Weekend Recap: Settling Down

So I would say that this is the first weekend so far where we are all settled in. All of our stuff is moved in, unpacked and in its proper place (for the most part).

On Friday after work, I headed down to Roxbury to do a final walk-through of the old apartment with the manager.



It felt really weird being in there while it was empty. Even when I first moved in it was never really empty since I overlapped a couple of days with the previous tenant so there was stuff in there when I moved in my first set of boxes.



I'm going to miss walking down the alley to pee the dogs, and being right across the street from such a great park! I should have played tennis more while I was there. :(

So I slept in on Saturday morning -- woke up around 11am. All the dogs were being lazy too.

After we were all wide awake, we took a walk to the Barrington Dog Park. It's a good 15-20 minute walk but the way there is uphill so it took a lot of energy. Lulu had a huge workout chasing after birds. A lot of the people there watched her running after the birds and just laughed. After the dog park we gave the dogs a bath (Tofu gets stinky so fast) and then headed out to Monterey Park for my haircut appointment.

On the way there I had a craving for a Pastrami Sandwich at Chano's which is next to USC. There was a lot of construction around the school and one-way streets and detours set up everywhere. Took us about 45 minutes to finally find Chano's.

After our lunch/dinner I had my haircut by James at Visage salon. He did a pretty good job, always knows how to style my bangs. He did layer my hair a LOT because I had so much dry/dead hair he had to cut it all off. My hair is so thin now I have to figure out a good way to style it so that I don't look mushroom-headed.

After the haircut, we went to 99 Ranch to buy groceries. Since our new apartment has a real gas stove, I was excited to finally start cooking (and baking!) again.

On Sunday morning we went to the Farmer's Market for lunch. There were a lot of clothes vendors (this IS LA) and a lot of good Mexican food. I had a beef tamale, some corn and a "pupusa". I'd explain what that is but I'm not really sure. 

Edit: Pupusa (from Pipil pupusawa) is a thick, hand-made corn tortilla (made using masa de maíz, a maize flour dough used in Latin American cuisine) that is stuffed with one or more of the following: cheese (queso) (usually a soft Salvadoran cheese called Quesillo), fried pork rind (chicharrón), squash (ayote), refried beans (frijoles refritos), or queso con loroco (loroco is a vine flower bud from Central America).

After stuffing ourselves silly and buying a bunch of fruit and other stuff, I also bought some flowers for the house. I'm going to try to fill this vase every weekend from the farmer's market, it brightens up the house so much! Although I'm starting to feel like we have *too* many plants...

Gerbera Daisies, Spider Mums and an unknown pink/white flower.

After the farmer's market, we ran a few errands and went to Bed Bath and Beyond, Nordstrom's and Ralph's. I bought the last minute things I needed to make dinner and dessert for tonight.

I found a recipe for Pad See Ew online and decided to try it out. I bought most of the ingredients at 99 Ranch already -- it turned out surprisingly well! It was a little dry, I could have used more oil. The chicken was really tender and the Chinese broccoli was really fresh so I actually thought that the taste was a lot better than some Thai restaurants! (Heehee)

I also baked a pound cake. I was actually aiming to make my cream cheese pound cake but wasn't paying attention and pulled the wrong recipe out and made a plain butter pound cake. It's more fluffy than pound cakes usually are (I left the mixer on too long) but overall tastes pretty good. Baking with a gas oven is so much better than my old electric oven! Everything cooks/bakes so evenly.

I even baked something for Tofu & Lulu -- two dozen Pineapple Luau cookies from the Three Dog Bakery Cookbook.