Escape from Chicago

I'm a few weeks late, but hey, I'll just blame it on the god damn freezing temps. In case you were wondering, waking up on a Monday morning and seeing that it's -2 outside is not something that really inspires you to do anything except turn your alarm off and go right back to bed.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago, I was lucky enough to journey out west to visit the lovely Kara (pictured below) and Amelia (not pictured, alas).

Kara picked me up from the airport (thanks for driving all the way to LAX, K!) and we went to a hippy-dippy super LA restaurant, M Cafe De Chaya. It was on Melrose and seemed very LA to me. People were talking about Sharon Stone's agent on one time ("a real dick") and there were some PETA-esque animal rights people on the other. I ordered the vegetarian club sandwich. It was HUGE. Now I know why people always order this—it's enough food for two meals. This particular one had vegetarian bacon made out of tempe on it. Words cannot describe the deliciousness of this sandwich.


I knew that no trip to LA would be complete without a trip to Pinkberry. And so we went, in a neighborhood whose name I don't remember, but sort of resembled a mix between downtown Palo Alto and downtown Los Altos. Pinkberry was so good! Mom - if you are reading, you will love this stuff. It tastes like yogurt, but frozen, something that most frozen yogurt seems to manage not to do. With the mango on top... mmm. Why does a stupid Starfruit Keifer cafe have to open near me? WE WANT PINKBERRY AND WE WANT IT NOW!


Fast forward: we met up with Amelia that night and headed to Buddha's Belly, a pan-asian restaurant in West Hollywood. Food was yummy, though nothing stands out, but the real highlight was seeing my first LA celebrity (and the only for that matter): Mr. Zac Efron, he of High School Musical fame.

After our celebrity encounter we went out to some bars in LA: The Room, and Tokyo something something. Or maybe it was just called Tokyo. Much dancing occurred, and it's possible an 18-year-old tried to hit on me/Kara/both of us.


The next day, we went to see the Murakami exhibit at MOCA. We stopped off beforehand to eat some delicious Mexican food. I love Chicago (and its Mexican) but there's something about Mexi-Cali food that's just... yum. Here's the ensenada style fish taco I enjoyed pre-museum. It's a crappy picture, but it was so full of slaw, battered fish, guac, and other fixings, that I was forced to eat it with a knife and fork, as attempting to eat it taco style was proving messy and unsuccessful.

In the midst of all this, Kara and I found time to make an entire, delicious, homemade loaf of wheat bread. How did you do this, you might ask, if you were running around LA meeting celebrities? Aha! Because this is one of those magic loaves of no-knead bread. Ours was a slight variation, so it required 15 seconds of kneading, but as you can see, it turned out fantastically. Complete recipe/retelling of the bread story, here.


And then, I willingly got on a plane and returned to the land of 0 degrees. Not so fun. But I'm hoping that once it's warm, I can return the hosting favor to Kara and Amelia. And maybe we can even make bread again. Celebrities however, I'm not making any promises of.