Fish Bottle Opener ~ Perfect for Father’s Day $5!

Drunken Clown – $50

401 Broadway East
Happy Hour 3-6
$3 Bottles
$2.50 Wells
$5 Margs

The party-like atmosphere at La Puerta immediately makes you think you’re in for a good time. There’s a full bar area, giant deck, fiesta decor and sometimes gangsta Mexican rap on the stereo. Today I even heard a tricked-out salsa dance remix of Coldplay’s “Clocks” with horns and congas and shit. Totally put me in the mood.

But the mood soon changed. I’ve had no less than 30 tacos this week, so I ordered sopitos ($6.95 includes 2 sopitos and rice and beans). La Puerta’s Sopitos turned out to be a weird pile of beans, meat, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, and about 12 bushels of iceberg lettuce suffocating a thick, dense corn tortilla. The produce looked fresh, but there was something strangely rich about the dish that made me uneasy since I was basically eating a jacked up taco salad.

Somebody tell me what is going on here

Gastroenterologically, La Puerta doesn’t do a body good. I had a very long walk after lunch and this made me nervous if you know what I mean. It was a close one.

Amazing empanadas and fried plantains are discovered at Villa Victoria by a Seattle Weekly food blogger.

The Seattle PI covers a new taco force at the Ballard Farmers Market complete with split-roasted pork, $2 tacos, and $3 banana leaf-wrapped tamales.

The New York Times hit a giant bonanza by finding a new Mexican Olive Oil from Baja, CA.

Sammy Hagar quote of the week:  “If you’re with a bunch of fun people and everyone’s drinking tequila, you really get off the hook. You start to get loose and wild and crazy.”

Recipe courtesy Costa Vanikiotis at Eveready Diner, Hyde Park, NY via The Food Network.

2 pounds thawed frozen or fresh cooked lobster meat
10 (8-inch) flour tortillas
2 pounds cream cheese
1 pound Cheddar, shredded
1 bunch scallions, chopped
1 roasted red onion, chopped
3 roasted plum tomatoes, chopped
4 tablespoons Sriracha (Thai hot sauce, available at most markets)
1 lime, juiced
2 tablespoons canola or olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. F. Cut onion and tomatoes in half and place on a baking sheet. Put into hot oven and roast for 15 minutes or until softened. Remove and let cool slightly and coarsely chop.

Combine all ingredients together in a mixer except for tortillas and lobster meat. On an 8 inch flour tortilla, spread 1/2 cup of the mixture and 3 ounces of lobster meat evenly on 1/2 of tortilla and fold over to create a half moon shape. Repeat with each tortilla.

In a large skillet over medium heat, add oil and pan-fry tortilla until brown and crispy, about 3 minutes per side. Cut into wedges and serve with salsa, guacamole and sour cream.

The following food tourney was made possible by Safeway and Clarence Birdseye, who developed the quick-freezing process of food preservation in the early 20th century.

Contestants:
Banquet, Beef Enchilada and Tamale Combo Meal
Discover Cuisine, Chipotle Chicken with Mexican Style Rice
Stouffer’s, Steak Fajita Flatbread
Hungry-Man, Chicken Burrito

Last Place – Banquet (8%)

Though priced right (one dollar), Banquet really drops the ball on their Beef and Tamale combo. In fact, they maybe never had the ball in the first place. Inside of the seedy black plastic tray is a bunch of slimy, nauseating stuff that nobody really has any business eating. The tamale and enchilada were, literally, impossible to discern; they both could have been sculpted from day-old barf. The beans, colored of dead and battered flesh, slip between fork prongs before you get anywhere near your mouth.

If you are going to a grocery store and buying this kind of thing intentionally to eat for dinner, then you have abysmal taste in food. If you are buying a bunch of ‘em for your family, then God help you. Eating sculpted barf sucks at any price point.

Third Place – Hungry-Man (12%)

Engineered for the microwave dinner eaters that weren’t quite fulfilled by the regular “sissy” microwave dinners, Hungry-Man promises to, at the very least, fill you up. Which is exactly what their Chicken Burrito dinner – weighing in a 1lb – is supposed to do. But immediately upon peeling the plastic off the tray, it becomes strikingly apparent that this full pound of food is not going inside of anybody. There is a strange tangy sweet scent that emanates from the small cup of Cocada Pudding that is not dissimilar to the small of 7-11 nachos. The beans, once again, are more of a foreshadowing to what the next bathroom visit probably has in store. And the burrito, stringy mushy, cuts like a dull plastic knife through the wretched odor of Pudd’nhead Cocada.

Second Place – Discover Cuisine (45%)

After recovering from my initial shock (this line of food, surprisingly, shares no relation to the cabel channel of the same name) Discover Cuisine’s Chicken and Rice dinner delivered a palatable, confusing meal. Sporting perhaps the most misleading pictures on the box (favorite touch: the cute piece of cilantro placed on the seemingly barbecued chunks of chicken), the dinner amounted to basically a passable pile of rice topped with chicken and soaked in tangy barbecue sauce. Now the box promised a jalapeño sauce, but ten bucks says they just used the same vats of bubbling red liquid that they pump into their other non-Mexican dishes. A bit offsetting, but not a deal-breaker by any means. The meal is sold finally on the crispy heartiness of the black beans in the rice.

First Place – Stouffer’s (55%)

This steak fajita flatbread, coming from Stouffer’s “Corner Bistro” line of foods, and tasting exactly like microwavable pizza, was a Frankenstein creation of tasty proportions. This is the kind of multi-genre zappable appetizer that you can really hang your hat on. Four square pieces of spongy cheese covered bread, sprinkled with pea-sized bits of pepper and steak, the dish contained a strange confidence that the other three competing meals lacked. It was alright being Goldfish-colored Mexican-flavored pizza and I was okay with that too.

9 month old cats with alot of kitten in them! [sic] ~ free!

Free Large Yard Fern…You Dig It Out!