Chicken Charlie at the OC Fair

A little pilgrimage to the OC Super Fair (my first fair ever!) yielded our newest post collaboration: "Chicken Charlie's Midas Touch: Turning Oreos into Deep-Fried Gold."

Quite the fun excursion. A big thanks to Jewel and Malia, without whom, I would have been out at the first bite of greasy batter.

Bon appetit! My post on "Julie & Julia" food stylist, Susan Spungen

"'Julie & Julia' Food Stylist Susan Spungen Explains the Secret to a Perfect Cheese Pull" was a pleasure to write, as Spungen herself was incredibly interesting, but getting it up was like trial by fire.

The PR people from Columbia hounded me about when I was going to post on the blogger event and then, when I was all ready to go, they couldn't get me photos. It seriously took them 5 days to send me the photos, which were actually a link to the photos and came with their own set of hoops for me to jump through. My editor Amy really went to bat for me though. She called the PR girl and (I assume) tore into her for making this whole thing so difficult. I can only imagine what she said exactly because she got the photos up shortly thereafter and the post looks lovely.

Redefining "Inker": My post on Comic Con

"Comic Con Trades Tights For Toques, Keeps Utility Belts," is my favorite headline.

Although I've yet to develop a taste for Manga -- perhaps something to do with the art and its tendency to under-develop emotional exposition (a grossly sweeping generalization, I know) -- I think I'll pick up some Garume when I'm there on Sunday. Whatever it is I feel is missing from Manga, I hope to find it in Garume.

Also, when I was searching around for my SI post material, I found Mostly About Food, an online collection of one guy's food-focused comics. It includes illustrated restaurant reviews, recipes, food odes, etc., with occasionally wax-on/wax-off-ish samurai themes. I don't really like the art (it's very 80's and I have issues with color), but I appreciate what he's trying to do.

And today, LA Weekly ran a Comic Con slide show titled "Comic Con: 'THE EMPIRE MUGGS BACK' STAR WARS DISPLAY." The collection of Star Wars inspired toys like the Admiral Ackbar Cereal bowl will be auctioned off to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It's all very silly. All very, I can't believe people are actually going to buy this stuff. But the consumer aspect of fandom has always eluded me and, of course, it's for charity.

Food at Comic Con

I'm attending my first Comic Con on Sunday. So naturally, I searched "comic con food," (it has become a habit) to see if there is anything quirky about which I'd like to write. There's plenty here. But I'll save it. For now, I'll say only that the unanimous recommendation was to bring your own food, as the food at the convention center is crappy and expensive, and leave you with this.

National Ice Cream Day, two days late

Wrote this for National Ice Cream Day but I didn't get to edit it before Hawaii so it didn't go up on SI. Still, I think it's pretty funny so here y'are:

During his term in office, President Ronald Reagan recognized that Americans love ice cream and in 1984, he proclaimed the third Sunday in July to be National Ice Cream Day. His proclamation address suggested the holiday be celebrated with "appropriate ceremonies and activities." In 2009, a roundup of the L.A.'s major ice cream purveyors revealed that many have even heard of the holiday and most don't plan on celebrating. Coincidence? A sign of the times? Just burn out from the National Doughnut Day calorie fest?

Still, there are those who've come through to celebrate this year's National Ice Cream Day on Sunday July 19.

Mid-city's ice cream maven, Bret Thompson, invites customers to Milk for a special holiday promotion. Any customer who comes to the shop and says the secret code phrase: "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream," will receive a scoop of the creamy stuff absolutely free.

And Charlie Temmel, owner of Charlie Temmel's Ice Cream on the Venice Boardwalk is offering 5 oz. of Schwarzenegger's favorite Austrian-style scoops for only $2.

Thanks for holding it down, guys! We invite the rest of the city's ice cream shops to please comment below with any "appropriate ceremonies and activities" we might have missed, or those that may have materialized during the past week.

Also, to ensure that the next national food day is more successful, here's a little heads up to Pinks, Let's Be Frank, Oki Dog, Skoobys, Wurstkuche, and The Stand: National Hot Dog Day is July 23rd. Make it happen.

Excuse the silence

Here's what I've been working on:

Froyo Gas Station

Willy Wonka al Fresco

Clare City's Cops and Doughnuts

Beer Float Battle

Original Farmers Market Celebrates 75 Years

"Bananas!*"

"God of Cookery" at Cinefamily

Locali on three wheels

A Locali treat vendor. HELL YES.

Empty house, full stomach

Coming back from Boston has been, for the most part, lousy. The house is a strange, unfamiliar echo chamber. Most of the mattresses are empty, my stuff is still in white boxes because I've got no drawers, the shower head is placed so high that it sprays me in the face with piercing rods of high-pressure water, the neighbor next door has been watching the History Channel so loud I'm convinced that what appears to be a normal, healthy mid-thirties male is actually a deaf WWII Veteran, and Boston still feels more like home than L.A. ever has.

The kitchen is really the only place in our new digs that has anything that I recognize, and so far, it's the best part of the house. Cooking in it has been the only thing that makes me feel okay about life right now. Alana and I are calling it quits for the time being, my grandmother might be seriously sick again, and I'm back here to patch a life together that I'm not entirely sure that I want but that I have to carry out anyhow for my own well-being (personal and financial). I can't say cooking has exactly staved off the loneliness and existential confusion, but it's been an outlet for restless energy and a reminder of what I enjoy. And hey, at least I can feed myself.

I got home on Sunday, and as I may have mentioned, the house is fucking EMPTY. Unable to unpack, I paced up, down and through the vacant rooms. I looked around the kitchen, opening each cupboard one-by-one to see where everything was. The refrigerator had a few miscellaneous items, mostly dairy and dairy-like products: milk, soy milk, coffee mate, Joe's yogurt, and a plastic to-go box filled with about a dozen french fries, most likely a remnant of Jesse's presence (and a reminder of his absence). My can of ground ginger didn't make it over, my punishment for not being around for cleaning shit out of the fridge at Veteran. I found one cabinet filled with my spices, and was hit with the distinctive, strong, and now comforting smell of hing. I saw my lentils sitting rolled up with a clothes pin holding the bag shut, and I realized that was about the only thing in the damn house of any nutritional value, meaning that's what I'd cook.

After eating a bowl of cereal, I got to the lentils. Cooking them is a long process. You have to rinse them, soak them, and even still, they take hours. So, I built the rest of my day around the process. I sat, worked, walked over to Fairfax high, hopped the fence, shot a few hoops, and prepared the lentils in between. They simmered for over 3 hours, 1.5 cup black lentils and about 11 cups of water (ratio is 1 cup lentils to 7 cups water) with a bunch of toasted cumin, mustard seed, corriander and salt. This batch turned out to be one of my best (slow cooking and whole, dried red peppers did the trick, I think).

Now, this isn't a chicken soup-type story. The food didn't make everything all better. Daal didn't cure mid-twenties, suburban existential confusion. They did, however, at the most basic level, give me something to do, something in my history that has always made me feel better (both in the process and in the end result). The smells didn't carry me on a wave of nostalgia, but they did make the house smell homey, and they made me think about cooking them over the last few years: when I started making them at Brandeis, preparing them at Chestnut Ave. in Boston when I was super busy at my internship, and when I came back to Los Angeles at Veteran. They've become personal. They happen at home.

I made this today, and I'm calling it Huevos Hindùes, which is leftover lentils and rice mixed together on a bed of sauteéd frozen green beans from Trader Joes with a poached egg and red pepper. It was pretty satisfying, by no means perfect. A bit like the new house, I guess. And though nothing has changed in my mind (I still feel pretty heartbroken and confused), the food will take care of me the rest of the week. No matter what is going on in my external or internal world, a guy's gotta eat.

So for the moment, at least I have a full stomach.