koko's corner

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to meet Tim Petersen in our local Albertson's market in front of the display of San Diego County wines. He was with another gentleman and one thing that struck me about him, was that as they were talking, Tim was straightening the bottles of wine on the shelves. I thought what a nice person, and he truly is, both he and his wife.

We struck up a conversation about the San Diego County wines and when he told me about his winery, I weaseled an invitation out of him for me and Stan to visit his winery, Rock Canyon vineyards.

Oh, I couldn't wait to see the rows of grapevines and the wine cellar.

Come visit Rock Canyon Vineyards with me, you are in for a treat.

This morning I made some beautiful pancakes. I usually make them from scratch but this morning I used an add water mix, yes I did, Fiber One to be exact. They are pretty good if you don't overcook them.

Anyway, while I was cooking these beautiful stacks of pancakes,

I was also tearing apart the refrigerator and cupboards looking for some maple syrup, none was to be found.

The saga continues...

After eating hospital food for three days, Stan was listing off his cravings; tamales, hamburgers, Italian food, orange chicken, or just about anything that didn't come on a tray. 

We had to go to Alpine Monday so we stopped by Panda Machi in Alpine, one of our favorite quick and inexpensive eateries. We've been going to Panda Machi for years. It has come into new ownership this last year and it is just great, much, much, better. 

One new thing on the menu is the lunch combination plate. Your choice of at least 10 entrees that come with soup and salad, all in the six and seven dollar price range. Each plate also has a potsticker and a cream cheese wonton. 

Let's start with the soup. 

The first word that comes to mind is creamy. It's a rich broth with swirls of egg among pieces of corn, peas and finely diced carrots topped with chopped green onion. Deeeelicious, I ate mine and Stan's. 

Want to see what else we had? 

Friday Stan went in for an Angiogram and came out with an Angioplasty. 

During his annual physical, some routine tests showed Stan has some minor heart damage indicating he may have sometime in the past had a heart attack, and not even know it. He was faced with the decision to have an angiogram, to go in and see if there is any blockage and if so to what extent, or, not have the procedure at all. Well, waiting to see if you might or might not have another heart attack is not much of an option that we can see. 

Going in for the angiogram we knew there was the possibility that he might need a stent. As luck would have it he did have to have one, thank God just one. The blockage was minor and the procedure went smoothly. 

He was to come home yesterday, well; after waiting for a long eleven hours, sitting on a hard straight back chair, afraid to even go get a cup of coffee for fear I'd miss the Dr. (that didn't come until 7:00 P.M.)<wahh, wahhh poor me> I went home without him because his temperature was up and his blood pressure was down. 

The Dr.kept him overnight again and ordered more tests. So far the tests show no infection, so we are just waiting for the results of the chest X-Ray and a visit from the Dr., hopefully sometime before the sun comes back up. :-)

The face of a man that found out he gets to go home from the hospital today. 

Yes, that's as big as his smile gets, for him, that's a huge one. ;-) you should see mine. 

And that's that 

It's just been too hot to cook so last night I had a delicious cold plate for dinner. 

A beautifully boiled egg lightly salted with some freshly ground black pepper. Slices of Manchego cheese, cherry tomatoes, Landjager sausage, that I bought from the Schreiner's sausage guy at the Irvine farmer's market, which is absolutely delicious. Feta cheese, jalapeño stuffed olives and Prosciutto. 

Some toasted and lightly buttered sourdough bread helped get the wonderful meal to my mouth. Yummie

And that's that

How could I possibly have forgotten this when I posted Foodie Weekend, Foodie Finds. It's one of the greatest inventions since sliced bread. 

Ta daaaaa!!!!

A veggie scrub, how cool is this. 

Just load that baby with your veggies and

scrub under running water. It's a really quick way to get the veggies scrubbed and rinsed. 

And that's that

Before I show my great foodie finds from the Foodie Weekend, I have to apologize to Squeaks for being remiss in getting a picture of her sausage biscuits, I could have sworn I did, but I didn't. I will be making them soon but for now, the recipe will be added at the end of this post. 

I'm going to share some of the foodie things I bought over the Foodie Weekend. 

Dang, look at these, all you do is soak the cedar sheets and the string in water, then roll and tie up the food in the wrap and bake in the oven or place on the grill. 

How great is that!

Come see what else I got. 

We bought some wonderful fresh veggies at the farmer's market in the morning. 

On our way back from the farmer's market we stopped by Su la table but I'll post about that later. It was a quick stop anyway as we had a "very pricey" piece of salmon in the car. 

Come see what we did with our haul from the farmer's market. 

Our gracious hostess for the foodie weekend got up very early on Saturday and made us biscuits from scratch. Not only did we get home made from scratch biscuits, 

but we got to have them with Barb Schaller's Berry Very Berry Jam. 

Barb, for those of you who don't know, is not only a wonderful giving woman, she's also the jam queen of the Minnesota State Fair. She sent some jam to Squeaks for us to enjoy over the weekend. 

Last weekend was one of my greatest weekends ever. I was able to spend the weekend visiting with some special foodie friends, Terry "Squeaks" and her husband Bill. They were kind enough to open their home to me and another foodie Christine to come visit and cook. 

That's me hiding behind Squeaks. 

We arrived Friday afternoon and started cooking right away, wanna see what we made Fri night?