I think every table I had today made that joke. The other jokes that need to die are the ones with the "so its on the house?" punchline.

I happen to love having you in LA, as its made it so much easier for me to decide where to eat on the rare occasion I go to LA. (Who am I kidding? I've been at the Hollywood Bowl every other week this summer...its my favorite venue). I know you'll be back in a few months, but if you can try to make it to Sattdown Jamaican Grill or Mantee before you go. I've been to both in the last 3 weeks and the oxtails at Sattdown and fattoush at Mantee were amazing.

I saw the butter melting and I kinda hoped you were going to say you "accidentally" browned it. Because I bet they'd be even more amazing with browned butter. But I think browned butter makes everything better, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

Skhug sounds delicious. In a "why have I never heard of or experience such a thing in all my 24 years?". I think hummus is a perfectly valid dinner, but I would start the night before so I could use dried garbanzos. Sure, it takes some planning, but the results are so worth it.

Since I'm unfortunately pretty sure I'm the one who recommended Wangs (it was good 5 years ago!) I'll share my recipe for date pulp. 2/3 cup sliced pitted dates 2/3 cup water Combine in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Once it starts to boil, drop the heat to low, and cook stirring frequently and mashing pieces of date until reduced to about 1/2 cup. You can put it in a blender at this point if you want it really smooth. If you do, I've used it in place of some of the honey in this recipe: http://marthameetslucy.typepad.com/blog/2012/05/chewy-no-bake-fruit-and-nut-bars.html

That is one glorious looking bagel, but I always put my capers right on the cream cheese and corral them with onions. The lox goes on top. I just hate it when the capers roll off whenever I take a bite. Being a life long Californian, I commit all kinds of sacrilege to my bagels...sometime I add avocado to my lox. I'll go sit in the corner alone with my bagel now.

I use my grill to make pizza, but I put my brick on it first and use it like an oven. I never actually grill my pizza. I might be about time I change that.

That's what I was going to say. I think Alton Brown has instructions for how to do it on his gumbo recipe. Its something like a 350 degree oven in a covered dutch oven and you stir every 30 minutes for 1.5 hours

I bought a jar of truffle salt at Cost Plus a few weeks ago and I've been putting it on everything. I love that it smells like truffles, whereas I've always been disappointed by truffle oil. My favorite use so far is sprinkled on popcorn. Or scrambled eggs.

I like to toast my oats, and if its the weekend I add some rum soaked raisins. And the rum they were soaked in.