Yummy Places

A blog post mostly about food...

St. Patrick's Day!!!

So, on St. Patrick's Day my parents were in San Diego so I had my St. Patty's day meal by myself. It was also super rainy and windy that day (much like today. What is with out weather?!?!), so I brought food home. I got....

The Guinness Braised Corned Beef Reuben from The Counter, a design your own burger place in Irvine.

A yummy St. Pat's day themed cupcake from the Cupcake Store (in Mission Viejo. They also have a stand in Downtown Disney though...)

Just a normal Saturday

So, I recently found this little coffee shop in San Clemente called Zebra Coffehouse. They have great muffins (my favorite so far is the zucchini-blueberry) that they'll warm up for you. Yummy and a great place to read and relax with a mocha or a cappuccino.

Evening in South Africa

I got a Groupon for Mozambique (Laguna Beach) last year, but I kept forgetting to use it. So I finally used it the day before it expired. It was pretty good! I had always wanted to go in there because I've driven by it so many times. Below is a picture of the Piri Piri Chicken Pops on top of grilled pineapple with a spicy slaw. This is huge, and the appetizer!!!

On a non-food related note...

I discovered that my Scrabble app can be put in French! So I changed it on the iPad (so as to not mess up my amazing stats on my iPhone), and I've not been doing too badly. Granted, I've been playing on easy mode, which is way too easy for me in English, but still! Considering I haven't really been doing anything with my French in months? (maybe closer to years?) My one question is, though, why can't I put it in Spanish?!?!

A Tale of Insurance

...that's good!

So, on Sunday I was just minding my own business driving down Avery Pkwy when out of nowhere a car slams into me from behind. I had seen that car with the two young guys in it at the top of the hill because they were in the lane next to me right next to me. As I drove down, I checked my mirrors (good driving habit), and I saw that they were still at the light even though it had turned green a while ago. Then I continued on my way, then heard a sudden screech of tires and then BAM! Likely distracted driving. At first I thought they were on something, and they still might be. *maybe* they were smoking cigarettes, but who knows...

Anyways, so my car is in the shop possibly until the end of the month! To fix my car costs $2,000. Fortunately (I now love insurance companies), they are paying for pretty much all of it. It didn't look that bad, but so it goes. The guy's car was not quite totaled but totally bad and leaking something out the front. But it *was* their fault, so I think that's fair.

It's *only* 500 calories

So, I saw an add for Carl's Jr's new turkey burger which they advertise as under 500 calories. What I thought when I saw that was: 500 calories is still a lot! OK, if the average person can have 2,000 calories in one day, then that's kind of ok within that amount, although this is the basic turkey burger, not one of the more tasty seeming ones and without fries or a drink or anything, and people might be like "I chose the healthier burger, so let me get (insert additional likely unhealthy thing here). I know they would; I think like that sometimes. But then I went to the website to look at the nutrition, as you can see above. I *know* that A LOT of the food we eat out is unhealthy and loaded with things we shouldn't have, but still. Wow. 23g fat! Ok, so I must admit that I am not a super healthy eater all of the time. I eat healthy most of the time so I can eat unhealthy things some of the time. But really, these stats are comparable to an In-N-Out cheeseburger (read: yummy burger with CHEESE)...An In-N-Out cheeseburger has 480 calories, 27g fat, 60g cholesterol, 39g carb, 3g fiber & 29g protein. So, they are pretty much equally unhealthy, but the turkey burger is claiming to be healthy by saying that it's under 500 calories, which really does not mean much. Clearly.

So, it's been FOREVER

It's been a long time. A lot to say, but I cannot always remember what I wanted to say, so we'll see how it goes...

SO I got a new job at AmEx, as you probably know, which is going great! I like it and I have a good feeling about it. At my last job, I always felt that it would be temporary and the excitement over being hired was quickly tempered by being unsure about it. Not so here. It's cool to learn about all of the destinations, and all of the cruises & tours that go to many awesome places. I've definitely added some places to visit recently. As well as places that I want to visit again and spend more time in, like Spain and Portugal.  Even France! I know, after my semester abroad I was sort of disillusioned about France, but I now think I could go back to go to the places I didn't really visit before (ex. Champagne region, Provence,...).

I also want to go on  a Celebrity cruise. I have since one of their ships was in pretty much every port that we were in on my recent(ish) Princess Cruise in the Baltic. On one of their ships, they have small rooms made with single, young travelers in mind. The rooms are a more economical way for the solo traveller to cruise. On most cruises, a solo traveler has to pay the per-person cost, and then 50% of the per person cost on top of that (Ex. A cruise that is $2000 per person, will cost a solo traveller $3000). Plus, those solo rooms (which can fit 2) have access to the exclusive suite lounges. Super cool. Plus Celebrity has very modern ships.

Anyways, hmm...I got to use my language skills! Someone came in who needed to send something financial (traveller's cheque? I don't know) and I helped double-check the address because all of the instructions were in French. For Spanish, someone came in who only spoke Spanish and had a question about gift cards. I'm not sure if it went so well because he didn't seem to fully understand. At first I did, and he left and I thought it went well. Then he came back with more questions and I still don't fully know what his issue was (the first part I got. He asked if he could exchange gift cards for cash and we got that question sorted out. Then he asked how they work, and I explained that. Then he said he couldn't use it at the gas station and I thought I relayed that, and he left. Then he came back asking about a PIN number for it, and I'm not really sure if he tried the card while he was gone and the machine asked for a number, or if he was just asking if there was one). I also realized that I need to brush up on some vocab...

Umm...what else? I am still learning German on Rosetta Stone. I do my lessons during lunch, which is a convenient time. I also just got a book on German grammar, which will be so helpful because the thing with Rosetta Stone is that you don't really learn the grammar well; I don't know why exactly some things are arranged or spelled differently, but with the book hopefully I will!