A New Take On Cupcakes

I typically prefer sweet over savory, so I'm not sure what to think about this one...

In spirit of the Super Bowl this weekend, Coccadotts Cake Shop invented chicken wing cupcakes! A cornbread cupcake with bleau cheese frosting and a chicken wing on top.

What will you be eating this Superbowl Sunday?

An Awesome Tote Bag & Clutch

As much as I love this bag and clutch, they definitely fall into the want instead of need category...

Got to love Kate Spade!

Los Angeles Museums Free For All

From MuseumsLA.org, "[i]n a joint effort to present the arts and culture to the diverse and myriad communities in Southern California, the Museum Marketing Roundtable announces the seventh annual ‘Museums Free-ForAll’ Saturday-Sunday, January 28th and 29th, 2012. The museums—presenting art, cultural heritage, natural history, and science—will open their doors wide and invite visitors free of charge."

Check out the list of participating museums here: http://www.museumsla.org/news.asp

MH has been wanting to visit the Hammer and I've been wanting to see the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball!

Secret Menus

If you're from Southern California you most likely know about In-N-Out's not so secret menu. However, if you don't know about it, you can find it on In-N-Out's website here.

Anyways, the point of this post is that I just learned about a secret menu at Starbucks! I'm not an avid coffee drinker, so I doubt I'll ever try any of these, but they are still fun to know about. If you're interested, you can check out the story and secret menu posted by thedailymeal.com here.

All About The Bread

MH was looking for a good meatball sub, so we tried All About The Bread based on Los Angeles Magazine's recommendation for '17 Great L.A. Sandwiches'.

Their meatball sub is pretty solid. The sub has a great bubbly bread crust, tangy tomato sauce, and nicely seasoned meatballs. It's awesome that they are located somewhat close to our house too (La Brea & Melrose). The only downfall is that parking can be a pain, so if you go, be patient and look around for street spots.

In other somewhat related matters, we thought it was a little odd that for a place called 'All About The Bread' all of the subs came on the same bread and there wasn't a variety of bread options. It isn't a deal breaker since the bread they have is pretty good though.

Hola Tijuana

After seeing an episode of Rick Bayless's Mexico-One Plate at a Time featuring Caesar Cardini's famous Caesar salad, MH decided a day trip to Tijuana was in order. So over the weekend, we jumped in the car one early morning and headed toward the border.

Since we weren't interested in buying car insurance for driving in Mexico and didn't want to chance it, we parked in a lot by the border and walked across.

View of Tijuana Crossing the River

Tijuana is famous for their "zebras" and you can find them set up on almost every street corner. I wonder what they use and how long it takes to paint the stripes on the donkeys? The even have stripes on their ears, poor donkeys.

Tijuana Zebra

Caesar's Tapas and Bar is located in Downtown Tijuana on Revolucion Avenue between 4th and 5th street. There is a giant "Hotel Caesar" sign on the front of the building and a Carl's Jr. on the corner so you can't miss it.

Our lunch at Caesar's ended up being highlight of our trip. MH and I both ordered a Caesar salad and shared a combo plate that came with carne asada, cheese enchilada's, and chili relleno. Our salads were made and served table-side, and were fantastic. The carne asada that came on the combo plate was also the best we've had in a long time too!

Caesar Salad

The buzz kill for our trip was the horrendous line at immigration to get back into the states. It took us almost two hours to get back across the border and if it weren't for that, I would recommend a day trip to Tijuana just to visit Caesar's Tapas and Bar.

On our way home, we stopped at the Tijuana Estuary National Park in Imperial Beach. We checked out the visitors center and strolled along the trail for a bit before we decided to turn back since there was no end in sight.

Tijuana Estuary National Park

All in all, it was a great day and another fun adventure to add to our collection!

Chinese Eggplant & Dumplings

I was super excited to get Easy Chinese Recipes: Family Favorites From Dim Sum to Kung Pao for Christmas and was inspired to do some cooking. Since we had some eggplants leftover from our Christmas ratatouille, I went with the 'Fish Fragrant Eggplant' recipe and then also decided to make the 'pork and chive dumpling' recipe because they sounded good.

Both recipes were a success and I will definitely be making them again. However, since I am a total wuss when it comes to spicy food, I have to remember to cut back on the spicy garlic paste. Even after omitting the pepper in the recipe, the eggplant dish was still way too spicy for me.

Shout out to Ickity for the awesome prezzie!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family and friends!

This year MH was inspired to make a vegetable side dish for our holiday meals and he decided to make ratatouille. However, since traditional ratatouille is a stew served out of a giant bowl, he opted to make ratatouille a la Pixar's Ratatouille movie because the end result is much more aesthetically pleasing.

Ratatouille

It turned out to be a really tasty dish. We just wish it didn't take so long prepare, assemble, and bake!

Since I love baking for the holidays, I made a lattice top apple pie for our Christmas Eve family dinner, our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas day, and a banana creme pie for our Christmas day family dinner.

Apple Pie

I didn't bother snapping a picture of the cinnamon rolls or the banana cream pie since the cinnamon rolls look the same as the ones I made last year and the top of the banana cream pie was just a fluffy layer of whipped cream. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word on it that they turned out well and were delish!

Salted Butter Caramels Fail

Caramels are one of my favorite candies and after making a salted butter caramel buttercream to go with a chocolate cake for Thanksgiving, I figured I would give making them a try. I followed the recipe as best as I could, and everything seemed to be going well until I tried to cut them into squares. The mixture hardened into a much harder candy than I had hoped and were more like a sucker/lollipop. Since they still tasted good, MH didn't want to trash them and now we have a giant caramel lollipop on our kitchen counter. Fail.

New York In December

After we punched the clock, my colleague and I caught a train into the city to check out the Christmas tree at Rockefeller center and the decorations in the department store windows.

It was a crisp, clear night which made it perfect for us to stroll through the streets and take in all of the holiday cheer. Happy Holidays to all MH and my family and friends!