Category Archives: Favorite Foods

That’s What a Hamburger is All About!

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In-N-Out double hamburger with grilled onions, cheeseburger with raw onions and fries. That was our order and the cost was $11 and change.

Yesterday, my husband had the day off. We ran errands, I got my hair done, shopped at Trader Joe’s and finished the day at In-N-Out, an iconic hamburger stand that began in California in 1948 by husband and wife Harry and Esther Snyder.

If you’re not from California, or don’t live in the west, you might not know about In-N-Out. I’ll give some of the highlights.

What makes In-N-Out so good?

Fresh ingredients, quality and simplicity. It’s been family owned and operated from the beginning. They’ve never once wanted to franchise or sell out, because they don’t want to sacrifice quality.

This is the wrapper my cheeseburger came in. It sums up why their food tastes so good.

As for their employees, the Snyders have treated them like family from day one. Company policy is to promote from within. Many of their restaurant managers earn more than six figures per year. The average worker at this hamburger fast food chain makes $20 an hour with a $2,000 annual bonus.

I first went to an In-N-Out burger with my husband when we were first married. It was in Loma Linda, Calif. and it had drive-throughs on both sides, no dining room, but some outside tables. We sat outside and ate. Eventually, we got one near Palm Springs in 1988. It was In-N-Out’s 50th restaurant.

Today there are 415 restaurants in eight states: California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Colorado and Idaho. Here’s a LINK to In-N-Out History.

There’s always a line at In-N-Out. It doesn’t matter the time.

Here’s the regular menu. Talk about simplicity:

There’s a Secret (not so secret) Menu that isn’t posted. One of the most popular items I notice being ordered whenever I’m at In-N-Out is Fries, Animal Style.

After Harry Snyder passed away, running the business went to one of two sons. When that son died in a tragic airplane crash, the other son took over. Then when he died, the business went back to Esther. Eventually granddaughter Lynsi took over and she runs the family business today.

Here’s the theme song for In-N-Out:

Have you been to In-N-Out? If so what do you order?

What’s your favorite burger restaurant?

I noticed Revelation 3:20 on the wrapper for the first time. I looked it up:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

What’s up kitty cat?

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Olive is feeling better. I keep finding her up on top of things.

I had a few stress-filled weeks when we came home from vacation. Olive the cat was not her usual perky self. I wrote about it HERE.

For about two weeks, I monitored Olive. She’d have a good day followed by several bad ones. On her bad days, I wouldn’t see her. If I did see her for a few brief moments, she looked really scruffy and miserable.

One of my neighbors asked me how old she was, When I said 11, the neighbor suggested maybe it was time. You know what? I pushed back on that. I took Olive to the vet. I waited, watched and eventually Olive no longer hid under the bed all day. She started eating like a champ. Her other bodily functions became normal. Definitely it was NOT “time.”

Our last cat, Sherman, was 17 years old when he was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No, he didn’t make it. Olive is an indoor cat and I expect her to have a long life.

Now, she’s leaping to the top of the closet. The shelf she’s on is six feet high! Yesterday she was up on the closet space a few feet higher than that!

I walked into the casita to see this! She’s never been a counter shopper before.

FYI, the photos on this post are taken with my iphone, not my DSLR camera.

I’m getting ready for guests this coming weekend. The Wickham Casita has been a popular place this past month. Our last guest is a world champion spear fisherman. He’s entering a competition at Lake Pleasant, which is about 30 minutes from us. He’s planning on scouting the lake several times before the event. He brought us black cod, salmon, rock fish and lobster during his last visit. I wrote about Black Cod also known as Sablefish HERE.

We enjoyed lobster over the weekend. Our houseguest free dives off the coast in Southern California for lobster.

What a treat! I had to share the lobster photos.

Lobster poached in lemon butter with steamed broccoli. Yum! Yes, our last guest is welcome to our casita anytime.

What is your most favorite food and why?

If you’ve had dogs or cats, do you get stressed if they aren’t feeling well?

What’s cooking?

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Instructor Jan D’Artri helped us by cutting up the White Chocolate English Toffee I made with my neighbor during a cooking class at Sweet Basil Culinary Center.

Are you a spur of the moment person?

I’m not. I plan out my weeks and I like to follow a schedule. I make to do lists and enjoy crossing off items with a red pen.

My neighbor texted me and invited me to an Ina Garten cooking class. She said her friend couldn’t make it and would I like to take her place. I hesitated. It wasn’t on my schedule. It wasn’t on my list.

Then I said yes.

I had to look up who Ina Garten was. She had a show on the Food Network called the Barefoot Contessa. I watched her show occasionally, but I didn’t know her real name.

It was a hands on cooking class called Cooking Ina Garten Favorites (no she wasn’t there in person). Then we got to pick what we wanted to prepare out of the following recipes:

Spinach & Artichoke Dip with Garlic Bread
Truffled Mac & Cheese
Crispy Chicken Parmesan with English Roasted Potatoes
Ina’s Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons
White Chocolate English Toffee
Beatty’s Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
Paloma Cocktail

FYI, you can google any of these recipes and they show up from Ina Garten.

Crispy Chicken Parmesan with English Roasted Potatoes. Delicious.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Puff Pastry Croutons. This was my favorite and I’ll try it at home. Here’s a LINK to Ina’s recipe.

One of my neighbor’s friends making the Paloma cocktails.

A photo of the cooking area. We were assigned to stations with our ingredients, pots and pans, burners, ovens and recipes.

My neighbor and I chose White Chocolate English Toffee because it looked super easy. However, we couldn’t get our white chocolate morsels to melt. The instructor added vegetable oil and whipped it into shape. Here’s a LINK to Ina Garten’s recipe.

When we were done cooking, we sat down to a delicious meal. Everything was so good!

Sweet Basil’s is also a kitchen store with all sorts of fun gadgets, beautiful dishes, serving platters, knives and everything under the sun for cooking.

Have you tried any of Ina Garten’s recipes before? If so what ones?

From my list of recipes from the cooking class, which would you most likely want to prepare and eat?

Are you a spur of the moment person or a planner?

A few of my favorite things

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My all time favorite cheese.

A few years ago we were visiting our kids in the Berkeley area. The weather was perfect and we went on a quest to see redwoods.

We walked through the woods in the Redwood Regional Park in Oakland with our kids and future daughter-in-law. We sat down on a bench and enjoyed a treat our son prepared for us. Brillat Savarin cheese, blackberries and crusty bread. It’s the first time I had tasted that cheese. If you have not tried it, it’s mild but the creamiest. I found this description online:

It is a triple cream soft-ripened cheese that is luscious, creamy and faintly sour.

We did find a few redwoods and it was such a peaceful place to be outdoors in a forest with the people I love.

After our hike, we went to Rockridge in Oakland to a cafe and window shopped. What a beautiful day with family.

Once at home, I searched for the cheese. I went to five different grocery stores and none had Brillat, including the expensive, fancy schmancy one. Years later, I was picking up vitamins I normally order on Amazon at Whole Foods. (For some reason, Amazon directed me to pick up my vitamins myself.) Wouldn’t you know it? I spotted Brillat Savarin!

What are a few of my favorite things? Spending time outdoors. Spending time with family. My favorite cheese that brings back those memories. Olive. And yes, “The Sound of Music.”

What are a few of your favorite things?

Views from Salt Lake City

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We had a great time revisiting Salt Lake City. The little big city has a special place in my heart because of my daughter’s four years living there for college. It’s filled with memories from our many visits. Plus, we saw my husband’s best friend from fourth grade through high school and his wife. We wish we had many more hours talking and laughing together! Every second was full. Our friend showed us a paper he wrote in fourth grade where he referenced my husband. Then he gave us a joint project they wrote together! Priceless!

Oh yes, Matteo’s restaurant owned by a former international student from Italy and swim teammate of my daughter’s at the “U” was amazing! The food and service was incredible. You can look at Matteo’s menu HERE. (Matteo is the handsome guy in the middle row photos that I linked for the menu.)

Here are a few views from our getaway in Salt Lake City:

No trip to Utah (in my opinion) is complete without a Freshie’s lobster roll. We’ve been to their Park City location, but now they have a Salt Lake City restaurant a mile from the hotel we stay at — the Little America. If you’re wondering how lobster rolls could be a thing in Utah, read this archived article “Utah restaurant stomps coastal competition, takes home ‘World’s Best Lobster Roll’ award.” Every bite of lobster was a major chunk from claws to hunks of tail meat. There was no sketchy filler. The roll was drizzled with warm butter, garnished with perhaps parsley in a grilled bun. Oh my!

Photo of the Little America tower I took during a morning walk. The Little America has two-story buildings surrounding the tower with garden and courtside rooms. (FYI, The Little America was founded by Stephen Mack Covey, grandfather to Stephen Covey of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” who in turn is grandfather to Britain Covey of the Philadelphia Eagles.

An example of the two-story buildings surrounding the tower that I borrowed from their website.

View of the Wasatch mountains from our 12th floor room. The apartment buildings below did not exist last time we visited Salt Lake City.

We walked to City Creek Center from the hotel. It was about a mile away. It’s an indoor-outdoor shopping center downtown and fills two city blocks. To get from one side to another you can cross the street, or use their skybridge. (We were on a mission to get new earbuds for my husband’s iphone at the Apple Store there. A story for another day!)

View from the skybridge walking from one City Creek Center building to another. Notice the train tracks lined with yellow? That’s TRAX, the light rail system that makes getting around SLC so easy and convenient. It’s free downtown.

Our daughter said she took TRAX from campus to football games, to downtown or wherever — all free as a student. She’d swipe her student ID. How convenient would that be going to a football game at the Rice Eccles stadium that seats more than 50,000 people and is sold out for every game? Or for everyday life? We used TRAX this past weekend.

City lights from our hotel room with the pool and garden and courtside rooms below.

The view of the Grand America from our deck. That’s the grander sister hotel across the street.

Thanks for coming along for highlights of my weekend.

Where you live, do you have a light rail system like TRAX? I wish we had that in Scottsdale!

Do you have any favorite go to places where you live or visit — like Freshie’s that I visit in SLC?

Looking for a good restaurant

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Rueben from Sherman's Deli Palm Springs.

This is the Rueben from our favorite Sherman’s Deli in Palm Springs.

For Father’s Day, I wanted to treat my husband to a nice breakfast or lunch. We heard about a Jewish Deli that we hadn’t tried yet. We were told it was pretty good.

Well, what a disappointment. It was nothing like what we’re used to. My husband had a breakfast burrito that he took two bites of and left it. I had a Rueben and potato salad. The sandwich was okay. But they didn’t grill the bread and the corned beef was tough. I took it home and doctored it up. The potato salad was inedible.

There’s always a line at Sherman’s. But not for us. We’d be spotted and whisked to a table by the manager. That was the advantage of being a local in a tourist town.

We haven’t found fabulous food in Arizona, which is why we hardly ever go out. It’s always a let down. I should take that back and say there are a few places I like, but they are a trek from our house.

The good news is we’re visiting a friend in New York and I can probably get my fill of fabulous food. I’m also hoping to meet LA from Waking Up On the Wrong Side of 50 in person.

What is your favorite food to go out for?

Foodie Friday

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Dinner at sunset after our exciting drive to Mexico. We decided to eat at Wrecked at the Reef, where some tables are on the sand with perfect sunset views. It’s very Americanized, has a huge indoor sports bar, corn hole and live bands. We prefer the quiet tables next to the sea.

One of my favorite things about Puerto Penasco is the food. They have fresh seafood, since it’s a fishing village, and the prices are outstanding.

Coconut shrimp at Wrecked on the Reef. My husband and I shared this along with a shrimp cocktail, American style.

On our first trip to Puerto Penasco, we asked our Arizona realtor for places to eat. He gave us a list, but said his family of four kids and wife liked Pollo Lucas the best. At first, I was skeptical of char-broiled chicken, rice and beans. What could be so exciting about that? Well, it’s now our go to place and favorite, too.

Prices are in pesos. For under $20 we ordered a whole chicken, rice, beans, salsa and the most delicious flour tortillas I’ve ever had. We got about four meals out of this, eating in the restaurant and taking the rest back to the condo.

I’ve posted about Pollo Lucas several times before. But it’s so good it deserves another round of applause and attention.

The works at Pollo Lucas. I LOVE the Mexican Coca Cola but I’m glad we don’t have it here!

The restaurant was empty when we arrived. Sometimes we have to wait for a seat. It’s open air with a thatched roof. It comes complete with cats who are very well behaved.

Where are your favorite places to go out to eat?

Do you have a go to place? What is it?