+ food and rain, food and rain

Soundtrack: Balmorhea "The Winter"

It's raining a tonne this weekend. I'm not sure that's a good thing - being housebound while we prepare for our Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is making me very snackish. An early rise this morning to get the pre-ordered roast duck, soy chicken and roast pork was a bit like torture on the pre-breakfast drive home.

The rain-food combo makes me think of my birthday last year. It was the one day LA decided to rain while I was there, and it was glum but kinda beautiful at the same time. We didn't leave the house all day, only ducking out for cheap and tasty burritos at Tacos Por Favor and babycakes.

I got the sauteed mushroom burrito. Immense. The pickled carrots and peppers were also super tasty. As you can see I even went back for more carrots.

I ate it like the Australian sissy that I am, with knives and all.

And being my birthday, Benj wanted me to get my beloved cupcakes. Testament to its slightly bourgey character, Santa Monica has quite a number of cupcake vendors in close proximity to each other. We chose the pink frou frou-ness of Vanilla Bake Shop for my entry into babycake society there.



I was not disappointed. The texture of the vanilla cakes was particularly good - incredible crumbliness and heavily buttered.

+ spring rain

It seems like we've had more rain this spring so far than we did all winter. I slept rather poorly last night because the wind was howling and the rain was falling so loudly on the corrugated iron balcony roof.

It was pretty dreary on the southern approach to the Harbour Bridge.

But though the sleep was poor, the waking up was kinda gleeful actually. Because only yesterday had I remembered the Hello Kitty gumboots that I bought for dirty cheap way back at the start of the year and up until then, had tucked out of sight, out of mind. So I was delighted to be able to pull them on and do a little dance in front of the camera (new quadcam lomo-alike app on the phone!)