little treat culture
little treat culture
cookie monsters, where to get the best olive oil cake, eating disorders + feeding your inner child
little treat culture
some say little treat culture has gotten out of hand. and you know what i say? we actually do deserve it! life has been wiiild the last few years, so why not spend a few bucks on ourselves and bring on a blitz of much needed serotonin + dopamine. my personal go-to little treat is an oat latte + pastry combo. i used to be only a cookiehead and then i fell in love with olive oil cake. lately i’ve been broadening my horizons and am into scones, muffins, blondies, you name it. i try to opt for dairy free, but for the right pastry i’ll make an exception. here’s where to find my favorite cookies, pastries + bread in la + elsewhere. and then we’ll get into some heavy raw stuff.
cookies:
as a certified cookie monster, here’s the best cookies in la + elsewhere:
just what i kneaded - la - rotating flavors like pbj (v) + salted chocolate chip (v)
sqirl - tahini jam swirl
botanica - la - alllll of their cookies but really into their tahini jam thumbprint
librae - nyc - salted tahini chocolate chip
mokonuts - paris - literally of them, and yes you’ve gotta fly to paris for these
bakers bench - la - black sesame cookie (v)
marlow & sons - nyc - rotating but last i had was sesame oatmeal
l'appartement 4f - nyc - salted tahini chocolate chip
sweedeedee - portland - rotating but salted chocolate chip
gusto bread - la - spelt sea salt wholegrain chocolate chip
gjusta - la - miso date but really all of their cookies
kafeteria smk - copenhagen - sesame and tahini
ovenly - nyc - salted peanut butter (df gf)
jewel - rotating but last i had was tahini (v gf)
collective bakery + coffee collective - copenhagen - sesame & raspberry
tourists welcome - berkshires - rotating cookie. it’s been a minute since i’ve been but my last one had cardamom in it
smile to go - nyc - pbj (v gf) but honorable mention for salted choc chip
all time - la - peanut butter (gf). not on the menu at the moment but hoping they bring it back?!
colossus - hojicha apricot cookie (v) well worth the drive to long beach
pastries:
(that aren’t cookies)
just what i kneaded - la - everything truly, but really into their rotating cake slices like their raspberry pistachio (v)
red gate bakery - nyc - pickled pbj bar
la grocery & cafe - la - polenta olive oil cake
sqirl - la - rotating flavor vegan loaf but pretty much anything they make
botanica - la - date cardamom scone (gf)
honey hi - la - seasonal fruit (persimmon / citrus) olive oil cake wkend special (gf)
cookbook - la - citrus olive oil cake at their larchmont location
canyon coffee - la - sasha’s seasonal kabocha loaf or anything sasha makes really
+ literally anything natasha bakes - i had the pleasure of shooting with natasha while she was at altro paradiso, as well as natasha’s ny + la charity bake sales. she has an amazing cookbook: more than cake so go to one of her popups and try everything
bakers bench - la - furikake croissant (v)
bub & grandma’s - la - banana choco coco bread (v)
hell yeah gluten free - atlanta - cinnamon roll (v gf)
pinyon - ojai - olive oil cake + blondie
joy on york - la - not quite a pastry but hakka (black sesame + peanut) mochi (gf)
erewhon - la - solid in-house bakery but there’s this pbj bar (v) by giselle’s vegan kitchen wow
little nelly - la - rotating menu but love everything i’ve ever had
clark street - la - citrus cake
night + market + most of thai town - la - not quite a pastry but la has some good mango sticky rice
san & wolves - la (opening soon in long beach) - rotating menu but ube anything (v)
fondry - la - kumquat + loquat’s new sister is getting tons of hype. i’m not typically a croissant person but i was curious so i waited in line for far too long … only for them to sell out with a few people in front of me. as i despondently ordered a (luckily very solid) oat latte, the staff told me a hot tip: kumquat + loquat are going to carry select fondry items available sunday - tuesday so do yourself a favor and spare yourself the grueling line. i hit up loquat on a tues am for this baby sans line
for the bread heads:
sourdough at clark street, bub & grandma’s, tartine, super bloom (gf)
danish rye at sqirl, clark street
focaccia at jennie’s house
feeding my inner child:
okay now that we all know where we’re getting our little treat this week. i’m about to get heavy and stream of consciousness-y so excuse my typos. i probably wouldn’t be so embracing of little treat culture if i hadn’t deprived myself of them at some point. if you don’t feel like getting a little raw and deep with me you should probably stop now, no feelings hurt, and i’ll see you next for the next where to – montreal after my trip this weekend with my fam.
i’ll cut to the chase: i have struggled with an eating disorder for a long long time. i wasn’t aware till recent years and wasn’t officially diagnosed till even more recently. i find it’s tricky for those who work in + with food because you’re constantly surrounded with really good food, and more often than not, you really love it. i had the double edged sword, so to speak, in that i was *obsessed with food but also… obsessed with food. meaning, i am beyond passionate about food, i really love eating, tasting, talking about it, and the whole culture, but i also became obsessed with food in an unhealthy way: constantly overthinking, calculating calories, balancing it all in my head: ‘if i eat this pastry today, then i’ll only eat healthy and do a spin class tomorrow,’ etc. i’ve always been an anxious over thinker so this combo didn’t do me any favors.
i was constantly surrounded by food. i grew up in a family that lives to eat. and i’ve been shooting food since i got my first point-and-shoot digital camera in i think middle school? i’d take it to the mall food court and take a shitty photo of my double doozie cookie sandwich.
i’d always been active growing up, trying every sport etc. in high school i’d have back to back varsity and club soccer practices. i once ate two fully loaded chipotle burritos between these two practices... if there was good food in front of me, i could clean the whole table, no self control and just kind of moan and groan after and not eat for a while / till the next one.
in college i had an amateur blog called bite&sip (lol) where i’d shoot and blog about restaurants (i deleted any signs of it, don’t you worry!). then my passion became work when i interned as a photo editor for a food agency in ny and shot for the infatuation on the side (before they were huge).
it wasn’t till i was shooting in-house for a hospitality agency representing ny’s (+ elsewhere’s) best restaurants and had the city’s finest food at my fingertips that it became too much. i’d come really hungry to my shoots, knowing that after we shot the whole menu, they’d hand me a fork and we’d dig in. i’d get in a frenzy, binging everything till my stomach swelled like an anaconda. every day i’d walk the williamsburg bridge to our office in soho and would never ever skip a workout, even if there was literally no time or if i was sick. there weren’t really days off. i became depressed, i was breaking out, i was gaining weight for the first time and i was having more frequent seizures. something wasn’t working. sidenote: i have (mild!) epilepsy.
when a coworker started doing the whole 30, i decided to give it a go out of curiosity. i got into it, and i decided to keep most of my new restrictions because it felt weirdly good to have some boundaries. i didn’t know the word, but i was developing orthorexia (an obsession with healthy eating with associated restrictive behaviors). i started getting more rigid with my rules, eating “healthy,” cutting out meat, gluten, dairy, sugar, drinking less alcohol, while still never skipping a workout. at shoots i had less and less options to eat with these new guidelines so instead of sampling the entirety of a menu, i found maybe one safe dish to eat. this felt easier to control.
the restricting started to come out sideways. i couldn’t keep nuts or nut butter in the house, scared i’d lose control and eat scoop after scoop after scoop. if i was in someone’s kitchen, i’d raid their nut butter or scoop handfuls of nuts. it felt like it didn’t count somehow if it wasn’t mine. i created these strange loopholes to give into my cravings. on holidays + parties, i wouldn’t leave the spread, going ham in full binge mode. if it were a birthday, i’d be tipsy and eat way too much cake… then, my body not used to all that sugar combined with the alcohol, would have a seizure later in bed. i’d wake up the next morning full of deep shame. something had to give.
somewhere in this timeline, i decided to move to la to slow down + chillll. my orthorexia was getting better, but my binge / restrict cycle was not. pivoting into freelance meant rather than shooting multiple restaurants every day, i got to create (ie control…) my own schedule. for instance: if on tuesday i’m shooting here, then i won’t make plans to eat much on wednesday, so maybe then i can have some wine out on thursday... i was constantly in my head working through some harsh bartering system. spontaneity was a no go (and i’m still working on it to be honest). i slowly stopped stocking my pantry and fridge with anything but utmost necessities. i claimed it was for my tight budget, but that wasn’t the only reason. life felt out of wack, covid was crazy, my work was inconsistent and i needed a sense of control. so i took control where i could: what i ate, when i ate and what i’d do to work it off.
later i learned i was inching my way toward an anorexia binge/purge combo. i had no clue that to purge isn’t just throwing up, it’s also messing with laxatives / stool softeners (guilty) and overcompensating on a workout to counteract (also guilty). my self loathing body dysmorphia was getting worse: the better (thinner) i thought i looked, the more scrutinizing i would do in the mirror. i would squeeze my arms to see if they got bigger after a vacation full of what i thought were one too many cookies. i’m not into scales (despite me being a libra) but i constantly kept tabs of how tight / loose my jeans felt against my stomach. i was often light headed with floaters bouncing in my vision, almost passing out on the tennis courts. even my seizures started back up again.
when it was suggested i seek help with my eating disorder, i was automatically pretty defensive. i thought eating disorder treatment was for those reallyyyy underweight or reallyyy overweight or throwing up after every meal. i didn’t realize you could have an under the radar disorder. finally i agreed to see a specialized eating disorder therapist weekly. i really dove in and Did The Work™. i was working on my recovery most waking hours and had to log my food: every bite, every sip, every location and every thought. i listened to podcasts about eating disorders, read books about eating disorders, watched movies about eating disorders. i filled in those close to me so i could be held accountable and all that.
and then i did it. i conquered it?... for now? i was discharged, knowing it could come back at any time but also that i had my regular therapist to check in with. my favorite takeaway from my ed therapy goes something like: ‘having an eating disorder is like having a dvd playing on loop. once recovered, you still have the dvd, but it’s in a stack with all your other dvds. you could still pop the disc in the dvd player, but you can also keep it at bay in that stack.’ gen-z may not get it but this stuck with me.
i haven’t spoken much about my recovery because i was a little scared the dvd would pop back in – what if we called it too soon? sure, i still overeat sometimes, but i try not to beat myself about it and go down the same old shame spiral. i still have body dysmorphia thoughts, but i try not to dwell on them. i still struggle with the idea of moderation sometimes. (and yes i know, “everything in moderation, including moderation.”) i’m learning that being cured is not clear cut black or white. but i do feel in a much better place physically and mentally so i feel like it’s finally *safe* to share.
i’m working through the artist’s way right now. (i know i know, i was also sus at first.) but the book wants you to treat your inner artist like your inner child, with compassion and by occasionally giving in to its desires. i’m eating intuitively and mindfully and all that, but above all i’m listening to inner child little d’s nostalgic childhood cravings: pastries! pbjs! popcorn! i eat a fancy pbj on a slab of sourdough outside in the sun with oslo most days. i would’ve never everrr had a pbj in the thick of it all. hell i’ve even got pasta and sandwiches back on my rotation! and it feels (and tastes) really good.
i hope you remember to treat your inner child (+ inner artist!) gently and listen to their cravings… and go get yourself that little treat and try one of those pastries. if you’ve struggled with disordered eating, i truly feel for you. i’m here if you ever want to talk, and will always appreciate my friends + fam who let me do the same. it’s nice to know we’re not alone. ANYWAYS, see you for a much more lighthearted edition on montreal next time <3
thank you for sharing !!!