Artichokes and My Brother

We drove from Atascadero, California to Watsonville, California. This is the beginning of the beautiful coastal Highway 1 drive...when you can see it. Fog hugged the coast for the vast majority of the drive. Every now and then we'd see a little glimpse of the ocean. Unfortunately, the weather report is similar for today. Here are a couple of good ones--see the rest on the link to the right.

So back to that first photo. If you look at it closely, you can see what is beautiful about the photo--the little bulb in the middle--the lovely artichoke. It's lovely in every form, but more lovely in this form...

We got them here...

On the far left is a food truck. They serve artichokes of all kinds.

They were sooooo good. But even more they brought back great memories. Most of our family vacations consisted of going to Florida or Alabama to visit family. I loved those vacations, but that usually meant we didn't do much other traveling. For those of you who don't know my birth order, I am the third of four children. (I have some traits of a middle child, but really, more of a first born.) I have some of those first born traits because there are eleven years between me and my older brother, Craig. Craig is the reason I went to Southwest Missouri State University. (I didn't know anything else nor how to search for a college.) He was the cool older brother who cooked us Space Fry-owns (how do you spell that, Craig?!?!), which was his way to sell fried bologna. He took us to Pizza Hut then teased us when we would hear a crash in the kitchen--that was our pizza, of course. And really, he is the reason we went anywhere for vacation other that Florida and Alabama. When Craig finished college, he worked for one company in several different cities over the years. He is the reason I saw Chicago, Portland, Charlotte, and San Francisco for the first time. Love you, Craig!

One of my clearest memories is the trip we took to San Francisco. I was in 8th grade and didn't want to be gone from my friends for that long. This was our longest vacation as a family. We were going to see Craig. We took about a week to drive to San Francisco, spent about a week there, and took about a week to drive back. We drove through Castroville, California, the self-proclaimed artichoke center of the world. We stopped at a road-side stand and ate fried artichokes out of a paper bag. It was one of my first foodie moments and a fond family memory. Today, I ate artichokes out of a paper bag--good times.

We ate dinner at The Fish House in Watsonville, California--an excellent meal. Craig, I ate Petrale sole--delicous. Time had clams and pasta--also excellent. We started the meal with oak grilled oysters--yum!

That's all for today!