Year in Review: 2012

This past year has been filled with many highlights for Paul and me. And while I considered writing up a long list of things which were both exciting and stressful, I figured I should take a shortcut and sum it up in photos.

January was uneventful especially with a cold that lingered from the previous year. But in February, fellow blogger Marie of Meandering Eats and I met Andrew Zimmern and invited him for dessert at Oasis Ice Cream. We were each independently tapped from producer of the show where eat in San Diego. As I posted previously, Zimmern was nice and gracious to everyone including people who recognized him during this impromptu stop and wanted to snap a photo with him.

As much as I would have liked to have traveled more this year, Paul and I managed to take a few trips this year. A first for us was Austin in March. We both became enamoured with the city despite the nightmarish traffic. We still wax poetic about food the city had to offer: donuts, breakfast tacos, BBQ, etc. But the most memorable was found the most unlikely place: a house used in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now called Junction House, it’s food we can’t find anywhere in San Diego.

Not to far from the U.S. Border, I discovered  Tijuana’s growing culinary scene with a bunch of fellow food bloggers led by the Kristin and Antonio of Life & Food. Since the trip, I’ve visited Tijuana several times already for some world class food that’s also pocketbook friendly.

Paul and I also collaborated on our first comic together, The Girl with the Donut Tattoo, based on our food adventures after some nudging by our good friend, Marc Mason. We slammed it together in two months (just in time for Comic-Con) and published it ourselves. The comic was written up in several sources both in print (The San Diego Union-Tribune/San Diego City Beat) and online sources. I look forward to working with my husband again on future projects.

But the comic was only a precursor to the San Diego Comic-Con where the book sold out. But we saved one copy to personally hand over a copy to Anthony Bourdain — a dream for us. And it should go without saying that seeing friends, old and making new ones, was another highlight of during this mad-dash comic event. How we managed to work the long hours and not get sick was a miraculous.

During the comic-con, we also attended a Dos Equis dinner which included other diners like Chris Hardwick (host of The Talking Dead), Charlie Adlard (artist of The Walking Dead) as well a few other comic luminaries. We were in awe the entire evening that it was difficult to focus on the amazing multi-course meal prepared by Wolvesmouth chef, Craig Thornton.

No big news but one that is documented in-depth is the purchase of our first home. It was so hard to say good bye to the Mission Hills/Hillcrest neighborhood  but our rent was going up and we had to take advantage of the low interest rates.  Our last meal at the old place was grape Faygo and Mexican food.

The episode of Hotel Hell taped in December 2011 was finally aired in August. While we didn’t view it live (we had no cable at the time), we were saw screenshots of us via Facebook from our good friend, Erin in Iowa. We eventually saw it almost a month later when our other friend CC burned us a copy of the show on DVD.

Paul and I made one final trip together in October: Lake Tahoe. The trip was for a wedding but also fell adjacent to Paul’s birthday. It was a hectic weekend but we made it a point to visit to one of Paul’s creations earlier this year, the Dish Truck. The art on the truck was commissioned by owners and our friends, Nancy and Joe Horn (no relation), of Dish Café. The truck launched earlier this year to stunning reviews and Paul finally got to see it live and in person.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, I went on a solo trip to Montreal, Quebec. It was a first trip for me and despite the subfreezing weather, I had a grand time exploring the city with new found food blogger friends, Marti from Eat, Live, Travel, Write and Lauren (accompanied by her spouse) from Capital Cooking. The trip was hosted by Catherine and Tourisme Montreal. Look for a post about the trip coming soon.

As we settled into our new home, we fostered a Border Collie/Black Lab puppy. I knew we were in deep when Paul suddenly started testing out the name “Doctor” on him. A month later when emails started coming in to adopt the little guy, we knew we couldn’t let him go and eventually adopted him. Having never really grown up with a dog, much less a puppy, the Doctor is the sweetest, calmest puppy we’re ever met. We didn’t expect to become failed fosters off the bat but it’s true when they say the dog picks you.

We celebrated the holidays in our own way: quiet with lot of food, sleep and trip to the harbor for a puppy excursion. With Paul recovering from hand surgery and an effort to keep costs down, our only gifts to each other was a promise of a bigger television, continue our home renovation and toys for the newest member to our household, Doctor.

Hope 2013 has been great for you so far!