Foods We Miss

We've found that since we've been here, we CAN'T find some of the foods we really liked and ate regularly while living in Sparks, NV.

1. Tri-tip: I guess Tri-tip just isn't a big deal down here in the south. We can't find a tri-tip anywhere, and when we asked a butcher at Kroger's to cut one for us, he didn't know what we were referring to. Keith went to whole foods and the butcher seemed to know about tri-tips and cut one for us, but it definitely looked different than the ones we are used to - BUT Keith grilled it tonight and we had it for dinner. It was the BEST tri-tip we've ever had! Super tender and juicy, flavorful meat! Hefty price tag though, so we'll have to limit our tri-tip eating to every once and a while, instead of once a month - which might be a good thing.

2. Salsa: we can't find any good, fresh salsa to buy here! In Sparks, we bought Casa de Sanchez, or Killer Salsa, or even the Safeway store brand was good. They have a lot of fresh salsas to choose from here and I bought about 5 of them a few weeks ago to try them all out, but most of them were too sweet, and none of them have the cilantro content of Casa de Sanchez! Feel lucky and blessed west-coasters! You have great salsa that you can't find over on the East coast. Unless I make it myself.....

3. Whole foods cookies: we didn't go to Whole Foods in Reno very much cause it was like, a 20 minute drive and I am just fine with buying non-organic foods. There's plenty of good stuff at Raley's in Sparks. They have this cookie stand at the bakery in Whole Foods where you could pick out your own cookies and buy them by the pound. They had caramel chocolate chip and shortbread cookies with apricot jam inside - soooo good! I thought, 'cool, we have a Whole Foods 1 minute from our house here, I can go and get those yummy cookies whenever!' NOPE. They have the buy cookies in bulk thing, but no caramel chocolate chip and no shortbread jam cookies! Yes, it's better that I don't go and eat cookies frequently, but now I can't EVER get them unless I go back to Reno! Sad.

4. Yogurt Beach: a really awesome frozen yogurt place in Sparks that we went to here and there and their frozen custards were soooo good. they had great flavors and a ton of topping options, but we just really liked their flavors. There's a frozen yogurt place a minute from our house (everything is a minute from our house), and it's the same type of business as Yogurt beach, the serve yourself and they charge you by the weight. Their flavors just aren't the same and they just aren't as good! They were ok, though, so we might go there here and there too.

5. Sushi: we got sushi rolls from CJ Palace frequently and they were sooo good - can't find anything THAT good here, yet. We did get some sushi from Whole Foods last night - they have a sushi station where someone makes up sushi rolls right there in front of you and you can request anything you want. They were really good! and to have it made up fresh right there and the price was ok too. Too bad they don't have fried rolls too......but I don't think Whole Foods fries anything.