LA Daytrips Part 01

It's not uncommon for Vegas locals to literally drive to LA for the day. Frankly, it's nice to get out of the desert every once in a while.

In this case, we actually had a mission which was to get boyfriend a new desk. His old apartment had one built in and when he moved, he needed one that would accommodate his computer and tower weight. Easy enough. Unfortunately, IKEA wanted to charge about $99 for shipping on this little $79.99 desk. The reason was apparently because it was a measly 12 ounces over the 70 lb limit. In reality, the box was only 68 lbs, but we didn't find out until we were AT IKEA. Upon hearing about hte crazy shipping rate, Corey and I decided to drive to IKEA because the gas and food for a day would be less than the cost of shipping. Also, roadtrip.

After some Swedish meatballs, a discussion about whether or not I really needed a large stuffed shark (the answer is yes, yes I do), and the purchase of a desk, we were on our way to explore. 

I'd never spent much time in downtown LA and Corey had never really been to LA period, so we started there. We grabbed a delicious mini lunch at Eggslut. I had never been to Grand Central Market and OMG the food. So much food. My good friend Becca had told me that when she was last in LA, the line was so insane she never went. I guess we hit just the perfect time because the line was insanely short.

Then Corey got me the prettiest box of macarons at Bottega Louie.

Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving was supposed to be super chill this year.

We were going to go to our fave Chinese place with Corey the day before and feast on the leftovers and turkey sandwiches the next day.

Clearly, that didn't happen.

Wednesday morning, I was informed that a wonderful benefactor had left me a frozen turkey. Awesome!!! But WTF do I do. I'd never cooked a turkey before. Thank God for the internet.

I immediately started looking for the easiest and fastest ways to cook a 14lb turkey. 

I decided to go with spatchcocking. 

After deciding on sides, I settled with glazed carrots (Alton Brown recipe, yum), a standard green bean casserole, ready made mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce (Corey has a thing for the ribbed jelly kind), and some mashed candied sweet potatoes (I totally winged it and they were yummy; cannot go wrong with brown sugar, eggnog, Fireball, and marshmallows). 

I named him Tarquin.

The spatchcocking was harder than we expected. We thankfully had coated the counter with plastic wrap because there was turkey blood everywhere. Corey and I semi successfully ripped out most of the spine, I pulled out the innards and a pink block of blood ice (ewwwww). 

The sides went off without a hitch. 

As did the pumpkin pie.

A final look at Tarquin all covered in bacon. Before and after. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Coming soon...