La Jolla, The food

The food in America is just something else. 

Cody's

I would highly recommend breakfast at Cody's in La Jolla. It's my idea of the perfect place. Looking over Ocean Blvd and the sea this quirky restaurant has a superb breakfast & lunch menu with a quaint theme throughout.

The menu:

This was hands down the best breakfast i've ever had.  

Crab cake benedict - Jumbo lump crab cakes, sliced avocado, poached eggs on a toasted english muffin topped with hollandaise dressing. With gridded potatoes and grits. (Not a fan of grits!)

+++++

Whisk'n'ladle

I was really impressed with Whisknladle. It's another quirky restaurant in La Jolla with a dark interior (which made it difficult to take pictures). Everything on the menu is organic and local sourced if possible and the menu changes daily.

The menu (Click to open a bigger image)

The brussel sprout salad was perfection. I'm not a huge fan of sprouts but I eat one or two with a roast dinner. The salad was made from warm brussel sprout leaves with sugar snap peas, meyer lemon, pecans, butternut squash & goats cheese. All the ingredients mixed together so well to form a party in my mouth.

For my main I had the pumpkin tortlli with regianno cheese, hazelnuts and sage brown sugar. The dish was delightful and the brown sugar adds a sweet tinge to the pumpkin taste.

+++++

The Spot

The spot is located on Prospect Street and was the liveliest restaurant due to the game being on.

If you ever visit this restaurant you HAVE to have the cheesey garlic parmasan fries. OH MY. I think we stank of garlic for a week following on from eating these but it's worth every bite.

Gaaaahhhh I want these again!!!

+++++

KARL

We visited Universal Studios and visited one of the restaurants in Citywalk called KARL.

Once again, the food was beaut.

THIS DISH: 

Black Garlic Fondu

A warm melting wedge of Cambozola cheese, black 

garlic cloves, roasted peppers, caramelized onions, Red 

Trolley Ale cream sauce, and grilled bread - dribbleeeee!

BUFFALO SOLD-JAH mac and cheese, buffalo chicken, scallions & gorgonzola 

+++++

Cheesecake Factory

The cheesecake factory is famous for their immense portion sizes and of course their cheesecakes. Unfortunately i've never made it to dessert as the portions are so insane.

Spicy chicken chipotle pasta & fried zucchini nom nom nom nom

Until writing this blog post I didn't think I ate that much out there...NO WONDER I NOW WADDLE.

January detox has failed massively. I'm going to start again in February.

La Jolla life, San Diego

I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week over New Years with my parents in San Diego. It's sunny all year round, it's beautiful and the main reason - My fat alter-ego LOVES American food. And I can confirm I successfully gained 68 pounds.

La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya) is in the north of San Diego and is paradise. I had this massive urge to buy a dog and jog up the beach with it to fit in with the locals.

Our apartment looked out over the pacific where wild sea lions chill out on the rocks. It's enchanting watching them play but boiii do they smell of fish. pongeyyy.

We started every morning with a walk along the promenade dreaming it was an everyday thing. If only it was....I would be tanned/skinny and very happy with life!

Spotted this little guy on one of our walks! Heyy there.

This is my dream home:

274 Coast Blvd

Yes....the garage has glass walls that looks over the ocean. 

The house opposite is my second choice.

After daydreams of life there we had breakfast on the roof and headed to Westfields UFC where I spent too much money in Victoria Secret's. Standard.

I have a weird obsession with food and VONS is my dream supermarket. It's an absolute pleasure shopping there. I scared a friendly new yorker away by telling him I wanted to live there. He didn't get my humour and just thought I was strange. Here are some of the things that excited me on our shop.

They have THE BEST condiment aisle

+++++

I couldn't resist adding a picture of this guy from the zoo

I'm going to post separately about the food. Because there is a lot of it. And it deserves its own post.

I'm soo ready to retire here... even writing this post is making me have itchy feet. 

A Weekend dans Paris

Balch and I had never been to Paris and after accepting the fact that we are both single and do not have boyfriends to take us there we decided to take ourselves - on a budget!


I love a deal and saw an offer for DFDS Ferries and booked a return trip from Dover - Calais for £9 each. Niceeeeee.

The four of us set off for Calais at about 6am on Saturday morning and after a short crossing and a hilarious drive on the wrong side of the road we were checked in to our apartment by 2pm French time!
The apartment was the first part of an amazing trip, Balch found it on Air B&B and it was perfect. It was a one bed apartment with a gorgeous big feature window that looked out over a french courtyard below. It had big iron gates that needed a code for entry and had a mirrored walkway to the block. And the best bit? It cost us around £50 each for both nights.

We dropped of our bags, had a quick glass of wine to get into the French way of life and headed straight for a gorgeous late lunch/early dinner on the river before a trip up the Eiffel Tower with a serious amount of selfies.

After a quick rush to get our vodka from the shop before it closed we headed back to the apartment to get ready and experience night life in Paris!

Talitha really wanted to visit Le Magnifique. We had no idea where we were from the club so I was really excited to use Uber in Paris. If you haven't used Uber - download it now! Its the best car service app as you can pick the level of luxury car you would like to be picked up in. You can get £10 off your first journey if you use the promo code jb256. (Uber is available in lots of cities worldwide - Snoop Dogg uses them - that is all).

The club was..different and a little bit too expensive for what we were looking for. It cost ¢32 for a double. OUCH. The music was brilliant and consisted of the Spice Girls, Greese etc. 

After too much vodka and fantastic conversations in what we thought was fluent french we stumbled home and passed out after filling ourselves up on biscuits.

We woke up feeling very sorry for ourselves but quickly pulled ourselves together and headed out to see Paris and to feed our hangovers. We found a sweet restaurant near the Louvre that satisfied our need for cheese.

We headed over to the Louvre for some tourist snaps and then found our way to Angelina's to taste  their infamous hot chocolate.

I do love chocolate and I'm about to offend lots of people here but I don't know what all the fuss is about with this hot chocolate. It was too rich, dried my mouth out and was severely over-priced.

We walked up and down the Champs-Élysées taking in the culture that Paris so effortlessly breathes.

After a few more selfies with the Arc De Triomphe we headed back to our apartment for a power nap before the part of the trip I was most excited for...Kong.

Those of you who love Sex and the City you might recognise Kong from this scene.

It's a fabulous restaurant with a superb menu and an even better view. At night time the Louis Vuitton head offices are lit up and the ambiance is lovely despite being a bit judgey. This part of our trip was definitely not within budget, but it was worth every penny.

To start I had the lobster hot dog and Balch had the crab and lobster ravioli.

Just wow. The picture does not do any of the meal justice.

For my main I had a tuna steak with soy glaze and winter veg. Served with the most delicious buttery mash i've ever tasted.

After filling ourselves with food and wine we wandered along the river and admired Paris by night.

The next morning we pulled ourselves out of our perfect apartment and headed to Notre-D'ame and Love Lock Bridge

We decided not to leave a padlock with our names on, just in case it meant we would be alone together for the rest of our lives.

There was also no sign of a hunch-back, despite the rumours.

It was time to leave our perfect Parisian weekend and head back to Calais to visit Carre-four for wine, cheese, pate and biscuits. 

I bought 10 litres of wine for the equivalent of £10. What a place!