Elderflower Soda

Last week when we had out of town visitors we went to the Galco's the soda pop store. Its a store dedicated in its entirety to soda and old fashioned candy (and a little bit of boozey). I've been there a bunch of times but its always fun to go and pick up a few new flavors. I tried the Elderflower Soda because recently I've discovered I'm a huge fan of St. Germain which is made from the elderflower.

via. exp. realm:wurstkuche

Here's a great little music video that Greg Laswell filmed in Galco's. At the 1:10 mark you can see the owner walk by in his apron!



Last night I cracked open the Elderflower and thoroughly enjoyed it!

Busy , busy, busy

Work is getting really busy and that means less time for me to do general life necessities like laundry which means even less time to do blogging. Soooooooooo, instead here's a recap of my weekend via instagram (which I LUHUV).

We went to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles for dinner on Saturday. It was awesome as usual and if you're ever in LA a definite must!


Sunday, we rode our bikes to Thyme Cafe for Breakfast! We shared a frissee et lardon salad and a cornmeal waffle with lemon curd and fresh berries!


I love our Sunday mornings. They refresh me for what is inevitably too long a work week.


Jack took a picture of me via instagram that is now my favorite picture currently.


Later that night we grilled steaks and enjoyed our new patio lights.

We grilled a ribeye, roasted radishes, roasted tomatoes and an arugula salad with a simple dressing from my new Julia Child Cookbook. It was tres magnifique!


We also bought a yogurt machine. It makes seven 6 oz jars of homemade yogurt at a time. The consistency was very runny but the taste was great. I used an organic whole milk, a little bit of powdered milk, and a vanilla bean.


The weekend overall was amazing despite having to work unexpectedly on Saturday Morning.

P.S. Add me on instagram if you'd like - my user name is jackandtill

L.A. can be lonely.

This New Years marked the fifth anniversary of moving to LA. It's been a hard five years between LA and I. We've had our good time and our bad times. I pretty much hated everything about LA for the first 2 years. Suddenly when presented a choice of do we want to leave or stay? I choose to stay. We moved to a better house, we got our two puppies, I started working, I made more friends everything just sort of fell into place once I stopped fighting it.

The downside of LA is that in living here I've made lots of friends and four of my good friends have moved away. Two of them went to San Francisco, one to London and now my fourth friend is moving to Nashville. I guess its what's to be expected when most of the people living in LA aren't natives. So they have no real reason to stay or return.


via-wehearit.com

It's hard to have your best friends at opposite ends of the coast or the world or even the opposite end of your VERY long state but the good thing about LA is if you're looking there are always new people to meet and bond a friendship with. I've personally never had so many friends until living here. So to my friends living far and near I love you all and thank you for being in my life.

Dinner with Friends

Last night, we dressed up and drove to downtown LA to go to Cirque Bezerk, a twisted circus. A pretty long winded story but basically I had a coupon for 50% off 4 tickets and when we got to the box office they refused to take it. The box office was owned by Club Nokia and opperated by Ticketmaster. I thought it was BS and I requested to speak to a manager from the show and we got frustrated and decided to go to dinner instead (which was what we were going to do after getting tickets anyways!).

So we walked for about 10 minutes to this little wine bar, CorkBar.


view of the bar

The girls got a bottle of wine and the boys got a bottle and we shared a three cheese's and three charcuterie's plate. As well as these little cheese puffs that were something like "cheddar gogugeres". I referred to them as cheddar boogers. Not because they tasted like booger but because I couldn't pronounce the fancy french gogugeres.


cheddar boogers

Then we all had our own main entree. I did a rootbeer braised beef short ribs over polenta, Jack had pan seared scallops over bacon spinach and turnip puree, and the other couple had hangar steak over risotto.


We didn't have the top picture which I believe is the pork tenderloin. Left is the scallops and right is the hangar steak.

Then to complete it off we had a chocolate board with about six small truffles and a brioche cupcake with caramel and bacon.


cinnamon brioche cupcake with bacon and caramel

It was pure gluttony but man was the food amazing. It's also really nice when you like to go to nice restaurants and you find another couple who's compatible and get down with that. Also, downtown LA is turning around and becoming quite the night spot with lots of fun restaurants and bars. Wish we had a metro that we could take its a little too far for a cab and driving after drinking is never a real good idea.

*all of the pictures are from a random google search of corkbar

Snuggly Sunday Nights

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The air has gotten cooler and crisper here in Southern California. I'm hoping its for keeps but one can never be sure! It is only the end of September and occasionally we have scorching hot falls. Today, we slow cooked a big old chunk of beef with potatos, carrots, turnips, rutabaga, onion, celery and garlic. Poured on a black currant and cabaret marinade and thoroughly enjoyed it tonight. I enjoyed it so much I forgot to take a picture before I ate it. Oops.

I hope everyone is enjoying a snuggly sunday like we are!

Cheers-

Raechel

Its been rainy and cold

here in LA. I personally love it but a lot of people hate it. I personally enjoy wearing a sweater and a scarf in July while living in Southern California. I've been meaning to blog the past couple of mornings but I came down with a cold over the weekend so I've been sleeping in later and resting up. So I apologize for being a short little blog today but I'm going to leave you with a cute image of coffee and fun fingernails.

via weheartit.com

Diddy Riese Cookies

I'm sorry for being away for so long but entertaining guests who are, how shall we say, slightly unable to take care of themselves for any amount of time, types of people can be tiresome. My week consisted of working for 10 hours and then going to pick them up so we could eat dinner for a couple of hours and finally getting back home to sit up for another 2 hours with the dogs so they didnt feel neglected with me going back to work and being gone for 14hrs a day ( we do let them out for lunch but it was quick because we were meeting the visitors for lunch). Sooo enough of my complaining, the good part of entertaining people is that you try to remeber the great stuff you love about LA! One of my favorite places to go is Diddy Riese nestled on the outskirts of the UCLA campus is the cutest little city area called "Westwood Village" and inside filled with lots of yummy restaurants, a bunch of old movie theaters that do the official screenings of movies with celebs and Diddy Riese.

DR is a ice cream sandwich shop that has been open since 1983. For $1.50 you can get the best ice cream sandwich that ever lived. First you pick out the type of cookie you want and then you pick out the ice cream for the filling and they push them together and hand you a bowl of happiness. Its amazing! I highly recommend checking them out if you're in the area! The line looks long and scary but its really fast!



My favorite combo is snicker doodle top and bottom with butter pecan ice cream in the middle. Narm Narm Narm.

Cheers-
Raech

Now it works...

So the picture I was trying to upload yesterday is now able to be uploaded!



This is a pic from the backdoor of my house looking towards the garage. I love the rain and miss it so much. I love how green and fresh everything looks after a rainfall. I love the smell of the rain, dewey, fresh, and grassy smell. Rain feels like a fresh start here in LA where the days all seem to run into each other and start to blend.

Cheers-

Raech

Old Patterns

I could wear a hole in a floor with how much I love going to the same places. I don't mean to do it but I like comfort. I don't like to be disappointed and I don't like to disappoint those people who work at my favorite haunts.

I'm talking about my favorite restaurants. We always go to the same places when we go out. For a nice dinner we go to Silverlake and go to Cliff's Edge, for sushi we go to Miyako, for Indian we go to the place by our house, and for Thai we go to Chan Dara which is literally in our alley but for some reason this weekend we put a toe outside of the box.


Drum roll please......We tried Ethopian Food and absolutely loved it! In Los Angeles there is "Little Ethiopia" and its on Fairfax also nicknamed "Ethiopian row". We were driving back from Ikea and wanted something good for dinner but didnt' want any of our usual ( gasp..how could this be?). So we decided to try ethiopian food.

So we used Urban Spoon ( iphone app..love it!) and found, Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Restaurant. It was amazing. We split a millenium special for 2.




This isn't exactly what we had but it comes out like this. Little mounds of stew and served with this spongy pancake that has a slight sourdough flavor. Its actually the brown part under the stews in the above image. The meal also came with a big basket of the spongy part and that is what you ate with. There were no forks, spoons, knives, etc.. ( though an obnoxious table of 10 teenagers did order forks). If you've never had Ethiopian its very similar to Indian as far as texture but different spices. My favorite was a carrot and potato stew and the split pea stew. The perfect compliment to all these spicy stews was a fresh coconut juice. Yum. Over all the experience was really good and it hardly hurt at all to step outside of our comfort zone! The only part that was not so good was the service. There was one waitress for about 15 tables and we had finished eating and waited almost 30 minutes to be able to flag her down for a check. A little disappointing because of service but the food far out weighed that part.

Upon doing a bit of research it appears that Rahel also used to own Messob which is next door to Rahel's restaurant. So maybe our next trip down there we will check out Messob.

Its finally Friday!

I am so excited! Yesterday my best-ie ( who lives in LA) called and she had to cancel plans to go down to Orange County to visit another friend and was wondering if i'd be around to hang out this weekend! I was floored! I haven't seen her since my big birthday bash in April so naturally I was super excited and jumped on it!

Im really excited to hang out with her. We have a list of places to stop

Vanilla Bakery



I'm hoping we get up here to do some shopping!





See ya on Monday kids!

I'd rather be here vs. here

I'd rather be here





than here