live and active cultures

2012-01-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

The owner of the Eastern European restaurant across from my office was an even more colossally bitchy today than she usually is until I ordered the stuffed cabbage with mashed potatoes -- her favorite dish. She says she "eat it for lunch everyday!"

Now we're best friends.

This is what I did today.

2012-01-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

Research for a LA Weekly assignment. Get excited.

lavendar vanilla frozen custard

2012-01-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

Complete dive school. That's what's at the top of my New Year's resolutions list. It's a carry-over from last year's list and has nothing to do with this post except I figured you might be curious about my number one when you read my number two.

Number two is Make a perfect vanilla ice cream, a new addition on which I'm already hard at work. Since my roommate Ryan and I bought an ice cream maker last year I've been toying around with ingredient combination and have yet to find something I'm thrilled with. Granted most everything has been delicious, excepting a couple major flops, I'm trying to find something else. Something really transcendent.

Here's what I know: I won't use cornstarch or corn syrup, no matter how much David Lebovitz says they'd help. I want to use only natural ingredients and not because I care so much about the health issue -- I mean, it's ice cream -- but because you can buy perfectly good corn syrupy ice cream at the grocery store.

I'm not a ludite. I have no resistance to technology or "progress," even if I still don't know how to make sound come out of my TV at times. (It's really not easy. There are a lot settings and a lot of wires that sometimes get unplugged.) Still, the point of making ice cream at home, to me, is to create something basic and knowable. To wonder at the fact that combining milk sugar and eggs in just this certain way changes them fundamentally. It's like magic, only better because the trick is still amazing even when you know how it's done.

Corn syrup, on the other hand, is a laboratory food, made by boiling corn solids down for a long time under specific, controlled conditions. It may help my ice cream but it'd take the magic out of it for me too.

Final note: As you can see, this is a recipe for lavender vanilla frozen custard, not vanilla ice cream. I'm playing with other flavors to help me figure out what works and what doesn't, and maintain the interest of my tasting audience, of course. Also, in the way that people say you can judge the quality of a restaurant on whether or not they can make a good chicken, I figure if I can master vanilla, I've got a leg up on other flavors.

Recipe adapted from Epicurious.

INGREDIENTS

1.5 cups heavy cream

1.5 cup half-and-half

2/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons dried edible lavender

2 eggs

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Bring cream, half-and-half, and lavender just to a boil in a heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally. Remove pan from heat and steep covered for 30 minutes.

Pour mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl and discard the lavender. Return mixture to cleaned saucepan and heat over moderate heat until hot.

Whisk together eggs, salt and vanilla in a large bowl, then whisk in 1 cup hot cream mixture in a slow stream.

Pour into remaining hot cream mixture in saucepan and cook over moderately low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until thick enough to coat back of spoon, about 5 minutes. DO NOT LET IT BOIL!

Pour custard through sieve into a clean bowl to catch any eggy bits.

Allow the custard to cool completely, stirring occasionally. Chill, covered, until cold, at least 3 hours.

Freeze custard in ice cream maker. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden.

NOTES: Fresh from the ice cream maker, the lavender was potent and flowery. Almost too much so. After hardening in the freezer overnight, the flavor mellowed to something like a sweet cream with lavender on the back end, a faintly medicinal warming after each swallow.

i might have to eat oklahoma

2012-01-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

That's what I said to Garrett, my Oakie office-mate yesterday afternoon. I was having sugar pangs in a big way and the only things left in my holiday stocking were a few packets of Emergen-C and a block of chocolate in the shape of the Sooner State. I brainstormed alternatives for what felt like half an hour, though it may have been a much, much shorter time. In the end I decided to be selective, nibbling the panhandle instead of the heartier central state, both because it had broken off months ago and because nobody famous is from there.

True story.

excuse the iphoneography

no knead bread

2012-01-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

This post is late. I made no kneed bread for the first time over a month ago for our fourth annual Post-Thanksgiving dinner party. It's not traditional Post-Thanksgiving fare -- concocted from whatever is left after the grandiose meals our families prepare, usually hodgepodged and decidedly unattractive. But someone at our last party asked if I had baked my own bread for the pot roast sandwiches (recipe coming soon, I promise) and I took it as a challenge because I am hyper-sensitive. The bread is beautiful, perfectly tanned with a handsome seam, and delicious. Listening to the crackle of crust fresh from the oven is the single most pleasureful experience of my modest baking career.

I sometimes imagine that if I were more a confident person I'd have a higher-paying job for which I'd travel the world, visiting the homes of expatriate writers, carrying vintage handbags. A glamorous life indeed. But would I bake my own bread? Probably not. So alls well that ends well.

Recipe from Mother Earth News.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 tsp dry active yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

3 cups all-purpose flower

1 1/2 tsp salt

Cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the salt and flour, stirring until blended. The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at least 8 hours, preferably 12 to 18, at warm room temperature.

The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently shape it into a ball. Generously coat a clean dish towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put the seam side of the dough down on the towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel and let rise for about 1 to 2 hours. When it’s ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

At least 20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat oven to 475 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart dutch oven in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven and lift off the lid. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. The dough will lose its shape a bit in the process, but that’s OK. Give the pan a firm shake or two to help distribute the dough evenly, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect; it will straighten out as it bakes.

Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove the bread from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour before slicing.

kitchen gadgets for secret agents

2011-12-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

A Christmas List for George Smiley: 5 Food Gadgets for Secret Agents is a post about secret agents and the neighbors who suspect them and want to give them kitchen gadgets for Christmas. I'm considering adapting it into a full-length how-to on shopping for secret agents.

via createityourway, etsy

you know what sucks about a tower of gifts?

2011-12-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

that it's not a cheeseburger.

Dear Reader,

MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

via Gift Couture:

Gift Couture is a start-up creative and innovative wrapping paper company that offers high-quality wrapping paper sets. We will produce unique papers that coordinate together into conceptualized themes and sets. This is exemplified in the Cheeseburger set that we chose to use as the initial project. This includes 5 different wrapping paper designs; a bun, hamburger, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes, all of the components of a Cheeseburger! Right now we are working to get pre-order funding to get the project off the ground. This will also encourage and enable us to release additional coordinated sets, which will be available online and through retail partners.

salted caramel frozen custard

2011-11-27T13:18:00.001-08:00

This recipe from an old issue of Gourmet, courtesy Epicurious.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
2 1/4 cups heavy cream, divided
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
3 large eggs

Heat 1 cup sugar in a dry 10-inch heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring with a fork to heat sugar evenly, until it starts to melt, then stop stirring and cook, swirling skillet occasionally so sugar melts evenly, until it is dark amber.

Add 1 1/4 cups cream and cook, stirring, until all of caramel has dissolved. (Ed note: If this step is not scary, and your mixture doesn't bubble up into something monstrous and horrible, you've done it wrong. Go back and try again.) Transfer to a bowl and stir in sea salt and vanilla. Cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, bring milk, remaining cup cream, and remaining 1/4 cup sugar just to a boil in a small heavy saucepan, stirring occasionally.

Lightly whisk eggs in a medium bowl, then add half of hot milk mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly. Pour back into saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until custard coats back of spoon. DO NOT LET BOIL!

Pour custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl, then stir in cooled caramel.

Chill custard, stirring occasionally, until very cold, 3 to 6 hours.

Freeze custard in ice cream maker (it will still be quite soft), then transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to firm up.

NOTES: The recipe really captures the caramel flavor, the texture too -- velvety -- the salt not so much. Next time try a different kind of salt maybe? Or more of it? And maybe add some on top, right at the end. Lots of salt options.

The other problem is... I don't quite know how to put it. Temperature? It didn't feel cold to the taste. Again, maybe it was the salt maybe the number of eggs, but it was cool, not cold.

Amanda the baker, now in blog form!

2011-11-26T13:14:00.001-08:00

Amanda, the wise and lovely, has started her own blog. The aptly titled amanda the baker has a charming voice like the lady herself. An occasional depository for her thoughts on eating and buying locally, the baker's greatest strengths lie in saucy musings on niche topics like making your own wedding cake, and what's a girl to do with leftover croissant dough. Her apple tasting notes are sweet too.

I hope the stream of traffic this post is sure to direct to her blog convinces her that the people want what she's got. Amanda the baker, America wants more posts!

mint chip ice cream

2011-11-19T13:50:00.001-08:00

I've been doing this thing where I eat food when it's hot instead of taking pictures of it. It's incredible. But selfish. So I apologize that there aren't pictures of my first ever POT ROAST(!), nor the sandwiches we made with it, topped with just enough horseradish sauce to ignite a flash fire at the top of your sinus--spectacularly delicious. I'll post the recipe soon.

I do, however, have photos of this mint chip ice cream I made for our housewarming party last week, which is why it looks a bit icy. It's still super delicious though, and if you want to avoid that iciness you can add a couple egg yolks to the mix. Eggs add richness, but also egginess. And even though the Salmonella in uncooked eggs is relatively small, it's life-threatening to infants and pregos and I don't want that on my conscience. I generally try to go it without the eggs.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
a handful of fresh mint leaves
3/4 cups sugar
dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 oz dark chocolate bar

RECIPE:
Combine milk, cream and mint leaves in a heavy medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Heat until little bubbles form around the edges. DO NOT BOIL!

Remove from heat, cover and let steep for ten minutes.

Uncover and pour through a colander into a medium bowl to strain the mint leaves from the milk. Toss the leaves.

Combine sugar and salt in a new bowl. Whisk milk mixture into the sugar, just a bit at a time.

Pour back into the pan and cook over medium-low heat for two minutes, stirring constantly.

Pour mixture into a bowl. Stir in vanilla extract.

Transfer bowl into the refrigerator to allow mixture to cool completely.

While mixture is cooling, shave your chocolate with a vegetable peeler. It should give you pretty little chocolate ribbons. If your vegetable peeler sucks, as they so often do, just use a sharp knife to chop tiny uneven pieces. If the pieces are too large they'll feel like weird sharp plastic.
Pour mixture into ice cream maker.

Stir chocolate shavings into ice cream before transferring into the freezer to firm.

2011-11-13T14:36:00.001-08:00

Otherwise known by the title, "Feminism's pretty sweet," here is Oreo Cameos by Judith Klausner: Cookie Art with a Message

2011-10-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

I couldn't really find the right category for Back to the Roots so tagged it under culinary ephemera, but that doesn't give the company the credit it deserves. You can read the post if you want to know more, or watch the time lapse. In either case, you can count on receiving a kit for your next birthday/gift-giving holiday. You can count on that.

kosher ink

2011-10-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

I originally titled the post Chozen Kosher Ice Cream Takes the Babka. But Chozen Kosher Ice Cream: Babka, Rugelach Flavors + No Conversion Required is good too.

WE FOUND A PLACE!

2011-09-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Lease signed, deposit paid. We move October 1st.

Here's one from before I started living out of boxes. Spread on Melrose: Is it a Sex Food Shop? is an attempt, of sorts, at hard core investigative journalism.

Photos of new digs and new projects coming soon.

2011-09-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry pretties. We're still looking for a place to live.

There's so much to show and tell, but it'll have to wait. I'm happy you stopped by though. And I look forward to catching up.

Love,
Emma

P.S. Please tell your friends with good credit not to move to Los Angeles. They're making it very difficult for me to find an apartment.

canned food

2011-08-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

I just saw Contagion and now it seems nothing is certain. Except my love for Matt Damon. And that I need to stockpile canned food.

I also love Kate Winslet and John Hawkes.

corkbar: wine bar for neophytes

2011-07-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's been hard to type with my fingers triple-crossed, but I think I've finally found a new home. I don't want to jinx it, so I won't say more than that. Only now I feel comfortable taking some time away from house hunting and money making to sit down and put in some table time. So here we go.

I got a hold of a beer once when I was very little. I don't remember drinking more than a couple sips of it--nor do I remember trying to eat part of a raw steak afterward, though I've been told that I did that--but I do remember slamming my hand in the door of our red Subaru station wagon, and I remember it was horrible.

I like to think of this story as a fun explanation for why I never felt possessed to drink. I didn't start drinking until after I turned 21. And I still don't really drink-drink. But the truth is that I was probably scared straight by a video I watched in the D.A.R.E. program in 5th grade. (You may have seen it too: it's the one with the anthropomorphic bee and rabbit. It's terrifying.) As a result, wine is one particularly cavernous gap in my food culture knowledge.

Now to last week: Aaron and I were invited to sample the summer menu at a wine bar downtown. These things are a bit funny for us because we're always slightly convinced that there's been some kind of mistake. Any minute someone will announce that we were accidentally invited to sit at the grown ups table, and that we should go back to our rooms where we'll be served shells with ragu.

Of course, that didn't happen. And as we sat at the table at Corkbar, looking over the menu with two of the sweetest PR girls, I realized that it is the perfect wine bar for a horticultural neophyte like me. Corkbar's wine menu is meticulous and comprehensible. The list includes notes about flavor and pairing for each wine on the menu, all of which are made in California.

The food menu offered wine notes as well. And everything we ate was delicious. There isn't much to say because the bar seems to specialize in comfortable simplicity. They have taken the impenetrably high culture concept of a wine bar, stripped it of pretense, and given it air and light.

I will say, however, that it does not get better than their bahn mi sliders. Ground pork, ginger, cilantro, garlic, and carrot, with cool daikon that tempers the hot bursts of sriracha for the most pleasant kind of heat I've had served between two mini challah buns.

Corkbar: 403 W. 12th Street, Los Angeles. (213)746-0050

it's a bicycle wine rack, you hipster

2011-07-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

Whaaat? More Squid Ink? Yes. Eat it up.

Food Gadgets for Hipsters: The Bicycle Wine Rack

wild goodness + food party + little trees

2011-06-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

Updates! I'm looking for a new apartment in an exciting neighborhood. Rededicating myself to Squid Ink and taking on new responsibilities at the Academy. Is it too early to say the bounce is back?

Food Party Hostess Thu Tran at Everything Is Festival Tomorrow

Wild Goodness Food X Film Series: Chicken Screen Tests + Scorsese Meatballs

And this one. To which I contributed a sweet little nugget of my origins story:

Squid Ink Food Writers' Most Reviled Childhood Dinners

Western Spaghetti

2011-06-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm embarrassed. This video made the internet rounds two years ago and yet I saw it for the first time this weekend. I'm sharing it here because it's wonderful and because I'm sure that somewhere there exists another person who has not seen it. I refuse to believe I'm the only person who doesn't troll the youtubes.

Cakes for my Betty Draper New England fantasy life

2011-06-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

In my younger years I often wished that I had grown up on the east coast. Somewhere in New England, my hair would be longer and thicker and my bangs more blunt. I'd take tennis lessons of course, and crew. Competitors would fear my level head and quiet power; my coach would have been an alternate for the '84 Olympic team in both sports. My friends, Madison (Maddie), Bernice (Bertie), and Caroline would always dress in whites or pastels, which would never get dirty, even when picking berries. On weekends, we'd head for the cape.

At 25, I'm super proud to be a Californian. I love soccer and brown skin and garlic. If I were to get a tattoo, I'd get a California silhouette somewhere on my inner arm so that when I shook someone's hand he'd know what's up. I still love the fantasy of New England mothers ironing white linen tablecloths, planning theme parties and icing cakes. And this is why I'm thankful for the internet, and JCrew.

Both cakes via Poppytalk. Top, inspired by Stella McCartney's spring collection, Apollina created Stella Cake (a Citrus Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Orange Lemon Icing). Bottom, a DIY tutorial from Strawberry Chic shows how to make frosting roses.

petite douche avec ton pilsner

2011-06-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

I once had a boyfriend who told me that bar soap was unsanitary. But he was an extremist. We disagreed about a lot of things.

Read Lather with Lager: Give Him Beer Soap for Father's Day, my new post about soap made from beer on Squid Ink.

The one where Aaron gets a title and is quoted

2011-06-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

Followers of Live and Active Cultures have gotten pretty accustomed to Emma's colossal presence on the LA blogosphere as one of Squid Ink's finest, but this time, it's yours truly who's making his own tiny-but-mighty foray into internet stardom. Yup, I just got one of my photos featured in LA Times' food and culture mag, Brand X, in an article about non-alcoholic summer drinks. The cafe where I work, Espresso Cielo, was featured because we serve some of the best iced coffee around and happen to use one of the coolest-looking ways to make it, Kyoto-style cold brew drip tower. Anyway, Brand X emailed the shop and asked us for pictures of it, which is, naturally, where I came in. And to boot, the piece also included a little something I said about what coffees make good cold brew coffee.

If there's one thing I've learned working in coffee, it's that coffee people are obsessed with two things: great tasting coffee (duh) and gadgets they use to make it. For me, the Kyoto process is both of these things, the perfect marriage of amazing taste and crazy-awesome-doohickeydom. Room temperature water drips through coarse coffee grounds over about ten hours. Every coffee, of course, tastes different, but the process tends to yield a really smooth, sweet, and bright cup. The best ones taste almost like fruit teas or pure cocoa. Plus, since there's no heat or pressure to break down caffeine molecules, it's a real kick in the pants. Really, it's the perfect drink for those long summer days of grab-ass at the beach.

Also: weird to be referred to as "Barista Aaron Stein-Chester." Like, who is that guy?

cookieboy

2011-06-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

Some hope to see their name in lights. I'd be happy with my face on a cookie.

These by Japanese textile designer turned baker, cookieboy. Are they Conan O'Brian and Jay Leno? His work is usually less mysterious--birds and cameras and feathers and things--but his blog is in Japanese so we may never know.

photographic dinner at Akasha

2011-06-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Quinoa with asparagus, snap peas, corn, and tamari grilled tofu $12. Don't judge me.

THE AKASHA crop organic cucumber vodka, pineapple & cucumber juice, martini style $11

I'm a grownup

2011-05-06T10:02:00.001-07:00

I drink coffee now. Like, twice a month maybe. It's no big deal, I'm a grownup.

This is my drink: the Cubano at Coffee Commissary on Fairfax--cinnamon, raw sugar, espresso and milk. Sometimes I add a Splenda.

I get coffee at 7 pm before the longer double features and four hour foreigns. Then I haul ass down the street to our favorite revival cinematheque and I talk very fast about my ailments and which girls at work I don't like and literature and I feel that I am just like Woody Allen. The unmarked paper cup looks very sophisticated in my hand. (A haiku!) I wonder if people think I'm European.

the one where i compare the flaming lips to a boob job

2011-04-28T09:09:00.001-07:00

"The Flaming Lips Releases New Music in Life-Size Gummy Skulls, Teases Gummy Wayne Coyne Statue," is blowin up. Posted Wednesday morning and already it has 94 facebook "likes"!! Whatever that actually signifies, and I doubt it signifies very much, at least there's a lot of reposting, which boosts our Google score and keeps the editors happy. I wonder though if it's my post they're liking, or just The Flaming Lips. Like a girl who got a boob job and suddenly became interesting to talk to, but with the form and content swapped. Should I be worried that people aren't interested in my posts for their ideas, but for their magnificently enormous chichis? That is to say, their flaming lips?

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm killin it.

jk I really don't know.

Matzoh Brei

2011-04-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

Topped with bananas, yogurt, a few drops of maple syrup, and cardamom. French Toast a la juif, let's say.

business card, draft 1

2011-04-20T16:07:00.001-07:00

Remember these? I never had them printed. Turns out I suck at Illustrator. Instead, I made it into a stamp. I carved the design into a linoleum block using a Speedball Linoleum Cutter and printed with Speedball ink.

The screenprinting ink left a nice texture on the card stock, but was ultimately too unpredictable to be time or cost effective. There was always too much or too little ink on the stamp to give the utensils a clear edge. The uneven surface of the card stock didn't help either. They were just a bad match. For every five cards I made I ended up with only one usable for professional purposes. I like them looking crafty, but you still need to be able to make our the shapes.

I'll use high end stamp pads for my next trial. I imagine they'll give a cleaner, more even and consistent silhouette. Fingers crossed!

alice waters on fishsticks paltrow

2011-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

photographic lunch at little doms

2011-04-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

grilled chicken paillard, with arugula, grilled mushrooms, balsamic vinegar and olive oil

wood grilled hamburger with burratta, roasted tomato mostarda and speck, and fried potatoes

We've had a great day.

the best laid plans

2011-04-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hey, I write about food for the LA Weekly and I'm interested in doing a short piece on The Sandwitches before their show at The Echo.

Nothing that would require a formal sit down, just a quick phone interview about Mrs. Jones' Cookies, Ambient Sad Cake, who can eat the most sandwiches, who can eat a sandwich the fastest, and where in town they like to eat sandwiches. That sort of thing. I think the story has the potential to break boundaries. Welles' The War of the Worlds for food/music journalism. If not, it's still a bit of extra press for the show.

In any case, call or email me to work something out.
Emma Courtland

That was the pitch. One of the first Joe and I talked about when I started contributing to Squid Ink actually. To my surprise and delight they accepted, and I outlined questions for my first SI post in over a month. During the interview, however, things took a turn. It might have been as early as the second question, and I couldn't help but think about my cousin Margy's interview with The Slits.

I had recently listened to the story on Bob Carlson's new show UnFictional on NPR. She describes being a young journalist interviewing the British punk group, who are less than eager to participate. Listening to the tape of the interview, she told me, was excruciating. (You can listen to it here.) She asks them about their influences and they mumble something about the earth and the stars. Something like that. Makes me think I got off easy. Mine was a phone interview after all, I could hang up whenever I wanted. The Sandwitches didn't pelt me with a wad of paper, but they didn't play ball in any other respect either.

We went to see them at the echo last night anyway and I introduced myself and Grace apologized for the awkward conversation. I told her not to worry about it, that it made a good story. You can read it below and let me know what you think.

Q & A with The Sandwitches: Clearing Their Name of Food Pun Confusion, Cafe Tropical + a Menu Pairing for Their New Album Mrs. Jones' Cookies

dispatches from sweeden, via poppytalk

2011-03-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

Scandinavia must be the most inspirational region on the planet. It seems like everything that comes out of there has the same charming minimalism that makes me swoon with admiration and envy. Every so often Popytalk contributor Elisabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day posts something spectacularly charming she found in her home of Gothenberg, Sweeden. Last week she posted these, boxes of dry cereal and museli.

Breakfast in Sweden. Maybe some organic yoghurt or curdled from Milko, and some energetic cereals or museli from Ica? Or we could make some oatmeal porridge and eat some wholemeal bread with it. Or we could just sit there and look at this great packaging, and eat later.

I love the mountain climbers. And I don't know what fullkornsbrod is, and it doesn't really matter, but it looks an awful lot like rocks. Maybe it's mushrooms...

appreciative palate

2011-03-19T12:38:00.000-07:00

My mom forwarded this to me yesterday. It's an article from the Tucson Citizen I think, about my gradmother, Mrs. Elmer Courtland.

She talks about cooking, learning to cook, and cooking for my grandpa: "'His palate is an appreciative one,'" she says. It's a perfect phrase. Far more precise, and less elitist than the popular terms for someone who cares deeply about food. "'And cooking for people who appreciate good food'" she continues, "'is a real incentive.'"

That said, these recipes seem strangely simple for publishing. My grandmother was a truly great cook, and although I agree that if you can read a recipe, you can cook, there's also a special touch to cooking you can't learn from a book. And she knows that more than most.

My grandmother, no longer Mrs. Elmer but Fanny, made matzo balls with this special skill. Dozens of small globes, perfectly light, and perfectly schmaltzy, that required her hands. I'll grant that most people think their grandmother's matzo balls are the best because that's what they grew up with. But my grandmother's actually were superior, as were her chocolate chip cookies. I mean, nobody else made cookies that tasted/crunched like hers, and she used the recipe on the Nestle Tollhouse bag!!

My grandma hasn't cooked in at least three years now. She fell and broke her hip a month before my graduation from UCLA, then again shortly after recovering the first injury. The second spill left her with some brain damage and enough cumulative muscle atrophy to keep her from standing on her own. My grandma believed that food was her gift to us, so none of us learned the secret to her special touch and I worry that it's lost to us now.

I wonder if my grandma was holding back in the article. She was of course politely understated about her skill, but she didn't believe in microwaves and her spaghetti sauce took hours to simmer, so the idea that she'd offer Easy Peach Compote and Fish Mold as her summer dishes somehow feels overtly withholding. I understand why people would want to have secret recipes, but I disagree with it.

For this reason I'd like to submit an addendum to "Everybody Cooks: Cool Summer Dishes": Good food should be for everyone. It isn't enough to cook well for your family, you have to teach them to cook well too. I'd much rather live in a world where you didn't have to eat before certain dinner parties, than one where a few very special people made a few very special dishes. Also, no one should ever make fish mold.

tea with amanda

2011-03-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

My friend Amanda the baker had me over for tea. She's currently nesting in her parent's guest house with her fiancee, Adam the actor/playwright. We've been friends for six years and I've never seen her yard. It's like The Secret Garden fell to disrepair in suburban Los Angeles, by which I mean it's the most romantic little yellow house I've ever had the privilege to visit. She has an industrial stainless steel sink and a dozen fruit trees growing outside. I adore it.

She asked me if I wanted a scone and I said yes, of course, assuming that she had some lying around. Instead, she took out a mixing bowl and set to making me a fresh batch of Meyer Lemon Strawberry Scones. Charmingly amorphous and lightly fragrant, they were perfect with blood orange marmalade and our loose leaf Earl Grey/rose tea mixture on a Wednesday afternoon in her new home.

MEYER LEMON STRAWBERRY SCONES

Preheat your oven to 350.

In a bowl, combine:
1/2 cup sugar
zest of 3 Meyer lemons
and rub together with your fingertips until the sugar is fragrant with the oils of the zest.

Add:
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tblsp baking powder
3 cups all purpose flour
and toss together with your hands.

Add 8 ounces of cold butter, cut into cubes and use the pad of your thumb to push the cubes of butter against the base of your forefinger into long flakes that look like giant fish scales. The motion is like a slow, deliberate, forceful version of the hand gesture that normally means "cash" when done quickly and repetitively. Do this fairly quickly and don't worry about making all of them perfect. The goal is to have long flaky bits of cool butter in your dough that will melt and steam in the oven, creating long flaky pockets of buttery goodness in your dough.

When all of the butter has had this done to it, add

1 cup of buttermilk

and

2 cups of diced strawberries
and fold together gently with your hands. Scoop out half-cup portions of dough onto a prepared baking sheet, a couple inches apart, and push down into roundish blobs. Brush with a little bit of beaten egg, garnish with slices of lemon or strawberry, and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake until they lift easily off the tray and are deeply golden brown and fragrant and lovely.

Depending on your oven, this could be anywhere from twenty five minutes to a bit more than half an hour.

breakfast still life arrangements

2011-03-04T13:25:00.000-08:00

In elementary school I knew a kid whose mother would dye his sandwiches with food coloring. I envied him. His lunches were mesmerizing and distinct, and in a small unconscious way they expressed the love that his mother had for him--a love so great it couldn't help but pour over on to his meals, warming him from his tummy out through his limbs--a love surely greater than all the mothers who made normal sandwiches had for their children. Albeit to a lesser degree I also felt this way about my friends who had cans of soda and fruit roll ups in their lunches: their mothers must love them so much, I thought, to bestow on them such treats. I believed Lunchables were the ultimate delicacy.

Then came March, and the Saint Patrickfication of our school. We colored leprechauns with red beards to hang in the windows and cut four leaf clovers from construction paper. My friend's mother made green egg salad sandwiches. They were vivid green, like the moss on the teeth of children who ate sugar cereal (my mother's name for Fruit Loops), with darker patches suggesting something more rotten, more sinister. Putrid.

The sight of them was stirring, to my stomach and my soul. In my life I've gleaned more than a little insight from sandwiches, moments of perfect clarity about culture and Truth in bites of corned beef on rye, but never before has such a revelation come from sheer sight. In a glimpse I realized that my friend's mother did not love him more than my mother loved me, she just had less to do during her days. I imagined that dropping him off at school was the hardest part of her day, and picking him up was the happiest. Around this time I stopped asking to have the crusts cut from my peanut butter and jelly and realized the meat in Lunchables was slimy and disgusting.

I unconsciously developed disdain for people who play with their food. I don't think I've seen Close Encounters all the way through because of the mashed potato mountain, or maybe I thought it was boring. The feeling has subsided as I've gotten older, but it still peaks out every so often, catching me and the poor soul with whom I'm sharing a table off guard. I'm not sure what triggers it exactly, but often wonder if it has something to do with those green sandwiches and that sad lady who made them.

Naturally, my feelings about these photos by Museum Studio are a bit mixed. They are, in all honesty, extremely charming and sweet. Very happy pictures. I just hope that someone ate these breakfasts after the photo was snapped. Because I like them, I have to imagine they did.

photos via BOOOOOOOM!

doughnuts of late

2011-03-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Portland is quite probably the best vacation city in the United States. You can literally spend hours just browsing bookstores, drinking coffee, sampling food trucks--all of the things you enjoy doing in your own city, without the guilt of doing stuff you do in your own city. Portland culture is that of cultural aesthetes, a collective of our type of people doing stuff we like to do. Zinester/animal portrait artist Nicole Georges, whose Portland zine anthology Invincible Summer I am currently enjoying very much, describes it as "a city of seasonal affected disorders and kids who never grow up," and every time I visit it gets harder to leave.

On that note I've been eating a lot of doughnuts at work lately. And I don't like doughnuts. To me they're like arcades, alluring and charming, only insofar as I understand they're supposed to be. Things for which other people's abundant excitement has often swept me up, though I have no particular interest in them myself. Jonathan Taylor Thomas was another such popular fixation. [In third grade I bought a Tiger Beat magazine because I assumed it was another part of being a girl my age I didn't yet understand. Like bras.]

Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland meets every criteria for a necessary vacation visit--small, local, weird. These are qualities I seek out tirelessly in other cities. And yet, during our last trip, I started walking over to shop, after a perfect vanilla latte from Stumptown, located conveniently down the street, and at the last minute I decided to keep walking because I didn't want a doughnut. This probably seems insignificant, I know, only it wasn't. In my own city I do and eat things that I don't even like. And why? Maybe it's easier and less exhausting than a life of amazing things all the time, less emotional. Is that why Portland is such a special place to visit, because it encourages you to behave like a local and live exactly as you would if you didn't worry about money and failing and the future. That's what it does for me.

josie's dresses

2011-02-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

I realize the posts this month have been more peripherally food themed than usual. Never one to break a trend, here's another.

My new favorite cousin, Josie Rose is going to turn one next month. I made her a pair of pinafores from a pattern I bought on etsy. Each is reversible and fairly easy even for a novice seamstress, such as I am. I wouldn't do it if it were too hard. The most pleasurable parts of sewing for me involve handling textiles and combining patterns, the moment they begin to resemble something. This teapot fabric is one of the sweetest I've found. Meant for quilting I assume, but the print is just large enough for a child's garment.

sookie, i'm too timid to order food from that Chinese restaurant--last time I only tipped them ten percent.

2011-02-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Recently renewed friends of mine made this video, True Blood - Confessions From Bill Compton. The title of this post is one of said confessions.

I came up with a few, more food-centric, of my own:

Sookie! If you already know that one litre equals 4.2 cups, then why is this demi-glace so runny?

Sookie! Where's the 12th page of my Skinny Bitch Cookbook?! Ahm trying to maintain mah figure, without sacrificing taste.
Sookie! You know ah get farty and bloated with a foamy latte!!

That last one's from Zoolander :)

the butter to my bread

2011-02-15T14:20:00.001-08:00

As promised, here is the fruit of my Valentine's Day crafting. Paul Child is quoted as saying this to his wife Julia. "You are the butter to my bread and the breath to my life." But my Valentine is more of the visual sort. Literal too. And "breath to my life" has an almost macabre undertone, so this suits us best.

I have a deep love for the folk aesthetics of paper cutout, or scherenschnitte, to the Germans, and to other people who can pronounce scherenschnitte. I've been playing around with paper cutting for about half a year, mostly holiday cards and monogrammed gift tags from black card stock. Clearly, I need a new Xacto knife. It's too dull for precision lettering but I'm still pleased with the general look of this one. It's my zero dollar Valentine.

tea, love

2011-02-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

This morning, Design Sponge posted a tutorial for DIY tea bags, heart-shaped for Valentine's Day. I've been working on my own Valentine's crafts, which I'll post in a few days. But I'm going to keep this one tucked under my hat. I imagine I'll one day be the woman in the office who gives everyone small homemade gifts on holidays. Though I can't imagine myself actually working in an office. Weird.

the problem with whoopie pies, a plea for help

2011-01-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

Something amazing happened.

For my darling Joe's birthday I gave him a beautiful French film poster. An enormous red one sheet, 63 " x 47", from a film by his favorite director. But that's not the amazing thing. I discovered that framing would cost at least twice what the poster did (and it wasn't cheap either), so I would have to save up for the framing; hanging the poster would be a gift for another occasion. That was last April.

Along comes our two year anniversary and I decide the occasion has arrived, but I still can't afford the price quoted me by the framers. I bring the poster to work and my boss suggests we ask the installers for advice. (I should mention that I work for an organization that houses one of the largest archives of film print materials in the world, if not THE largest--I assume the Library of Congress has a sizable stock--and the task of framing and hanging of said collection falls to this group of guys.) I show them my poster and ask for their advice. They confirm that the job costs about $600, and that I'll want it mounted on an archival-quality board. And then the amazing thing: they said they'd frame it for me, FOR FREE! They don't normally do this, it just so happened that they had a frame, a board, and plexiglass the size of my poster, all of which they planned to throw away because of a few scuffs.

I am so incredibly grateful, and so inexcusably clueless as to how to thank them that I baked them whoopie pies, which seemed like a good start, but proved problematic for storage and transportation. See, the top of a cake is the smoothest and most delicate. Most people have experienced what happens when icing a cake that hasn't adequately cooled: the fragile crust peels a bit, getting crumbs mixed in with the icing. Well imagine that the fragile upper crust, the delicate cake top serves as both the top and bottom of the dessert. Even when cooled to past the point of most normal cakes, the bottom of the pie (the lower upper crust) would stick to the plate, creating a big old hole, ruining the aesthetic.

I'll consider that perhaps this is a sign that whoopie pies are not the best way to thank my framer friends, nevertheless, this is a problem with whoopie pies that needs solving. Does anyone know how to prevent it? Do I need to wait longer? Freeze the cakes? Use a cooling rack? A little help would be greatly appreciated.

Sweetish, like from Sweeten.

2011-01-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

Salta Katten, The salty cat, and other edible Swedish novelties, via Poppytalk.

Deserves further investigation, methinks.

whoopie pies!

2011-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

My friend Ryan gave me a whoopie pie pan for Christmas. Essentially, it's a normal nonstick cookie sheet with shallow circular grooves in which to spoon batter--very exciting. I bet they make perfect muffin tops, my #3 fave baked good.

This is my first draft. They were made from a mix and I don't think they're technically whoopie pies, more like chocolate sandwich cookies. Still, mega tasty.

anyone can cook

2011-01-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Maxim of the fictional Chef Gusteau in Pixar's "Ratatouille," the encapsulated message of the film, conveyed lovingly and convincingly throughout its course, then unpacked with unapologetic overstatement in its final scenes. "Not everyone can become a great artist," explains the converted food critic, Anton Ego, "but a great artist can come from anywhere."

This post is not about "Ratatouille," or artistry at all for that matter. Quite the opposite. I write this post because the event which prompted it struck me in a way that recalled the line with the most perfect, happy irony that I wanted to share.

The event was this: last month, my friend Nathan (pictured) came home from a two week holiday with The Trader Joe's Cookbook and began to cook from it.

I should explain that Nathan is a PA for a reality TV show, which, at times, is literally the shittiest job in Hollywood. (Once, my boyfriend had to clean up dog shit and then spread it around a lawn in a "more random distribution" so that the shows producers could film a midget cleaning it up.) The days are long, the pay sucks, and there's little mobility.

Before the book, my friend was a burger and pizza kind of guy, when my friend he said that he was making dinner it usually meant that he was heating up a bag of frozen orange chicken from the market. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this for the poor and overworked, such as we are, other than a general lack of nutrition. At the end of a 12-hour day, the time and energy of shopping and cooking, and the cost of fresh ingredients, often make preparing a meal much too great of an undertaking.

Then came the book, to which I'm reluctant to attribute Nathan's change; it seems oddly religious, in a 12-step program way. But the results speak for themselves: first, he made pesto pita pizzas and monkey bread, then rice pudding, then macadamia-crusted mahi mahi with mango salsa and coconut rice. And oh such coconut rice!

Again, this is not to imply that The Trader Joe's Cookbook has transformed my friend into a gourmet. Rather, the philosophy of the book seems to be that anyone can combine ingredients in a prescribed order, "anyone can cook." And that works for Nathan.

The TJC offers a nice assortment of recipes, with all the ingredients available at a single store. Most take about 15 minutes to prepare, and none involve anything resembling technique. Rereading this I realize it sounds like a small ploy to get people to buy the Trader Joe's cookbook, but I assure you I am not getting paid to write this. If I were, I could probably afford to shop elsewhere. And again, I assure you I cannot. (Reese's Puffs Cereal is a huge splurge for me.)

Below is a picture of Nathan's mahi mahi. It looks tasty, and it was. I think, actually that that was the happy ironic experience that prompted this post, actually tasting Nathan's food. Because we were all skeptical, and the fish was so thoroughly edible, we all had a simultaneous ah ha moment: Nathan can cook. ANYONE can cook.

two new posts

2011-01-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Sakuma Drops, Or, Food in the Future: Your Dinner in Tablet Form

Bourdain to Attend San Diego Comic-Con to Promote His New Graphic Novel

I've been assigned to cover Anthony Bourdain's upcoming comic, Get Jiro!, so today I emailed who I hope is the head of PR for DC coimcs. Pretty excited.

idiot fish

2010-12-27T16:37:00.001-08:00

My cousin sent this to me. He knows a lot about weird foods and World War II submarines. I love him.

Now, here are a few cool things I learned about Idiot Fish on the internets:
-it can survive for five months without eating
-it can live to 50 years old
-the species is at least 10 million years old!!

Unjustly named because of its bulbous eye, and endangered because of deliciousness, it seems idiot fish can't win.

jew can do it: a christmas cookie myth busted

2010-12-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

My mom sent me this image in an email with the subject line "You can do it." My entire life she's told me that Jews can't make cutout cookies, that it's just not in our DNA. I explain this to my goy friends a couple times a year and it always provokes a bit of scoff and an eye roll. It's an understandable reaction for liberal arts post racial types. I only half-believed it myself. That's what I say. Except that in high school I had a friend who got to write in class essays on his computer because he had clinically bad handwriting, so a genetic predisposition to ugly cookies doesn't seem entirely impossible. Also, early tests of my cookie cutting prowess indicated that she was correct.

She made these cookies on Monday. Note the precision of the snowflake tips, the expressive bend in the necks of the cookie men--they're lovely. I don't know what to believe anymore.

speaking of gingerbread...

2010-12-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

My latest post, "4 Local Gingerbread Structures of Note: How Southern California Builds Christmas," a fun little piece inspired by this little Jew's unlikely love of a little thing called Christmas, received considerable likeage on Facebook last week. I'm very flattered, but these achievements are seldom reached alone...

The lead photo was taken by my favorite almost 21 year old, Jewel Peeler. It doesn't nearly do her justice, because she is quite the budding photographer. You can find her work here and sometimes here.

Gingerbread boardwalk at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.

we need these: ninjabread men

2010-12-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

For Christmas last year we made gingerdads, gingerbread men in the various costumes of Joe's dad: Iron(bread) man, Breadhead man (he has a Grateful Dead shirt; it's a pun), etc. The dog ate all except one of them while we were out, before we were able to take photos.

Today I found these: ninjabread men, cookie cutters posed for holiday ninja action. We've already decided to make gingerbread moms this year, but next year these are so on.

photographic lunch at Tender Greens Hollywood

2010-11-30T14:26:00.000-08:00

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

tomato soup with dumplings

2010-11-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-15T13:29:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-08T17:46:00.000-08:00

"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.

2010-11-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

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.

still life with puffed rice

2010-10-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

In his essay on gift-giving, Emerson says "the only gift is a portion of thyself." Gifts should be individualized, they should covey your biography, and be unique to what you (the giver) do. Thus, the shepherd should give a lamb, the sewer, a needle-pointed handkerchief--and the casual crafter, Hello Kitty lover should do something like this. This Hello Kitty rice crispy treat was made for me by my friend Maryrose. The bow and the eyes are made with M & Ms and there's a mini chocolate chip for the nose. Though it is just one of the insanely cool birthday presents I received this year, it is perhaps the only one that's Emerson approved.

birthday cake

2010-10-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

My mom's birthday is one week before mine so we share a cake. It is a chocolate cake from Rose Cafe in Venice, with alternating layers of chocolate cake and chocolate mouse with raspberries, topped with chocolate ganache. And it is enormous. My mom, who is famous for under-ordering food stuffs (like me, she is 5'' tall and just over 100 lbs., and thusly assumes that everyone eats the way she does--bird-like), does not skimp on cake. In the days following a party, she has been known to eat leftovers of this cake for breakfast lunch and dinner, until it is completely finished. However, this year she left town after our party and therefore wouldn't be home to eat the said leftovers. Or so I assumed.

Today I went home to discover an entire half cake in the freezer, wrapped in tin foil and two gallon-sized plastic bags.

I love you, mom.

Emma Courtland is on the pulse of L.A. dining

2010-09-30T23:38:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for sardonic restaurant news, or stories about chocolate shaped like poo poo, or screening announcements for food films that "bite back," check in next week. Restaurant Musical Chairs, Mexican Edition: Frida's Tacos in, Santito's Tortas out is almost real reporting.

Sara's roasted bell pepper bruschetta

2010-09-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

We had bell pepper and people coming over so...yeah, this is what happens when my roommate Sara wings it. Everything's made to taste so we don't have real recipe for this. It's just roasted pepper, peeled dry (that is, NOT under the water), chopped with basil, then salted (heavily), peppered, with some olive oil, and maybe some acid (she can't remember; we started drinking on the early-side) on little toasts topped with sliced, melted mozzarella. Freaking delish.

Photographic Lunch at Thuan Phat

2010-09-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

These pan-fried root cakes were the most edible thing on the menu at this market-adjacent Vietnamese cafe in San Diego.

They Draw & Cook, and hand-written recipes

2010-09-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

There are few things in the world that are more wonderful to me than the hand-written recipe.

While visiting my grandmother's house last week, I spent hours perusing the cookbooks in her kitchen. They're filled with her favorite recipes, transcribed from ancient issues of Gourmet and Bon Apetit, always credited, or from her friends who (I like to imagine) traded them like gossip or quasi-folk remedies at parties. The latter have titles like "Sybil Bracker's Famous Meatloaf" and "Marcy Shapiro's Delicious Fruit Cake." Adapted in her slanted finishing school handwriting on now browning paper, they seem to me like integral but forgotten history, as if they might contain an answer to life's most pressing questions, or, at the very least, a cure for cancer.

They don't, but there is still something wise about them. The romance of sharing knowledge among women coupled with the distinct beauty of my grandmother's script, maybe. I used to receive a letter from her every month when I was little and to me, her handwriting is her signature, her seal of approval. Her pithy commentary too; even the typed recipes have little hand-written notes and food stains, a reminder of their continued evolution. I'm sure it's all three--the sharing, the script, the evolution--they're all so personal, like a living history.

Which brings me to this, the hand-drawn recipe.

I don't often check in with They Draw & Cook, a blog of recipe renderings by different artists and illustrators, but every time I do, I'm amazed with the beauty and coolness of its offerings. The recipes, which are often basic, scrambled eggs, spaghetti and meatballs type-things, become incredibly personal and meaningful when drawn by hand. I am so thoroughly gladdened that this project exists.

IN PRINT again

2010-09-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

The post I wrote about Chew, along with my plug for Nuclear Comics. 2x cool!

photographic lunch at samosa house east

2010-09-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

garlic naan

my first bread pudding

2010-09-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

20 minutes before people arrived for our last minute Labor Day BBQ, I still didn't know I was going to make this. But we didn't know how many people were going to show up/ if we were going to have enough food and we'd had these two loaves of stale sourdough in the fridge for about a month so, you know, transitive property.

I adapted this recipe from one I found on grouprecipes.com. I used a higher baking temperature to begin with, so that the top formed a nice crust. I also subbed dried cherries for raisins and eliminated the meringue topping altogether. For my next round, I'm going to try adding fresh stone fruit and maybe brulee the top.

SOURDOUGH BREAD PUDDING WITH CHERRIES

INGREDIENTS

1 large round loaf of stale sourdough bread, torn into rough chunks
1 cup dried cherries
4 Tbs. butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
6 eggs - yolks
1 cup sugar
1/3 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
6 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425°. Combine bread, cherries, and butter in a baking dish, mine was a large round tin. Sprinkle on cinnamon. In a large bowl mix well the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, salt, 1 tsp vanilla, and milk. Pour over bread, make sure to get the pieces at the top too. Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350° and continue baking for 20 minutes, or until the custard appears to be absorbed. Remove and let cool.

F You Fest

2010-09-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, we all schlepped downtown to L.A. State Historic Park for the 7th annual F Yeah Fest. Despite the negative food situation I wrote about in F Yeah Fest: An Effing Food Nightmare, the day was actually very positive. Blue sky, lots of dancing, and, if you were willing to wait for them, super delicious french fries. Just a lot of love about.

PALETA TEST KITCHEN, PART 5

2010-09-03T09:07:00.001-07:00

First, I'm sorry about the crappy photo. You can't tell here but these paletas were lovely, ivory speckled with black. Someday I'll have bigger windows.

This recipe for VANILLA RICE PUDDING POPS was adapted from a recipe for COCONUT MANGO RICE PUDDING POPS on Apartment Therapy, which was adapted from one in Saveur.

These were definitely one of the best pops I made. They were delicately sweet, soft and creamy. Some people told me they were a bit filling, but I'm biased as this was the first time I'd ever cooked with a whole vanilla bean. Scraping out the little seeds from the pod was something of a moonwalk for me, exciting and a bit scary, and it made my hands smell wonderful. Also, the bean I used was gifted to my roommate Sara by Top Chef Michael Votaggio. So yeah, I'm biased.

VANILLA RICE PUDDING POPS

INGREDIENTS
1 15-ounce can coconut milk, shaken
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
1 cup arborio rice
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

DIRECTIONS
Whisk the coconut milk and whole milk together in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean and stir in. Stir in the rice, and bring the whole mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Turn the heat down to low and cook for about 25 minutes, or until the rice is tender.

Whisk in the sweetened condensed milk, water, vanilla extract, and salt. Let it cool and then divide the mixture between cups and freeze. After about 1.5 hours, insert popsicle stick and let freeze over night.

PALETA TEST KITCHEN, PART 4

2010-09-02T16:51:00.001-07:00

STRAWBERRY MINT ICE POP

INGREDIENTS
1 basket ripe strawberries
1 can strawberry juice
1 cup lemonade
1/2 cup mint
1 lemon

DIRECTIONS
Slice ripe strawberries lengthwise (so that they look like thin hearts). Chop mint extra finely. Put both in a jar. Add the lemonade and refridgerate overnight to let the flavors infuse.

Pour the contents of the jar into a food processor. Add the juice from half a lemon and pulse so that the strawberries remain pulpy. Mix in 1/4 can of strawberry juice. Taste the mix. If it's not very sweet, add sugar until it seems like it's just a bit too sweet. Divide the mixture between cups and freeze. After about 40 minutes, insert popsicle stick and let freeze over night.

PALETA TEST KITCHEN, PART 3

2010-09-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Another strange thing about ice pops: popsicle sticks are impossible to find. This kind of blew my mind because they seem so common. I mean, are they not the basic build blocks of any and all structure? Ultimately, I fashioned my own sticks from coffee stirrers and chopsticks, halfed and sanded. If you're using the stirrers, I recommend doubling up. Single sticks hold up okay, but the doubles feel much much sturdier. (Of course, it wasn't until after I'd completed my pops that a friend suggested I try looking for popsicle sticks at the 99 cent store. I haven't checked, but I'm 75% sure that they definitely have them.)

The recipe below for BANANA COCONUT ICE POPS is from a series originally printed in the LA Times. The bananas I used were not as ripe as the recipe calls for so I had to add more honey. I also found them to be a bit icy. Should I choose to make them again, I'll definitely use riper bananas (for sweetness, and more of those adorable speckles) and try adding a bit of sugar too.

BANANA COCONUT POPS

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups full-fat Greek yogurt
2 bananas, very ripe
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup coconut milk
3 tablespoons honey
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

DIRECTIONS
Place the yogurt, bananas, milk, coconut milk and honey in a blender. Blend until smooth. Stir in coconut flakes, then re-cover the blender and pulse briefly to combine.

Divide the puréed mixture evenly among your pop molds, leaving about one-half inch of headroom at the top of each one. Once they are filled, tap the molds gently against the counter, allowing the purée to settle evenly into the molds and dislodging any air bubbles that may have formed. Cover the molds and fit with popsicle sticks, if necessary. Freeze the molds until completely firm, at least 5 hours.

for geeks and gastronomes...

2010-09-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I picked up this book with the intention of writing about it. It was food-related in a round about way, and categorically seemed to fit that certain type of weirdo niched that I look for in subjects. Plus, I'd get to plug Joe's old comic book shop, Nuclear Comics & Skate Shop in Laguna Niguel ;). Anyway, I loved it. I think everyone should read it.

Here's
Chew: A Comic Book Series for Geeks and Gastronomes

PALETA TEST KITCHEN, PART 2

2010-08-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here's the other thing I learned during my week-long paleta frenzy: as much as I would like to make my pops out of nothing but fruits, juices, herbs, and dairy, the key to softer pops is sugar. Sugar lowers the freezing point of liquid, acting as a "lubricant between ice crystals," so they don't turn out so rock hard. (Thank you Marthastewart.com)

PINEAPPLE CRANBERRY KIWI POPS

INGREDIENTS
1 pineapple
8 kiwi
1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped
sugar
1 lemon

DIRECTIONS
Heat equal parts sugar and water to make SIMPLE SYRUP. Let it cool. Puree chopped pineapple in a food processor. Add quarter cup of simple syrup. Strain pineapple mix to remove the leftover pulp. Fill molds half way and freeze. Puree chopped kiwi in food processor. Add the juice of 1 lemon and 1/4 cup simple syrup. Remove the molds filled half way with pineapple from the freezer. Distribute the pieces of chopped dried cranberries between them, then top with the kiwi mixture. Return molds to the freezer. After about 50 minutes, insert popsicle sticks and let them freeze overnight.

PALETA TEST KITCHEN, PART 1

2010-08-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

To set things straight: "Popsicle" is a brand. Like Kleenex, or Band Aid, or any of the other brands that have successfully worked themselves into the American lexicon in place of generic terms without us (me) knowing. What we're talking about here is "ice pops," frozen water-based desserts on a stick, and "paletas," like Latin American ice pops, though not necessarily water-based. Paletas are not necessarily frozen either, but that's a subject for a different post.

Two weeks ago I became overwhelmingly inspired to test kitchen paletas. I can no longer remember what sparked it, but I imagine that while cruising my favorite crafting blogs I stumbled across a batch with particularly charming shape and bright happy colors and became smitten. That's usually how it goes anyway. So I spent the better part of a week in the kitchen, making a mess, buying ingredients that I thought I'd use but didn't (Greek yogurt), dying the tips of my fingers, running out of space in the freezer, eating Lean Cuisines to make room in the freezer...and ultimately concocting a proud batch of pops. I found that some of my favorite recipes were the traditional fruit and simple syrup mix, but if I weren't so terrified of wasting fruit (fresh berries are ridiculously expensive in L.A. right now) I would've tried to incorporated some gelatin a la estilo mexicano. Maybe next time we're in Oregon.

I'll run the recipes one at a time.

MEXICAN MANGO CHILE AND LIME

INGREDIENTS
4 mangoes
1 enormous, juicy lime
1/4 cup sugar
Arbol chile powder

DIRECTIONS
In a food processor, puree the mango until free of chunks. Add lime juice and sugar. Add arbol chile a little at a time, to taste. Remember that freezing dulls all of the flavors, so if the mix tastes too sweet or too spicy, it will probably turn out right. For more spice, run a lightly lamp towel on the inside of the pop mold. Sprinkle chile powder inside of the mold so that it collects at the top. Fill your molds and freeze. If you don't have ice pop molds, use Dixie cups. First stage freeze time will depend on the size of your mold. After about 30 minutes, insert a sticks into the pops. Freeze overnight.

WE'RE IN PRINT!

2010-08-30T09:42:00.001-07:00

I had planned to throw a party when this happened, but it caught me completely off guard. I could not be happier.

a taste of things to come...

2010-08-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

pomegranate blueberry ice pop

beanworld action figure

2010-08-26T21:34:00.001-07:00

Battle damaged bean, one of the many attractive bean action figures offered at Larry Marder's Beanworld table at San Diego Comic-Con 2010.

Liège Waffle makes me feel fine

2010-08-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Feeling positively filled lately. The past few months have been a stream of wonderfully haphazard, exciting, intercity adventures, which strangely, have produced in me a most welcome calm. My legs have browned (finally) and the impromptu over-the-bathroom sink haircuts I've been giving myself have actually begun to settle nicely. And, after fighting myself for well over a year, a tributary battle in the life-long war of Am I smart? Can I have a public voice with any legitimacy?, I'm finding a place in the world of food writing where I fit. It might be too early to say, but I think I love my place.

Shaky Alibi Serves the Holy Grail of Waffles, the Liège Waffle
A new post with photos by Aaron.

business card prototype

2010-08-14T13:08:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of changes I want to make. For one, I think my name should be at the top left. So maybe I'll switch the positions of the utencils, put the knife at the top, because it's straighter on the left side. Then I'll try black text, and see how it looks from there. Of course, it took me an hour to figure out how to isolate and export this one draft in Lightroom, so who knows when I'll have them printed. But, true progress happens slowly (is my new mantra).

I love the rough edges of the utencils. They look like they were drawn by a Swedish child, though really they were drawn by me, a helpless Merimekkophile, during one particularly monotonous 4 p.m. at the office. Special thank you to John Bobrow for developing this draft for me, and for my two-hour crash-course in Illustrator.

strawberry preserves

2010-08-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

When we used to work the counter at Clementine, I would have to wait until Christmas for a single jar of jam from Amanda, who was then still a part-time home-baker, and my personal cultured butter queen. With only slight embarrassment, I confess one particular jar of Davis Strawberry jam was so good that I'd sneak sips straight from them jar when we had run out of bread. Recently, after what seems like years of planning, Amanda and finally got together for a Sunday preserve tutorial.

Here are some of Amanda's notes:
Fruit: some of it should be on the under ripe side, for extra pectin and complexity. Wash it if it's covered in pesticide or dirt. Cut it into bite-sized pieces.

Taste them. If they're super tart, use more sugar. Fruit preserves are at least 1/4 sugar by volume. (That's 1 cup of sugar to four cups of fruit).

For every four cups of fruit, add a lemon. The seeds of that lemon should be added separately in a tea strainer or cheesecloth bag or something.

Boil it until it's syrupy.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. There should be enough water in the pot to fully submerge the jars.

When the preserves is syrupy it's ready to pack into jars. If it's foamy, go ahead and turn off the heat under it. Let the foam settle and skim it off before you proceed.

To sterilize the jars, drop them carefully into the boiling water. After ten minutes, use your handy-dandy jar lifter to get them out. [ed note: Amanda got a her jar lifter from Big Lots or Tuesday Morning or some such. If you don't have one, use tongs.] Next, boil the lids to the jars for exactly five minutes. More than that will damage the rubber seals, less won't necessarily be sterilizing enough.

It's easiest to sterilize the lids in a strainer of some sort, because picking up flat heavy objects that are at rest in a large pot of boiling water is one of those things that life is too short for.

Drain the jars. Fill them to within 1/4" of the top with jam. Wipe the rims off with a paper towel or something that you have dipped in boiling water (we must keep everything very, very clean at this point). Put the lids on, then screw down the rings. Boil for another ten minutes.

AND YOU'RE DONE!

Occasionally Amanda teaches classes on rustic, seasonal baking at FOOD, a neighborhood market/cafe in West LA, where she's the head baker.

mouth pleaser

2010-08-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

Excuse the absence, we've been very busy. Movie making, berry picking, nerd proming, cream cheese frosting. I'm hoping to get settled long enough to share our photos and recipes this week. That is, before Lil's bday and There Will Be Blood Roadshow consume my attention and my milkshake. In the meantime, enjoy the amuse bouche:

Top 5 Culinary Absurditites at Comic-Con

Top 10 Killer (Literally) Food Films

Ink about town

2010-06-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Two new pieces from about town.

Now Open: Paddy Rice, Not Your Grandma's Pho Shop

Food bloggers were ripping off this post like it wudn't no thang. To be fair though, some gave credit.

Best Wowshi: Definition Included

This little gem I wrote for the upcoming "Best of L.A." print edition. Fingers crossed it'll make it in.

Photographic Lunch at Cardinale

2010-05-21T17:31:00.001-07:00

New Argentinian/Italian/American place around the block from my apartment. Pretty decent empanadas, $1 on Mondays.

forgetting my food films on ink. beef hearts and zombie chickens

2010-05-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

Zombies + Fried Chicken = "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead"

Les Blank Cooks Beef Hearts and Guinea Pigs (Probably) for Cinefamily Screening

No guinea pigs, but Joe and I prep'd the beef heart for Les Blank. I don't know if he actually cooked them himself, but they turned out unexpectedly well. A lot like lamb kabob really and, as you can see, so much cheaper.

Recipe from the Washington Post

INGREDIENTS:
3 tablespoons corn oil
1 tablespoon ground achiote (annatto seed)
1/2 fresh or canned aji amarillo pepper, minced (1 to 2 tablespoons)
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
5 medium cloves garlic, minced
6 pounds beef heart, cleaned and cut into 1 1/2-inch-by-2-inch rectangular pieces*

DIRECTIONS:
Place the oil in a small heatproof container; microwave on HIGH for 10 to 20 seconds. Add the achiote, stirring to form a paste. Transfer to a large resealable plastic food storage bag.

Combine the aji amarillo and water in a mini food processor**; pulse to form a pastelike puree. Add to the bag, along with the salt, cumin, pepper, garlic and vinegar; mix well.

Add the pieces of beef heart; seal the bag, pressing as much air out of it as possible. Massage the marinade into the meat. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours and preferably overnight.

When ready to cook, soak several 12-inch-long bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes, or have ready metal skewers.
Prepare the grill for direct heat. Lightly coat the grill rack with oil and place it on the grill.

Push 4 or 5 pieces of seasoned meat close together, end to end, on each skewer, reserving the marinade. Grill for 3 to 4 minutes (for medium-rare), turning the skewers as needed and using the marinade to brush the meat.

NOTES:
*The butcher can clean the heart for you. At Jons, which was pretty much the only place we could find hearts without at least a days notice, they were already cleaned and packed in cellophane.
**We didn't have a food processor so we just chopped as finely as possible. All combining was done by Joe with his bare hands. Further note, you might want to wear gloves. Also, don't touch your eyes.

double coconut

2010-05-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

At the Conservatory of Flowers, San Francisco.

Jacque's hush puppies

2010-05-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Made with Hush Puppy Mix with onions from Hyman's Seafood in San Francisco. Essentially just corn meal, wheat flower, salt, sugar, milk, and eggs. And phosphate!

DIRECTIONS:
Add one can of beer plus 1/2 large onion, finely chopped. Add 3/4 cups sugar and 2 tbs. honey. Add water. Mix to thickness sufficient to drop from a spoon into 350 degree hot oil. Cook to a golden brown.

*For best results, refrigerate for 1-2 hours then stir air out of mix before dropping hushpuppies into hot oil.

NOTES: Since Jacque, like most people, doesn't keep a thermometer in her kitchen, she just ran a few testpuppies through until they seemed to come out right. Joe was happy to eat the testers.

Aaron's Sake Fest Photos

2010-05-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Remember when we went to that somewhat comical Speakeasy party where that drunk girl got on stage and showed her butt and Aaron took pictures?? Well, the organizer hired Aaron to photograph another of his events: the 2010 Sake Fest.

The complete album's on their facebook page, but you have to be friends with them to view. Hopefully this will convince Aaron to put them on his Flickr page.

2010-05-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

A letter from the Weekly's editor to my editor:

Colleagues,

Amy Scattergood's food blog is one of three finalists for best food blog in the nation in 2009, the Association of Food Journalists has announced.

And that's for a blog that began halfway through the year.

Congratulations to Amy and her team.

The other two finalists are food blogs at the Washington Post and the Milwaukie Journal Sentinal. The winners will be announced in Sante Fe on Sept. 2.

Drex

I've been out of touch and unsure that this was something I wanted to be doing. There were too many things and they were all neglected. They fell apart and away. Maybe it's all because I was unsure. Because I was terrified really, about the inevitability of a Future and Choices. I know that's probably it.

I spent last week on the set of an infomercial. Being stuck in a room for 10 hours a day for five days was awful, but also strangely wonderful. My time away from there, even at the Academy, has become somehow more my own. I'm still unsure, but I'm drawing and learning to bind books. I want to rebind the Moderate Revolt book and take it to APE. I'm thankful for these small goals. But I also want to write something and see it printed. I do.

Photographic Lunch at Lemonade

2010-03-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

BBQ beef brisket sandwich with green tomato and cheddar.

$1 lemon cupcake, crumbly like cornbread.

Blueberry mint lemonade. And Piggy.

Roscoe's #13 is the key to the kingdom.

2010-03-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

I'm officially changing my "religious views" to Roscoes.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: "Religious views", the category on Facebook.)

photo courtesy street view.

Kit Kat Top 10

2010-03-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Here y'are:
THE Top 10 Kit Kat Flavors You've Probably Never Tried. Is up! And I'd like to mention that I'm incredibly proud to write for a publication that allows me the freedom to compare Kit Kat fingers to the logs that built Lincoln's cabin.

Also, this:
La Creme de la L.A. Cupcake Challenge: DrinkEatPlay announces Cupcake Challenge Winners

UPDATE: Kit Kat Top 10 has 41 Tweets and counting!!

elizabeth, jello saint

2010-03-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

My cunada Elizabeth blew me away with these photos she posted to Facebook. Here she is (with the big smile) with her insane gelatinas in Oaxaca. In Mexico, Jello is practically religious. So Eli's something of a Jello saint. (I assume this is how it works. Saintdom.)

2010-03-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

Despite having a number of really very noteworthy food excursions lately (judging L.A. Cupcake Challenge, the 2nd Annual Gold Standard, 2 visits to Silverlake's new Forage, and a very successful Oscar pot luck), I haven't been able to bring myself to post. My head is elsewhere. And thinking and writing about food feels painfully irrelevant.

Nevertheless, I'm working on a Top Ten Kit Kat Flavors You've Probably Never Tried, the latest addition to my ever-growing body of surprisingly successful Japanese snack food posts (or as I sometimes refer to it, My LA Weekly Legacy). For it, I began a wonderfully tangential, slightly jingoistic introduction, which I will not use, but which I believe best reflects my state of mind as of late:

In honor of the birthday of President Andrew Jackson (Monday March 15), Squid Ink has taken the the time to pay homage to America's adopted sons, the Kit Kat. A licensed product of America's own Hershey Company, this classic confection stacks three layers of creme-filled, crispy wafer inside four milk chocolate-covered fingers, each with the ability, nay, the freedom, to snap, or "break", from the bar one at a time. Sturdy and brown, these chocolate bars recall the logs that built Lincoln's cabin...God bless America.

Yup, crazy. You can expect the real thing to go up sometime this week.

I've been moving a bunch and inking some. Here's ink.

2010-01-31T15:34:00.000-08:00

Jack Bauer Eats! (Japanese Nutrition Bars). Metal Gear's Naked Snake is also a fan.

Free Screening: 'The Bitter Taste of Tea' Exposes Not So Fair Trade

F Cup Cookies: Breast Enhancement Through Dessert, Not Surgery
I got kudos on this one from a commenter called "Bacterial Vaginosis." Go me. Also, favorite dig: CourageWulf on 01/20/2010, "Can someone tell me what a vagina is plz?"

inkses.

2010-01-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I did this last. So long, in fact, that some of my posts may have been lost. (The blog doesn't go back very far.) Whether it was because I wasn't proud of them, or just didn't care, the fact that they're just gone--it's sad.

Here are the posts I was able to retrieve.

New Year's Eve Dining Roundup: Because 2012 is Only Two Years Away

Top 10 Christmas Dining Options If You're Going Out This Year, For Whatever Reason

Now Open: Tiger Beverly Hills

Now Open: Gonpachi Torrance

Umami Truck Debuts at Festivus 2009: Mobile Burger Battle on the Horizon?

Upscaled, But Not Elevated: 9021Pho Beverly Hills

Black Friday Freebies at Luna Park and Henry's Hat

Whatever I feel about these posts, I'm done with them now. And I'm finished with the newsletter. And in a very non-New Year's resolution kind of way, I think I'm ready to make something good again, something I'm proud of.

Photographic Lunch at Portos

2009-12-23T08:55:00.000-08:00

Ropa Vieja. Or, Old Clothes. Cuban-style carne machaca (stewy with mild heat, and full flavor).

Photographic Lunch at La Grande Orange

2009-12-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

Muesli. Like cold, sweet, milky, oaty, porridge.

how do you like them apples?

2009-12-09T09:26:00.000-08:00

Sauced.

Peel and chop green apples. In a covered pot, let them sit over low heat with a few slices of lemon. Stir occasionally.

The easiest ace in my deck.

Best f-ing meal I've eaten

2009-12-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

...at home in a long time: pasta tossed with sautéed green chard with sliced garlic, lemon, coriander, salt, and parm. MAN-o-MAN!

SO good. Just had to tell you.

Milk: The Other White Gold

2009-12-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

For you squares who don't already think milk is super cool and funky fresh, this is my last attempt at convincing you.

Get with it, losers.

Bring home the bacon

2009-12-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

If there are any rich benefactors out there who read this blog, perhaps you'd consider making this swine-lover's year with this supreme gift, a membership the Bacon of the Month club. I know its nothing new, but seriously, what a great holiday gift idea. I'll think of you every time it comes in the mail, which is twelve times-a-year, much more than you can say for, say, a fruitcake. My address is 438 N. Ogden Dr. Los Angeles, CA 90036. Merci et joyeux noël.

and now for another...

2009-12-01T23:15:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving pie that is. Certainly not Alice Waters approved, this one is in the Sandra Lee vein: peanut butter pie with pre-baked crust. Mostly mixing, and fairly excellent in the way that extra creamy peanut butter in pie crust could not be anything but -- excellent.

1 (8oz.) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 tbs butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream, whipped
1 cooked pie crust

Whip cream and set aside. Mix together cheese, peanut butter, sugar, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gently fold in whipped cream, a third at a time until combined. Pour into pie crust and refrigerate.