Pancake heroism

Pancakes are a new love in my life, but only to order. Try as I might to make them at home, I'm not having much luck.

Sadly, this was the case even when I tried to mix it up with some ricotta and fruit.



I gave these ricotta pancakes a whirl with some market fresh ricotta and extra raspberries, and all was well on paper. Looked good. Added Cool Whip (v good).

Yet, ultimately meh. I don't understand this. Whenever I order pancakes for breakfast, it's sweet fluffy goodness, but at home it's.....[deflating sound].

Intending to persevere this week with a few new recipes and mixes, but until then you have defeated me once more, oh unknowable pancake universe.

Silverlake breakfast

Q. What washes down a bottle of cheap wine and birthday cupcakes?



A: Sunstreaked omelette and sweet potato fries from Dustys in Silverlake!

Cheesy, carby goodness.

Finally

I finally caved, and tracked down one of the Twitter trucks.

If you're going to track a food source down via the internet like some kind of demented hipster scavenger hunt, better make it a good un.

And what's better than a giant dollop of ice cream sandwiched between two giant chewy cookies?



Cheers, Coolhaus truck! I forgive you for setting up in a spot with no. parking. for. miles. I feel cooler already.

First attempt at homemade pizza

My GOD I've been missing me some carbs. Hence, homemade pizza.



The star of the show here was garlic and herb refridgerated pizza dough from Trader Joe's. SO doughy, chewy and good.

I topped with some zesty pizza sauce (made from scratch, pat on back, pat on back), a sprinkle of parm (really didn't want it too cheesy), spinach, buttloads of garlic (technical term), a few mushrooms and some market fresh ricotta (the blobs).

I've never worked with fresh pizza dough before and found it a bit unruly, so ended up making two slightly oddly shaped pizzas, but my god they were good. I shared one with Joe's sister Jenna who's visiting us at the moment, and divided out the extra slices for lunch and snacks. It felt so good to have a comfort food on hand with fresh yummy ingredients. Definitely one to repeat.

PS. My Halloween Hitchcock tribute

The things that we eat and do not blog

The last week somehow has prompted a bit of a spiral. Here are some things I have eaten since Halloween and failed to photograph.

Jack in the Box burger and fries
Several large bagels with lox + cream cheese
4-5 slices of pizza. Large
Iced cookies
Snickerdoodle cookies
Nestle Crunch mini Halloween bars. Many
Energy bars as supplement to breakfast every day
All you can eat sliders + spanish rice

Mitigating circumstances:
Crazy blackouts in my building that went on for over 24 hours, making cooking impossible
One of the worst colds I've had for years. Cue mantra 'stave a fever, feed a cold' playing on loop in my head
Halloween

Decision
Although this has not been my proudest week, I can feel myself coming out of it. Luckily my cold only prevented me from running for a day or two and shouldn't hold me back from the 18 miler training run this weekend.

Although the temptation is to take this bad behavior and ride it out for as long as it can go, I'm starting to stabilize. The Halloween candy has thinned out and no longer haunts me. The power is back on and I'm all stocked up on healthy fruits and veg. Joe's sister is in town, so I'm pouring a lot of energy into cooking healthy meals for three. It's all starting to click back into place.

From now on, it's less of this



And more of this



Back on track, baby.

Thai me up! Thai me down!

We celebrated a pre-Halloween night at a haunted house in Pasadena, CA, with a slap-up Thai meal at Saladang.

I haven't eaten my fair share (or anyone else's share) of decent Thai food since we moved to LA, so I was excited to visit this highly recommended eaterie. It was a nice, airy space with high ceilings and a relaxed vibe.

We were all about the food. Starting with the 'Thai Toast'. These were delicious, if sinfully deep fried - they tasted like shrimp toast, but had a mix of meat and came with a nice tangy, delicate cucumber salad.



Pad Thai was a must. We picked the chicken version - HUGE enough to comfortably feed three people and still have a mountain of leftovers to take home:



We also ordered a massive plate of shrimp fried rice to share:



And a red curry with beef. This was the star of the evening! Very creamy, with a delicious coconut sauce. Holy YUM. Shame this was the smallest dish we ordered! We all wanted more.



It felt so good to have some great Asian food again - been much too long!

After the haunted house (hilariously cheesy and fun), I was jonesin for some pre-Halloween chocolate. This little guy pretty much jumped into my hand at a late night Vons run



Let candy season commence!

Pasta methadone

There are certain foods I would never have dreamed of eating a year ago. Tofu is one of these foods.

There's just something I don't trust about tofu. It's not meat. It tries to masquerade as meat, but it's confusing and odd. The texture is odd, that mushroomy smell is odd.

However, I do dream about pasta. Big bowls of creamy pasta. So good, so forbidden, so sorely missed. Therefore, I suspended my no-tofu rule a few months ago to try the Tofu Shirataki noodles, as championed by Hungry Girl.



I was pleasantly surprised by these. They have a very pasta-like consistency, and work really well as a substitute for me. Add in some Laughing Cow cheese, a dollop of sour cream and some chicken/vegetables and voila! Faux alfredo!