Central Coast: Food & Stuff to Do

-
Notes from stops along the way on the Central Coast...
Watsonville
Food: Gizdich Ranch 
Moss Landing
Food: Phil's Fish Market
Santa Cruz
Relax: Well Within

Watsonville
55 Peckham Road, Watsonville, California
It's all about the pie. Yes, they have sandwiches, but how on earth do you expect me to focus on some bread with stuff in the middle of it when the air is aroma-fied with apples, cinnamon, ollalieberries, and other good things? Here's a hint. Don't expect me to focus on the sandwich or even remember it exists. 
The first time I went, I had straight-up apple pie. These things are so loaded with apples that the crust is probably eight inches high at the middle, the crown, the summit, the apex of pie-ness. Most recently, I had the apple-ollalieberry pie. You can do the whole a la mode thing, but I don't like to dilute my pie with unnecessary dairy products. It's a personal decision. Respect or don't. It's my pie, not yours.

I don't know if it's really a pick-your-own fruit bonanza that happens to have pie or a pie palace that happens to have acres and acres of apples and berries. It's a working farm that happens to have all of these things happening while the real work happens. It's not fancy. The bake shop is in a big warehouse, but I don't need fancy, especially when I can see the trees from which the apples were picked and sit at a picnic table with the orchard to my right and the scent of fresh pie wafting from the left.
 
 
Moss Landing
Phil's Fish Market
7600 Sandholdt Rd., Moss Landing, California
I find myself tracing my dad's footsteps. I'll tell him about somewhere I've been and he'll already know all about it, what's best to eat, and probably the best backroads to get there. Phil's is one of those places. It's nothing fancy -- another warehouse, in fact -- but they're busy feeding lots of people. Order at the counter, grab a number, and food magically appears. You can sit inside, in a covered porch area, or outside at picnic tables.
If fried artichokes are on the menu, it's mandatory that I order them (unless they're made with marinated, canned, or otherwise tortured artichoke souls). The batter at Phil's is heavy-handed for my taste, but they artichokes aren't bad. Skip the mayo and ranch -- they're best unadulterated by goop that masks the actual flavor of the 'choke. (Note to self: Must embark on quest to find the best fried artichoke hearts on the central coast.)

TG and I split the char-grilled halibut. It was plenty of food for a light-ish lunch -- a big, perfectly grilled piece of fish with salad, rice, and garlic bread. As it should be in a fish market, the highlight is the fish and the rest of the stuff on the plate is pretty standard stuff.
If you're not a native or long-time resident of California, you may wonder about our obsession with A-vegetables: artichokes, asparagus, avocados... Stop wondering, accept that you've missed something in life, and pick up a fork. 

Santa Cruz
417 Cedar Street, Downtown Santa Cruz, California
Make a reservation for a massage and follow it with a soak in a hot tub. The tubs are in private rooms with shoji screens that open to a peaceful Japanese garden with a waterfall that masks the noises of the rest of the world. I've been here several times over a five-year span and every massage has been good. It's clean the staff knows their stuff and it's a great way to shed real-world stress.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cancer Is a Narcissist

-
I am angry. And I am sad. But at the moment, it's mostly anger. Keyboard and reader beware. That androgynous, faceless, scourge with too many names and ways of wreaking havoc.  That invisible stalker that sneaks in at the cellular level, latching on and demanding attention.  That predatory visitor that remains unseen until  it's too often too late.  It wins again. Today, cancer won again.  It won this morning, taking a young woman barely 30 from her world, her family's world, our world, this world. Quickly. Aggressively. Ruthlessly. I want to scream at cancer, cuss it out, kick it where it hurts, be heard. But cancer is a narcissist. It doesn't care that I'm angry. It knows nothing but itself and how to propagate until it wins.
Read more

The Consumerization of Popcorn... and IT

-
Image
Technology continues to change not only the tools we use  but the language we use to describe it. Wikipedia describes  consumerization  as: …an increasingly accepted term used to describe the growing tendency for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business and government organizations. Consumerization absolutely affects technology, but confining the definition to information technology too narrowly defines it. The etymology pins the emergence of the term itself as early as 2001, which is a long time in  dog years  and at least a half century in technology. But the concept goes back far before Y2K. I could delve into Eli Whitney’s  cotton gin , but I’ll stick to less distant history. Before we get to IT, consider the impact of consumerization on time and choice. Consumerization & Time In some ways, our experiences with consumer technology have changed the very speed at which we live our lives. We don’t make time for things th
Read more

Raising a Son in a World of Brock Turners

-
Image
This whole Stanford Rapist Who Can Swim thing has been everywhere this week, and I haven't tried to escape it. I've read the letters, read the articles, and shared in the discussion. I found myself wandering between disbelief and outrage. It was strange to realize I've been in the courtroom of the judge who sentenced Turner to the prison equivalent of cleaning chalkboard erasers after elementary school. He annoyed me then. He infuriates me now. At first, I didn't talk about the Stanford case around my son. I didn't want to talk about rape. I didn't want to explain what Turner had done. I didn't want to talk about how a young man smart enough to go to a university as prestigious as Stanford could also be as vicious as to attack an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. But then, I did. I am raising a young man. I wanted him to see me angry, astounded, and affected by the case. My son can go toe-to-toe with me about how unfair it is that I limit his s
Read more