted to keep it. It’s very comfy 🙂

I spent Christmas Eve at my aunt’s house and Christmas day at my parents’. Here’s my cousin, Mitch, collecting all the gifts to him in one place so he could open them quickly.

I got all my cousins board games. I gave Apples to Apples, The Logo Board Game, and Munchkin Legends. On the subject of board games, I also bought Edward Arkham Horror. My brother got a video game from me instead – Super Mario 3D Land. I gave gem a Tokidoki x Sanrio clutch.

I also took gem to see Cirque du Soleil’s Totem. I talked about that yesterday, but it was excellent!

Edward gave me a new leather jacket! I was very surprised, and it’s pretty great. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a leather jacket.

On the subject of unexpected gifts, my brother got me a Harman/Kardon soundbar and subwoofer. I was pretty amazed. It’s connected to my TV, and I’m listening to it right now. When it put it on top of the TV stand in front of the TV, it blocked the IR receiver on the TV. I moved it to the shelf underneath, which looks a little odd but works. It’s a great sound system! Notice the bow on the present? My mom added that.

Duncan moved the bow to Sumo. He’s quite festive with it.

We tried to turn the box into a dog house, but Angel and Sumo really didn’t want to hang out in it. We’ve put their beds in it, hoping that would entice them to enter. Well, they’re not really going for it.

Anyways, that was my Christmas time! Yay!

Drinks, Cirque du Soleil, and Zenko

Friday and Saturday provided a great start to my weekend. I began Friday evening with a martini with the “Beet” that was infused and given as a gift to me by my friends. I did have to buy martini glasses and some other things, but it was worth it. Duncan was going to Dave & Buster’s for drinks with some friends, so I went with them. I definitely had a good time.

Saturday afternoon, gem and I saw Totem, a touring, Grand Chapiteau Cirque du Soleil show. It’s about the evolution of humanity.

Totem was an amazing show. There’s not much of a reason to explicitly recommend seeing it, because I’d always recommend all Cirque du Soleil shows. I particularly enjoyed the ring and trapeze artists. Their strength (and balance and coordination) is just amazing.

Before the show when some of the artists were interacting with the audience, one, who I’ll call the ringmaster although I’m not sure it’s accurate, was near us. Everytime the ringmaster looked our way, gem would wave enthusiastically. When he got closer and was a few rows from us, he almost walked away, but after gem waved again, he came over to us. He got really close to her until his nose touched her nose. After a few seconds he jerked back and booped her nose, attempting to put a clown nose on her. It didn’t stay, so he tried again, slower, and then told her she a small nose. She lifted her glasses, pushed the nose on, and then lower the glasses on it. During the show, every time the ringmaster came on stage, gem would whisper, “that’s my buddy!” And that’s how gem got her clown nose!

We went to Zenko Sushi for dinner. I finally took back my rightful mayorship of the restaurant on Foursquare from “B.”

The waitress missed my glass when refilling my water, getting my shirt pretty soaked as well as my pants and phone. Everything was okay; she was very apologetic, and I really didn’t mind too much. She gave me dessert for free – deep fried green tea ice cream! It was very delicious.

I somehow doubt Sunday can live up to Friday and Saturday.

Friday was pizza day, the best day of the week

Thursday – Sloppy joes and burritos in a bag

Wednesday – Hamburgers and Chocolate Milk