hi my name is kim & i'm a starbucks addict

Change the word "coffee" to "chai tea latte" and yep... this is pretty much all true.

24 Things Every Hardcore Starbucks Addict Knows To Be True

Plus here's #25: You start cursing the Starbucks app loudly inside your car when it won't take your mobile order and you're forced to actually stand in line to order
(= me this morning)

tea time

For the rest of the world, today marks the end of International Hot Tea Month.

But for me, every month is Hot Tea Month.... I love the stuff and it's how I get my daily dose(s) of much-needed caffeine (because I hate coffee and soda).

However, I did celebrate tea this month in a few special ways.

I went to afternoon tea and a tasting (learning all about white, green and black teas) at Chado with my friend Leslie. This reinforced my previous opinion that light teas are meh.. and black teas are amazing! (My faves are chai, earl grey, english breakfast and Chado's Mauritius, which rhymes with delicious!)

Today, I also cleaned out and organized by tea shelf because it was getting a little out of control ;) Most of my loose leaf teas are now dry and secure in tins next to my hoarded and carefully rationed stash of Marks & Spencer shortbread petticoat tails from London (thanks Daryl, James and Susie!), which are the perfect accompaniment to a cup of hot tea.

If you want to celebrate with a hot cup of deliciousness, here are tips for brewing the perfect cup of tea from Twinings.

And remember...

happy national hot tea month

While in my world, every month is Hot Tea Month, January is officially National Hot Tea month. Yay!
And to celebrate, I've been drinking hot tea every day.

How is this different than every day that isn't part of National Tea Month, you ask? Well... it's not. But considering it's been really cold this month (until today), I've been really enjoying my tea and its hotness. I've also been more experimental with my tea choices, having teas other than my normal Chai and English Breakfast. I've started to really love some of the Harney & Sons teas, such as their Paris and Hot Cinnamon Spice blends.

I even had a lovely tea party with my parents as we watched the Golden Globes last Sunday. Granted, Mom did most of the work (see photo at right), but I provided the sugar cubes... and everyone knows a tea party isn't a fancy tea party without sugar cubes ;)

I've also set a sub-goal under my 2013 "Try New Things Goal" and I'm going to learn to make good tea the real way -- with loose leaves.

That's #14 on this list of 31 Ways YOU Can Celebrate Hot Team Month ... check it out. Tea is delish!

things that make me smile... the summer edition

Things I love about Summer... in no particular order (except for #1... my fave food ever :)

1. Strawberries
2. My rose garden in bloom
3. Lazy Sunday mornings on my back patio with a chai and the LA Times
4. Flip flops
5. Summer Movie Blockbuster Club 
6. Bike rides 
7. John Williams at The Hollywood Bowl
8. The Stanley Cup Finals (especially this year ;)
9. Daylight till ~8pm
10. Peaches
11. 4th of July
12. BBQ's
13. Gardening
14. All-day hikes 
15. True Blood
16. Grilled asparagus
17. Vacation
18. Margaritas 
19. The Olympics
20. Big Brother
21. The farmer's market
22. Concerts at the Greek Theatre
23. Movies in the Cemetary
24. Mojitos
25. Dining al fresco on warm nights

reunion brunch

My dear, dear friend Jenny came down from Portland this week to see Bruce Springsteen, but managed to plan a mini-high school reunion brunch in her spare time, which took place this morning at CiCi's Cafe in Tarzana. 

If you like breakfast food, especially of the sweet, sugary, pancake/waffle/french toast/crepe variety, this is the place for you! It's totally packed and you will have to wait a while to get in, and once you're in, it's loud and cramped, but it doesn't even matter when you get to eat deliciousness like this:

Jenny had the "healthy" thing on the menu -- Wheat Berry pancakes, which consists of
strawberries, blueberries and almonds on a giant stack of three wheat bran pancakes.
Does this look healthy to you? Yeah, thought not ;)

I decided to be fancy and got the "Strawberries Valentino" crepes, which was delish.
As was the sweet, but not too sweet, ginormous Chai Tea Latte I had for an appetizer
and forgot to take a photo of. But it was very pretty, trust me :)

In addition to the food, it was also great to see some of the girls from high school that I have lost touch with. Thanks Jenny Z for being a great "hub" and organizer. Next time you need to stay longer though! 

brunching at bottega louie

I've been to the fabulous Bottega Louie in Downtown LA twice for dinner, drinks and dessert, but have always wanted to try their breakfast menu. So when my friend Diana asked to take me to brunch to kick off my birthday week, and mentioned going somewhere special (aka somewhere other than Hugo's or 4n20), I picked Bottega, and I'm so glad I did (even though I've been in a food coma all day). 

Here's the deliciousness we devoured:

I started with a chai tea latte (shocker!) and fresh squeezed orange juice. The chai was small and just sweet enough. The juice was thick and pulpy and good. Diana had fresh pinapple juice. 

We ordered raspberry beignets as a "starter." These are not like the beignets I've had before from the world-famous Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans (which actually did not live up to their hype). These are covered with normal sugar, not messy powdered sugar, and were lighter..just like a sugared doughnut. The raspberry compote was great!

Diana had the Breakfast Flatbread for her entree, which consisted of Bottega's pizza dough (fresh out of their giant pizza oven) covered in prosciutto, mozzarella, baked egg, arugula and a house arrabiata sauce she said was really good.

I had a really hard time deciding what to order for my entree. I almost got the french toast, but decided that'd be bread overload after the beignets. So I ordered the spinach and goat cheese quiche, served with a side of frisee salad and pear tomatoes. It was pretty great. My one recommendation would be to add another layer of spinach lower in the quiche. It was all up on the top layer, which was crispy. 

After all that (plus the yummy Bottega bread they bring for breakfast too, but with jam!), we were stuffed. However, I'd already decided I was stopping at the patisserie on the way out for Sunday night dessert with the 'rents. Here's what I took to-go:

A giant piece of tiramasu, that made my mom decide she wants to start making tiramasu. This isn't my fave dessert, but the bite I had was pretty good.



Creme brule -- this IS my fave dessert! And Bottega Louie has three flavors. I ate the normal vanilla one, surrounded by raspberries, with some green garnish that I never figured out sprinkled all around, and sitting on a crisp, sweet base.

Dad got the chocolate creme brule. He didn't share so I don't know what it tasted like, but I assume it was good since he devoured it pretty quickly. The third flavor they have is hazelnut, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I'm sure it's good to people who like hazelnut.

yummy discoveries

Yesterday morning was errand time. I went to the ATM, to the vet to pick up more fluids for my sickly cat, and then walked over to Starbucks. One thing I love about Starbucks -- other than the Chai tea lattes (of course!) and the awesome staffs at both the Starbucks across the street from my office and the one near my house -- is how the arrival of "the red cups" in late November signals the start of the holiday season. Well, now Starbucks is celebrating Valentine's Day via their cups too! Check out the photo at left -- it's so cute and cheerful, with words completing phrases that include "love" shooting into the heart via little arrows. It made me smile when the cashier handed it to me. :)

From Starbucks I went into the grocery store and was in the cheese aisle when I remembered that I've been meaning to post about some yummy foods I've discovered I "love" recently. (I love it when a blog post comes together ;)

The first is smoked gouda cheese (which I bought yesterday while in said cheese aisle ;). I have never been very adventurous with cheese. It's expensive, so if you buy a new kind and it's gross, that's a waste of dinero. But I was introduced to smoked gouda at a focus group facility last year (the awesome one in Costa Mesa that also makes us fresh, warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies) and I loved it! It's a hard cheese, yet also creamy and -- as its name suggests -- a bit smokey. It's a definite new fave that will be a Hollywood Bowl picnic basket staple this summer.

Another new discovery is English Breakfast tea. For many, many years I have been strictly a chai tea gal. But in the tea shop in fake England at EPCOT last October I decided to try something new and bought a box of English Breakfast. Granted, it's also a black tea, so it was a fairly safe experiment. But it was still a nice discovery. It's less spicy, more smooth and is super-relaxing in both the morning and evening.

The last food I now like -- that I previously thought I hated -- is almonds. I've been anti-almond for I don't know how long, or why really. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because of its association with disgusting coconut in Almond Joy candy bars. But last summer, as part of my diet and attempt to stock my kitchen with healthier snacks, I bought the Costco bucket-o-mixed nuts, which contains delish pecans, cashews, macadamia nuts... and almonds. I couldn't just leave the almonds to settle to the bottom of the container until all the other nuts were gone, so I tried one... and I liked it. I really liked it! (But I'm still not eating an Almond Joy. My hatred of coconut is non-negotiable... we'll get into that some other time.)

mmmm... chai tea

I am addicted to chai tea. I freely admit it. Besides the fact that lack of caffeine now gives me a really bad headache, I can't go a day without at least a cup because it's so delish. My go-to chai is the Starbucks Chai Tea Latte -- I drink so many of those I have gold status in the Starbucks Rewards program and get a free one at least every two weeks. At home, I go basic -- a tea bag of either Stash's Double Spice Black Chai or Twinings Spiced Apple Chai -- and hot water. Whenever I go to San Francisco, my go-to breakfast place is Cafe De La Presse, where, upon request, they make a super-yummy Chai latte in a mug almost as big as a soup bowl. It's spicy and sweet and super-frothy. Today, I had brunch at Hugo's, home of a ton of organic teas. If you order non-lattes, you get tea leaves in a press. But I ordered the yummy Organic Black Chai Latte pictured below. It could have been sweeter (I ended up dumping a raw sugar in it), but the froth was perfect, and it looked pretty too :)