Guacamole, Peaches & Pomegranates

This sounded so funny to me and my friends who are not adventurous in the food arena. But wow was this refreshing. The peaches were sweet and added such a nice burst of flavor when you scooped up the guacamole on a nice salty corn chip. And pomegranate in anything, martini's, salads...whatever you can think of is just so awesome. This is a great starter. We ate some nice greasy taco's afterwards and just hung with our friends.

Grapefruit & Crab Salad

Occasionally we get these random magazines in the mail about food. I suppose this is because I subscribe to Bon Appetit so I must be on the food mailing list. Anyways we've been making lots of yummy healthy things from the recipe's listed there. SB made this delicious salad with hearts of palm, mixed greens, basil, mint, grapefruit (should use ruby red) and crab meat. He dressed it with a lemon vinagrette. It turned out really fresh, clean and super filling.

Macarons

It's been slow lately at the office, so the usual Monday crazy fest was at a lull. This left room for a nice leisurely lunch at the Little Next Door. I adore this place. It's so French and reminds me of Paris. The people watching is phenomenal. It's getting quite popular, we actually had to wait for a table this time, which has never happened. I t's full of Europeans and most of the staff all speak French and English with the most adorable accents ever. The wait was worth it, we started with the anise flavored water, not for everyone but a nice surprise.Sandwich of the day was smoked chicken, with figs and brie served on brioche. I had that with a yummy lentil salad that had green olives and something spicy, our intern had the same sandwich with a nice carrot salad.The best part was the peach gazpacho. This was so refreshing, with peaches, cucumbers, bell peppers and a nice floating moss green basil ice cube. Perfect for a hot summer.
Shoefiend had the most delicious looking Nicoise salad. Too finish off this memorable work lunch were these wonderful macarons flavored in strawberry, coffee and pistachio. Really it doesn't get better than this. The manager of the Little Next Door told us that this was an unusually busy Monday, maybe it's the French still in party mode after Bastille Day. He said that they were working on keeping the Cafe open for dinner and in the upcoming months they plan on opening the Little Door for lunch as well. Also another place worth visiting. Completely charming and a nice retreat from the L.A. bustle.

Bay Cities

This once sleepy beach town that I live in has the most fantastic Italian deli ever. It's called Bay Cities Italian Deli. I've been going here since elementary school. But it was in high-school that I found it was truly my place. I live but two blocks away now. In high school we had the rare pleasure of leaving campus for lunch and we'd all run down here, get us a Poor Boy sandwich (bolgona, cotta salami, and swiss cheese) for $1.98 or something like that, now it's $4 for a small sandwich.

This weekend surferboy and I went to get us a picnic dinner at Bay Cities and head to the beach. It was hot and we were too tired to drive to Hollywood to wait for a table at Pizzeria Mozza. We'll do this another time. I ordered my favorite sandwich "The Godmother," (pictured above and yes I did take a bite) it has genoa salami, mortadella, coppacola, ham, proscuitto and provolone cheese a meat lovers sandwich. You must get it with the works this is the best, mayo (hold this for blacklashes), mustard, onions (hold this for me), pickles, lettuce, Italian dressing and hot or mild peppers. I prefer the hot ones. I ate this on a blanket at the beach and it was so juicy and messy and totally spicy hot, you can't like your lips when you eat the hot peppers it only makes the burning worse. It was a totally a no frills picnic and completely relaxing.

White Bean Dip

Did you ever buy a bag of Fritos and that small tin can of brown bean dip and go to town scooping out every crevise? Well this is not that bean dip. Instead this is a white bean dip made from cannellini beans, garlic, lemon, olive oil and parsley. Toast some pita bread drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and dried oregano. Then go-to-town. Surferboy and I scarfed this down quite quickly, we had a friends bbq to go and knew the food would take a while to cook, doesn't always, so we made sure to eat before we left so as not to be grouchy guests. This is a great starter and sometimes a delicious meal.