Trying New Things

One thing that our friends Aaron and Laura have been good for (among many other good things) is expanding our culinary horizons. BJ and I really love food, and we both like trying new things. This makes dinner with Aaron and Laura always an excellent adventure, because they'll try pretty much anything (as long as it's not a restaurant chain), and with them, the motto is 'the more authentic, the better!' Last time we were in LA we ate dinner with them at an El Salvadoran restaurant that served us up papusas, and thus began our quest to find papusas in Oklahoma City. This was accomplished when we came across Cocina Guatelinda, which I have blogged about before. Delicious!

Last night we were fortunate to meet our wonderful friends Aaron and Laura for dinner once again while visiting in LA, and they took us to a kickin' Vietnamese restaurant. I've tried Vietnamese only once and didn't like it, but I wasn't sure if it was because the food was Vietnamese or if it was because every meal I was forced to taste at this particular restaurant had tofu in it. It must have been the tofu, because this place was remarkably delicious! I knew that Aaron and Laura were not going to disappoint us when we walked into an absolutely packed restaurant and we were the ONLY non-Asian folks in the room. I was particularly fond of this drink that Aaron convinced me to try. Basically it was a mixture of a very strong, smooth coffee combined with sweetened condensed milk and poured over ice. It was among the better drinks I have had in my life, and I consider my pocketbook lucky that this restaurant is so many hundreds of miles away from home, or else I would probably get one every day.

So I loved the Vietnamese food. After that we went and got boba tea, which was also a new thing for me. For those of you unfamiliar with this treat, it is basically a tea mixed with milk and it has soft, cooked tapioca balls in the bottom of it. You drink it through a wide straw and those boba just come up through your straw. No one prepared me for this so when it happened the first time, I thought there was a worm in my drink. BJ said, "It's like a drink and a snack all in one," and he really is right because the boba have the consistency of soft gummy bears. I had to get used to this one, so BJ and I found another boba tea place tonight and I got another.

Today poor BJ had to work, but Silas and I lived it up by eating lunch at In-N-Out (don't worry, Silas ate green beans and mangoes) and then spending the afternoon at the Santa Ana Zoo. My life is good. I hope that yours is too!