A sweet vacation

One of my favorite parts of taking a vacation somewhere new is being able to eat out - and since I have a sweet tooth that includes desserts. It's no surprise then that two of the stops on a recent vacation my boyfriend and I took to the Central Coast revolved around places to get sweet treats.

I had a few leads on finding places because a friend suggested that we stop in Cayucos, a small coastal town about 10 miles north of Morro Bay and another friend said Linn's in Cambria was a must try.

We stopped in Cambria first and checked out Linn's which serves a comfort-food menu that includes basic sandwiches as well as pot pies and quiche. I had a club sandwich that was typical of other places and my boyfriend had an asparagus and sun-dried tomato quiche. He thought the asparagus was the overwhelming the flavor of his meal, but he liked the flaky crust on the quiche. We didn't want to miss out on the olallieberry desserts so we took a couple items to go. We ordered an olallieberry and cream cheese muffin and an olallieberry cream puff. The muffin was surprisingly devoid of olalliberries and cream cheese, except for on the top and the bottom. The cream puff was tasty though it was quite a mess to eat when the cream and the easy-to-stain olallieberry syrup oozed out.

Cayucos is the home of the Brown Butter Cookie Company, whose owners created a delicious shortbread cookie made completely with brown sugar and brown butter. We stopped in Cayucos on the way from Cambria to Morro Bay on our second day, enjoyed a fresh cooked breakfast from a take-out window before we stopped at the cookie shop.

When we walked in, the room smelled of sugar and butter as workers were busy rolling out the round shortbread cookies. We were offered samples immediately from one of the owners, including an original sea salt brown butter cookie and a cocoa brown butter cookie. They had a sweet flavor finished off with a slight salty taste. I normally don't like shortbread cookies, but these were a lot more moist than the average cookie. We ended up buying a few to share later that day as well as a couple dozen to share with my family and our co-workers when we returned from the trip. The shop makes the brown butter cookies as well as traditional sugar, oatmeal, chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies. All cookies are for sale individually, or can be bought in a package. The Brown Butter Cookie Co. does sell their cookies online for those who want to try them, but can't make it down the coast.

After the trip to Cayucos, we continued south to Morro Bay, where we spent the early afternoon out on the water on a kayak. We shared a double kayak, and it was the first time we'd been in one for both of us. Luckily, my boyfriend had some canoe steering experience so we quickly got a handle on navigating the water. We judged the kayaking a success as we did not bump boats, we didn't tip over and we didn't get stuck in the sandy, shallow water.

After the kayaking, we enjoyed lunch at a local restaurant and walked around the shops near the bay. I checked out a few different candy stores and ice cream shops before settling on one that served SLO churned ice cream. The small serving came with two scoops so I got a scoop of black cherry that included bing cherries as well as a scoop of rocky road. I got it in a waffle cone because my boyfriend isn't a fan of ice cream, but likes the cones.

On the last night of our trip, we opted to eat close to our hotel in San Simeon. We went to a place called the San Simeon Beach Bar and Grill. There weren't many places from which to chose in San Simeon so we picked the place with a mix of seafood and other typical American fare. The appetizer of sherry sauteed mushrooms was delicious, but my boyfriends seafood platter was mediocre and my burger tasted like typical dinner fare. We decided to order dessert to share, and had a lemon creme cake which had moist cake and just a light lemon taste. It was pretty tasty.

I enjoyed the desserts on the trip, but it was nice to get home and cook a meal of fresh ingredients as well as swapping out the sweets for fruits and vegetables.

A savory dish and a dessert from new ingredients

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I am much better at keeping them than I am about reporting back about them. So here is the first of several updates on how things have been going and a resolve to update things a little bit more frequently.

First off, I finished up resolution No. 12 to cook with five new ingredients quite before spring even got under way. But that doesn't mean I stopped trying out some new ingredients. This year I've tried to push myself to try new foods, recipes and cooking techniques though I still haven't tried any fish-related foods.

A few months ago, when it was still cold and rainy outside my boyfriend and I decided to cook up some beef ribs. But since it was not yet grilling weather, we found a recipe to use his pressure cooker. I'd never used a pressure cooker before, but I know from watching "Iron Chef" that it speeds up the process of cooking slow-cook items - and it can be a dangerous appliance if not used properly.

The new ingredient for me on this recipe was the beef ribs which I had never cooked at home. I wasn't sure what to expect from the process, but we looked over the recipe carefully and gathered all our ingredients. The first part was easy - we just had to cook the ribs with a season blend, sear them on all sides in a saute pan and them put them into the pressure cooker with some vegetables and beef broth. From there the pressure cooker would do the work - except that this recipe called for opening up the pressure cooker halfway to make sure the ribs were not sticking. The problem with opening up a pressure cooker is that you can't do it until it cools down enough to release all the steam from inside.

I was okay with skipping the step, but my boyfriend, armed with a long bread knife and a potholder as a face shield held the steam release valve open so all the steam escaped and we were able to check on the ribs. It is a step we would skip if we made the ribs again since there was no sticking going on. Once the ribs were cooked, we added in the barbecue sauce, which had a nice kick to it thanks to some cayenne pepper. We both enjoyed it and the meat turned out perfectly tender in under an hour.

More recently, I ended up trying a new ingredient on the spur of the moment. When I went grocery shopping with my mom a few weeks ago I saw key limes in a bag on the shelf. I've never noticed them at the grocery store before, but since they have made the dessert that bears their name so famous, I thought I would try to make a key lime pie at home. The recipe was simple, using just key lime juice, condensed milk and eggs. I cheated and used a store-bought graham cracker crust to save the time of making one at home. If I were to do it again, I would go the extra step and make the crust. The pie filling was perfectly creamy, tart and sweet at the same time, but the pie crust was a little dried out. The season for key limes is short so I probably won't be making another one soon. It was a major improvement over the frozen pie versions I've tried.

I'm sure there will be some more new ingredients to try before the end of the year, but at least one resolution can be crossed off the list.

Photos by MELISSA FLORES

Beef ribs are served with plenty of homemade barbecue sauce on top.

Key lime pie is served with a sweetened sour cream mixture on top.