Foodies

Not sure how I feel about this film. Granted it's only the trailer and anyone can cut anything to change the intent or meaning. But it's the same film makers that produced Jiro Dreams of Sushi which is supposedly a good thing. Jury is still out on that.

To me my Foodie's definition is not just about appreciating good food. Who doesn't want to experience good food with good friends, great conversation and an amazing local. It is part of the whole experience. Trailer is a bit pretentious and lonely to me. What do you think?

Hostess Gifts

What do you take to the Host when you are invited over for dinner or to a party? With my friends I usually ask what can I bring, as in do you need anything for the meal. And of course I always volunteer to bring dessert. It's important for me to know what your making and I hope the host sticks to their meal plan. i.e. Recently I was told the meal would be Mexican, so I made a Tres Leches cake, when I got there they'd made Pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes and green beans. In that case an apple or pumpkin pie might have been a better choice.

Ok enough of the pot luck way of bringing a host a gift. Let's talk other types of gifts. In the past I've brought wine and flowers. I know, so not creative. Wine or any kind of liquor is good, since it can be consumed at the event. However flowers, unless they are already cut and in a vase can be a mess. Who, as a host, wants to stop the flow of the party or cooking or whatever to find a vase and trim the stems. So if you go that route, make it pre-cut flowers in a vase or a potted plant.

But how about something different. Maybe a pair of vintage whiskey glasses like 1. Madison Avenue Whiskey Glasses who doesn't want a great glass for the Old Fashioned Cocktail you will consume. For the cook, how about 7. pot holders or 2. tea towels (Kei & Molly of course). Handmade gifts would also be ideal maybe some 6. Coconut Vanilla Body Butter or 4. Rosemary Infused Salt.

I love these 3. Pop-Print Measuring Spoons from Anthropologie, I own them myself and use them all the time, if the host is a baker they'd adore these. Of course anything coffee and I'm all in. Maybe the 8. Chemex this is such a pretty way to make coffee, or if your feeling extra generous the 5. Journeyman Stumptown Coffee Kit.

Whatever you decide to give, always remember "there is more happiness in giving then there is in receiving." So do it out of love and thoughtfulness. Enjoy!

Mindless Monday

Last week in Lalaland was a Fall weather cluster. One day it was 80, the next day it was in the 60's and drizzling. I suppose that's why we live in Los Angeles and not somewhere it's snowing and cold. But call me crazy a little Fall weather would make me super happy! In the meantime I promise I will NOT be jaded by our lovely weather.

Are you overwhelmed by all the Fall ideas out there? I am, between the blogs I follow and the magazines I subscribe to and the catalogs that come in....OVERwhelming. I think I'll curate a list of things I want to try, make, buy, and do!

I hope this week will be productive and inspiring. Count down to Alt Summit is on it's way so lots of planning and creating to come. Enjoy your week!

Kei & Molly Giveaway

Hello Lillian, you won a beautiful tea towel from Kei & Molly Textiles. You have a choice between the bees and the ginko leaves. Email me at tstarponce@gmail.com for your address. And congrats. Enjoy!

Kei & Molly

A few years ago I was introduced to these lovely tea towel designs by Kei & Molly at the Farm Shop and I've started collecting them ever since. I do occasionally use them, but they are so pretty I hate to get them dirty. While visiting New Mexico this last time I had the opportunity to visit and meet Kei Tsuzuki and Molly Leuthi at their studio, Kei is Japanese and Molly is Swiss German. I must add how gracious these women were to let my mom and I visit the studio, watch a printing of two of their designs, ask a lot of questions and do a little shopping.

They opened up this light filled studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2010. Everything they do is very manual, no fancy machines that automatically to do the printing, drawings, mixing of paints or drying of the product.

Their esthetic is simple design. They are obviously inspired by New Mexico with scenes of the Bosque, Red & Green Chili's, and the Big Satellite dishes from Socorro to name a few of my favorites. They also use their own Japanese and Swiss-German backgrounds as an inspiration. Their designs remind me of wood cuts and folk art, both of which they pay tribute to.

Everything is hand drawn and the stencils are printed on acetate sheets, then they use a enlarger in the photo studio to print the designs on nylon screens.

Kei is showing the aluminum frames they had custom made with one of their designs. You'll see below in their inventory of supplies they have a bright beautiful color palate. The best part, if you've ever silk screened in the past, is that all their inks are water based and non-toxic. Yay for the environment. I told them that this was the one thing that made me quit my college silk screening classes, the plastisol nearly killed me in that class.

Every season they introduce a new color, for Fall they were using an Olive ink I hadn't seen yet and making a lovely print of the Bosque, which is indigenous to New Mexico. It's an area alongside the Rio Grande with trails for people, bikes and horse. The Rio Grande is lined with Cottonwood Trees and wetlands for ducks, geese and other wild life. This design reflects them all.

As mentioned before they do everything by hand. Pinning all the flour sack material, they purchase from a distributor in Pakistan, onto the long printing table. Then they unpin them from the table and hang them on the clothes line to dry. After this they send them out to a place that has a drying systems to keep the inks from bleeding.

One the many things that make these two ladies endearing is they LOVE what they are doing. Imagine going to work everyday and loving everything about it. These two met thru their kids and hit it off. They came together to form this company, Kei taught Molly how to silk screen and with both their backgrounds in business and arts they create some amazing designs. The other amazing thing is that they are involved with helping low-income, immigrant women in the Albuquerque area. They provide great training and work for these women. That day the studio artist was Jenny a fellow Cuban, such a coincident. She did all the printing while we talked, it was great to watch her and catch-up on Cuban life.

After all the questions, we got to shopping. I bought a nice blend of tea towels, napkins, aprons and oven mitts. They even started printing scarfs. I am convinced they need to sell these towels at a few places in L.A., They are ready to expand and mostly it's a word of mouth that get's them into places. So start speaking about these ladies. I bought one of the beach scenes designs to shop around in LA and chatted with them about new designs that were uniquely LA from food trucks to flowers and fauna. So we'll see soon what they come up with.

I was drawn to so many of the designs I couldn't help myself, buying a few for friends, me and YOU. My bag was full. So I'm offering to send you one of these lovely tea towels. All you have to do Like my itsweetandsavory and Kei & Molly's Facebook page and leave a comment below. A winner will be picked at random. Ends Wednesday Nov. 13.

Dark Chocolate Cups + Double Chocolate Tartelettes

We've got chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Go to A Simply Raw Life, she has two amazing recipes for these chocolate delicacies. I partook of both during our Fall tasting event. I am really craving these treats right now, they would be SOOOO good with a cup of coffee.

Above image is the Double Chocolate Cookie Dough Tartelettes with Chocolate Frosting. I know I had you at "Cookie Dough." Felicia did an awesome demo at our event of how to make these, super easy and really, really good desserts.

Dark Chocolate Cups with Hemp Seeds I think besides the chocolate I'm kind of addicted to the Hemp seeds, they are really good, nutty and filling. To me the taste like a cross between a sunflower seed and sesame seeds.

Both these amazing chocolate desserts were made possible by products from Artisana Foods, Manitoba Harvest and Navitas Naturals. Thanks to them for providing the goods, we loved them all.

Enjoy these great recipes! #mylifesimplysweet

Proscuitto + Goat Cheese Crostini's

What to make for the Fall tasting event? I had Proscuitto, figs and cheese on my mind, so that's what was up first. I had one request from Deborah "Goat Cheese and Honey things". It's my fall back easy appetizer recipe that I make all the time. I might start doing a twist on it, I saw some good ideas the other day that I'll try to incorporate.

Image above courtesy of Deborah from My Life At Playtime

For these recipe's here's the start:

1. LaBrea Bakery baguette - this is the one I use, it's the perfect texture. If you happen to live in France I'm sure you can find some amazing baguettes. But here in L.A. I found this to be my favorite. Plus it's available in every major grocery store.

2. Slice these bad boys on the diagonal, layer slices on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil and toast for about 10 minutes on 425 F. I like them crunchy, so I turn them over and toast for another 5 minutes.

Now you can layer just about anything you want on these toasted slices [Crostini]

Proscuitto, Fig Jam, Manchego Cheese Recipe

Ingredients in the order below:

Fig Jam [buy a high quality jam and schmear it on the crostini]

Manchego Cheese [slice thinly, layer over fig jam]

Proscuitto [good quality thinly sliced, tear the pieces into smaller bites. This makes it easier when you take a bite into the bread all the meat doesn't come off at once. ]

Super easy to do and then arrange on a nice serving platter. I choose a big ole slab of cut tree trunk, it just made it festive and Fall.

Goat Cheese & Honey Crostini

Ingredients in the order below:

Goat Cheese [Room temperature, schmear it on each crostini]

Honey [drizzle over goat cheese]

Fresh Rosemary [finely chop]

Toasted Pine Nuts [I buy raw and lightly toast them in a cast iron skillet on the oven top]

Serve on a pretty platter and your all done!!

Image above courtesy of Deborah from My Life At Playtime

Enjoy! #mylifesimplesweet

Coconut Vanilla Body Butters

One of the lovely gifts we sent home with everyone at our event were these Coconut Vanilla Body Butters. Take a look at how easy they are to make on Deborah's blog at My Life at Playtime. #mylifesimplysweet

Coffee Tasting #mylifesimplysweet

For our first Fall tasting event we decided we would do a coffee tasting. Stumptown Coffee Roasters gladly supplied a few of their amazing coffees for the tasting. If you haven't checked them out here in L.A. they just opened a store in Downtown, see my visit here. You'll love their coffee and the cool vibe of the place.

Mind you this was my first ever coffee tasting, which is surprising considering how much I love it. I asked around at local coffee roasters for the best way to go about this. Cupping is the method that most are doing, it's really for the experts. So I decided to use a French Press method. This way it's something that everyone can easily duplicate. I borrowed and bought a few French Presses for the occasion.

As I didn't want to make this too formal and stop the party flow, we discreetly mentioned to everyone that it was time do to the tasting if they were interested. We had an even mix of men and women who participated. I supplied the coffee mugs from Anthropologie and typed up the instructions as follows:

Tasting Instructions

Step 1: Take a Cup and Piece of Paper

Step 2: Pour a little Coffee & Taste

Step 3: Write Down Notes Next to #

Step 4: Pick Your Favorite

Step 5: Revelation of Brand (End of Night)

Before the party I prepared the notes by staining this cute paper from Anna Rifle Paper Co. purchased from Anthropologie with a few coffee cup marks. Funny thing happened at the party a few of my friends sorted thru the papers to find a clean one, finally realizing that I purposely stained them. Oh I love you guys!

The other thing I did was make this a blind coffee tasting. I put #'s on all the French Presses and put the coffee in Paper Bags all numbered as well. This way if anyone moved a pot of coffee around we still knew which brand it was. All together I had 7 coffee's to taste. In the future I think I'd pick 5 at the most.

Here's the set-up:

The last photo is the reveal. Gather everyone who tasted the coffee and made notes. One by one reveal what brand is in the bag. You can read a few coffee notes from the tasters and any notes you have from the brands yourself. It's up to you how formal you want this to be.

One of the great things during the tasting is it really stimulated conversation between everyone. It wasn't as easy as I thought to come up with descriptive words on what you were tasting. Maybe next time I'll put some adjectives or teaser words around to help that out. Maybe notes from the coffee roasters.

Another thing I learned, is you need something to cleanse your palate. Water maybe, well I had Acorn shaped sugar cookies to put out. Which warranted one comment on Coffee #6 "Good with Cookies." Hmmm?

What brands of coffee did I use? Los Angeles has quite a coffee scene these days with a few local coffee roasters and the newly opened Stumptown Coffee, based in Portland. My suggestion is use local coffee roasters and brands, make it easy for your guest to go out and buy their favorites.

So here's what we tasted and there was no clear winner. I expected that, it's like wine, it's what taste good to you.

#1 Handsome Coffee Roasters - Cristobal Fernandez

#2 Stumptown Coffee Roasters - Hair Bender

#3 Intelligentsia - Organic La Perla Oaxaca Mexico

#4 Handsome Coffee Roasters - Los Girasoles

#5 Groundwork - Black Gold

#6 Folgers (I had to throw in a basic less booszchee brand)

#7 Stumptown Coffee Roasters - Holler Mountain

Throw in a basic coffee that you can get at your local grocery store. This makes for a fun evening and teasing. My fellow coffee snob and occasional blogger Roger happened to pick Folgers and well we can't stop teasing the poor man. Here's his notes:

We couldn't let people leave without trying Stumptown Coffee who was so kind as to supply us a few bags of coffee for the tasting. This meant we sent everyone home with a bag of beans. #mylifesimplysweet

My Life Simply Sweet

This past weekend two of my fellow bloggers and Alt Summit attendees planned a Fall tasting event called My Life Simply Sweet. This week we will be sharing all the festivities from the event, which included our first ever Coffee tasting with Stumptown Coffee Roasters as our sponsor mixed in with a few local roasters in the L.A. area that I gathered up. You'll also see a recipe for another easy appetizer, as seen below.

Now let me introduce you to these ladies, first up is Felicia, a wife and mom of one, from A Simply Raw Life. Felicia features wonderful raw food recipes from smoothies to desserts to just about anything you can think of in the raw food category, and let me tell you her food is delicious. This week she'll be sharing her recipe's made from the great sponsors and products of Artisana Foods, Manitoba Harvest and Navitas Naturals. Check out her blog this week for those post and make sure you click on the links for these goodies: Green Smoothies and Raw Chocolate Tartelettes.

Deborah from My Life at Playtime is a wife and mom of 3, who shares all her family adventures, art lessons, diy decor and handmade goodies. She lent her lovely home for this event and will be sharing a few posts sponsored by Minted and Bake It Pretty. You'll get to see the details on how to make the garland and body butter below. She might even share her first time making cream cheese frosting for her pumpkin muffins.

Together with It Sweet & Savory we hosted this lovely event we called My Life Simply Sweet, get it? It's perfect for us. Check out our hashtag on Instagram and just about every other social network this week as we share the details #mylifesimplysweet.

And doesn't that table garland below just scream Fall, look for that this week on Deborah's blog.

Image above courtesy of Deborah.

Mindless Monday

Well last week got away from me, but this week I promise to bring you a post about my studio visit to Kei & Molly. Can I just say I love New Mexico and if I didn't already have roots set here in Cali, I might move back there. The weather is lovely, and I just miss seasons. We so don't get a real taste of them here.

I also love road trips. As most of you who follow me on Instagram know I had 13 images posted before 10AM. There is so much that inspires me in the Route 66 landscape. Thankfully, I have a great, patient (long-suffering) husband who indulges me and stops at every abandoned house on the way. Actually I only ask for one big stop on the road, the rest are random when we stop for gas, potty break or just a quick walk around. Sadly there are so many little towns on this route that have been completely abandoned or old buildings, gas stations that just no longer exist.

Here's a few of my favorite images IG photo's that I didn't post from the trip. Enjoy your week!

Mindless Monday

I believe I've finally beat the high-altitude laziness. Only took a whole week. I woke up energized, if not cold, while SB is wishing for our comfy bed at home. I started my day off by having a good call with my boss (real job), good coffee (I made it this time, mom's is terrible), a visit to an art studio I love here in ABQ (more to come on that later this week), and a quick trip to see if I will ever be able to afford a Pendleton blanket. I'm coveting the Glacier National Park version (first from left), but the new Badlands version is a close second (fourth from left). Oh one day. It's an investment I know that's well worth it.

This week is full of friends and family dinners, taking care of granny, and letting mom rest. So basically cooking, baking and visiting. All that and my regular 40 hour work week along with a bit of prepping for an upcoming blogging event for a small group of friends It's going to be a busy week indeed.

It's my last few days in the Southwest with the real Fall weather, and then back to the 80 degree weather of SoCal. Hope yours will be as fulfilling. Enjoy!

Mindless Monday

Blogging from the road on our way to New Mexico. Two weeks spending time with Family and working from Mom's office with the Corvette clock! Yes the engine roars on the hour.

Being on the road is a great way to just clear your mind. Enjoying the scenery. I use to like a sleep the whole way as a passenger, but now i want to stay awake and soak in all the landscape. Catching up on podcasts and maybe learn some Spanish from our language course. Arriba, arriba. Enjoy your week!

Mindless Monday

It's HOT out, I want it to be truly Fall. I want to drink HOT tea, HOT Chocolate and HOT coffee. But no, the indian summer is here in L.A., it was a summer beach weekend. Although we were out in the high desert for a historical event this weekend, it was windy and HOT there too. What a crazy Fall. Next week I'll be in NM taking care of some family business, but hope to keep up my posts with maybe a small NM adventure here or there. At least with my family it will always be an adventure for sure. One day I may live somewhere different, at least I hope. But in the meantime I've been trying to take advantage of where I live. Doing local things, like I did a few weekends ago here.

When I'm in a new area I always try and find a cool coffee or tea place. I found this one above on Pico Blvd., called Paper or Plastik. I loved this place, great vibe, good food and flavorful tea and coffee. I had tea the first time and loved how they served it in this cute little pot and great cups.

Also this place is attached to a dance studio, where we were able to peer into a ballet class, oh this looked like so much fun. It's always a treat to find a new place in any neighborhood in L.A., we're so far spread out you have to enjoy what's near you, while you can, otherwise the traffic will swallow you up.

Here's to hoping it turns colder in L.A., if not I'll let you know what it's like in New Mexico soon enough. Enjoy the week!

Paper or Plastik

5772 W. Pico @ Ogden (just east of Fairfax Blvd.)

Open 7am - 10PM

On the weekends, no Laptops allowed (i kind of like that)

Italian Travel Adventures

As mentioned a few Tech Tuesday's ago, traveling to Italy in the days before we all had a camera and computer in our pockets was a welcomed adventure.

Here's the story I was referring to for our arrival to Rome, maybe you can relate and laugh and share your own fun travel stories. When your traveling on a budget, off-season and backpacking you have to be ready for any adventure. This includes sometimes taking night trains to cut hotel costs. To get to Rome we took the night train from Venice.

We also had one baguette and one jar of Nutella for this overnight train ride. Miche and I called this concoction "chocolate bread." We ate that on our train ride while trying to get a few snaps that ended up turning int double exposures and a hot mess of images, but they make me laugh every time I see them.

Next up was getting to Rome and then calling, from a pay phone, our pre-planned meeting place (pre-planned as in "on the plane to Milan"). Why would this be easy, the Pensione, of course, was booked. In my broken Italian I proceed to call every hotel in our Let's Go Italy book and found one that had a room for three girls.

Then I ask directions, mind you I have no pen, pencil or any writing utensil. So I'm repeating everything this man says out loud and trying to map this in my brain, which has no reference to a city I've never visited, Rome. We could have taken a taxi, but remember we're on a budget, so we are determined to take the train. Oh youth.

I really only remember one thing from those directions, saying "Il Spagna," over and over. That was the train stop that we needed to get off at to walk to our Pensione. So the three of us make it to the underground train station. Out of no where, hundreds of people come flooding to the platform, train comes, WOW, seriously everyone shoves their way in. I'm so intimidated by large crowds, I resist. Then the train doors close and I am standing on the platform with my friend Ronda. We look at each other and realize Miche has been shoved into the train. I go running, with backpack on down the length of the train to find Miche. She is shoved in the middle of a crowd, ON THE TRAIN, with her backpack literally being pulled down by the mash of people. I bang on the window and just scream Il Spagna, Il Spagna. The train departs. I tell Ronda, "okay, we have to shove our way in, if we get separated, get off at the Spagna stop." So next wave of ants come, we shove our way into the train and pray that Miche heard us.

The Spagna stop comes, we run out, Miche is patiently sitting on a bench hoping we get off this train. Thank God, she heard all my mumbling directions. We all hugged, laughed and practically cried, very thankful we didn't get separated.

Once we gather ourselves, we proceed to walk many, many blocks looking for the street of our hotel. We come around the corner and we see the gypsy kids and immediately we all decide to put our backs against the wall so they can't steal anything or distract us. They are pissed and spit in our direction. Then they proceed to try and steal a well-dressed Italian man's wallet from his pocket. He proceeds to smack their hands and walks away. They eventually lose interest in us and walk away. Now we're slightly lost. So I ask anyone I can, in my broken Italian, where this address is. Someone kindly gives us directions and we continue on our way.

When we finally arrive, we find this giant door to a Palazzo. We open the doors, which leads to a courtyard. A sign tells us the Pensione is on the top floor.

So what do we do? LOOK FOR AN ELEVATOR. We are so kidding ourselves and resign to walking up SEVERAL flights of marble stairs. We get to the very top and knocked on this little door, completely out of breath and SPENT. The owners of the hotel quickly help us in, take our backpacks off and check us into our room. What a day! Trains, trains, separation, gypsy's, and stairs. Oh the joys of traveling, are you tired yet? We were, but after settling in and securing a reservation for our friends, we went on our non-tech adventure mentioned earlier. After that debacle we finally begin our Roman Holiday.

Mindless Monday

Today my mind is jumbled AGAIN. I have so much going on I can't focus at all. So I'm moving from one thing to another. I gave myself a computer break this weekend and I probably should have just sat down and hammered out what needed to be done. Today I am finally making me a list of what I need to do. I have a few friends that love LISTS and love to cross off what they accomplish, I'm more of check the box kind of girl. I find that writing things down is super helpful. For one it organizes my mind.

Sunday was National Coffee day and well I barely had time for a cup of coffee. I did manage to have some over the weekend, visiting my usual places Groundwork in Santa Monica for a Mocha and a Machiatto and then Emilia's for a Cappucino and that was all on Friday and Saturday.

Over the weekend I really took advantage of living on the Westside of L.A. county. Went to the local farmers market for some food inspiration, met the harpist above, who was such a happy soul. Produce right now is very transitional. I was on the hunt for figs, cause it sounded so good, but didn't find any. Apples are in and although I didn't get to apple picking with my friend Deborah at my.life.at.playtime, I hope to reap the bounty of what she picked and make something fantastic.

This is the third year for Glow in Santa Monica that showcases few art installations on the pier and beach. Some things were pretty cool. Like the beautiful light filled nets above which came with it's own audio, and mounds of sand to climb around. NYT wrote an interesting review on it. Other things were plain out weird and cosmic, not my thing. Great time for walking and biking as most of the downtown streets were closed. We choose to walk and boy my feet felt it.

After that we tried a new place called Bar Pinto, felt like a trip to Spain, followed up by watching Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown episode on Spain , which really made me visit Granada, Spain. On my list of things to do in this lifetime.

Last thing for the weekend was a quick jaunt to the Abbot Kinney festival. I went early, 10AM just to get myself a tote from Urbanic and buy a t-shirt for my friend in the UK. It was already hot and looked like it was going to be a fun day full of food, music and amazing locally created arts and crafts. I had, had enough of crowds so getting there early was key for me, get in and out and take a quick look. Plus all the road closures and parking were not ideal.

October starts tomorrow. I hope to have a few more Fall focused posts and can't wait for a busy fun month of activities. Enjoy your week!

Mindless Monday

This is truly a Mindless Monday since I can't get my head straight and mind working. I'm all over the place today as this post will indicate. House and mind are cluttered. I think if I get the house uncluttered it will help my mind.

Did you know yesterday was the first day of FALL? That makes me so happy, I love this time of year and am anxious to put on a sweater and crunch thru some leaves. We may get that opportunity soon if we end up in New Mexico helping out with a few family responsibilities. I have an itch to travel, I so want to get out of town, maybe my NM trip will help that out. Sometimes we need a relief from our routine. Which ironically I haven't had a routine in about 2 months.

I continue to explore a few vegan and gluten-free recipe',s just because, we'll see what I come up with. Someone just suggested a chickpea based cookie recipe that she tried over the weekend, she said it was fabulous, so I'll give that a good ole try. It might just be vegan too. Have a Happy Monday and great week.

Mindless Monday

It's going to be a busy week, so posts will be few. We'll see how much I end up on instagram, it really depends. We have another local assignment, so we'll be juggling real-life work with volunteer work and well that means this place always suffers, but I'm OK with that. Seriously my priorities are as follows:

1. Volunteer Work - it's religiously based and MY LIFE.

2. Secular Work - cause we gots to pay the bills, I actually like what I do

3. Blog Work- i love this space, it's my lifeline to creativity, but it's #3 on the list till one day it can be #2 and help pay the bills.

Past weekend was filled with spending long days in volunteer work, making a chocolate gluten-free cake (blog post soon), visiting with friends and babies and a favorites party (see a sample of one here) and a going-away party. Oh party party party. Our social life has been full. We are ready for some down time. I might have forgotten what that is? We'll be carving out some space for that soon...I hope.

I foresee a road trip and what I wouldn't do to drive an old car like the above thru the desert, of course with a good radio and some air conditioning or heater, depending when we get on the road. But this just screams road trip to me. Until then enjoy your week, hope it's as fulfilling as mine.

Back of the Napkin

On a day when you are probably thinking about World issues, you may think this is a little trivial. At least here in the U.S. there is always self reflection on this day, remember what we did before Sept. 11th. I think this is the first thing in history that I was fully aware of and lived thru watching it live on TV. I try not to rehash that day, but always try to remember live each day like it really matters what you do and what you want to be remember for.

This brings me to some of the little things I enjoy. Each month I get a few magazines subscriptions, you can see them here. One of my favorite columns is the back page of Bon Appetit. I love this "back of the napkin" series. In the August issue Sofia Coppola was featured. I love this one, I really like her, never met her, but I like her movies, photography and musical taste. She's got a unique style. In this issue she named a few LA favorite places to eat.

Giorgio di Baldi in the Santa Monica Canyon made the list. They have great Italian food, small intimate place. It's been ages since I've eaten there, was with a Foodie client way back in the 90's, and well SB has never been, so this is a must visit place. One of the other places she mentioned is Proof Bakery in Atwater Village. I made a special field trip just to go check this place out. You'll love the low-key vibe and great pastries and coffee.

I think a Napkin series on your favorite places would be fun, don't you. Let me know what you think? I'd love to hear from you all on what your favorite places are in your city. Leave a comment below and let me know if you'd be willing to submit a Napkin with your list of places to visit, even if it's from your Smart Phone and even if your on vacation. All the better I say.

Stumptown Open in Los Angeles

I am outside my one post per day. But I found out Stumptown Coffee Roasters opened up in Los Angeles yesterday. Location is 806 S. Sante Fe, in Downtown LA. I love this new space, can't say I am super glad it's in DTLA. Would love something closer to the Westside, cause as you all know it takes hours sometimes to go 10 miles here.

LA Times photographer was there today and there should be something online at LATIMES.com this afternoon about the opening. Great space, tall ceilings, amazing roasting machines. It's all industrial with warm wood tones and that's just the decor.

I need a these lamps AND I need a space where I could hang these too.

On to the coffee. There are nice choices, I've already done a mini tasting of the coffee during my camping trip here. So I'm familiar with a few of the blends. I ordered a Latte, it was milky smooth, but I think I'll be moving back to Macchiato's, I'm not such a milk person these days, I just enjoy the jolt of the beans by themselves.

Oh and treats a Maple BACON scone. And yes there was a piece of bacon on top. I couldn't order it, GUILT, but I will when I go back when I feel less guilty.