A post in whence I briefly recap the latest goings-on in my life.
Did
It’s been a busy few weeks since I last wrote one of these little updates! The weather in LA has been kinda crazy this month, with lots of rain that lead to classes being cancelled and severe weather alerts. I love being cozy inside while rain is coming down though, and seeing the intersection of our street turn into a giant puddle, so I’ve been enjoying this unusually wet weather. In other news, we went to a pop-up for the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Latte Larry’s, earlier this month. I thought the level of detail in the decor was so cool, down to the “No Chat and Cuts” sign and the “Extra Dry Scones” (which were actually quite good). I love going to these kinds of fun little events and, luckily for me, LA is full of them.
Axel and I have gone on some more stairwalks and have seen some amazing neighborhoods. We’re definitely developing a little list of future areas we’d like to live in. These views are from a walk we did in Silver Lake, I love how you can see the Hollywood sign in one of the photos.
For Valentine’s Day/our anniversary (February 13th) was a couple weeks ago, we celebrated by going to omakase sushi at Sushi Tsujita in Sawtelle. While I really liked the different appetizers that the omakase included, I felt that the nigiri portion could have been better. Three of the pieces tasted very similar so I wished there was more variety there. At other places we’ve been to for omakase, the sushi chef makes each piece individually and sets it down in front of you one-by-one, whereas here, it arrived all together on one plate. They were out of their sake cocktails, but we really enjoyed the Awa Yuki sparkling sake, it had a lovely hint of marshmallow! Confusingly, the meal also took forever so we were at the restaurant for over two and a half hours. Overall, I would still give Sushi Tsujita a 4/5 and really enjoyed the meal!
Made
This Bon Appetit citrus and fennel arugula salad. We used cara cara and sumo citrus and it was frankly delicious. I made some classic pink sauce pasta as an accompaniment,
We also had a petite dinner party (aka had one other couple over for dinner). We were originally going to make sake soy braised pork belly but apparently pork belly is very difficult to get in California due to a law that was passed last year. I’m all for ethical animal farming but I didn’t realize that that would mean that you wouldn’t be able to find pork belly anywhere. We decided to pivot to these Korean-inspired short ribs instead, served with my favorite soy butter fried rice. Our guests brought some delicious homemade kimchis and pickled seaweed as accompaniments. For dessert, I made this coconut rum tres leches cake, which is something I’ve made many times before. It’s super simple to make (you just need to let the glaze soak in overnight) and very good.
Bought
There’s this cute Scandinavian store called Huset on Abbot Kinney in Venice. We stopped in the other day for some Swedish candies and they had a whole range of Moomin items, including this adorable plant pot and sugar jar. Since my cat named Moomin knocked my favorite little blue and white terracotta sugar jar off the counter and broke it, this seemed like the perfect replacement. These were kind of a Valentine’s Day gift from Axel because he got me the Skims soft lounge tank from the collection that Lana del Rey modeled, but I thought the fabric felt really thin and cheap compared to their cotton lounge tanks so he returned it.
Watched
As I mentioned above, Curb Your Enthusiasm is now in its final season., with new episodes appearing weekly on Max. I hate to say it, but I feel like this show is well past its prime. Larry does some very tired bits in the first episode and it only gets marginally better from there. I did get us tickets to watch a live conversation with pretty much all the main members of the cast in April for PaleyFest though so I am excited for that.
Read
We finished Stoner and hosted book club! I really liked this book and gave it 5 stars on Goodreads. I thought it was very well written and well-paced. I was never bored while reading it and it evoked a lot of emotions for me. It was fairly sad but kind of in a “that’s life” way that I thought was thought-provoking.
