photographic lunch at Tender Greens Hollywood

Today's special at TG HW: roasted fingerling fries with parmesan, $3. Thoroughly delicious.

tomato soup with dumplings

Because it's winter, and because my grilled cheese needed a buddy, I made tomato soup. My first ever.

I adapted this recipe from one I found on A Cozy Kitchen, a food blog authored by a pair of LA girls, friends of an old friend, which I discovered during a bout of Facebook stalking. The photos are absolutely spectacular, and judging by the results of this test, the tastes are quite sound.

Their soup looks soupier than mine, perhaps because I used a food processor instead of an immersion blender, and redder, which is odd, since I added a can of tomato paste for color and because at first the flavor was surprisingly bland. I realize now that I made a number of modifications to the recipe to get it to taste: I used more butter and a different type of cheese in the dumplings; initially the dough was just too dry. And if I were to make it again, I'd use chicken stock instead of vegetable (because sometimes vegetable stock might as well be brown water), and I'd get rid of the chickpeas altogether. Also, I'd make smaller dumplings.

INGREDIENTS

Soup
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon chili powder
1 ¾ cup vegetable stock
1 14oz can chopped tomatoes
1 can tomato paste

Dumplings
1 cup all purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, chopped
2 tablespoons grated cheese (they used parmesan, I used feta)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs
3 tablespoons water

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large saucepan and sauté the onion for 2-3 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic, cumin, coriander and chili powder and cook for 1 minute. Add the stock and tomatoes and blend with an immersion blender(OR FOOD PROCESSOR!).

Stir in the chickpeas and bring to a boil. Once it boils reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

To make the dumplings, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add in the chopped butter and knead with your fingers until the mixture starts to resemble fine bread crumbs. Stir in the cheese and herbs, and then make a well in the center of the mixture. Add in the water and mix together (use your hands).

Divide the dough into 8 portions and roll into small balls. [ED NOTE: These small dough balls fluff up when they're cooked. Try dividing the dough into 12 small balls to get a greater quantity of smaller, more delicate dumplings.] Add the dumplings to the soup, cover and simmer for 20 more minutes.

black toast

I'm very grateful for Design Sponge. It is not merely my window to beautiful things made by beautiful people with their beautiful hands, my daily source for inspiration and bridge to the craft community, Design Sponge is also my blissful, if momentary break from my job, an alternative to watching people walk in and out of the bathroom, which faces my office. It's my escape from all of the round gray desks in my life, and more.

Today I am grateful for Black Toast, one of ten finalists from round one of DS's Design Your Own Alphabet Contest. Toast is my favorite alphabet for obvious reasons (I could eat my words, with butter), but Kern Over, which constructs letters out of various styles of comb-over, and Sweat Pants, a sort of YMCA type type, are close runners up. I'm also grateful for them.

Emily the Strange soda, a better investment than American real estate

BNWT Jones Soda Releases Collectable Emily the Strange Labels

Aaron and I went to a fun little masquerade party for the Emily the Strange pop up shop at Royal/T cafe and happened across these limited edition bottles of Jones soda. Ridiculous, because they're just limited edition labels, not really for drinking, but a pretty great find actually: Jones only made 600 of these babies and Emily the Strange is a sort of unofficial collectable queen, so you know, A + B = C (ASH). Buy some, and sell them on ebay.

Naresh's, THAT post

"Naresh Mehra Built Main Street with His Bare Hands, Opens Eponymous Restaurant"

Did I do it? My mom didn't particularly like it, and my editor cut two paragraphs, but my favorite writer assures me that it is actually very good. So I'm still undecided, but I have a hard time liking the stuff I write.

I've said before that I think I make things too precious, I project holiness onto the commonplace so writing about any subject becomes stifling, my words inadequate. It's probably a compound of being Jewish and hyper-literate. I mean, I cry during commercials for women's deodorant and read into the subtext of croissants. I don't know that stuff is appropriate for food blogging, which seems best when it's fast-paced and specific, but if I ever write a book, you bes' believe it'll be full of poetic waxings on the perfection of fun-size Milky Way Midnight and reasons not to eat an ice cream sandwich while walking.

That said, Naresh's really is that place you want to bring your friends. It's open late and feels like you could stay all night, sharing small plates, freezing time. Naresh himself is a delight. I wish him all the best in his new business.

There is much from this last month that I'm proud of. Cool people and cool things, back-to-back and all strung together. My proximity to them has made me feel powerfully alive, and grown-up.

It has also overwhelmed me, all this coolness. Strung together in my datebook as it is, in different colors denoting the categorical divisions I've invented to "organize" my life, packed in so tightly that during the short hours when I'm alone, I can motivate no greater action than watching NBC shows on my laptop--this coolness has kept me from writing, has inched out one of the best and most validating parts of me. I mean that I have done that; I've neglected my work.

I read these words now and they remind me of something I heard Francis Ford Coppola say about pretentiousness. They feel clumsy and inarticulate, the reaching words of someone who used to wield words. But merely writing them is such a deep relief to me, to this nebulous physical weight I've been carrying behind my eyes. I ask myself for the thousandth time if I'm a writer, and today I tell myself that I must be since writing is the only thing that makes me sick when I don't do it.

A writer. The title makes me beam and shiver. Looking at it conjures dubious images of my path, and I muse that perhaps it's just the finality of the period that scares me. I already feel a sense of competition and rejection, and exhaustion from this seemingly relentless hustle of life -- but I know (at least rationally) that all of this is self-imposed. I wonder if should I go back to school, worry that I won't make enough money, that I won't be able to have a family, that I'll end up with nothing. I'm 25 now and I'm scared to be what I am.

I don't want to be scared and I don't want to be neglectful. I want to self-actualize and make beautiful things. I want to be brave. Tomorrow I'm going to start a new post for the Weekly about a very special restaurant in Venice. I'm going to try to communicate love and professionalism with an earnestness that I that I haven't used before. I want to know that I can. It'll probably go up on Thursday, and I'll repost it here then.