tea for three

plus one.  what?  "tea for four" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

oh, how i love going to tea.  and i am amused at how many blog posts i have that revolve around visits to all sorts of different tearooms around here.  i don't think there's a tearoom in the l.a. area that we haven't tried yet, and if there is - well, we'll get to it.

but one of our favorites is chado in pasadena.  we met my mom here for a lovely visit a few weeks ago, and it was just as good as it always is.  pretty reliable for service and grub.

even the bean approves.  of course, this is right after she got to make a hefty dent in that plate of sweets at the bottom there.

and then we met up with our beloved cousin seven to celebrate her birthday.  since she works out in the burbank area, we decided to try a new place in montrose - the t room.

because it was the middle of the afternoon, the place was empty when we arrived.  the bean was enchanted with the decor.

and she was pretty excited to hear that there was a section in the menu just for her.

MIL introduced her to "peanut butter & chocolate" sandwiches ages ago, and it's one of her favorite treats.  because she is her mother's daughter, she refuses all things fruit - even PB&Js.  sad, i know.  even i love a good jelly-filled sandwich.  so she was super stoked when this arrived.

she's also a pretty big fan of hot tea.  well, hers isn't really "hot" - she always requests an ice cube or two to cool it down enough for her to drink.  and she was really delighted to drink it out of this delicate teacup...with some assistance.

the teen, cousin seven, and i shared this three-tiered tower of tasty treats.

i'm sure she's going to love me for that shot.

pinteractive pizza

pizza is probably one of my most favorite foods on the whole planet.

and i'm no pizza snob, either - i can get down with anything from costco to pizza hut to local hole-in-the-wall joints and everything in between.  give me a thick crust, a zesty sauce, pepperoni with crispy edges, mushrooms (canned or fresh, doesn't matter to me), and gobs of melted cheese and i'm a happy camper.

so when i spied this photo on pinterest for something called "bubble up pizza," i clicked on it immediately.  turns out it's (brace yourselves, non-processed-food eaters) a casserole comprised of cut-up pillsbury biscuit dough, jarred pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella and whatever toppings you love.  plus, a 5-minute prep.  SOLD.

i even had all of the ingredients on hand already. since this was just going to be for me and the bean, i basically cut the recipe in half.  she doesn't like pepperoni, but is a sucker for salami, so i promised to put some in.

to make it easier to dish up for her, i cut the biscuits into smaller pieces than the recipe called for.

adding the sauce made it look like a scene out of a gory horror movie.

it really took mere minutes to put this together.  hell, it took longer to warm up the oven than it did to assemble the whole casserole.

granted, it doesn't exactly present well.  it ain't a pretty dish in any way.  but really - who gives a crap?  this thing was goooooooood.

even though biscuit dough sounds like it would make for a fairly heavy meal, somehow the whole thing puffed up nicely and it was kind of like eating pizza air.  sounds weird, right?  but it was light and fun to eat.  the bean agreed as she munched happily.

definitely a keeper.

one major disney disaster

so...yeah.  the teen and i had such grand plans to take advantage of disneyland being open all night on leap day (which they were billing as "one more disney day" - hence my bitter take on that title).  we'd snuck in some naptime, set our alarms to wake us up with enough time to get ready for the chilly night temps, and looked forward to it all day long.

but when i got up at 11:30 to start assembling the layers of clothing i'd thought out, the hub stopped me cold.  "you'd better take a look at what they just showed on the news," he said.  uh-oh.

and sure enough, a live overhead view from a newschopper hovering over disneyland resort showed one horrific ass nightmare.  the reporter even said "i've been doing this for 18 years, and i've never seen it like THIS."  yikes.  brake lights could be seen for miles around the area, backing up the freeway and all of the surrounding surface streets.  even worse was the marquees posted near the mickey & friends parking structure that said "disneyland is full."  folks were stuck in their cars, with all parking lots completely full (that structure holds 10,000 cars! holy shit) and the park at maximum capacity.  google told me that the rumored headcount limit for the land of the mouse is 85,000.

good god.  and i was so disappointed.  not to mention, a little afraid of the teen's reaction as i trudged over and knocked on her door.  i could tell she was super pissed, but what could i do?  no way were we going to drive all the way to anaheim at freaking midnight, knowing that it would be a futile mission.  so instead, i scrubbed off my makeup, took my sullen ass to bed, and tortured myself with the gazillion tweets with the hashtag #disney24.

actually, i was torn between being miserable over missing the fun and rejoicing in the fact that i was in my warm, comfy bed and about to get a full night's sleep after all.  but damn, i sure would've sacrificed that shuteye for hours of bonding time with my girl at our favorite place on earth, taking advantage of the freedom to ride rides that the bean would blanch at the mere mention of.  gah.  maybe one saturday night soon, the hub can hang out with the bean while the teen and i go off to enjoy a few late hours at the park. they're usually open till midnight, so if we took off at around 6...we could still recapture some of that late-night glory.  at least we're annual passholders and can go pretty much whenever we want.

so since i have no fun disney leap day pictures to share (bah!), here are some of my favorite shots from other visits to the house of the mouse over the last few months.  you'll notice that most of them are of me and the bean - we manage to sneak out there every other week on the one day of the week we have open. i'm not so lucky with the teen, but maybe the summer will bring more opportunities for us to go together.

one drizzly day, we actually sat and waited for a parade - which was cancelled in favor of "mickey's rainy day cavalcade," deemed safer for the performers so that they wouldn't slip and fall.  meh.  but the bean thought it was cool to march along behind the last character-laden trolley, as if she were part of the parade herself.

watching the "disney junior" stage show...for the 47th time.  i can damn near recite all of the lines and do the little dances and hand gestures.  seriously.  the teen is also not a fan of this show.  i just can't imagine why.

in a deep conversation with rapunzel about the meaning of life.  or, more accurately, the reasons why macaroni & cheese is far superior to a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

after watching the lineup visit after visit, the teen finally decided to give the famous dole whip a shot (she wasn't too impressed).

the bean loves her some characters.

i hopped into this shot only because i hadn't taken one with tinkerbell during her very own half marathon.  i think she needs new tights.  pixie dust apparently doesn't fix everything.

i love watching these two on rides together.

yeah, we've been here together a few times.

it ain't a proper visit to disneyland without snacks.

according to disneyland's annual passholder website, i've been to the parks exactly 30 times since september.  pretty stinking awesome.  i wonder what the number will be by the time it expires...

meat and bones

while we were brunching in the afterglow of our hollywood sign hike a few weeks ago, my friend y4m was dropping some serious raves about a thomas keller recipe she'd tried out of his ad hoc cookbook.  "it's SO good," she said.  "you've gotta try it!"

delicious meat, roasted to perfection after being rubbed with a blend of spices for an overnight stay in the fridge?  uh, sh-yeah.  but as i'm far too cheap to spend the cash on a copy of this cookbook, i turned to the google and easily found the recipe i wanted.  one trip to the grocery store and i was all set.  i massaged those spices all over that roast, wrapped it tightly in some plastic wrap, and stuck it in the fridge.  i realize that uncooked meat generally looks pretty gross.  i don't care.  i love meat.

the next day, i pulled it out and followed the instructions - first searing the meat on both sides and adding some other magical ingredients, including some very thinly sliced lemons.  thank goodness for our awesome shun knives.

then into the oven it went.  yes, i totally macgyvered a "roasting rack" in my pan - that's one of my smaller cooling racks for cookies.  heh.

i actually should've left it in the oven a bit longer, because as i sliced it up and got closer to the middle of the roast, it was pretty red and bled like a damn stuck pig.  d-oh.  totally my fault for getting caught up in emptying my DVR queue and losing track of time.

luckily, it tasted fantastic - everything y4m had promised it would be.  and because the center slices were so rare, it heated up nicely as leftovers the next day.  i'll definitely be doing this one again - on another night when i have more time to work with.

oh, and check out these super cute cookies i got to do for a sweet little girl's 2nd birthday.  said sweet girl loves puppies, so it was easy for her mama to figure out what theme to go with for the party.

of course, the teen snickered and snorted as i got to work on doing the contrasting outline.  yes, yes, they do rather resemble double-sided peen.  okay.

but i was pleased with how they turned out, after flooding the surface with ivory-colored frosting and then piping the birthday girl's name on in purple.  a little pawprint in hot pink to match the outline over the "i" was the perfect finishing touch.

see - they didn't end up looking like big mutated dongs after all, right?