July 2025

Food July 30, 2025

Unknown Eater Presents: Four lazy afternoon lunches

Dateline: Rancho Santa Fe — Somewhere between the second cup of coffee and the third phone call from City Hall, hunger strikes. You’ve got five minutes, an aging microwave, and a fridge full of “almost.” Fear not, North County — salvation arrives on toasted bread. Lazy Tuna Melt Born of desperation and mozzarella. Take your tuna salad (yesterday’s newsroom lunch special), pile it onto a…

Escondido, Featured, North County, Surprising and Strange, Travel July 4, 2025

Hodgee, friendly Lake Hodges Monster: Fact or fiction?

Go down to Hernandez Hideaway at rural Lake Drive in Del Dios and people will swear up and down the long wooden bar that Hodgee, the friendly Lake Hodges monster, really truly — well, almost definitely exists. “The Lake Hodges Hodgee monster is kind of like the Loch Ness monster,” said Stan Smith, a long-time Del Dios resident. Smith, a cowboy poet and man about…

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