[Friday Link Round-Up]

1. I am so obsessed with the idea of a low-cost pallet succulent garden. It looks so easy and beautiful! This localspoon photo tutorial makes it a snap.

Image via The Local Spoon

2. The Kitchn this week revealed the secret to great tofu: freeze that shit. 

Image via the kitchn

3. One of my favorite blogs, Daydream Lily, just posted these lovely labels from Love Mae. These are a must-have for any aesthetically-conscious baker, like myself. Everything must be pretty!

Image via Daydream Lily

4. And another kitchn post (can you tell I think about food all day and night?): no-bake boston cream pie. Graham crackers! Chocolate! Genius!

5. A lovely travel blog on La Tartine Gourmande about Portland and Oregon in general. It makes me miss Stumptown and lazy days walking through art street fairs. Sigh. 

Image via la Tartine Gourmande

Blog Under Constructon

Carrie and I love this blog. But, let's be real, it needs some work and a jolt of new inspiration. We want to refocus, regroup and revitalize the content, design and aspirations of the blog and aim to be back September 1. If you have any ideas of what you would like to see on BohoBeat, please let us know. Until then, enjoy your August!

In personal updates, Carrie just spent the weekend with me in LA with some Santa Cruz, SF and LA amigos. We did Intelligentsia, Urth, The Standard, The Library Bar, Bulan Thai, and Cowboys and Indians. We also made delish chicken pasta, watermelon vodka tonics and banana fudge custard pie. I head up to SF tomorrow for a night with Carrie in the Mission and then we are headed to Portland for the weekend! (I am especially looking forward to VooDoo Donuts, the Alberta Street Fair, and some record shopping.)

Love you!
-Ambz and Care-Bear

[Friday Link Round-Up] Father's Day, Blog Marketing, Japanese Cheesecake, Kris Atomic

1. Such a cute little Father's Day idea. I, for one, am making my dad sugar-free chocolate chip cookies.

2. I'm loving the "21 Days to a Better Business Blog" Challenge on Blogging for Branding. 

3. I've never heard of Japanese cheesecake before, but you better believe I'm going to try it now. It looks so much lighter than American cheesecake, which I find cloyingly sweet and dense. Cheers to Green Cilantro for the recipe. 

4. I found a new favorite blogger and illustrator this week, Kris Atomic. Her work is so adorable and relatable. If I ever wrote a children's book, you better BELIEVE I'd be contacting her to illustrate it. Hmmm, new life plan? Hahah, I'm scatterbrained enough as it is without a book on my plate...

[Green Thursdays] GreenIsSexy.org

I stumbled upon this blog a few weeks ago while looking for ways to save water in my house, and now I keep coming back for all the practical, energy-saving tips. GreenIsSexy.org is run by three women, one of whom just so happens to be the lovely Rachel McAdams.

Check out all the interesting articles about things like how much water goes into making one pair of jeans (now you might think twice about buying yet another pair of Rock & Republics), the gross stuff in our air fresheners, and which fonts save the most ink.

[Girl Crush] Julie Sarinana (Jules)

This girl knows what's up. 

She can dress it up. 

Or she can dress it down.

And she always looks like a badass.

She basically makes me want to get up and get dressed for work in the morning. If you were to only follow a handful of style blogs, Sincerely Jules has got to be one of them.

All photos via her blog.

[Food + Drink Wednesday] SF Food Blog Log: The All-You-Can Eat Guide to the Bay Area

I present to you, lovely readers, a semi-definitive list of San Francisco food blogs. San Francisco loves food almost as much as it loves talking about how much it loves food. So these blogs are by San Franciscans, about San Francisco food culture, and usually contain epic photos of food-related greatness. This list is a work in progress, but I think I've brought together the most notable tastemakers (please excuse my terrible pun) the Bay has to offer. 

Blogs by San Francisco Writers

• Cooking with Amy: gourmet recipes; restaurant, book, and travel reviews.
• Chez Pim: a “professional eater” chronicles cooking, baking in San Francisco and around the world
• An Obsession with Food: An SF food writer’s take on the local “food scene” and offers tips on wine, cooking techniques, etc. No recipes.
• 101 Cookbooks: A blog written by an SF-based food writer, cookbook author, and photographer. Beautiful photos and great, inventive recipes.

via 101 Cookbooks

• The Certifiable Foodie: Food news, recipes, local farm news, and so on.
• Italy in SF: Italian food in the Bay Area
• becks & posh: An English girl explores SF's culinary adventures.

Via becks & posh

• Gastronomichael
• No Salad as a Meal: Food reviews, etc.
• Married with Dinner: A couple’s blog on SF food.
• Food Wishes: So cool. Chock full of VIDEO recipes from this SF chef.
• Briciole: An Italian girl in California.

Food News & Review Blogs

• 7x7: The food section of the San Francisco magazine
• SF Eater: News, Reviews. Part of the larger Eater.com blog

Via SF Eater

• KelsEats: Reviews of restaurants, dining
• Mission Mission: Not a food blog, but does have a food and drink category, which gives reviews, SF-centric food news, and good local information (even though it’s crazy hipster)
• Uptown Almanac: Not a food blog, but has an extensive “Eats and Beers” category (their largest category behind “Mission District,” “Street Art” but slightly larger than “Douchebaggery”). Contains reviews and food-related news.

Via Uptown Almanac

• GrubStreet SF: Local and national/international news.
• SFoodie: SFWeekly’s Food Blog
• Bay Area Bites: KQED’s SF food blog.
• Beer & Nosh: Beer news and reviews, beer dinners, market news.

Via Beer & Nosh

• Tablehopper: Not a blog, per se. It’s a website for the author’s weekly newsletter, focusing on SF dining reviews and the like.
• Hidden Menu: An amazing blog with amazing photos from restaurants around the Bay Area that details all the “secret menu items” that you’d never know existed.
• SF Cart Project: Food cart news galore.
• Edible San Francisco: A blog for the big, glossy magazine, called Edible.

Academy of Sciences Chef via Edible

• Inside Scoop SF: Michael Bauer’s Blog for the San Francisco Chronicle
• Summer Tomato: Tips on healthy, local, sustainable eating by San Francisco-based food scientist, Darya Pino, Phd.

Baker Blogs by Bay Area bakers

• Bake with Mars
• Dessert First (see microblog for SF-centric posts)

Via Dessert First

• Ciao Samin
• Eat the Love
• The Tomato Tart
• The Flirty Guide
• La Vie en Route
• Piece of Cake



Via Piece of Cake

Food Communities:

• SF Food Wars
• I'm sure there are more of these, but I'm having trouble tracking them down. 

Vermont Cheese Forests via SF Food Wars

That's Right, Get Excited...

We have some exciting things to come in the next few weeks, and I thought I'd share the excitement with everyone else. Spread the love a bit, if you will. Share the good vibes, if you want. Or just feign excitement. I'm cool with that too.

1. I'm putting together a comprehensive list of San Francisco food blogs to share with you. If you live in SF, it will help you eat healthier, source your food locally, and introduce you to the lovely community of food bloggers right in your own 7x7 homebase.

2. We'll dust off our cameras and give you more perspective into the beauty that's around us, plus inside looks at our respective cities, SF and London. This will help us engage more with our communites, and we hope it inspires you to do the same. It also means more pretty pictures taken by yours truly and Amber Lee.

3. More news! We like to think it's our most compelling aspect of the blog, and we'll bring you more up-to-the-day information on women's equality, sustainability, human rights, film, music, and publishing.

4. A new layout. Our layout is a constant work in progress. Next goal: Tabbed browsing, complete with photos instead of all this cluttered text. No one likes to read! Boooo!

Much Love,
Carrie Melissa

[Friday Link Round-Up] Budget Fashion, Vegan Stoners, Breast Milk Ice Cream, Oh my!

1. SHOP at us.asos.com. I am so obsessed right now. Tons of cute stuff for affordable prices. This sweater is on sale for $50.

2. READ about this LDN ice cream shop that just started selling breast milk ice cream. Lovely. And it's already sold out. 

Photo via Sheknows.com

3. MAKE delicious, simple vegan recipes from The Vegan Stoner, one of my fave vegan food blogs of the moment. I just love how easy and pretty the recipes are. Tres unique. 

4. BROWSE the goodness of this amazing budget fashion blog, The CheapChica's Guide to Style. That's my kind of blog right there. 

[Inspiration] Belle Fleur De Lis

Belle Fleur de Lis has quickly become my new favorite blog since I discovered it via {Frolic}. A photographer and gardener, Lotte gorgeously documents her green-thumb lifestyle. (Also, I'm green with envy regarding her beautiful red locks.)

I'm now thinking of re-landscaping. And by re-landscaping, I mean cleaning off my windowsill and picking up a plant that I will try not to kill.

[Green Thursdays] Now You Have No Excuse Not to Eat Local

So I don't know how this works in other parts of the world, but I know that America is finally getting their stuff together and catching up with places like New Zealand with the Buy Fresh, Buy Local initiative.

I actually discovered my area's Buy Fresh, Buy Local Guide by accident. I was at the library a few days ago, doing my thang, stocking up on poetry anthologies and cookbooks, when I passed a stack of catalogs with some delicious looking green vegetables on their covers (I'm pretty sure it was kale, which made me really hungry). It turns out, these catalogs are the Bay Area Buy Fresh, Buy Local Guides. Inside, the guides contain articles on sustainable eating, lists of sustainable restaurants and grocery stores and growers. To a food junkie like me, this was heaven. These guides are put out by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and there's a guide for every major area in California and in other states as well. Finally, America is finding ways to make it easier to eat better. The regional websites (you can get to California's if you click that link over there) are particularly helpful for the conscious grocery shopper.

Here's a few to get you started:
www.buylocalpa.org
www.buylocalvirginia.org
www.buyfreshbuylocalcr.org
www.buylocalnebraska.org
www.iowafreshfood.com
www.buylocalny.org
www.bfblsd.org
www.buylocalca.org

And here are my favorite fall fruits from the farmer's market down the street (actually, the persimmon is from a friend at the office).

[Green Thursdays] Take an Eco-Tour of San Francisco

San Francisco is kind of a ridiculous place... ridiculously amazing. I feel like I hear every day, "That would only ever happen in San Francisco." We have outlawed plastic bags, have stopped selling cigarettes in drugstores, stopped giving kids toys in their happy meals because they have too many damn calories, and I just found this website that helps you live and visit San Francisco in an environmentally conscious way. Now, I don't want TOO many tourists to flock over here (my favorite local ice cream shop already has a line around the block), but check out GreenSF. Not too shabby.

(Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!)