Almost There...

Tomorrow the movers will be here bright and early to help us load up all this crap into a big truck and lug it to Los Angeles. Whoo!!

LA will be exciting, in large part because there will be lots to see and do (more than here in Riverside, anyway), much of which will include food (were you expecting anything else from me?).

In between unpacking all our stuff and beginning the job-hunting process (oh god...), I intend to check out what the neighborhood has to offer. Some places I'm interested in visiting:

The Whole Foods on Santa Monica Boulevard (I know, they're an evil corporation that is way waaaay overpriced, but at least they're an organic corporation that is way overpriced!)

The Hollywood Farmers Market (I live in Hollywood, woo!)

The Farfaix Farmers Market (more like a giant grocery store/restaurant complex really, along the lines of the Ferry Building in San Francisco I think)

The Santa Monica Farmers Market (sensing a them here?)

Plus restaurants of course: there's a self-serve frozen yogurt place within a couple of blocks, Todd has already located a cupcake bakery nearby, and we've already eaten well at a Thai restaurant just minutes away. All those things shall be blogged, and more!

And if Todd has anything to say about it, there will be Mexican food. That's one cuisine I'm not so into, honestly, but I think that has less to do with the way it tastes and more to do with my lack of exposure to good Mexican food before coming to So Cal (there may be some good places in NYC; on Long Island it's pretty much Taco Bell or nothin' as far as Southwestern/South of the Border food goes).

On the West Coast, though, they do Mexican right, and our final meal out in as Riverside residents was at El Sarape, a little dive of place downtown.

Todd's deep-fried burrito of death, aka "chimichanga." You should have seen the waitress's face when he said he wanted only cheese, beans and rice inside, no meat.

My much healthier shrimp, octopus and abalone cocktail (just kidding - I ate a bunch of Todd's lunch too). Mexican seafood cocktails are completely different from what us gringos think of when we hear "shrimp cocktail," ie cold shrimp with spicy ketchup-based sauce. This was cold, but the seafood is suspended in tomato juice with bits of avocado, tomato and onion (and always served with saltines, for some reason. I didn't eat them.) They did actually give us a bottle of ketchup with our meal, but we couldn't figure out if it was for me or Todd or both of us (don't know how you would put ketchup on mine, so probably meant for Todd), so we didn't use it. Everything was yummy though, and like all good Mexican places they give you a basket of freshly fried chips and salsa right away. In this case there were two salsas, one red, one green (tomatillo). Both good and spicy, but a bit too thin for my taste (as salsa in these places tends to be; I think it's a style). Gimme chunky salsa I can scoop, not this runny stuff that drips on the table on its way from the bowl to my mouth. Ok, end rant. 

A good, very filling lunch, with hopefully more to come starting tomorrow when we become official Hollywood residents. Stay tuned!