recent adventures :)

Ah, it's been a while!! The week after summer school ended, I was having a major cupcake craving!! So boyfriend and I went to Kara's Cupcakes in Santana Row.  Surprisingly, they don't make red velvet cupcakes?? WHAT?? What kind of cupcake bakery does not make red velvet?? X_X 

Actually, when I was there, they only had like four or five flavors to choose from :(  Now that I'm looking at the website, they actually have lots of flavors that sound promising, but none for me that day :( But of all the flavors they had, strawberry looked the most enticing. 

vanilla cupcake with organic local strawberries and cream

I was expecting the strawberry cupcake to be pink!! Like most strawberry cupcakes, but this one was just strawberry filled.  Still pretty yummy I think!!  Despite the lack of cupcakes to choose from, my cupcake craving was SATISFIED :D

Meyer Lemony Lemon, Strawberry Cream, Vanilla Chocolate, and Kara's  Karrot

I also bought a box of 4 cupcakes as a present for my sister's birthday.  Unfortunately, they melted a little bit by the time I came home and gave them to her. O well!! They were still pretty tasty.  I picked the all the cutest cupcakes they had, all the ones with flowers on top :) It also gave me a chance to try the other flavors.  The lemon one was very very lemony, true to its name!! The chocolate frosting on the vanilla chocolate was SUPER chocolaty, like tooooo chocolaty!!  It was like eating very dense chocolate pudding X_X My sister liked the carrot one the best, it just tastes like carrot cake to me.

Overall, I'm not a big fan of Kara's Cupcakes.  I'd rather eat other cupcakes.  But this will have to do for now :P

MoGo

Besides cupcakes, I have also been craving Korean food.  Just my luck, the MoGo truck was in town.  Actually, it's always in town near my house every week lol!  Well, I was super excited, because I have always wanted to try the interesting food truck fusion cuisine.  The truck opens at 7:45, and we came at 7:30, and the line was just SUPER LONG X_X We ended up waiting maybe about nan hour before we finally made it to the front and ordered, and then we had to wait about half an hour to get our food.  Then we just sat down in the parkinglot and ate!!

short rib burrito with melted cheese, lettuce/cabbage slaw, kimchi fried rice, and a spicy chiplote sauce

I only took a bite of the burrito, but it was surprisingly good!! I didn't want to eat anymore of it because I had other things to eat, and I can't handle spicy food.  I didn't bite into any of the rice, so I just basically ate meat and lettuce.  Pretty good!

short rib sliders with spam, cheese, and slaw

Please excuse the neon lettuce, lol.  We were sitting underneath yellow parking lot lights, and I tried to tweak the yellowness out of my picture, and I ended up with neon purple slaw LOL.  Anyway, the sliders were pretty good!!   I kind of expected it to come out as like little burgers, not meat and stuffed just poured over three attached buns lol.  The spam was a surprise, but I think it adds to the flavor.  The bread was just normal hawaiian buns, toasted with butter? Or it could've been the cheese.  It was dark :P Oh yea, when I ate this, I kept dropping all my short rib meat and spam all over the ground :(

short rib tacos

The cheapest item on the menu, $2 per taco!  But they were my least favorite.  In fact, I didn't like them at all!! It was just SUPER dry.  Not good :P

Overall, MoGo was OKAY. The tacos and burritos didn't taste like anything special to me.  I think it would've been better if they used beef bulgolgi instead :)

Treatbot the Karoake Ice Cream Truck

Treatbot the Karoake Ice Cream Truck was there too.  I think they collaborate with MoGo.  They have a magic mike set up there, and if you score 90+, you get free ice cream!! We tried 3 times, and FAIL!! It's pretty hard! It didn't help that they had a really poor song selection.  It was mostly all oldies, but they didn't even have Journey - Don't Stop Believing!! That is like the ultimate karoaking song!!

mexican chocolate and horchata

Maybe it was just too cold to eat ice cream ( it was about 10pm by the time we got our ice cream) or I just simply didn't get the right flavors for me but I wasn't too crazy for it! Mexican chocolate tasted nothing like chocoalate.  It tasted more like cinnamon and spices.  Horchata, was cinnamonny  and sweet.  I don't know.  I didn't like it.  I usually kind of like exotic flavors, like the ones at Ici's, but I wasn't too fond of these.

Capitola Beach

This past Tuesday was the hottest day of summer thus far, so boyfriend and I decided to randomly go to the beach in Santa Cruz that night!  He took me to Capitola.  The beach was small, but there were lots of restaurants and little shops nearby.  He told me to take a picture of the view. That picture above was taken without flash.. um, it looks like daytime.  It was actually around 8:30 at the time, long past sunset!!

So I tried using the night function on my camera, and this is what I got. I think it has an interesting rustic feel to it, but the flash left me with all those misty spots!!

Finally, I tried the long shutter function, and this was the result!!  This is what we really saw, pretty huh!! You can still kind of see the surfer in the water!! And just look at the almost full moon!! It was a very pretty night :)

Here's the other side of the beach.  Those lights are from a restaurant at on a pier.

Well, we left San Jose around 7:30, so when we got to the beach, we were pretty hungry since we didn't eat dinner yet!! I was craving some sort of fruity salad, and the boyfriend had to eat vegetarian that day too.  We wandered around the various restaurants nearby to see what they had.  Most of them were bars.  We finally ended up at the Paradise Beach Grille.  The decor made it look like a fancy restaurant, but it's pretty laid-back inside with butcher paper tabletop covering and crayons for you to draw with!

Fuji Apple, Walnut & Gorgonzola Salad - Mixed spring greens topped with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, candied walnuts & thinly sliced Fuji apples. Served with Honey Mustard Vinaigrette.

This salad definitely satisfied my craving.  We were hungry and started digging in when I remembered I had to take a picture!! I wish it had more fruit though, I'm sure I could make something like this at home.

Beach Blanket Breadalon - 16 oz. Sourdough bread boule filled with smoked Gouda, Mozzerella, garlic, green onions & olive oil.

This bread sounded good... but they gave it to us after we finished our salad.  It wasn't as flavorful as I thought it would be, and it was just too rich, i guess from all the cheese.  I felt kind of sick after eating this.  :P  no good!!!  I think it would've been better if we ate this first or something.  I was still feeling this bread well into the next morning!!

Caramel Apple Pie -  This delectable dessert made with buttery caramel poured over Granny Smith apples and a shortbread crust is especially comforting because it is served warm

I can't end a meal without dessert!!! And especially after that bread, I really needed to end my meal on a sweet note.  I also wanted something a bit fruity to get rid of all that cheesiness I still tasted in my mouth.  Apple pie sounded good, and it could've been better if the apple pie was warmer!!! Yes, they gave us barely warm apple pie.  Like apple pie that was taken out of the fridge and  microwaved for only 10 seconds :(  Don't get me wrong, it was still good, but it would've been 10X better if it was even slightly warmer!!!

Well now that all that's done, my plans this weekend is to go to the Eat Real Fesitval in Oakland!! :) I'm super excited!!! A whole bunch of food vendors in one place for me to try!!! :)  I have got to try Kung Fu Taco, Gobba Gobba Hey, Seoul on Wheels, and the Creme Brulee Cart.  Those were the first bay area food trucks I heard about and have been on my "to try" list for a reallly long time!!  There are many other interesting food vendors there I want to try too, hopefully it won't be too expensive and that the lines won't be too long and that they won't run out of food!!!

I've been in a pretty good mood lately. Mostly because I'm excited to eat this weekend, but also because I got this:

Urban Decay Naked Palette!!!

I randomly saw that it was in stock at Sephora.com, so I ordered it using my cashback rewards points!! YES, free :) LOVE IT!! :)

The pic's a little blurry from me being too excited and anxious to try the colors.  It's so pretty! I've been trying it out everyday this week since I got it :)