Sat, Dec 20 - Wurstküche, Scoops

11.28am - Ritesh's Indian veggies and daal , at home, with Ritesh1.27pm - an apple w/ chocolate-hazelnut-cocnut spread from Germany. When this runs out, I'll try and make a batch myself, from Jennifer's recipe...

3.59pm - some ginger snaps at the cash register at CostPlus World Market, where we found some nice Moroccan tea glasses for dinner tomorrow night

4.41pm - sampling some of the chips that Ritesh scouted at CostPlus while I was looking for the Moroccan tea glasses, at home

4.44pm - some awesome dried kiwi from the Persian Sun Market on Westwood, where we ended up in our search for Harissa (Moroccan spicy condiment) - and got lucky!

5.55pm - our long-anticipated outing to Wurstküche, the new German/Belgian sausage place in downtown LA, with Greg and Phinney - this is the set up in the mildly industrial dining room

6.08pm - and here's the first set of sausages that we all shared: alligator/rabbit with sweet peppers and caramelized onions, a vegetarian beer bratwurst w/ sauerkraut, and a buffalo/beef w/ super spicy jalapenos and caramelized onions

6.09pm - super tasty Belgian fries w/ sundried tomato aoli and chipotle ketchup. We got another order I didn't photograph w/ curry ketchup and a blue cheese walnut bacon dipping sauce

6.14pm - and the second set of sausages: a turkey sausage w/ sauerkraut, a green chili/cilantro chicken sausage (my favorite) with more spicy jalapenos and caramelized onions on top, and the duck/bacon sausage w/ sweet and spicy chilies - I feel like I'm missing some ingredients here - can you help, hon? Still at Wurstküche, with Ritesh, Greg and Phinney

7.23pm - and the glorious finale to our epicurian outing: ice cream from Scoops! This was just fantastic - the flavors this guy comes up with are incredible, and we didn't even get the best ones, they kept bringing out new flavors after we'd already started eating. The ones we got were the signature Brown Bread (with crunchy grape nuts, everyone's favorite and the only flavor they're guaranteed to have on any given day), Thai Iced Tea, Earl Grey, Vegan Mocha Hazelnut, Vegan Chocolate, Blackberry-Balsamico and coconut-lemongrass (couldn't really taste the lemongrass, as with that Dean&Deluca cupcake I tried in the Napa Valley). The flavors we could have had if we had arrived 15 min later included Banana Oreo (awesome, we sampled some), chocolate guiness, lavender honey and strawberry rhubarb. Will HAVE to come back!