New Category- Local Eats

Pretty Coffee

I'm planning on revamping my blog by categorizing my posts, fixing my labels and giving my blog a little face lift. My goal is to convert everything by the end of June. That should be plenty of time... yes?

One of my new categories I'd like to share with you is called "Local Eats." I live in the Los Angeles area and there are plenty of neat and interesting places to eat at and I thought it would be neat to share them with you... good experiences and bad.  Let's start with the good...

Place: The Conservatory for Coffee
Location: Culver City, CA (right across from Sony Studios)
What: Coffee Shop

I believe I found this gem from Yelp and I'm sure glad I did. Jason and I love to get coffee here on Saturday mornings. I love this place for many reasons. 1st, it's an independent coffee shop. 2nd, they make really good coffee. 3rd, it's literally a mom & pop shop and 4th, it's not run by hipsters! The staff are all very nice and put care into making your coffee.  Having just visited NYC and experiencing some local coffee shops, it's made me appreciate The Conservatory for Coffee even more because it's really the whole experience that makes going to coffee shops appealing to me. (I used to work at a coffee shop in college, by the way.) I've found that specialty coffee shops do make better foam and put in a bit more TLC in pulling their espresso, but the hipster vibe that I've found at these other coffee shops just doesn't do it for me and ruins the experience.

And that's why I like Conservatory for Coffee. One person takes your order and that same person makes your drink. They know what they're doing when they steam their milk and pull their shots. The prices are comparable to Starbucks, and with recent Starbucks rate hikes, they are likely cheaper. And the quality is so much better. Seriously. It's smooth strong coffee and velvety milk. My favorite drink is their vanilla iced latte, where they froth their milk by blending just the milk & vanilla in the blender before pouring it over ice and adding the espresso shots. Yum and genius!

Dreamy Vanilla Iced Latte

Jason and I only go here on Saturdays generally because they close at 6PM on weekdays and are closed on Sundays. If you're in the West LA area, I completely recommend you make a trip here. If you're not, check out their website, where you can order coffee beans online.

You will be hooked.

Homemade Strawberry Lemonade

Strawberry Lemonade

When your mom gives you a ton of home grown lemons and you freeze all of them and forget about them for a couple of months, but eventually find them and defrost them all.... you make lemonade. Did you know when you defrost frozen lemons them become all mushy?

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

So my weekend started off wonderful... took off early from work on Friday, woke up early Saturday to take my car in for an oil change

French Toast

Do you have a dish that you make without an aid for of a recipe? Something you just toss together and it's always the same way each time, regardless of the fact you didn't measure anything?

French toast is that recipe for me. It's such an easy dish.

White Chocolate-Chocolate-Coconut Cookies

Piles and Piles of Cookies

Cookies- what's not to love? I decided to make some cookies last Thursday night to bring into work and to also enjoy at home. I had half a bag of dark chocolate chips, half a bag of white chocolate chips and a big bag of coconut hanging around and felt like experimenting a little.

German Chocolate Cake

March has the blessing of two birthdays in my family. My BF Jason's (see his birthday cake here ) and my dad's, which this post is about. My dad wanted a German Chocolate Cake. I thought this would be (pardon the pun.... hah) a piece of cake.

Week Night Dinner- Chicken Caesar Salad

I have a few posts saved up and I need to start cranking them out! This is another week night dinner edition... brought to you on a Friday night where I did not cook dinner and instead had some takeout. But I mean well and that counts for something, yes?

This Chicken Caesar Salad was made one night last week for dinner. Homemade croutons, dressing and all. And it sure was good. I've never had such good tasting salad dressing at home before. And the best part was that is was almost too simple, I can't figure out why I've been buying the stuff from stores this whole time??  Seriously, the dressing will boggle your mind and change the way you buy salad dressing.