Home Cooked Mexican

Since moving to the Bay Area I have had one void in my diet . . . a home cooked Mexican meal. There has been times when my mother has sent frozen tamales and chile rellenos for us, but it isn't the same as having a freshly prepared meal from home. It doesn't help that we couldn't find quality hand made tortillas, until now. The other day we Yelped tortillas in the Mission and came across La Palma. Finally fresh tortillas! We made some beans, rice and threw in a few tall Modelo Especials and we constructed one of the best meals to date. I really can't emphasize how difficult it is to find Southern California style Mexican food. Everybody up here puts rice in their burritos and wraps them in tin foil. Also, don't even think about ordering a bean and cheese burrito because they don't have refried beans as an option. Lolita's would rule up here.

 

                                                                          Enjoy -M

best weekend ever

Friday night we decided to have a beer at Mojos. We thought we were getting there in time for happy hour but we lucked out. 

However, it did turn out that there was an event going on in the back of mojos where there happens to be a bike shop. The owner was moving to Vermont for some odd reasons and they were having a silent auction and a raffle with some pretty awesome prizes. 

They also had a tub of beer for the event goers. Manny decided to buy $20 worth of raffle tickets, since he's so lucky with raffles he couldn't pass up this great opportunity. And did I already say that the prizes were awesome?!

And guess who cleaned house that night during the raffle?! WE DID! Although we didn't win EVERYTHING, we definitely walked up more than twice to claim our prizes. We felt the sting of embarassment after the 3rd time we won something. I went up to get the woman's montana t-shirt and water bottles and Manny went up to get the two gift certificates to bar crudo and mini bar, we had been wanting to go to bar crudo for oysters!!! & our luck didn't end there.

Manny got a dollar off our lobster raviolis this morning because he was the first customer of the day for the ravioli guy and then he helped the bread guy out by giving his boss directions to the market, in return the bread guy gave Manny a free bear claw and persuaded him to get this caramel pecan pastry which looks like a distant cousin of the cinnamon roll for a dollar off.

All in all it was an awesome weekend & I love bear claws. 

P.S. We also met Dan Deacons distant cousin at this wine/beer shop on the way home from the mission - he was SO nice and helped us pick out a nice bottle of jammy and silky Malbec

-A

WE EAT FISH

The tastiest Salmon I've ever had EVER. 

This is how you could make garlic mashed potatoes.

Our salmon came from the market by our house from a fisherman who caught the fish a few days back! We have never really tried out the fresh seafood at the market, but it was Manny's idea to give it a whirl. Luckily we did because that piece of salmon was so fresh and so much better than any salmon I've ever had from any grocery store, hands down! 

We decided to try something new and marinate the salmon in a mixture of soy sauce, dijon mustard, olive oil, minced garlic. Salmon is also easy to cook, about 7-8 minutes on each side, depending on how big the cut is.   

And we reserved a little of the marinate to cook up some mushrooms. 

& to top our fancy meal off, we bought a bottle of this very aromatic, medium bodied pinot noir, which was pretty pretty good :) 

-A