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palm springs, year eight

For eight years now I’ve been coming to Palm Springs for spring vacation with my husband and daughter. It’s a pretty swell set-up as my parents spend the entire month of March in PS at a house they rent in the Deepwell section of town, and we invite ourselves along.

Though there’s a decent amount of things to do in the area, we tend to turn into pool-dwelling, sun-worshipping (we do live in Oregon after all), trashy-book reading sloths. When we do bust out of our routine it’s usually to the mini-golf range where my mother is known to throw tantrums and my husband does creative score-keeping.

Yesterday I decided to get my mother and nine-year-old daughter out of the house. First stop, Cheekys, for a mind-blowingly good breakfast. I had not only the eggs benedict with poached eggs, braised arugula and bacon on a cheesy biscuit, but also a buttermilk corn blueberry pancake. This pancake was easily the most delicious pancake I’ve ever eaten. The corn part of the cake was kernels of corn in the batter, and it added an incredible texture. I’m right now thinking of getting up and heading there.

After waddling out of breakfast, we went searching for desert wildflowers. Specifically the hairy sand verbena. What better way to spend a morning than driving down dirt roads in the desert trying to spot a small, fuzzy plant. We understood from the local paper that this is primo wildflower season, and my mother was key to see all of the purpley widlflowers. Of course we found only yellow wildflowers that looked to be more in the weed category. This incredibly cool three-pronged yellow sunburst was discovered by my mother though, and I do think it was a find.

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worth the guilt

I’m going to H. E. double tooth picks, but it was so worth it.  My most recent eating offense was when I learned about the Neapolitan specialty—the sfogliatella riccia, which exists somewhere between a croissant, a strudel, and a caramelized potato chip.  This orgasmic pastry is made of thousands of layers of hand-pulled dough and baked around sweetened ricotta cheese flavored with cinnamon, limoncello and bits of candied citrus.  Eating one piques all of the sensations.  The dough is extremely flaky, better yet crispy, but as your teeth reach the rich center the filling is like the most glorious cheese danish.  Oh, and did I mention these are made fresh all day and served warm throughout Naples?  It is a good thing I was only in Naples for one day.