Holiday Snacks: Panera Bread Gingerbread Man!

I spotted these the other day at Panera Bread. I don't believe they had these last year. I'm not very familiar with gingerbread... I don't know why, I've just never really been interested in it. But since it's another hectic December this year, I'm trying to squeeze in the holiday spirit everywhere I can!

The cool thing is that Panera Bread has their $.99 bakery item if you buy a meal so instead of paying $3 for this guy, I paid $.99!

Like I said, I'm not familiar with gingerbread but this little guy tasted like graham crackers. If you mushed them up and burned them a little. And of course like any food with a face, I had to make him talk as I ate him. Except all his lines were identical to the gingerbread man from Shrek lol! If only he had gumdrop buttons instead of M&M one's....

Snacks: Deep Fried Cheesecake.

I had my heart set on Todai for dinner after class one night but knowing we didnt have any money for it, I went to my favorite Chinese place, Manchu Wok!

They started serving Deep Fried Cheesecake so I decided to give them a try.

I was expecting it to be bigger... other than that, the crust isn't flaky but chewy. Not tempura chewy, almost like rice wrapper chewy. Which is good, I'm not a fan of tempura! The filling was creamy and definitely tasted like Cheesecake but nothing over powering. The powdered sugar on top gave it a nice sweet touch.

I see going back for more of these in my future!

Snacks: Wal Mart Cookies N' Cream Brownie.

Last year I discovered this brownie sitting on the table and snagged a slice. After inhaling that, I snagged another... and another... and another...

I have been on the search for it ever since. But I haven't been able to find it! I know it came from Wal Mart and it was a Cookies N' Cream brownie. My husband thinks I'm crazy but I finally (just now) showed him this picture and his typical response? "Mmm." See, I wasn't crazy! It actually really existed!

I can't give you a real review right now because well... it's been about a year since I've had it. But it was delicious. I'm not a huge fan of brownies or Cookies N' Cream, but this was bearable. And addicting.

If any of you spot this at your local Wal Mart at any time, please please please let me know!

Snacks: Grocery Outlet find!

Last week my husband took me to The Grocery Outlet because I had never been there, at least not that I remember... so we were browsing and I was actually excited because a lot of things I buy at grocery stores on a every-other-day basis was there! And for $1.50! When I normally buy them for much more than that!

I went to go look at the ice cream because well.... hello, it's my favorite isle (so is frozen foods)! And I found this....!!

I must have screamed when I saw this! This was my all time favorite ice cream when I was a kid! I seriously have NOT seen this since the 90's! I was so excited! AND it was $1.50! Oh my gosh! Oh how I wish I wasn't on my to class so I could had picked up a few boxes and enjoyed them at home in all of its creamy, vanilla-y, crisp goodness!

I will definitely be going back for a few of boxes of these!

Holiday Snacks: Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Every year, I patiently wait for these babies to make their appearance. I'm not a huge fan of Easter... it always reminds me of wearing an itchy dress and being forced to go to church then going Easter Egg hunting in said itchy dress but nope, you can't get the dress dirty!

But it also reminds me of warm sunny afternoons in high school when me and my best friend would snack on these babies and talk about boys.

I'm not a huge fan of chocolate either (I know, unheard of, right? A girl who doesn't like chocolate) but I'm a sucker for these!! I'm sad these only come once a year.

I love how colorful store isles get when the Easter candy comes out! Easter is almost here which is a slight bummer, the next colorful holiday isn't going to be until... Halloween?!

Baking: Valentines Day ready to make cookies.

My husband and I decided to bake some cookies last night, I love these! My mom had made the Easter version last year and I just love the swirled chocolate chips.

My husband was getting frustrated because every time he turned around, I'd grab a square of cookie dough and eat it! Haha. He was like "did you want cookies or just cookie dough?!" and he tried to scare me with the worms-growing-in-your-stomach story. I wasnt buying it! Besides, instead of figuring out how to make 24 cookies, now we only had to worry about 20 :) I think I actually helped the situation!

I'm not a fan of my oven. I can never remember if I should bake things on the top rack or the bottom. So at first, we had these at the bottom. And they burned around the edges but were raw in the middle so the husband switch it to the top and they just burned completely lol. I'm up for a second try!

The only frustrating part was that my parents had came home around the time we were making them and they were freaking out at the fact that they cookies were slightly burned. Did they forget I went to culinary school? I'm not going to burn down the kitchen, goodness.

Out To Eat: Cold Stone Sundae - Strawberry Funnel Cake

Cold Stone Creamery came out with these new sundae's. I cant remember exactly what they're called (and I cant find any info online) but I'm gonna take a guess and say that it was something along the lines for "Hot Sundae".

They have a few other selections. One being a Churro sundae, a brownie sundae, a caramel apple sundae, an apple cake sundae and I think there was another selection. I hope to try more of these!

The Strawberry Funnel Cake sundae normally comes with french vanilla ice cream but my husband wanted cheesecake instead. So okay, sure. Lets try it with cheesecake! Honestly to me, there wasnt much of a difference. The cheesecake made everything creamy, but it wasnt a huge difference. As for the sundae itself, the funnel cake was mini sized (which I dont mind, I can never finish an entire funnel cake on my own anyway), the strawberries were a bit soggy and there could had been more powdered sugar. It wasnt as sweet as your normal funnel cake with ice cream but it was a nice little mini treat.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday! And eat lots of yummy food :)

The fiance and I already swapped gifts and we both got each other the same thing, but in a different color; a DSi haha!

Holiday Snacks: Dots.

Wordless Wednesday.

Cause I really just dont know what to say about these lol.

Holiday Snacks: Red Velvet Cookies!

I went grocery shopping for the first time in a really long time a week ago and spotted these at Lucky's!

These cookies are delicious! They're moist and crumbly. The frosting is stiff, I'm a fan of stiff cookie frosting =). I'm not a fan of Cream Cheese Frosting that usually comes with Red Velvet cupcakes, but these are really really good.

If you happen to come across these, I defiantly suggest you try them!

Out To Eat: Quickly's!

I was introduced to Quickly by my good friend Sammie in South San Francisco.


I found the location at Concord, CA. It was a bit hard to find since it was located in a corner next to a much bigger store.

My favorite snack is the Soya Ground Pork Rice Bento and a side of Fried Pot Sticker with a Durian Snow Bubble.

Out To Eat: Panera Bread!

My favorite afternoon snack. Panera Bread is a nice healthy alternative.




You pick two:

• Broccoli Cheddar Soup
• Chopped Chicken Cobb Salad
• Potato Chips on the side
  

The Chopped Chicken Salad comes with All-Natural pepper-mustard chicken, Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, Applewood-smoked bacon, Gorgonzola cheese, hard-boiled egg, chopped and tossed with a herb vinaigrette.

It has a nice fresh as well as refreshing taste to it. Panera's side of chips have got to be my favorite type of chips. They're crisp, not oily and delicious.

They also offer BBQ Chopped Chicken Salad. Its similar to the Chopped Chicken Cobb Salad but with BBQ sauce and corn, its also a nice refreshing salad to have on a cool (or warm) afternoon.

New layout!

Hello! I know its been awhile since I've been here. I'm trying to get back into blogging so please be patient with me!

I changed the layout since I never really got around to putting up a layout for this blog. I adore the this girl's layouts! Seriously, they're all just so adorable! I hope you like the new layout as well =)

I'll be working on crossing things off of the "update" list and adding more things here and there. May or may not be on the list. The list is really for restaurant reviews rather than products and thoughts and such.

So yeah =)

Event: Eat Real Festival.

My good friend and I decided to go to Eat Real (and bring our boyfriends with us) which was held at Jack London Square. We arrived there at 10:30AM and the place was still being set up so we went into a building that seemed like everything in it was organic. Tried a bunch of samples only to realize that organic isnt my cup of tea.

Organic Gourmet S'more. This was really good, the chocolate was pretty rich. Thanks Jon!

By the time we finished walking the entire building, the place was packed! Which way to go first?! There werent any lines yet, so we tried to grab up as much as we could get before the lines started forming. I didnt take a picture of everything. Unfortunately.

Seoul On Wheels Korean BBQ. This was a.... chicken taco I believe. The chicken was really good, but the taco itself was spicy. I have a love/hate with spicy food, depending on my mood but this was really spicy to me (I have a low tolerance, I cant even eat an entire bag of Hot Cheetos with Lime -- which are my fav -- in one sitting without taking deep breaths the rest of the day). The boyfriend really liked it though. Thanks Mae!

Of course had to get some Kara's Cupcakes! Not my favorite, boyfriend's favorite. They didnt have Red Velvet so we settled for vanilla. Jon had some... strawberry basil ice cream thing that sounded odd, but was really really refreshing. Dont have a picture of that.

The heat caused the frosting to get really mushy and warm. So, that sucked! The cupcake was a lot sweeter than usual which is a surprise since considering my URL name... lol.

We also tried some Goat Milk Ice Cream which was actually really good. They had another cupcake truck of a place I wanted to try but with the heat, I was done with cupcakes for the day. Stood in line for a really long time for a really small cup of lemonade (the lines were starting to form after 12, it was nuts!) and we took a picture with a rubber chicken and a lobster!

The event was pretty cool, never been to something like it and wouldnt mind going again.

Snacks: Stawberried Peanut Butter M&M's.

I'm sure all of you have seen/heard about this. The M&M's that came out for Transformers this passed summer. I was a little hesitant to try this, only because I'm probably the only person in the world thinks that peanut butter & chocolate is the worst idea in the world.

Someone had told me that the peanut butter wasnt as strong in this one, so I gave it a shot.

They lied. If anything I tasted more peanut butter and chocolate than anything. Its like the strawberry wasnt even there! It had a slight strawberry after taste. I'm a huge fan of PB&J strawberry sandwiches too, so kinda thought it would be like that. Minus bread, add chocolate.

Totally disappointed =(. I ended up giving it to my boyfriend's siblings lol.

Out To Eat: Olive Garden - Lasagna Fritta.

I went to Olive Garden after taking a long break from eating there and I noticed they added a few new appetizers and a few new desserts.

The Lasagna Fritta caught my eye.

I'm a sucker for lasagna, and I was under the impression that these would be cute little finger food's that were wrapped in lasagna pasta. But they werent, they were fried. I mean they were super crispy fried. According to the menu:

Parmesan-breaded lasagna pieces, fried and served over alfredo sauce, topped with parmesan cheese and marinara sauce.

I know it says "fried" on the menu, but I dont think I read the description lol.

Anyway, these were pretty decent served hot. They're a little hard to eat because since the lasagna pasta is fried, its harder to cut (or bite) through. They give you a good amount of these and so I took the rest to go. A few hours later, I remember I had my Lasagna Fritta and so I grabbed them for a night snack.

The texture changed completely! It was now what I thought it would be, a nice soft pasta finger food! It was delicious. I personally love these better cold when it gets soggy because then the pasta softens up. MmM. New favorites!

Out To Eat: Paradise 33.

I don't remember how I ended up finding this place, but I'm kinda glad I did! Me and the boyfriend spend a lot of time in Concord and I wanted to try somewhere new, so I decided to try this place out. It was in a an area I've never ventured off to before, but the place was cute and the servers were really nice.

The boyfriend got Brown Rice & a Sushi Roll made to order. I got the Seafood Udon.

I personally really liked the Seafood Udon, the boyfriend however didn't. He said the broth was too "udon" enough for him, whatever that means lol.

I was able to get dessert, which I usually don't get to! Haha. I had my heart set on the Fried Banana when I was looking through the menu online, but I don't think they had it in the lunch menu, so I ended up getting the Exotic Bomba.

Its a sorbet ball (basically) that's half Passion Fruit, half Mango and the middle has Raspberry. It's rolled into a White Chocolate. Basically.

That's what the inside looks like. It was okay. It wasn't great. It was wayy to big for the both of us to finish, that's for sure! I kept rolling it to the Passion Fruit side and the boyfriend kept rolling it back to the Mango side, we both attacked the Raspberry haha.

I'd definitely come here again!

Snacks: Taco Bell Steak Bowl!

The Taco Bell Steak Bowl has been my comfort food on rainy days since 2002, they ended up discontinuing it a month or two ago, of course I was devastated! What will I order at Taco Bell now?! Sure they still have my beloved Nachos Bell Grande, but it does not replace my Steak Bowl at all!

Oh delicious Steak Bowl, you're already so very missed!

Out To Eat: Baldo's.

So I've hear some hype around this place in Vacaville, CA called Baldo's. So I decided to check it out with the boyfriend. We GPS'ed this place and missed it twice. It's so hard to see where this place is! But after making a second U-Turn we finally found it.

I read reviews saying how ghetto the inside was and figured it couldnt be that bad, until I got there. The place looked really really broke down. It looked abandoned almost. The menu itself was falling apart. So we went through the drive thru and ordered our food.

I got the Carne Asada Fries since I read so many good reviews on it. They give you a really good amount. In my opinion the fries were a little under cooked. The boyfriend loved them, but to me they were under cooked. It was pretty good, but it wasnt the best. It was nice to try but I wont be coming back here for more.

Overall rating: 5/10

Hmm.

I suck at updating! Updates to come...

• Baldo's
• Paradise 33
• Olive Garden
• Sour Starburst GummiBursts
• Sift Cupcakes
• Quizno's

I also have to compile that list of resturants to try before the year is over! I've tried 2 out of 5 so far. I know one will be Joe's Crab Shack (since I've been meaning to go there for like, what... 2 years now?!) but what will the other two be?

Hmm, hopefully I'll get some update's going by tomorrow. I cant seem to find my Baldo's picture. Lame.