|the report from los angeles|

For a person that loves food as much as I do, vacations are always awesome. Here are some highlights from my first trip to L.A.

• I hadn't been to a PeiWei or a Baja Fresh in THREE YEARS...and L.A. has both, so that was awesome.
• Had my first experience with Sprinkles (far, far superior to Crumbs) and Pinkberry, both of which were amazing. They take cupcakes and frozen yogurt to a whole new level.
• We went to the "Farmer's Market" just southwest of Beverly Hills (it's in quotes because there were no farmers there) and had some fantastic tacos at Loteria. They basically have a bunch of "stews" that they put into homemade corn tortillas. Mine was made with potatoes, poblanos, and cilantro.
• We had dinner one night at Father's Office in Santa Monica. There were very few vegetarian options, but I had the fries "a la cart" (they came out in a little grocery cart). They were very thinly sliced with an herb-salt seasoning on them. My husband had an amazing looking burger with gorgonzola, gruyere, and carmelized red onions.
  
• Our last day there, we went with my brother to an actual farmers' market downtown by his office. There were so many amazing options! I had some cold soba salad with jicama in it, fresh cherries and grape tomatoes, and a HUGE brownie.
• Urth Cafe in Beverly Hills is AWESOME! They do this whole organic, earthy gig. I had some really creamy and thick squash soup and a little hummus/tabbouleh platter. And on the recommendation of my brother, we both had the Spanish latte, which was some of the best coffee I've ever had.
• One of the tastiest roasted vegetable sandwiches I've ever had happened at the cafe in the Getty Center. Tasty. I also really appreciated all the signage they had everywhere about things the cafe is doing for environmental sustainability. For example, by the sandwich station they had a sign asking you to consider NOT adding cheese to your sandwich, but using one of their non-dairy spreads because of the greenhouse emissions from dairy cattle.