What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?

I've been all about salads for the last two weeks. Once the weather starts getting warm I'm all about them veggies. I don't want to brag, but I make pretty killer salads: like full-on restaurant style salads (the trick is to forego any premise of health food!). Last week my prepped lunches were a mexican-inspired salad with a simple pico de gallo, roasted corn salsa, diced marinated chicken thighs, and some leftover shredded mozzarella (too cheap to buy queso fresco when there's already a salty, bland cheese in my fridge) and a cilantro chile lime ranch dressing. This week I went a bit crazy and did croutons, parmesan, diced chicken breast, black olives, pickled sweet peppers, artichoke hearts, and caesar dressing. One really killer trick I've picked up on is to chop some herbs into your greens. It really adds a ton of fresh "green" flavor to relatively normal salads.
Oh, I guess I made salads the last two weeks because I had a bunch of left over toppings from making pizzas two Fridays ago. They were quite good and a great way to spend way more money than just ordering comparable pizzas for pickup. But, at least I got to use my stand mixer and mix up some dough.

For some reason, the idea of "California cuisine" brings up ideas of savory healthful vegetable dishes. And as someone who lives in the state, I kind of don't get it. Maybe it's a NorCal thing? There are more of them here than there were in Las Vegas, for instance, but I hardly think that they're indicative of the things that Californian's eat, which I think would probably be more accurately described as fusion cuisine across various cultures.

In any case, Yesterday I actually found a restaurant that matches that green stereotype and it really made me happy. I got a corn chowder that was super delicious, and I added some of their chili sauce to make it spicy which made it perfect.

On a side note, there is actually another restaurant that kind of makes that green stereotype make a bit more sense. During the pandemic Souplantation / Sweet Tomatoes, a restaurant that does a soup and salad buffet, went out of business. Some new people bought two of their old locations and call them Soup'n'Fresh, largely recreating their dining experience down to the soup and bread recipes they use. They're so popular that most of the day there is a long line going out the door to get in.