El Cajon Librarians Take You on Their Culinary Conquests

Miko Osada (left) and Jenne Bergstrom, both librarians at the El Cajon branch, have two blogs about their culinary experiences. They create recipe-less dishes from books they've read on their blog 36 Eggs and they've chronicled a journey to eat at nearly every restaurant on Convoy St. on their Convoy Conquests blog.

How do you celebrate Convoy Day?

Wait…that holiday isn’t on your calendar? It is for Jenne Bergstrom and Miko Osada, librarians at the El Cajon Branch of the San Diego County Library.

The duo began a quest to eat at every restaurant on San Diego’s Convoy Street and ended up blogging about the experience and creating their own holiday.

Now they’ve set out on a new adventure – creating food mentioned in books they had read. That’s spawned a second blog about their kitchen creations, featuring their attempt to be perhaps the first people ever to bake a cake with 36 eggs.

That’s right – a 36-egg pound cake from L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Windy Poplars” from the “Anne of Green Gables” series.

“Last Friday I stayed up until 3:30 researching pound cake. As far as we can tell no one has been crazy enough to try making this cake,” said Osada.

Part of that reason – 36 eggs not withstanding – is that the foods these two are attempting to make have no recipes.

“Most books don’t have recipes,” said Bergstrom. “They just mention the food in passing.”

But that’s part of the fun. As librarians, they relish having to research how to make the dishes. That particular cake inspired them to name the blog 36 Eggs, which captures the essence of the challenge they’ve given themselves.

“We’re librarians, we love data and librarians love projects,” said Bergstrom.

They’ve looked through cookbooks that are 250 years old. They’ve spoken to scholars. They’ve done online research.

Their most recent dish on 36 Eggs was Doctor Spencer’s Meat Pie from Roald Dahl’s “Danny the Champion of the World.”

“Jenne is a very good cook and baker,” said Osada. “For birthdays, she offers to make friends a dish of their choice and for my birthday I chose meat pie.

“I’ve wanted that pie since I was nine.”

They had only a vague illustration from the book as their basis. They had to come up with the recipe through research.

The first entry in the new blog was Billy’s Masterpiece of Empty Calories (toast with strawberry jam and bacon) from Judith Krantz’s “Scruples Two.”

On the blog, the duo notes to make the dish properly, you should use only the finest ingredients: English white bread, high-quality thin-sliced bacon and strawberry conserve.

There’s no shortage of creations they want to attempt. They’ve even asked fellow librarians for suggestions.

Osada said future plans include having a Harry Potter Day where they will make butterbeer and treacle tarts.

There are limits, however. When Osada mentions they create dishes from “Game of Thrones,” Bergstrom agrees but stops short of agreeing to locusts dipped in honey.

“I’m not eating locusts,” she said.

Their first blog together, called Convoy Conquest, just celebrated its 100^th post. It’s a chronicle of the duo’s desire to eat at every restaurant on Convoy St. from Clairemont Mesa Blvd. to Aero Dr.

They estimate that they’ve eaten at approximately 85 restaurants. The blog features reviews of each establishment along with photos of all the dishes they’ve tried.

It started as a way to celebrate Osada’s birthday, and Bergstrom said they just started going often because they both really like Asian food.

“We never thought we’d do a blog,” said Bergstrom. “We just started writing about our trips for our own reference and then people started reading it.”

The nice thing about Convoy St., Osada noted, is the variety of offerings and other businesses that allow you to have a different adventure each time you go.

“We’re very persistent. There were some weekends where we ate there three times in a day,” she said.

And if you’d like to celebrate the Convoy Day holiday? Pick a day, make sure you’re hungry and go for it.

Osada says they celebrate it in August or September , whenever they have a weekend free.

“Convoy Day is the best day of all,” Bergstrom said. “We go from 9:00 a.m. to midnight.

“We do breakfast, breakfast dessert, lunch, lunch dessert, get a massage, then dinner, dinner dessert and karaoke.”

Writing two blogs in their spare time has Miko Osada (left) and Jenne Bergstrom juggling their schedules to make time to go out to eat for one blog and find time in the kitchen to create dishes with the other blog.