Tapas in Puerto Vallarta

 

Should have posted this one earlier, but just getting around to it now. We went to Puerto Vallarta to eat, mostly. We ate at taco trucks, traditional Mexican restaurants, and to mix things up, a vegetarian restaurant with this totally crazy (delicious) cactus juice. We also walked just up the street from our B&B to go to this off-the-beaten path tiny tapas joint for a light meal one evening.

Best Tacos We Had in Puerto Vallarta

 

Little stand, lotta locals. We followed the scent for the last block, then ordered at the little window and grabbed two stools. The women behind the counter outfitted us with our tacos and three options of salsa (hot, hotter, and you-cannot-withstand-the-heat). The tacos were small but packed with flavor. And the flavor didn't depend just on the filling; the freshly made tortillas tasted of comfort and corn, and were so warm I needed the little piece of wax paper to pilot the taco. Both chicken and beef were slightly spicy and had the wonderful flavors of fire.

Boo

Hershey is going to close down Scharffen Berger. But will keep the name. Now I regret always putting off taking the factory tour.

Scharffen Berger, you are dead to me. Charles Chocolates, hello!

Lunar New Year Gelato Flavors at Naia

Gelateria Naia, the narrow little gelato spot in downtown Berkeley (there's also a location on the UC Berkeley campus and ... wow, I just looked and there are a bunch of locations all over the Bay Area now) has some yummy sounding flavors in honor of the Lunar New Year. They are:

- Five spice gelato. The five spices being anise, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, and ginger.

- Pomelo sorbetto. Pomelos are, according to the announcement email, a traditional and auspicious citrus fruit for the Lunar New Year.

Paris Chocolate tour

A NYT article about chocolate shops in Paris...

Thanksgiving Table

By the time the food was ready I had lost track of the camera, but here's a pic of the set table. The table is so abnormally wide that we managed to get almost all the food (turkey, mashed potatoes, two cranberry sauces, two vegetable dishes, biscuits, bread, two types of gravy, two types of stuffing) on the table.

Alexis' Turkey Cupcakes

Alexis decided she was going to make turkey-shaped (but thankfully, just vanilla- and chocolate-flavored) cupcakes for the six kids we had over on Thanksgiving. Her creative process was complex, and ended up involving toothpicks and cut up bits of those weird candy peanut foamy candies (she cut them up to make the snood-and no, I did not know the flap over the beak was called a snood until I just looked it up).

They got six thumbs up from the five-feet-and-under crowd. Alexis was triumphant.