Groceries, Friends, and Food … Oliver the cook, the friend, the foodie

Saturdays are my traditional sleep in days.  So sleep in I did.  Which was good because I was up late reading and I fell asleep with the lights on and the book resting on my bed.

Traditionally on Saturday is the lunch time hang out with my mom and dad but today was a bit different.  My traditional lunch hangout was not done outside of the house but at home.  My dad went to play golf and my mom decided that grocery shopping was needed. So I went grocery shopping at the Commissary.  And for those that don’t know what the commissary is, it is basically you traditional supermarket but military style.  Commissaries were a part of my life for about 23 years.  It wasn’t until I lost my military ID that I started shopping in “civilian” supermarkets.  So far the transition has been relatively good.  Although I have once again started looking for other ways to purchase food such as farmer’s markets.

Today’s visit to the commissary was a good one.  My mom and I just shopped around looking for the foods we needed to get.  Plus I get an opportunity to help them with their eating habits.  And since I usually cook for them I usually do the shopping for them and I try to introduce them to new food.  So it was cool talking to my mom about the stuff that they shouldn’t eat.  Which my mom always reacts to “Everything is bad for you,” my mom  kidding of course.  We both know that moderation is the best way to go and also just to make eating a healthy way.  So we shopped for an hour or so.  This kind of shopping was our traditional Saturday hangout before we did the lunch thing.  So much good memories doing that while I grew up.  It might also explain why I have my foodie side.  🙂

After doing the grocery shopping, we headed off and bought some lunch.  A good old traditional Filipino lunch.

Soon after lunch I headed off to meetup some of the coolest peeps around.  A few weeks ago I had such an amazing time at a conference in Portland called the World Domination Summit (WDS).  It was the World Domination summit that planted the seeds for me to start this blog.  This meetup was special because it was made up of the people that went to WDS and live in San Diego!  It was a great afternoon of hanging out with them.  It definitely brought the feel and excitement of WDS home.  Hanging out with them was cool not because they went to WDS but they are equally as nice and genuine and all believe in living their life the way they want to live it.  These guys are truly my peeps.  When I’m around them I don’t have feel like I’m the oddball or just feel weird when people just don’t understand.  It is these people that I strongly believe will make great GOOD in the world.  It’s exciting to know that I have set of people, wait scratch that, it is exciting to know that I have a set of friends that will be there to help support me and I will support them.  During our meetup / hangout we all got to introduce ourselves to each other.  It was awesome find out that we all have different interest collectively but we all have the same goal of making ourselves happy.  For sure we will be hanging out more often and making plans to work together to get stuff done.  Also an interesting fact was that none of us have yet to figure out what we are going to do with our $100 investment that we got from the World Domination Summit.  Currently we had the idea of doing community gardens and helping with people locally.  We will see were our ideas go.  Excitement for sure is in the air.

After an exciting afternoon, I headed home.  When I got home I ask my mom and dad what they wanted for dinner.  And I remember that my dad mention a restaurant that he wanted to try out.  So I ask him and then I went to the internet to search it out and to try to make reservation.  And so I did.  The place that we headed too for dinner was a new restaurant called Burlap in Del Mar.  Burlap as it turns out is the brainchild of Bravo’s Top Chefs finalist Brian Malarkey.  It’s a place were East meets West and described as “Asian Cowboy.”  The place was an awesome mix of atmosphere and modern and a bit abstract.  The food overall was good.  I had the braised short rib with some cowboy corn ( corn with a kick ).  It was good overall.  The only complaint I had about it that it was a bit noisy but that’s what you expect if you go to a place to go and be seen.  It’s definitely a place where the young go to hang out and enjoy each other’s company.  Good experience overall.  Just a bit pricy so not your everyday foodie place to go.  🙂

With dinner all over, we all headed home where I decided to chill out and spend the rest of the evening relaxing with tea and a traditional Marathon watch of the Ghost Whisper.  That will have to wait for another post.  🙂  Until then.  Thanks for reading.