In preschool, Rachel and I quickly became fast friends and in our childhood years, we started our own “enterprise” called Kids Cafe. We would cook for our parents (usually our ingenious combination of PB&J and Cheerios on wheat toast which we called a “Tuki”) and charged them 10 cents. We held several successful lemonade stands, and were quite the little amateur adorable chefs! Rachel and I have many hilarious stories of cooking disasters - like that time we swapped rosemary for raisins for these biscuits and ended up with very salty biscuits studded with raisins. A lot of this is caught on film, and I think both Rachel and myself are a little scared if these vids ever get unearthed. We took cooking classes together. We even had little chef coats made that had our names and “Kids Cafe” - mine of which still hangs in my closet! We were foodies early on and have both become home cooks in our own rights. A few weeks ago, we decided that it was time for Kids Cafe to grow up and we would bring our parents together again for a homecooked feast! We thought about calling it “Adult Cafe” but realized that just sounded…inappropriate? Anyways, on Saturday we got together in the afternoon for an adventure in cooking. First, it was the meal planning and the shopping.
Cookbooks..and a math book!
Lemon hands!
After all the prep was done, we drove to the new home of Rachel’s parents, which by the way, is my dream home. It overlooks all of Los Angeles city to the left and the Santa Monica mountains to the right. There is a wonderful open floor plan - great for entertaining - and floor-to-ceiling windows. It was truly a fantastic place to cook and serve a meal. So…did Kids Cafe reincarnate the Tuki on our more mature menu?
Los Angeles at sunset
The home!
No…we stepped up our game. We made an eggplant babaghanoush dip with crusty seedy bread, a radicchio, orange, and roasted carrots salad, and baked black cod in fennel, lemon and olives. For dessert, we chopped up winter fruit and created our own dark chocolate bark with roasted hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, and sour cherries. It was full of flavor (so many interesting flavors!), lots and lots of different colors, different textures, and we even timed everything perfectly for some a-plus Kids Cafe service. And we didn’t even charge our parents ten cents!
Radicchio, roasted carrots, and orange salad - probably my favorite dish of the night.
Homemade “babaghanoush” made with burnt eggplant, tahini, cucumbers and pomegranate seeds.
Buttery black cod baked with olives, lemons and fennel
The whole spread!
Sliced persimmons and pears with caramel dates and homemade dark chocolate bark.
She’s a cutie!
In the photo below - here’s to introducing the chefs of the evening! Us, our parents and Rachel’s beau ate everything we made. And I even learned a few new techniques in the process thanks to Rachel - segmenting oranges and burning eggplant to scoop out the flesh! (Flesh = another word that I dislike). I think Rachel’s med school training comes in handy when it comes to carefully wielding a knife in the kitchen.
I can’t wait to recreate some of these recipes and share them with you all. I think it’s safe to say that Kids Cafe has matured into something well, certainly more adult. All in all, a wonderful and truly special (and delicious) evening. Looking forward to the next time!
Thanks for stopping by! 
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