The Monterey County Youth Museum in Monterey, California is the place where children play to learn. They also rent a mobile museum called the Wheelie Mobilee for birthdays and events.
I posted a link to their website below for exhibit and ticket information:
Monterey County Youth Museum Ticket and Exhibit Information
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Watch the website below for the 2026 Sheep Shearing Shindig in San Luis Obispo, California. The event usually takes place in May after the sheep have grown a thick coat from winter.
The event has hayrides, food, music, and vendors. Click below for information for this event that unites Scottish and Spanish culture:
Sheep Shearing Shindig 2026 in San Luis Obispo, California
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Fusion Seafood Feast at Lure Fish House in San Luis Obispo, California by Ruth Paget
I enjoyed the fried calamari and linguini with clams meal that I ate on a prior visit to Lure Fish House in San Luis Obispo, California so much that my husband Laurent, daughter Florence Paget, and I planned another visit to SLO for another meal at Lure.
The meal I ordered on my recent visit was a great California fusion feast. I started with mussels Basquaise from Spain’s northwestern Basque Country. (The Basque Country extends into Southwestern France as well.) The classic recipe has cooks sauté small chunks of Spanish chorizo sausage with garlic and tomatoes with white wine and parsley added to steam open the mussels. (The Portuguese also prepare shellfish with chorizo sausage.)
Lure Fish House makes this dish a fusion by not adding tomatoes to the sauté and steaming sauce. Instead, Lure replaces the tomatoes with romesco sauce from the other end of the Pyrénées Mountains in Spain’s Catalan region.
Romesco sauce is a purée of sautéed and roasted red peppers, tomatoes, almonds, garlic, and parsley. This is a very upscale steaming sauce and utterly delicious.
I used the garlic toast that came with the dish to soak up the romesco sauce along with bread. Next time I order mussels Basquaise, I might also order a side of rice to add into the leftover sauce, so I can get every last drop eaten.
My main dish was tequila lime shrimp pasta (made with house-made linguini). This dish is like Italian scampi but is made with tequila and lime instead of white wine and lemon. When you cook this dish, you sauté garlic and tomatoes in butter and oil. Then, you add in shrimp till cooked and add in tequila to flavor the sauce and shrimp. The cooked pasta is then added into the cooked sauce and shrimp and tossed before serving. Lime juice is squeezed over the pasta at the table.
I now equally love Italian-American shrimp scampi and tequila lime shrimp pasta. The combination of cooked garlic (which becomes sweet when cooked), citrus juice, and parsley just tastes great with shrimp. The alcohol makes the sauce succulent and makes every morsel delicious.
Seafood lovers willing to experiment with fusion dishes will find much to enjoy at Lure Fish House in San Luis Obispo, California including the city’s sunny, warm weather.
(Note: Lure Fish House has two parking lots located down the street from the entrance. They fill quickly, but there is street parking within walking distance, too.)
(Note: We stayed at the Towne Place Suites by Marriott this trip. The suite we stayed in had a full kitchen, living room, and separate bedroom with the option of reserving an adjoining room. The air conditioning worked with no problem. I like the shower products the hotel offers – Alice and Co Botanicals. Those products make me feel like I have done a spa day when I shower after dinner and sit in the AC room. There is a pool and complimentary breakfast. Marriott also has a good loyalty program that new visitors might be interested in.)
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Chicago Meal at Pub’s (Growers Pub) in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
One of my favorite Italian restaurants in Chicago, Illinois was Danilo’s. I thought of Danilo’s on a recent dinner outing to Pub’s in Salinas, California.
I started my meal at Pub’s with fried coconut shrimp, which are not Italian, but available in almost all bar-restaurants in Chicago. There is a strong influence in Chicago from now-closed Trader Vic’s with its Polynesian-inspired food and décor that looked like a set from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The décor was kitschy, but the sweet, fried coconut shrimp paired well with exotic daiquiri and piña colada cocktails. When Trader Vic’s closed, a large number of Tiki bars with similar food, drink, and décor opened and remain in operation today. Other bar-restaurants added the fried coconut shrimp appetizer to their menu.
Tropical coconut tastes great in Chicago winters and hot Salinas summers. Seafood was expensive when I lived in Chicago in the 1980s, but I could afford coconut shrimp and was happy to have some iodine-rich shrimp when I ate them.
The coconut shrimp at Pub’s tasted great. You get five large ones in your order, which is the right size for a once in awhile treat. What I really wanted to try at Pub’s this visit was the chicken a la Marsala, which I ate a lot of in Italian restaurants in inland Chicago.
I love mushrooms, but I was really in for a treat at Pub’s. The mushrooms they served in the Marsala sauce were wild and indigenous ones from Sicily – Caesar mushrooms draped over the chicken breast and fresh, sautéed procini mushrooms that were arranged around the moist and tender chicken breast.
Chicken marsala is sautéed chicken that you serve in an equally sautéed mushroom sauce that is usually flamed with Marsala dessert wine from Sicily.
Marsala is a fortified wine, which means it is a sweet white wine that is blended with brandy and aged in barrels in what is called a solera system.
There are usually 5 levels of barrels stacked on top of each other on different shelves in a solera system. The barrel with new wine is place on top of the shelves and eventually will be totally emptied into the barrel beneath it on the fourth level.
The Marsala wine you buy comes from the barrel on the bottom of the stack. The wine from the barrel above the bottom barrel on the second level is used to top off the wine in the bottom that is removed.
The wine from the barrel on the third shelf tops off the wine that was removed from the second barrel. The wine from the barrel on the fourth shelf tops off the wine on the third shelf. The wine in the barrel on the fourth level is topped off with wine from the barrel on the fifth shelf containing the new wine.
Basically, you remove wine to be sold from the bottom barrel and replace wine taken out from a barrel with that above it. When the new wine in the fifth barrel is gone, it is replaced with more new wine.
Spanish sherry and Portuguese porto are also made using a solera system. The solera system allows wine makers to bolster up weak wine years with wine from better years to maintain dependable flavor and quality.
I have digressed, but if you know how Marsala is made you can understand why it also has a price comparable to steak. The primo mushrooms also make this a premium menu dish in a steak house.
I thoroughly enjoyed my Chicago meal at Pub’s in Salinas, California and highly recommend it.
Note: Total Wine in Sand City, California carries several brands of Marsala, Sherry, and Porto, if you would like to try something like Marsala chicken at home with button mushrooms.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Artist Jennifer Colby specializes in social justice and environmental themes. She has a gallery again in San Juan Bautista, California.
Check out her engaging art at her Eco Art Studio and Gallery, visit the Mission, and enjoy lunch in sunny San Juan, Bautista.
Dr. Colby’s biography follows:
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Erin Gafill’s artwork records the pristine beauty of the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary from Nepenthe and other vantage points of interest around Monterey Bay.
For a glimpse of her work, click below:
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Raw oyster lovers take note!! Esteban Restaurant in Monterey, California is shucking oysters on Sundays. They have the perfect wine to go with them, too.
Raw Oysters at Esteban on Sundays
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France