ladies who lunch

that would be me, WeezerMonkey, Nanette, and Connie! wikipedia definies ladies who lunch as a "phrase to describe well-off women who meet for lunch socially, normally during the working week. Typically, the women involved are married and non-working. Normally the lunch is in a restaurant, perhaps in a department store during shopping. Sometimes there is the pretext of raising money for charity."

so i guess we're sorta ladies who lunch. actually, in our case, we're ladies who order afternoon tea and MAKE lunch out of it.

the only "charity" that saw any money from us was jin patisserie in venice. it was a gorgeous day, and aside from some parking issues (which i managed to avoid by sweet-talking the hub into driving for me), we had a wonderful time, just chattering away and snacking on some very tasty treats. WeezerMonkey wrote up a great recap here.

as a bonus, nanette treated us to some adorable sugar cookies that she picked up at victor bene's bakery:

kitty was very yummy. i'm actually picturing WeezerMonkey biting into hers with gusto, seeing as she's a major cat hater. haha! cat hater, but a hello kitty lover. and she makes fun of my "no chunky fruit, just fruit flavored stuff" hangup.

when we were done, the ladies headed off to the pinkberry they'd discovered while hunting for parking, and the hub and i took off in search of baby gear. since he'd killed the time it took for me to snarf down afternoon tea at a local cigar shop, he was hungry.

and, as much as i hate to admit it, so was i. jin's "high tea" platter was cute, but "cute" doesn't work so well when it comes to food. especially when you're using the "eating for two" excuse.

so, due to some rave reviews from a handful of trusted friends, we ended up here:

and it was quite delish! i had a half order of pecan pancakes and bacon, while the hub tried to stay healthy with a chicken salad. bread and porridge is a little far for us, but should we find ourselves on the westside with a hankering for breakfast again, we'll know where to go.

the rest of the day was spent driving all over the place looking for a store to find strollers that we could "test-drive". we stopped at several baby stores, only to find that they specialized in overpriced miniature designer clothing and other ridiculously unnecessary baby accoutrements with ginormous price tags. oh, well. we've got time. at least that's what i keep telling myself.