Home Grown

My first pepper!

It's official.  I am a gardener.  This is my very first vegetable I have ever grown.  Not only do I have this one, but I have 3 more growing outside!  This is unheard of!

I don't count my herb plants because I really didn't have to do anything to make them grow.  Except water them.   Which I'm really no good at.  It's a good thing Ryan likes to go outside or else it would probably never get done.

This lovely little green pepper went into a favorite dish in my house, sausage and peppers.  Just like it sounds, it contains sausage, usually chicken sausage, and peppers.  And usually onions.  Onions belong in just about everything.  They add a little extra something.

But this post is not just about onions. This post is supposed to be about home grown deliciousness that is vegetables.

Because I don't have a garden at home, (my peppers grow in some whiskey barrels I have in my side yard) I like going to the farmer's market.  I like knowing that what I'm buying there was picked that morning, or sometimes that afternoon.  I like knowing that these people didn't drive for hours or ship their produce across state lines in order to give it to me.  I like knowing that I'm helping out local farmers and neighbors by buying this produce.

I will concede that living in California gives me a distinct advantage in that area.  The county I live in is smack in the middle of the salad bowl of America.  45 min south is one of the main growing areas of California strawberries and an hour north is a city called Gilroy where most of the garlic sold in the United States is grown.  You can get kale, squash, oranges, peaches, apples, grapes, tomatoes, carrots, any kind of lettuce, delicious white corn, and many more other vegetables in a 50 mile radius of where I live.  So, yeah, I know I'm really lucky.

Not only do we have great vegetables, but we have tons of beef.  Most every day I drive past cows grazing on the hills.  There are at least 3 local butchers, not to mention the meat program they have at Cal Poly.  It's easy to get grass fed, locally raised beef here.  I'd buy it a lot more often if it wasn't so expensive.

Not only does buying local help support your neighbors, but it also cuts down on your carbon footprint, if you're concerned with that.  It also helps to keep food prices down and gives people fresher food.  When strawberries are $0.97/lb here they are $3.99 in Georgia.  Granted, they don't grow strawberries in Georgia, but I saw the ones that were shipped all the way out there, and I'm certain they were not worth $3.99/lb.

So next time you go shopping, check out where your food was grown.  If you get a chance, find a local market or farmer's market and ask them how far they came.  I bet your food will taste better if it was grown somewhere near your home.  And if you're feeling really daring, go plant some green pepper plants!

My next challenge, Tomatoes!

My favorite thing about the Central Coast or Tri-tip: Why it's so fanatastically delicious

From Wikipedia: "The tri-tip is a cut of beef from the bottom sirloin primal cut".

Before I arrived on the Central Coast, I had never heard of "tri-tip".  To be honest though, before I moved out of my mom's house, I wasn't all that familiar with cuts of meat besides what they served at Longhorn's.  And even then I rarely got past the Prime Rib.

But all that's behind me.  I have finally become a real Central Coaster (at least by my standards) because I can cook a tri-tip.

Our friend Michael was the one that cooked the first tri-tip for me besides what I've had at a restaurant. I remember thinking that if I could make one as good as he did, I would really feel like I belong.  Tri-tip, when done right, is tender, flavorful and just downright delicious.  It is the key ingredient to Santa Maria Style Barbecue, where they slow cook it just like in the south.  If you're from the south, have been to the south, or have heard of barbecue, you know that it's not the same as grilling.  Grilling is throwing some stuff on a grill to get those nice char marks.  Grilling can be anything from chicken to steak, vegetables, sweet potato, or even corn  (leave it in the husk and grill it, it is fantastic!).

Barbecue on the other hand is a learned skill.  It involves just the right cut of meat, rubs, sauces, mop sauces and sloooooow cooking.  I personally have never barbecued, but I'll get around to it eventually.

Trimmed Tri-tip

So back to the tri-tip.  When you buy a tri-tip you can get it trimmed or untrimmed.  Getting it trimmed is nice, but more expensive and its not all that hard to trim it yourself.  Trimming it involves cutting the layer of fat off of one side of the meat.  When you trim it yourself you can decide how much of that fat you want.  If you don't care you can leave it all on there and let the fat get nice and crispy and let it drip into your meat to keep it moist and tender.  However, it can lead to flare-ups on your grill so keep an eye on it.  I typically trim off as much of the fat as I can see.

The next step is to marinate it.  You can just put a rub on it if you want, but I like when it soaks up all the flavors after a nice soak in a juicy bath.

I've got a couple different recipes for you to try out.

Spicy Tri-tip Marinade:

3 Tbsp chili powder
2 Tbsp unpacked brown sugar
2 Tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

I typically make this recipe for a 2-3lb tri-tip.  If you've got a bigger piece of meat, then you'll obviously need to make more.  Let it marinate at least overnight, but the longer you let it sit, the more flavor you'll get.  The marinade makes a nice sauce to baste your tri-tip in while its on the grill, just be careful about letting that sugar burn.

Pappy's collection of seasonings.

Sweet Tri-tip Marinade
Pappy's Choice Seasoning
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
juice from 2 limes

Cover that tri-tip in the Pappy's.  I mean cover it from end to end, on the sides, the top, the bottom, everywhere.  Make sure it is smothered in it.  Then put it in your marinating vessel (I use a ziploc bag).  Add the sauces and the lime.  I left this out for 1 hour at room temperature and it was just as tender and delicious as can be.  Using this recipe made the best tri-tip I have ever tasted.

If you're not in the mood to cook tri-tip, or just passing through, I recommend Firestone Grill in San Luis Obispo or Main Street Grill in Cambria.  I believe they are where I had my first tri-tip sandwiches on the Central Coast.  They give you a whole bunch of meat on a roll.  No fancy sauces, no vegetables, nothing to tarnish the delicousness that is tri-tip.  Most restaurants on the central coast have some kind of tri-tip on the menu.  Even SLO Pasty company has a tri-tip pasty!  Bet you won't find that in Wales.

My mom and sister said they can now find tri-tip cuts in their local grocery store in GA, so if you can't find it there, ask your butcher and I bet he can cut one. Then marinate it, grill it, and savor it.  It will be almost as good as vacationing here on the Central Coast!

It's All About the Thin Skin

When we first moved to Georgia, I remember my mom's hunt for a good chinese restaurant.  Coming from the bay area where there is a prevalence of good asian food, I think she thought it might be difficult.  However, just down the road, we found a place called Mandarin Garden.  One of the things that made this our chinese restaurant of choice was the fact that their fried potstickers were made with a nice thin dough that didn't overwhelm the delicious pork stuffing.  Many a Friday night we ordered General  Tso's Chicken (which turns out isn't even chinese but was actually invented in San Francisco), pot stickers and Mu Shu Pork (or sometimes Sweet and Sour Pork... yum yum).
Sadly, Mandarin Garden eventually went out of business when the shopping center it was in  was basically deserted by the anchor store (that was a grocery store) and slowly all the rest of the small businesses left.  We never did find another chinese place that had potstickers as good as Mandarin Garden.  So many of the new places had such thick dough on their potstickers (I keep mentioning these, but seriously, who likes doughy potstickers?) and just wasn't quite as good.
So the point of this story (and there is one, I promise) is that when I moved back out here to the west coast, chinese food was one of the things I was really looking forward to.  Chinese, Sushi, and sourdough bread from San Francisco (I'm heading there next weekend and look for an entire post on the perfection that is a clam chowder sourdough bread bowl).
Sadly, there are 3 chinese restaurants I can think of off the top of my head.  I've been to two of them and the third one has the kind of reputation that makes me want to have the paramedics on speed dial.  The one in Atascadero is a chinese buffet.  Aaron is pretty sure that when you call them for delivery they just take the food out of the buffet trays and bring you that.  I have not had to break down to call for delivery from them so I don't actually know if that's true.  What I can tell you is, once was enough.
When we really need chinese food in SLO, we head down to Mandarin Gourmet.  It's no Mandarin Garden, but they have a lunch special that can't be beat.  A cup of soup, cup of rice, an entree, a fried wonton, a spring roll and a slice of orange for color all for under ten dollars.  The price varies by dish, but most all of them are under ten.  Also when they bring you the fortune cookies, ask them for an almond cookie.  They come with a slice of almond and some orange sugar on top.  They are surprisingly addictive for a packaged cookie.
I've had the cashew chicken, the General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli, sweet and sour pork (not one I'd highly recommend), and the vegetable chow mein.  Ryan especially enjoys the hot and sour soup especially the tofu pieces.  Surprisingly he really seems to enjoy tofu in general, but that's the subject of another post.
Overall, its not bad and gets high grades for value.  If you're going to go, they really can't be beat for their lunch specials.  They also give a lovely hot pot of tea as soon as you sit down and always include fortune cookies at the end.  We even sometimes get a nice surprise dessert for being regulars.

Mandarin Gourmet
1316 Madonna Road
San Luis Obispo, CA

SloCo Pasty Company

Do you know what a pasty is?  I'm not talking about the stick-on kind you find in places where the girls jiggle.  I'm talking about little pastries that you can find in Cornwall, or here on the Central Coast.

past·y/ˈpastē/

Noun:

A folded pastry case filled with seasoned meat and vegetables.

This does not begin to describe the little pouches of deliciousness that you get at the Pasty Company. Located in downtown San Luis Obispo, the Pasty Company overlooks the historic San Luis Obispo Mission and if you're not looking for it, you might miss it.

Aaron and I go to the San Luis Obispo Farmer's Market just about every Thursday.  Not only does it have  dozens of booths of fresh, local produce, many of the local restaurants come out and set up stalls with their culinary offerings.  I happened to see the Pasty Company and decided to try it out.

I've had a few of their pasties now including the traditional pasty called the Oggy.  With steak, potatoes, rutabaga, onions and a hint of rosemary, it is what you would typically get in a Cornish Pasty in Cornwall.  According to Wikipedia

The traditional Cornish pasty, which has Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in Europe,^[2] is filled with beef, sliced or diced potato, swede (also known as a yellow turnip or rutabaga) and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, and is baked. Today, the pasty is the food most associated with Cornwall regarded as its national dish, and accounts for 6% of the Cornish food economy. Pasties with many different fillings are made; some shops specialise in selling all sorts of pasties.

 The great thing about the SloCo Pasty Company is that they offer pasties with a california twist.  They offer a Tri-tip pasty which is something you would only find here on the Central Coast.  (Tri-tip, by the way, is a whole article unto itself)  The Aporkrodite with porkloin, feta cheese, gorgonzola cheese, cream cheese, bacon and chives is a creamy delicious concoction that really is love at first bite.  Their vegetarian options are also delicious and a nice lower calorie options.  What really makes these pasties delicious, to me, are the sauces they are served with.  Most of them come with either the red wine sauce that is sumptuous and rich or the gorgonzola cream sauce that is creamy and tangy.  Both sauces compliment their respective pasties perfectly.

Even little Ryan likes the pasties.  Their dessert menu features a Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Banana pasty that is just perfect for little fingers, after it cools of course.  The dessert one usually feeds him for two meals and heats up nicely in the toaster oven.  I've stolen a couple bites and the PBJ&B dessert pasty quite delicious.

As if the pasty isn't enough, they serve a fresh broccoli slaw on the side with dried cranberries, sliced almonds, and a light, peanut dressing.  Order a nice Magner's irish cider on the side and it is truly a perfect meal.

SloCo Pasty Company
1032 Chorro Street
San Luis Obispo, CA

The Preponderance and Prevalence of Pizza

OMG, two posts, two days, she's out of control!  Calm down, I just didn't feel like cooking tonight and I spent all day compiling a list of restaurants and eating establishments here in Atascadero with which to entertain you folks.  Apparently there are quite a few pizza places in Atascadero.  And Aaron likes pizza.  So we got pizza. 

Here's the thing about pizza.  It's another simple dish, like beef enchiladas.  Simple, yet easy to mess up.  You need good crust, good sauce, a good cheese, and quality toppings.  If any of those things aren't up to par, your pizza will not be good.  It's like a mathematical equation.

Crust + Sauce + Cheese + Toppings = Yum  Factor

Now, as a form of reference, let's review Woodstock Pizza in SLO.  There will be a more thorough review later, but for now, I say its the premier pizza place on the central coast.  They sauce from edge to edge and fold over their dough so there is warm, tomatoey goodness in every bite.  They use fresh ingredients and plenty of them.  Their crust comes in white and honey wheat and they are both fantastic.  It's seriously good pizza.  It is the pinnacle of pizza-ness and every town should have one. So now that you understand the cream of the crop pizza, let's review tonight's dinner from Bravo Pizza Plus (and dang it, I forgot to ask what the Plus is all about!).

When I opened up the pizza box, my first thought was "mmm... gooey".  The cheese was all melty and the pizza looked full of toppings without having too much of anything and still had the crust visible.  We got a supreme with pepperoni, italian sausage, canadian bacon, green peppers, black olives, mushrooms and chopped garlic (it also comes with onions, but Aaron doesn't like onions).  The great thing about the garlic is it adds to the flavor of the pizza without being overpowering.  Yum Factor +1.

The crust was bubbly, toasty and well cooked on the outside, but not crisp on the bottom (I'm really OK with this.  I don't mind folding my pizza).  And, bonus points to Bravo for cutting the crust completely.  I hate when you go to grab a piece of pizza and pick up half the pie because someone was too lazy to cut it all the way.  It wasn't too bready or too thick.  It was crispy on the ends.  I give the crust an 8/10.  Nothing spectacular, but nothing to sneeze at.

I think the first bite of pizza is very important.  It's the middle of the pie.  It usually has the most cheese, sauce, and toppings.  I have to say this first bite was good.  It was cheesy, it was saucy, and it made me want more.  And I had more.  I had three pieces and I enjoyed every bite.


So of course, you're all waiting for what Aaron said because, if you didn't know, Aaron is an expert on pizza.  If there's one thing Aaron knows, its pizza (and cheeseburgers, but that's a subject for another day).  After asking what he thought, his reply was "pretty good".  This is not to be confused with "pretty tasty" which is slightly higher on the Aaron rating scale.  For pizza in this town, a "pretty good" is a decently high rating.  And I would agree.  It's not the best we've ever had, but could be the best in Atascadero. 

After a few not so good pizzas here (and don't worry, you get to hear about them all!) I'm pretty impressed with Bravo Pizza Plus.  I would definitely order from them again.  They are priced about average for this area and their large pizza is 12 good sized slices (you could feed 4 regular people with a large pizza).


Bravo Pizza Plus (Their official site)
8731 El Camino Real (How you can find them)
Atascadero, CA 93422

One "Fine Mexican Food" Restaurant Down...

Only what, a hundred thousand or so to go?  This is California after all. 

I should first say my favorite Mexican dish is Beef Enchiladas.  I always thought they were a simple dish, easy to make, hard to mess up.  Man, was I wrong.  I have yet to find enchiladas out here as good as La Parrilla's in GA. No, I have no problem dropping names and begging for some kind of endorsement.  Someday people will beg to have me, Tori, do a review of their restaurant.

Anyway, Beef Enchiladas is my default, go-to dish when going to a Mexican Restaurant.  I mean, if they make good enchiladas, then I figure they deserve another chance.  So you will probably hear a lot about beef enchiladas.

These were OK.  The sauce was mediocre with little punch to it. It tasted a little bland and a little off.  I'm not sure how else to describe it, but it wasn't enchilada sauce.  I like a spicy sauce with a deep red color.  I don't need spicy as in its too hot to actually eat, but I like to taste the peppers, the cumin, the chili powder, and let it all mingle on my palate and make that happy little yum noise.  You do it too, don't lie.

They used shredded beef, corn tortillas, and topped it with cheese and sour cream. I could live without the sour cream as well.  The beef wasn't bad, but I had to tear the enchiladas into bite size pieces rather than cut them.

Now lets talk about the beans. Those get an A+.  The rice was good as well, but their refried beans are the only reason I'd go back.  They left in some mostly whole beans to give it some texture and only added a sprinkling of cheese.  And I don't know what gives them that fantastic flavor (I can only imagine it has a lot of calories and probably sizzles), but give me some more.

My fellow diner, and the final word on all things culinary, is Aaron.  Aaron ordered a steak burrito which was as big around as his forearm and stuffed full with rice, those amazing beans, delicious steak, and cheese.  And then smothered in the so-so enchilada sauce.  He ended up mostly skipping the sauce, agreeing it was "meh" (yes, this is an official Aaron rating level) but finished off the steak which he agreed was "pretty tasty" (also an official level).

All in all, the Broad Street Taco Roco gets a B from Tori's Taste Buds.  They do have a few other locations as well.  Remember, we all have opinions and not everything on the internet is true.  If you doubt me, go try it yourself.

Taco Roco (Their official site)
3230 Broad Street (How you can find them)
San Luis Obispo, CA