As I noted in my last post, we’re down in Escondido on vacation. Today was a day of historic highways, exploration, and exotic foods, all driven by a need to drive into San Diego proper to visit our niece. We had a delightful visit (albeit short — she’s a very busy young lady), and enjoyed talking to her and catching up on what is going on. But on to the stuff you probably care about.
Historic Roads. As we’re in Escondido, and we were visiting San Diego (in particular, the Hillcrest area), this gave us the opportunity to drive on a number of incarnations of US 395 and US 80 — in particular, sections in Escondido (City Center, Escondido Blvd, Grand) and in San Diego (CA 15, CA 163, El Cajon Blvd, Washington). We also got to visit a number of hipster districts, explore some thrift shops and some used record shops. In my opinion, the used record shops up on Adams — one with a large collection of folk, blues, and bluegrass music, the other with an astounding collection of original cast albums — had great selections but were overpriced for many of their LPs, starting on the order of $7-$9. If the record is rare the price might be OK, but when I can find the music on CD for the same (if not better) price, I’m not going the LP route (especially when it is over 90°F outside). I did pick up some records — four for $1 each at an Assistance League Thrift Shop. The thrift stores were much better (Erin, if you read this, we have a lovely Calphalon pan we got for $4.5 and a nice knife for you).
Exotic Cuisine. While driving along El Cajon Blvd, we saw an interesting restaurant: “Flavors of East Africa“. Located at El Cajon and Texas, they have wonderful Kenyan cuisine. We had keema beef, tilapia, collards and cabbage, a wonderful stew of hominy, kidney beans, potatoes and carrots cooked in olive oil with garlic, tomatoes and onions, mashed plaintains, and rice. Driving home, the spices from the keema beef hit back a little, and so we found another wonderful place: “Tropicana Delite“. This is a Mexican paleteria y neveria, family owned, with hand-made ice cream and popsicles. They had flavors there I have never seen before in ice creme: queso rompope, mango/chile, elote, guayaba, nuez… on top of traditional flavors. Plus, they were making something I’ve never seen before: “Tostilocos”, which is a Tijuana street food. Here’s a description:
You begin by opening a bag of Tostitos, usually the salsa verde-flavored kind, and you layer on ingredients. If you can imagine an assembler of this dish in Tijuana, Mexico, ripping open the bag of Tostitos and then taking the ingredients from three shelves in a bodega and dumping all of those in. Those ingredients include: shaved jicama; pickled pigskins; stumpy, little, sweet, sour tamarind candy; sweet coated peanuts; and chopped cucumbers. Then they pull out two liquids: fresh-squeezed key limes and chamoy — that magenta-colored, vinegary, puckery, pickled fruit in brine. It’s sauce that you see often when someone is buying chips in a store — even when they are not buying Tostilocos. You’re handed a bottle of chamoy with which you garnish chips.
All that goes in the bag. The bag kind of bulges under that payload. Often the bag, when filled with all those ingredients, the sides slip and you just start dripping this Rorschach pattern on the pavement as you eat and walk.
So, as I said, a day of historic roads and exotic foods.
