Jake and I have driven by Star Dust Donuts probably 3 or 4 times now and every time it was closed.

They have crazy inconsistent hours:

But one magical day in early December, Star Dust was open!
Jake, the kids and I were heading down to Imperial Beach to collect sea shells for a present Jake was making for his mom for Christmas. Since we were going right by, Jake suggested we check and see if Star Dust was open and when I …

Hao Vi is this little restaurant is smack in the middle of City Heights. Jake and I used to pass it all of the time on the way to his old apartment in the ‘hood and for some reason, I always wanted to go here. It didn’t look like much, just this tiny little place on the corner, but I wanted to go exploring. The day we were going to actually go we couldn’t, since Jake didn’t have any cash …

Busalacchi’s is a pretty well known name around here in San Diego and recently I had the opportunity to visit Busalacchi’s A Modo Mio in Hillcrest for “a modo mio” week – or “my way” – where the chef calls the shots for dinner service. Guests get to choose what kind of entree they want (chicken, red meat, fish or vegetarian) and chef Joe Busalacchi takes care of the rest. It’s a fun and adventurous way to dine and you …

Hope you and yours have a completely wonderfully awesome Christmas!

I kind of slacked on doing photos for everything this season. But here’s a little Holiday Baking recap!

It isn’t the holidays without just a few sticks of butter, right?

I wasn’t going to make these Lemon Ricotta cookies this year but after a few hints from people I figured I had to bring this one back again.

Laura came by to help me with my baking, too! I made a thick lemon icing for the cookies and Laura helped out by icing …

Tomorrow Jake and I will be embarking on a fun quest: to eat our favorite restaurant foods in one day, before the end of the world.
Okay, I must confess I don’t really believe the world will actually end, but I figured better safe than sorry. I actually got the idea from some PR releases I received about special “end of the world” dinners and it brought to mind some thoughts like, “What would I really want my last meal to …

I’ve made saltine candy (also known as “caramel chocolate crackers“) for Christmas for a few years now. Last year, Stacey joined me and we experimented with flavors – actually, just one flavor – and bacon saltine candy was born.
This year I wanted to “step it up” and Stacey and I created eight (!!) different batches of saltine candy – experimenting with flavors, spices and other additions to the caramel – such as evaporated milk, cinnamon, chai, and whiskey.
Here are a …

We went here because A) the place I originally wanted to go to was cash only and for the life of me, I could not remember my pin number that weekend and B) it had a fairly high rating of over 300+ reviews on Yelp. I’ve learn to take Yelp reviews with a grain of salt though, since people tend to rate with no rhyme or reason (“the parking sucks, 1 star” or “it looks dirty, I walked out and …