Traditions- Rosca de Reyes (from Su Pan) and Calendars

mmm-yoso!!! welcomes you to this first Saturday of 2018 with a post from Cathy.  Kirk is feeling a bit under the weather.

Today, January 6, is the 12th Day after Christmas.  This evening, the 12th Night, is when The Mister and I take down our decorations (which went up on Christmas Eve).  It is traditionally known as the Feast of the Three Kings or Epiphany.  

Earlier this week, we dropped by Su Pan Bakery to order the Rosca de Reyes, a traditional pastry symbolizing a King's ring which we will have while working on dismantling the tree and cards and decorations. {If there were people helping us, then whomever gets the piece of Rosca with the hidden tiny plastic 'Baby Jesus' inside would be responsible to host the Candelmas Day meal on February 2, another traditional day to take down decorations}.

 
I did purchase a small Rosca to mail to family back East, hoping they would receive it today...but the weather is very bad and the Post Office tracking shows it probably won't get there until Monday.  At least it will be pretty much frozen and probably still fresh.  Samples of Rosca on the counter...


Su Pan is probably our favorite bakery, not only for the sweets, but also the fresh bread and the breakfasts (tortas, burritos and plates), lunch tortas and, on Friday and Saturday evenings, street tacos- grilling out in the parking lot.  
A ham and egg and cheese breakfast bollilo ($4.99).  The bollilo (bread) baked here, of course, is fresh.  A nice, light crispy, perfect crust.  The filling is a wonderful, light scramble of egg and cheese and pieces of ham. The combination of bread and filling is just a perfect breakfast bite.  
 The bacon, egg and cheese burrito )$4.99) is also a perfect meld of flavors (as well as filled with wonderful pieces of bacon).

Su Pan Bakery 5006 El Cajon Blvd San Diego 92115 Website Open 5 a.m.-10:30p.m. daily

Another New Year tradition for us is changing the calendars with new, business giveaway calendars.  The Mister and I usually are on the hunt for these beginning in November, but this year, we were busy and only managed to acquire a few on our own, and I was thrilled to have been helped by my friend, cc, who, with another friend, (Astroboi), went around acquiring(mentioned at the bottom of that post) the majority of the calendars this year.  
As always, we must have an Orchard Supply Hardware train calendar (since 1931, all of their calendars have featured trains-the artist this year is John Winfield ).  We usually picked one up after decorating Rose Parade floats in Pasadena, but now there is an Orchard Supply close to home.  Nijiya Market  always has a beautiful, botanic themed calendar and the Zion Market calendar is quite large and good for writing appointments.
Both Seafood City and Lucky Seafood Supermarket have the traditional 'bamboo' calendars, with drawings depicting the Year of the Dog.  Otay Mandarin Chinese Restaurant gave away a beautiful, desktop/standing calendar.  

 There were more, including the Beautiful photography of the Hudson River Valley, given away by the Marist College, a refrigerator magnet calendar from a local realtor, the HMart desktop style, the Buffalo Exchange (which has the calendar in Spanish, indicates the Days of the Saints and begins in December) and, when we were in Pasadena for the Rose Parade Showcase of floats (another post), we stopped in at the House of Cookies and Mrs. Arsen gave us one of their Armenian themed calendars (with Armenian text). It's hanging right next to my desk and I'll try to learn from it this year.

I hope everyone is having a great year, filled with tradition.

Comments

[Kirk]

Ah yes, the calendars Cathy! CC was so excited to get you those!

[caninecologne]

Astroboi was also excited to "help" acquire those calendars as well, ha ha! Seriously, it was a mission. We must have looked a sight, scoping out the registers, ha ha. My favorite calendars were the scrolls from Buffalo Exchange (I kept the VoG). Cuahtehmoc looks pretty cool. The box from Seafood City was nice too.

[Cathy]

She certainly did the majority of legwork for us this year, Kirk! I really enjoy seeing calendars around the house.

The Mister and I were similarly scoping out Orchard Supply weekly, knowing that the calendars were available at other locations North (People had the OSH calendars on EBay), cc. I really appreciate you and Astroboi doing us that favor...a tradition in itself!