Tacos and Burgers and Rice - Oh My!

It's rather hard to believe that a full week has passed and that I have flown out to California and back already but it has and I did. I think I'm still trying to process some of my trip but while I'm doing that, I thought I'd share with you some of the food that I had the chance to enjoy while I was on the West Coast that I can't get here on the East Coast ... and that's probably a good thing as I sure don't need to eat like this on a regular basis!

First up was my late dinner on the Monday that I arrived in Stockton.  My flights were running a bit late so I didn't get checked into my hotel until almost 9:00 and at that point all I wanted was something fast to eat (I really miss the days when they'd actually feed you a real meal on a plane!).  Luckily for me, there was a Jack in the Box right down the road from my hotel so I grabbed an Ultimate Cheeseburger and some Seasoned Curly Fries so that I could take a picture and make my cousin Amy jealous while filling that hole in my stomach! Healthy?  Heck no!  Tasty?  Whoa yeah!

Tuesday dawned rainy and blah but that was okay, I know they need the rain out there and it sure wasn't going to stop me from partaking in my first really good Mexican meal in almost three years!  I decided to head to North Stockton and have lunch at Miguel's which is the very first Mexican restaurant I ever ate at in Stockton way back in 1980 when I visited there with my first husband. Cyndi and I used to go there on occasion also when we weren't hitting up our favorite Cancun as it was closer to her home so yes, there were some sentimental reasons for going there - plus the food is delicious!

I suppose that it looks a little bit like a hole-in-the-wall kind of place but don't let that fool you at all! I got there a bit before the lunch crowd as you can see but when I left, it had filled up quite a bit.

Let's see, I had the combination plate with a chicken taco, chicken enchilada, and chile relleno - delicious!  And may I just say - with no offense to Cancun - that Miguel's makes the best salsa in Stockton.

After a rather long day - more of which I'll tell you about later - I didn't get back to my hotel room until after 11:00 at night and with lunch having been about twelve hours earlier, I decided to hit up another burger joint - this time the local In-N-Out Burger.  Just FYI, I didn't eat all of the fries though I probably could have if I had let myself!  It's probably a good thing that neither Jack in the Box nor In-N-Out Burger have East Coast chains or I'd really be in trouble!

Wednesday's lunch I'll tell you about later when I write a post about my trip to Yosemite National Park with Katharine but for now, I'll skip ahead to Thursday after my return to Stockton when I decided that since I was downtown anyway, I may as well stop in at Cancun for lunch. I knew it wasn't going to be the same without Cyndi there with me but tradition dictated that I eat there at least once.

I got there around 2:30 and had the place to myself which seemed to fit how I felt - the dining room was about as empty as my heart. That said, my stomach was pretty empty too so in honor of my friend, I ordered my traditional #12 combinación plate that consists of a beef enchilada and beef quesadilla along with the usual beans and rice.  I opted to add on a chicken taco also as truthfully, I can't get enough of chicken tacos when I'm in California!

Sentimental fool that I am, before I left I asked my waitress if there was a possibility that I could perhaps buy one of their platters to take home with me to go along with the coffee mug that Cyndi had bought for me years ago.  She offered to check with the manager and he graciously agreed to the transaction so I'm now the proud owner of a Cancun dinner platter. What I'll ever do with it I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I'll never look at it and not think of the wonderful meals I shared at my favorite Mexican restaurant with my best buddy over the years. Like I said, I'm a bit of a sentimental fool.

I didn't get back from visiting Cyndi at her new sub-acute care facility in Sacramento until late on Thursday night and at that point I was too tired to even think about eating so there are no pictures of Thursday night's dinner as there was none! I suppose I could have taken a picture of the Super Dog on a Pretzel Roll from Wienershnitzel that Cyndi had requested and I brought to her but I didn't even think of that!

On Friday, I met an old friend and former roommate of mine for lunch at Arroyo's which used to be a restaurant called Luigi Murphy's years ago that he and I used to frequent quite often back when we were attending San Joaquin Delta College together.  A transplanted Long Islander, Scott has been a resident of Stockton for quite some time now and is now the senior sports writer at the Stockton Record. It was great to see him and reminiscence a bit while also catching up on each other's lives.

Being a bit of a stick in the mud it seems when it comes to my menu choices, I had another chicken taco, chicken enchilada, and chile relleno!  Of course, each restaurant makes their food a little bit differently than the other so it wasn't like I was eating the exact same thing over and over again.  That said, even if I had been that would have been okay by me!

Arroyo's sits on the banks of Quail Lakes which is a series of small man-made lakes with a nice housing area developed around them; it's been part of Stockton for as long as I've known Stockton so the view from our table was quite familiar and also one of my last views of Stockton before I pointed my rental car towards Sacramento for a final visit with Cyndi before heading back down to San Francisco to catch my red-eye flight home - something I'm pretty sure I'd never do again!  As far as last views of Stockton go, this one wasn't bad and sharing it with a long-time friend made it even better.

So anyhow, there you have it - lots of Mexican food with the occasional burger thrown in! Eventually I'll get to the serious stuff in regards to my trip but I just wanted to share this part first. Of course, now I've gone and made myself hungry but there's nary a chicken taco to be found!