Health Food

Northern Exposure

TRI-CITY TRI-TIP? The Taste of Carlsbad drew entries from 21 restaurants and one hospital——the Tri-City Medical Center cafeteria. The dish, freshly made rumaki (chicken livers wrapped in bacon), drew rave reviews from participants, according to Nancy Held Loucas, producer of the 11th annual event. “It was sooo good,” she says. “Brown sugar, bacon——it’s sweet, and oh my God, it was just really good.” Not that she was expecting anything less. “Last year, Tri-City brought chicken salad that was also dynamite,” Held Loucas says. “So I was expecting big things.”

OPEN SPACE: The city of San Marcos plans to open nine new parks and increase the size of three existing ones over the next five years. One of them, 30-acre Hollandia, will include the city’s first skateboard park. The biggest of the proposed parks, Double Peak, will span 200 acres and feature an amphitheater and hiking trails. It’s being built by the developer of San Elijo Hills.

SIDEWALK SURFIN’: The funky heart of Leucadia is finally getting a sidewalk. Construction is under way to create concrete walkways along the one-sided commercial district west of Highway 101 and on Leucadia Boulevard. But pedestrians, take note: It still won’t be an easy jaunt along the old Coast Highway between Encinitas Boulevard and La Costa Avenue, which passes through Leucadia. The sidewalks, built to the tune of $390,000, will run only from Jupiter Street to North Court, a distance of 12 blocks.

HIGH LIFE: Legoland was featured in a recent episode of the MTV reality TV series Life of Ryan. The show, which follows the life of 17-year-old professional skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, touched down at the Carlsbad theme park when Sheckler brought his little brother there to celebrate his birthday . . . Legoland has been named Best Children’s Park by Amusement Today for the fourth consecutive year. The amusement park plans another big expansion in 2008.

ANYONE FOR A TWO-BEDROOM FIXER? Rancho Santa Fe came in third on Forbes magazine’s latest listing of the priciest ZIP codes in the country. The ranking for the 92067 ZIP was based on a median 2006 sales price of $2,585,000——$585,000 more than 2005. Miami Beach (33109) and Alpine, New Jersey (07620), were tied at first, each with a median home-sale price of $3.4 million. Meanwhile, swank Malibu (90265) was down at No. 29, with a median price of $1.45 million, while Beverly Hills (yes, 90210) was ranked down at No. 40, with a median home sales price of $1.345 million.

THEY PAVED PARADISE: Wal-Mart has big expansion plans in North County. Two existing stores, in Oceanside and Vista, have been pegged by the retail giant as potential supercenters, carrying a full line of groceries in addition to the regular inventory. The Vista store, in the North County Square shopping complex, would gain an additional 28,000 square feet, bringing its total size to 153,700 square feet. Wal-Mart also has picked Carlsbad as the site for a new upscale prototype, occupying a smaller footprint and carrying higher-end goods.

KNOCKOUT REDUX: Knockout Pizza in Carlsbad, the successful New York–style pizzeria that over the past three years has become one of the beachfront’s hottest eating establishments, continues to expand. A La Costa location is slated to open this month, says owner Patrick Farley, joining three others——in Vista, Encinitas and Oceanside. The Vista and Encinitas pizzerias opened in April; the Oceanside one, in January 2006. Farley attributes his success to the pizza, “a 40-year-old recipe, originally from Sicily, that’s also used by all those pizzerias in Manhattan.”

TURKEY TROT: A Ramona couple made the Salt Lake Tribune’s list of 10 “weird things” not to miss at the Utah State Fair. Nancy and Gil Riegler are behind the “Wild West Turkey Stampede,” in which turkeys chase a radio-controlled truck containing feed around a small track. “It can go 30 miles per hour,” Gil says, “and the turkeys can get up to about 20 or 25 miles an hour, so there’s a lot of action.” Gil says he and his wife take their turkey stampede to about 10 fairs a year, mostly on the West Coast——including the San Diego County Fair. Racing turkeys isn’t the couple’s only forte——Gil is an accomplished crystal cutter, and the two also operate Oasis Camel Dairy, said to be the only camel dairy in the country.

FIRES REDUX: Among the unsung heroes of the October wildfires that ravaged North County was the fleet of GPS-equipped Poway school buses and drivers that helped in rescue and evacuation efforts. As the fires grew, Tim Purvis, director of pupil transportation for the Poway Unified School District, moved his fleet of 150 buses to safety and later managed their use remotely from the Emergency Operations Center with a cutting-edge, Web-based telematics application. Purvis said his buses “worked 24/7 through smoke so thick that driving was nearly impossible.”

MOVING ON: Rick Dudley, who for 10 years has been assistant city manager of Vista, is celebrating his anniversary year by moving on to become city manager of Murrieta. There, he will make an annual salary of $210,000, a significant jump from the $176,000 he was making in Vista.

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