Decisions, Decisions

So. We've been a bit slack in our cooking regimen, although Marina and I did combine to put together lunches on back to back days for 8-9 people, at the great meeting of the clans up north in Sonoma, or, to put it another way, when our families met each other for the first time. Lots of watermelon, a Greek pasta salad with lots of feta and kalamata olives--do look for presliced olives, because manually slicing them and pitting them is a pain--turkey burgers, salmon burgers, even chips and salsa. Very professional. Except that we didn't get paid. That's the real trick.

My point is, we need to get back into our cooking routine, and I want to plan something great for tomorrow night. I'm perusing a recent issue of Cooking Light, which seems to be focusing on summery foods. The problem is, this is San Francisco, and summery still means fog, fog, wind, and more fog. Plus, I don't have a grill. This is a conundrum.

I have a couple ideas:

1) Bell Pepper, Tomato, Cucumber And Grilled Bread Salad.

This one has promise, except that it sounds a bit cool, even if you grill chicken to add on top of it. Cold salad is not going to be ideal if we have another one of those Mission evenings with a violet fog creeping over Twin Peaks as the street lights come on. We like our meals hot on nights like that.

I noticed the recipe calls for coarsely chopped tomatoes, which sounded entertaining, until I realized that it wasn't implying you should swear like a drunken sailor at the tomato while you chopped it.

The other problem, of course, is I don't have a grill. How do you replicate grilling on a stove top? This recipe calls for both grilling bread--which could maybe be toasted instead--and grilling chicken. Would frying the chicken be as good?

2) Walnut and Rosemary Oven-Fried Chicken, with Toasted Garlic Escarole. This looks like a winner, especially after I looked twice and saw that it called for escarole, not escargot--which, as everyone knows, is French for "Um, no thank you." I still have to look up escarole, but hey, it's already better than feared.

The research continues tonight, with cooking, photographs, and blogging to follow tomorrow!

Santa Cruz Food Crawl

Let's assume that the safest method of defining a place you have visited is your own experience. That way you don't have to factor in what other people like, because that's just a waste of time, unless they like the same things you do.

When it comes to food, I know what I like, so writing about the dining experiences we had in Santa Cruz seems like a good method for recording of our recent trip. I already wrote about seeing otters and a dolphin, so now it is time for the gastronomic highlights, which were plenty.

Our first night, we went to Seabright Avenue, which is clearly a haven of local dining: pizza, Italian, a breakfast-and-lunch diner, a taqueria, a bar, a coffee shop and a brewery all within a block of quiet residential neighborhoods. We went to Engfer Pizza Works, which was quite popular. Wood-fired pizzas baked in a tall brick oven, the embers and coals flaring a brilliant red that made your mouth water. The tables are snagged quickly, so you need to be quick. We bought two pints and waited at the bar until someone vacated a table, and I swooped like a vulture to stake it out.

The two personal-sized pizzas were excellent, and the atmosphere was convivial. There was a ping-pong table, a refrigerator of ice cream treats that you selected yourself and paid for on the way out, and the inimitable sense that this was a place for locals, not tourists.

The local vibe continued the next morning, when we went to Linda's Seabreeze Cafe for breakfast, right across the street from Engfer. The diners were of all ages, genders, locals versus vacationers, etc. There was a short wait, but a coffee cart was provided around the side of the building, where you could pour your own coffee in a mug to drink while you waited.

The cinnamon rolls were indescribably good. Therefore, I won't try to describe them. But I really, really liked them. And the orange walnut pancakes had a moist, zesty test that made me happy. Orange juice, coffee, and a side of scrambled eggs made for the perfect vacation breakfast. You really have to stretch to ruin that sort of breakfast. Linda's Seabreeze Cafe did not stretch to do so. They were friendly, courteous, and warm, the perfect breakfast spot.

That evening, we found ourselves on the main drag of Santa Cruz' downtown, looking for dinner. We wandered upstairs to Rosie McCann's Irish Pub, because fish and chips and beer were calling me with their irresistible siren's call. The dining room was airy with a high roof, the evening sunlight dappling the walls and reflecting off the red paint. The wooden floor and tables felt very publike, which is, of course, as it should be, and if you don't know what I'm trying to evoke when I describe it as publike, then you haven't been to enough pubs. There were sepia-photographs on the walls that seemed to give the impression that the place had been around for decades, but it had actually been opened in 1995, which made me wonder if it could be actually genuine. The Irish Pub culture just seems so un-1995.

Our last day in Santa Cruz, Sunday morning, we drove south to Capitola to take brunch at Zelda's. We were lucky to avoid a long Father's Day Brunch wait, and got a table on the deck, overlooking a long, sandy beach leading down to Monterey Bay, the sun sparkling on the blue, calm water, seaweed a golden brown. I had a waffle with fresh strawberries, maple syrup and whipped cream, along with orange juice and coffee. To cap it off, we bought a paper and sat on a bench overlooking the water. It was very soothing.

All in all, the beauty of the weekend could be found on the plate as much as anywhere. Santa Cruz is full of these delights. If you have been there, at what other places do you like to eat?