One for the pizza, one for me...

Ellen likes making her own flatbread pizzas. Her current pizza of choice: bacon and kalamata olives. The kid definitely has her own tastes.

Order up!

April 24
Sometimes, to entice Ellen to come down to breakfast, I text Mommy a picture of her plate. Yes, this is how I'm harnessing the power of the 21st century ...

Mincing meat, not words

The Ferry Building has been reinvented as an upscale food market. I browsed there for gifts (and lunch) a few times. Besides all the usual specialists in cheese, coffee, sweets, etc., there is the pork stall. Or as they put it "Tasty Salted Pig Parts."

Home alone

Rachel is off to New York for her grandmother's funeral. Ellen and I went on a "date" to Johnny Rockets. I took a few pictures of us to text to mommy to let her know she was missed.

Proud papa

I've been doing a lot of baking using the five-minute artisan bread technique. One of my experiments was to create filled breakfast rolls. Here's a ham-egg-cheese bun for Rachel's breakfast.

Bottomless pit

As Rachel likes to say, "Wow, your kid can sure put away breakfast." I'm surprised the bacon lasted as long as it did.

Tower of treats

For her birthday, we took Rachel out to fancy tea at the Scarlet Tea Room in Pasadena. Unfortunately, she was sick and lost her entire lunch shortly thereafter.

Clustertruck!

We decided to check out the gourmet food truck fad that is sweeping LA (and, to a lesser degree, many other cities). They usually don't make it out to our neck of suburbia or do so at times inconvenient to boring-married-people-with-a-small-child, but there was a food truck "festival" at the Santa Anita Park racetrack, with twenty of the beasts.

Fail. Twenty trucks and 5000 hungry attendees meant lines that were 2+ hours long and trucks that couldn't keep up with demand. They ran out of stuff and shut down. I spent two hours in line to place an order, waited another hour in vain for the food, and finally left, grumpy and starving. We ended up getting a salad at a sit-down restaurant nearby. No wait.

Burgers al fresco

  

One advantage to living in LA is the practically year-round outdoor dining. At a local gourmet burger shop, we have a warm and sunny lunch in mid-January.

Birth of a food blogger

She decided she wanted to take a picture of her meal. Is this the start of her career as one of those food-porn bloggers?

(For the record, the mass of unattractive beige is baked chicken schnitzel, spaetzel, and roasted Brussels sprouts. I get four stars out of five on Yelp -- please "like" this review, blah blah blah...)

Is China Disney open yet?

Vacation week continues. Dim sum for lunch? Sure, Ellen. And you want to wear your bridal Mickey Mouse ears? Why not?

Teppanyucky

Ellen and I are both on winter break this week, so I have to keep her entertained! Today, I took her to the local mediocre teppanyaki joint, with the usual showmanship with knives and fire. Ellen was fascinated but afraid of the fire. Of course, later, she wanted to drag us here every chance she could.

Quickfire challenge

My brother and I helped out with a lot of the cooking and prep for Thanksgiving this year, as my mother wasn't feeling well. We both fancy ourselves top chefs. Here's Scott putting the final touches on his pumpkin mousse dessert.

That's not right

This is what Target is selling as "holiday milk." Remember, America has no obesity problem. We might have a vampire problem, though.

Cold cuts

Found this on the cutting board in the morning. WHAT did Rachel make for Ellen's lunch???

Part of your balanced breakfast

I took Ellen to our local bagel place for breakfast. Her breakfast of choice: a chocolate chip bagel and a basket of bacon. The kid has interesting eating habits.

Oh, amber waves of cheese

I do love a good cheese counter. This place opened up a few miles from my office.

Back in season

The Asian pears are ripening again. We're moving into another fruit season at our house!

Roll your own

She liked the idea of a kid's "make your own sushi" plate more than the actual execution. All she wanted to eat was the rice.

Bigger than Ellen!

LA has good Jewish delis! Yay! This was not a strength of the Twin Cities. Here at Brent's Deli, I have a bowl of soup with a matzoh ball as big as Ellen's head.