Drive-thru Joshua Tree

In all my years of visiting Palm Springs, I’d never been to Joshua tree–which is crazy! You drive just 45 minutes or so out of downtown and–poof–you’re in a stunning National Park! We didn’t bring a carrier and so, traveling with a toddler who hikes at a rate of about six-steps-forward, five-steps-back (seriously: watch the video), we opted for the drive-thru version, or Joshua-Tree-lite. At least we’ll pretend that I would have been waaaay more hardcore otherwise. Ha!

Mozza-2-Go

We spent a day in Los Angeles over the holidays, indulging in nostalgia and some child-free shopping (more on that later). We didn’t want lose any precious minute of our 4-hour getaway over water service at a restaurant so we went for the best drive-thru option I could think of: Mozza 2 Go. Along with our beloved Motorino in New York (and, oh, perhaps that pizza we shared in Naples many years ago), Mozza’s squash blossom and Burrata pizza is one of our favorites.

I will always remember, just after finding out that Aron matched at NYU (his first choice) for his Urology residency and that we were moving across the country, sitting at the bar and smelling melting Sotocenere and sipping sparkling wine at Mozza–and feeling relieved that we would be going somewhere with really, really good pizza.

When you get the squash blossom pizza to-go, they give you the burrata in a little bag. It’s slightly less elegant (especially when you try to squeeze any last drops of the cream into your mouth), but I think you actually get a bit more than usual.

Oh goodness, I really want a hot enough oven to make crust like this one day.

P.S. Here’s a look at our attempt to recreate the Squash Blossom pizza, a few years back.

Holiday highlights

Before the lights all come down and the returned-for-wrong-address cards stop appearing in the mail (darn it!), I thought I’d share some photos from our holidays. Just a few favorite Christmas-y ones… I have plenty more Southern California posts in mind for next week.

Highlights included: For the very first time, stringing lights outside…

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