cous cous.

I love cous cous because of how quickly it can be made and how delicious and nutritious it is. It is such an amazing alternative to rice or pasta, which I eat everyday otherwise. It works with nearly everything (you can even mix it with cinnamon, almonds and sugar as a little dessert!). Usually my cous cous recipe adapts to whatever is in my fridge. This time I sauteed yellow, green, and red peppers, carrots and jalepenos and mixed it all in with my cooked cous cous that I cooked in vegetable broth instead of water. Then I added smoked tofu, corn, beans, feta cheese and topped it all off with cilantro. Click here to read how to make cous cous and here for more ideas of what to make with it.

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bread & cheese.

This is so simple, yet so tasty. You have to try this - the bread and cheese you'll most likely have to buy at a Persian food store... I haven't found the bread anywhere else :| that's the only downfall. I'm sure it is easy to substitute.... but it's just not the same.

Buy: Sangak bread (which is about 2-feet long whole wheat sour dough flat bread), organic honey, macedonian cheese, walnuts.

Cut the bread (I find cutting it with scissors is easiest), toast it. Spread the cheese on top, crumble some walnuts and then drizzle the honey. And that's it. Simple and SO addicting you'll probably make a few.

red fish, blue fish.

I finally tried deep fried pickles for the first time ever! And they did not disappoint. Extremely crunchy - even more so because of the tempura bits - and the pickle still kept it's full dill flavour. While previously living in Victoria, I always wanted to try Red Fish, Blue Fish for some halibut fish and chips, but the Gally (a favourite for fish and chips) always stopped me from going there. But since I was downtown already this particular Saturday, and my sister waited in line for ages, I finally got to try it and it was satisfying in every way. Sitting by the ocean, eating fish and chips and deep fried pickles... mmm... good thing I went for a run later that evening! P.s. Don't forget to enter my giveaway here - just a few days left!

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dumplings.

Din Tai Fung dumpling house was visited after the 4 hour shop at the Rose Bowl. It was worth the long wait, and once we were seated we got our food fairly quickly. We got 2 orders of pork dumplings, 2 orders of fish dumplings, 2 orders of veggie dumplings (I had an order of the fish and veggie dumplings which were amazing). Along with the delicious and generous serving of 20 dumplings each, we were served perfectly cooked and seasoned vegetables, fried rice, and cold appetizers. These pictures do not do justice to the food. We ended our feast with fresh steamed buns.

Din Tai Fung

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lotsa mozza.

Here are just some random shots of our fourth day in LA which was also spent at the Barney's warehouse sale (AMAZING, by the way). My favourite part of the night was going to Pizzeria Mozza, which is actually a restaurant owned by Nancy Silverton, Joe Bastianich (from MasterChef) and former Iron Chef Mario Batali. The entire meal was to die for.

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