Eastlake Food Truck Gathering

A few of weeks ago, my husband, boys and I headed out to one of our new favorite things - the Eastlake Food Truck Gathering.
It happened to be the night of the American Idol finale so it was packed with people.

The first time we went, we weren’t prepared, but this time, we brought camping chairs and a little table. The boys were ready to get their grub on. ;)

My husband and I enjoyed good eats from the Tabe BBQ truck.
He had the Tabe Asada Fries with Korean BBQ Beef…

…While I enjoyed Korean BBQ Beef Tacos. Both of these dishes were super yummy, but what really made them was a sauce that they have available. I don’t even know how to describe it other than it was slap-my-butt-no-way good!

My older son’s favorite food truck is Devilicious. They were on the Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network.
He put his two favorite things together – hot dogs and bacon. Before I even sat down to eat, he finished it up!!!

My little dude isn’t quite into food appreciation yet so he went with his good ol’ standby of chicken strips and french fries. No picture needed. ;)
We finished off our meal with a stop at Sweet Treats.

We shared a Peanut Butter brownie that was delicious. It was too rich for me, but my older son finished it off like it was nothing! :)

I hate to say it, but the Red Velvet was nothing to write home about. It was a bit dry and lacked flavor. And I love me a good red velvet so I was a bit disappointed.




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No Bake Peanut Butter Bars (Your taste buds will love this, but your diet won’t)

Let me start by saying that if I could marry peanut butter…I would.

I found this recipe on the Six Sister's’ Stuff blog awhile back. My son likes peanut butter just as much as I do so we decided to try this easy recipe out (with a few alterations of our own).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 2 cups cinnamon graham crackers crumbs
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 cup and 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips

Using a meat mallet, we took out all our aggressions on these defenseless graham crackers until they were granules. We left a few just a little chunky for that extra crunch.

(We used 18 graham cracker rectangles to get just a little over 2 cups of crumbs.)

With the butter already melted in the mixing bowl, we threw in the graham crackers, powdered sugar and 1 cup of peanut butter then mixed it together.

Spread the mixture into a 9x13 pan. If you want a thicker bar, you can use a 9x9 square pan instead.

Melt the milk chocolate chips with the 1/2 cup peanut butter in the microwave. Stir every 30 seconds until the mixture is smooth.

Spread the chocolate/peanut butter mixture evenly over the peanut butter layer then refrigerate.

Now comes the hard part…

…Wait…

Wait at least an hour for the layers to solidify…

Then ENJOY!

Everyone I have introduced this peanut butter bar to has fallen in love with it.  :)

If you try this recipe out, leave a comment and let me know what you think. :)

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Pinspired–Peep Smores

I don’t care much for Peeps, but when I saw a Pin on Pinterest using them in Smores, I couldn’t wait for the After-Easter sales so I could buy these babies on clearance!

My older son’s favorite color is green, so I opted for some green Peeps (does anyone else want to raise their arms up to their sides and yell “MY PEEPS” when you say Peeps? No? Well, um, I don’t either).

We don’t have a fire pit out back (yet) so we made them the good ‘ol fashioned way…in a microwave. :)

We layered the ingredients up….

Then cooked them for about 15 seconds.

The result was an ooey, goooey, green, deliciously marshmallowy smore.

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Cheesecake and Chocolate Strawberries

I have been craving the cheesecake truffle strawberries from Truffle Berries in Fairfield. If you are local to Fairfield and have never been there, then GO!!!! You will not regret it. She has a huge array of sweet treats.

My weakness at Truffle Berries was her strawberries dipped in cheesecake then in chocolate. It was heaven in the form of bad-for-you-fruit!

For some reason, those babies have been on my mind so I decided to whip some up (especially since the 99 cent strawberries at Ralph’s were too good of a deal to pass up).

I was a tad bit too lazy to make cheesecake so instead, I went instant…like J-E-L-L-O instant. Fortunately, they had a Cheesecake flavor instead pudding.

Once the pudding set, I dipped the strawberries into the cheesecake pudding then refrigerated them for about an hour.

The instant pudding didn’t quite harden the way I had hoped it would so my attempts at being lazy didn’t work in my favor this time. For my next attempt, I will be sure to make some cheesecake from scratch so I can get it the right consistency of thickness.

While the strawberries sat in the fridge, I used my handy dandy Wilton Melting Pot to melt milk chocolate wafers. If you like to use melted chocolates frequently, then I highly suggest buying this little pot. It melts the chocolate down smoothly and keeps it at a low heat to prevent the chocolate from re-solidifying.

When dipping the strawberries, do not make the mistake (like I did) of swirling them in the chocolate. If you do, you will get this cheesecake/chocolate mess.

Instead of swirling, dip each side of the strawberry into the chocolate. They will look MUCH prettier.

You can tell which ones were swirled and which were dipped.  

My taste testers approved of them so I look forward to trying it again with thicker cheesecake.

Let me know if you try this recipe out!

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The Dog Run–Good Eats in Chula Vista

My husband, boys and I are always willing to try new food places and had to try The Dog Run after passing it quite a few times and also after reading its great reviews on Yelp.

Since quite a number of the reviews were on the TJ Dog, I decided to try that one first. My husband and I also decided to share a plate of their delicious Bacon Ranch Nacho Cheese Fries (can you feel the pounds just transferring to you by osmosis as you read that name???).

The TJ dog consisted of a bacon wrapped hot dog, grilled onions and green peppers, tomatoes, mayo, mustard and a hot sauce.  With its conglomeration of toppings, I wasn’t quite sure how it would taste, but figured that it was worth a taste.

Two words – YUMMY and FLAVORFUL!

Combined together the toppings work deliciously together. Again, YUMMY! I’m not a big fan of green peppers, but on this dog, I’ll eat ‘em!

The staff is customer service oriented and very nice. They periodically check in with you to see how you are doing and ask if your meal meats your expectations.

We will definitely be back for more!

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Easy Peasy–Growing Your own Green Onions

I don’t remember if I saw this on Pinterest or elsewhere, but by golly is it genius!!!

One of my goals this year is to cut back on grocery spending (so we can spend it elsewhere, like a new pair of shoes for mommy…er, well, like for family adventures and such heehee). I saw this tip and decided to try it.

Instead of throwing away the stems of the green onion, put them in a container and cover the white bulb part with water.

I forgot to take a “before” picture, but this is what they looked like after only a day of sitting in water. You can already see the growth.

This is the growth on the third day (the stalks in the back). I had added a new batch of green onions the prior day so those are the ones with new growth in front.

This is the growth after only 5 days. Crazy cool, huh?

Now, instead of going to the grocery store for green onions, I have them growing in my kitchen.

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There’s a new bakery in town!

This weekend, I was on a manhunt for cupcakes!

To my dismay, there were not any cupcake shops in Chula Vista (at least that I could find on Google or Yelp!).

THEN on Monday, I found out that a bakery had JUST opened on Saturday. Sweet Sisters Bakery is located in downtown Chula Vista on 3rd Ave.

It is a cute little shop with a large assortment of baked goodness.

Luckily for me, they happened to have cupcakes. Unlucky for me, they only had vanilla and chocolate left. They had completely sold out of the red velvet cupcakes. I’m not a huge fan of either vanilla or chocolate cupcakes, but I did purchase some for my husband and son.

Instead, I decided on a carrot cake muffin for myself. It was as delicious as it was pretty!

The muffin was very, very moist and had shreds of carrot in it. The frosting was soft and was not overpowering with sweetness like many carrot cakes that I have had before.

I HIGHLY SUGGEST this muffin if you stop by Sweet Sisters Bakery.

My husband and son enjoyed the cupcakes so much that they sent me back yesterday for more!

Apparently, you have to get their early to get your pick of the batch because these delicious goodies are gone quick

When I arrived yesterday, they had ONE cupcake left – a vanilla cupcake (just what my husband had requested).

The gentleman at the counter just happened to ask the ladies in back if they were making more red velvet cupcakes and to my surprise they said that they would be done in 5 minutes! WOOT WOOT!

I impatiently waited the 5 minutes and was soon off to go home and enjoy my red velvet cupcake (don’t worry, I ordered 4 so I could share them with the family).

This picture doesn’t do the cupcake justice because frankly, I just wanted to take a bite and didn’t much care for the formalities of taking a nice picture.

The cupcake, like the carrot cake muffin, did not disappoint and was super moist.

I will definitely be back to Sweet Sisters Bakery and look forward to trying their other bake goods as well as sandwiches, crepes and coffees. I think I found my new hot spot in Chula Vista to hang out. Oh and did I mention yet that they have free wi-fi?

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