stick with the fish and chips

Tuesday: It was crazy windy on Tuesday, and the vents above my desk were banging and creaking the whole day. By 3pm my coworker Rob and I couldn't take it anymore, so we went to the roof and duct taped the flaps. Or rather, he duct taped the flaps, I pranced around the roof and took photos of the view. The roof of our building is so cool! We should have parties up there.

The Del Amo parking lot as seen from the roof

Poor Rob tries to tape down the vent flaps, and all I can do to help is stand around taking silly pictures

Torrance: a balanced city

For dinner, Kim, Jana, Cyndi and I schlepped through the pouring rain and converged in Santa Monica at Ye Old King's Head for a taste of Britain. And the verdict? Britain tastes gross and smells like feet. But it was good to hang out with the girls, and I was glad to see that they were at least game to try a whole bunch of weird food, even if it turned out lousy.

We started with Welsh Rarebit

Apparently Welsh Rarebit is just English muffins and cheese. It was kind of weird tasting and definitely looked unappetizing. We were desperately hungry though, so we ate it right up. In retrospect, the rarebit was comparatively good. How were we to know that much scarier encounters with cheese were soon to follow?

Beth: Should I order the vegetarian shepherd's pie?
Cyndi: No!
Beth: Why not?
Cyndi: Because shepherds tend SHEEP.

I ordered Veggie Shepherd's Pie anyways

And a good thing too, because it was pretty good!

Kim got the "Cornish Pastie"

That's just British for ground beef meat pocket. But Kim seemed to like it, so that's good. It came with a lot of peas, but luckily Kim likes peas. Jana did not fare so well...

Her cheese and branston sandwich was gross

It was basically shredded cheese and pickle spread, on a roll. Yum. It kind of tasted like taking a bite of a block of cheese covered in relish. And it didn't even come with fries. The sandwich comes with salad, but the meat pie gets fries AND peas? What gives?

Cyndi had a banger sandwich, which ended up to be ok, but not too exciting. Jana was definitely the biggest loser of the bunch with her cheese roll.

For dessert we ordered sponge treacle

I wanted sponge treacle because for Christmas one year they gave away jars of treacle on Neopets, and I was curious. It ended up to be this nice light sponge cake with sugary custard and cream. A lot of sugar, but it's served hot and it smells like vanilla. The word treacle implies something thick and muddy and gross to me for some reason. Whereas cheese and branston sounds like it might be yummy, and Welsh Rarebit sounds sophisticated. I guess the lesson we learned was everything is the opposite of how it will sound when you're dealing with British food. So just find the nastiest sounding thing on the menu, and it'll probably be fabulous.

Me and my buddy Winston

Afterwards we walked around 3rd Street a bit and tried the new premium convenience store, Famima!! They opened a big one in Torrance this week, which I am excited to visit mainly because each store sells tshirts with its zip code, and I SO want a 90505 shirt. But we had a preview with the mini one in Santa Monica.

Kim looks over the menu

Whole lotta shut the hell up

Jana LOVES it when you stuff soba noodles into things.

They also sell Kimono brand condoms, size large. Now, that's what I call premium.

With Famima!!, I find that it's all novelty, no substance. You can get most of the stuff elsewhere in the South Bay, but at Famima!! it's served and displayed in a much cooler, more ironic, more modern fashion. They even have a signature dessert(!!) Why does a convenience store have a signature dessert?! I fully intend to create my own signature dessert for my blog. Whole lotta empanada. It'll be an empanada, stuffed with soba and branston pickle, covered in cream and sandwiched inside a delicious pancake.