Sweet, cuppin' cakes!

During my scout up in Eagle Rock I stopped by Auntie Em's to get a sample of their cupcakes. It's never too early to scout locations or cupcakes! Well, as I was walking back to the car I was distracted by pretty fall leaves (yes, I know its January, but Los Angeles is bizarro world) and dropped the damn box. The pretty little pastries got smushed and a little dirty. (And this mean old lady who was sitting at a table outside shouted "No You Didn't!!!" Oh, yes I did. I turned back and pouted at her. Thanks, lady!) But it was clean Eagle Rock dirt, much different than grimy Hollywood dirt, or sooty Crenshaw dirt. Yes we ate them anyway. Sampled were Carrot cake, coconut, chocolate with ganache icing, and red velvet. I was on a pretty big red velvet kick for a while but I think I'm on the other side of that now. Anyway, after our little research lab/desert party we decided it would be fun to do mini cupcakes so guests could have a variety because other than poor little red velvet getting left out in the cold we couldn't decide on our favorite. We haven't settled on Auntie Em's as a vendor, much much much more research is needed.
Yesterday I went to scope out the South Coast Botanical Gardens on Crenshaw in Palos Verde.
1. Yeah, Crenshaw goes all the way to Palos Verde! How. About. That!
2. Man, that place is beautiful. You can feel the trees breathing and smell the eucalyptus and automatically 25% of your stress is absorbed by all that photosynthesis.
3. It would be a beautiful place to do some engagement shots. It would be a beautiful place to have a wedding! But maybe not our wedding.
4. I love that this scouting is taking me to so many interesting places! I'm really getting to explore the city in a way that I would probably not have otherwise done. Not that we're namby pambys about checking out cool places, off the beaten path and such, quite the contrary! But we don't tend to put botanic gardens and other such out and out beautiful places high on the exploring dance card, as it were.
And the Eagle Rock place was similar, cool place, glad I know about it, would love to go see some art there soon, not sure if its a great place for our wedding.

The place I went today, I love. I am not going to talk about it tho until I take Other J there. And I know how much it is. I will say while there I went on a hike, and it was awesome.

I'm not feeling very well today. I think its the Baja Fresh (ha! more like Baja Yesterday) we had last night.

I leave you with this recipe (scroll down for the polenta. I made it Wednesday and it was yummy and cheap. thanks NPR!) and this cartoon (now that's what I call fresh!).