tag: breakfast

I’m going to warn you now: there are lots and lots of brunch posts coming. Please don’t think I’m one of those dithering ladies who rolls out of bed at noon and stumbles to brunch on a weekday — quite the opposite, in fact. These days, I’m lucky if I can manage an omelette at home before running off to work. So, on weekends, I enjoy the luxury of several hours lingering over coffee and cocktails and something with eggs.

Today? Back to the Mission and Bar Tartine.

Bar Tartine’s brunch revolves heavily around bread, toasted and piled with various toppings, as one would expect from the name. Considering how I feel about carbs, and how much I love Tartine Bakery down the street, it was inevitable that I would enjoy myself here.

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Posted in: dining out, travel, Uncategorized | Tags: avocado toast, bar tartine, bar tartine brunch, bread, breakfast, brunch, california, food, food photography, mission, mission brunch, photography, restaurant, san francisco, tartine, weekend | 2 COMMENTS

Before I left for Paris, I lived a few blocks away from Huckleberry. Somehow, though, I failed to visit until just before I moved away. I’ve been trying to make up for my negligence by visiting nearly every weekend since being back, getting runny fried egg and gruyère sandwiches or duck hash, and trying to save enough room to have a piece of rich salted caramel shortbread for dessert.

It’s a deservedly popular spot, and doesn’t take reservations, so be conscious of the wait if you’d like to eat in. Or, you can be like me and go at an off-time like 2pm. Or! You can get everything to-go and drive the mile or so to the beach and consume your comestibles while wiggling your toes in the sand.

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Posted in: dining out, los angeles, Uncategorized | Tags: bakery, breakfast, brunch, cafe, coffee, food, healthy, huckleberry, latte art, los angeles, lunch, organic, photography, restaurant, santa monica, santa monica brunch, santa monica restauarant | 3 COMMENTS

These bright green pancakes happened while I was in Nice, and hadn’t figured out how to turn on the oven yet. Of course, being far from home and lonely, I also had a huge sugar craving. What’s a sweet-toothed girl to do when there’s no way to make gooey cinnamon rolls or chewy cookies?

These hot cakes were a perfect answer. With a base of my usual hot-cakes-for-one recipe, with the intriguing addition of matcha (finely milled, high quality Japanese green tea) powder, they had a hint of floral bitterness that was the perfect foil for creamy butter and a big drizzle of syrup.

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Posted in: breakfast, cooking | Tags: breakfast, cooking, food, hotcakes, matcha hotcakes, matcha pancakes, nice, pancakes, pancakes for one, sweets | 15 COMMENTS

You know how I can tell I’m an adult? I wanted carrot cake for my birthday.

Not just any carrot cake. That Carrot Cake. I received the recipe for That Carrot Cake from a friend during college. He’d gotten it from his mom, who’d gotten it from a neighbor, who’d gotten it from her aunt, etc. etc. etc. I ended up passing it on to HR Director at work a year or so ago, and now I’m passing it on to you.

It’s That Carrot Cake because I’ve been fiddling with the ratios in this recipe for years and years, and I’ve got the balance of moisture level and cinnamon batter flavor and carrot/walnut/coconut bits just right; that is, exactly how I like it. The original recipe came from a friend, but now it’s mine.

That Carrot Cake is so moist that it’s hard to ice; little moist chunks and crumbs keep wanting to fall off. Now I don’t even try to ice the whole thing — just a slip of frosting between each layer will do, and perhaps a light layer around the outside if you’ve got some extra.

That Carrot Cake has so much walnut in it that it might as well be called a walnut cake. The carrots are both shredded and grated, so that some smaller pieces melt into the batter while other, larger pieces hang around like flakes of carrot confetti. A good amount of coconut provides more chewy texture. Oh, and there’s pineapple in there. You don’t taste it, and I have no idea how it works, but that pineapple might be the secret ingredient that brings it all together, with just enough batter to hold everything in one piece.

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Posted in: cooking, desserts | Tags: birthday cake, breakfast, carrot, carrot cake, coconut, cream cheese frosting, dessert, moist, pineapple, sweets, walnut | 3 COMMENTS