Gastronomy 101

Brr! We had a cold snap recently and while I sitting in my apartment feeling sorry for myself and huddling near the heater, some other folks were having a far worse time than I. Our local farmers, especially those who deal in citrus and greens, were scrambling to try to save what they could of their crops, which were devastated by the freeze. VOCABULARY POLICE BREAK: Notice I did not say "decimated." People don't seem to know that 'decimate' means 'to destroy one-tenth of.' Apparently 66% of the American Heritage usage panel now accepts decimate to mean 'destroy a large part of.' I still can't get past it, though. It's like if we all suddenly started saying, "Man, those teenagers halved my food supply," when what we mean is that they ate every last piece of food in our kitchen. That's just weird. I know it's nitpicky and snobby, but it still bothers me every time. Okay, finished now. Anyhoo ... back to the farmers. In orde...

I don't have time for as much blogging right now as I would like. Everything's been crazy at work. The problem with specializing in issues affecting the elderly is that many of your clients are about to die, and that lends a certain urgency to your work that can't be blown off easily at all. There is no more final or urgent deadline than that. In addition, I also have a co-worker who forwards me every forwarded e-mail that she receives and she receives a lot. As a consequence I end up reading a lot of forwarded e-mails because I just need a break and that's the quickest way to take it. Most of the time they are some sort of hoax or misinformation that I need to debunk and the rest of the time they are some sort of tired joke. But--okay--in the standard list of so-called funny epigrams I just received, I have to admit that this one made me laugh: "Who was the first person to say, "See that chicken there? I'm going to eat the next thing that comes out of it...

What do you do when all of your relatives are far away for Christmas, and you have the busiest two months of work you have ever ever had? Well, you miss out on some Christmas presents. And what do you do when you miss out on some Christmas presents? Once you've missed Christmas, you can't just send any old thing off the internet. When you miss Christmas, you have to show the people you missed that you missed them because you loved them MORE than everyone else, and therefore you waited until they were back so you could send them something made by your very own hands. You make them a present. Perhaps ... you make them biscotti. Biscotti that might just save their life. Because when they are sitting around drinking wine or beers, if they didn't have something to munch on, then they would just be drinking and that could lead to some very dangerous stuff. So you make your loved ones snacks, snacks that show you care and snacks that will keep them from dancing around with lampsha...

All'Angelo: Restaurant Row has almost completed its ambitious goal of becoming restaurant square. From Simon/LA to Pink's, from Pink's to Mozza, from Mozza to Lucques, from Lucques to Simon/LA, I am now surrounded on all sides by some of the best restaurants going in this town. Melrose has suddenly entered the competition with La Cienega, Beverly and Third Street and is filling up with noteworthy restaurants of its own. The newest kid on the block is All'Angelo, opened January 20th by Stefano Ongaro, lately of Valentino, Enoteca Drago, and Il Grano. In other words, dude knows from Italian. All'Angelo is on Melrose near La Brea in the former location of Mumtaz, an Indian restaurant. The chef is Mirko Paderno, of Valentino and Dolce. The menu reportedly includes dishes such as Parmigiana-style braised tripe with grilled polenta; saffron risotto with bone marrow; ricotta, spinach and black truffle-stuffed guinea hen, and will serve 25 different wines by the glass. All...

Recently, there was an article by Amy Scattergood in the Los Angeles Times about local food blogs . It was a good article, focused mainly on buzzworthy blogs The Knife and Eater LA . But included with the article was a sidebar of other local food blogs with a blurb on what they are about. Many of them were regular reads of mine, but some were new to me. Yay! More blogs that I do not have time to read! One blurb caught my eye, proclaiming of Food Porn L.A. : "Launched in November, this is a photo-driven blog featuring commentary such as doughnut poetry and bacon-buying rants." Doughnut poetry? Bacon-buying rants? Very intriguing. So I went to read it only to discover that I know the fabulous female behind this blog, and that said bacon (of ranting fame) was, along with it's blogger, a guest at my holiday brunch . I guess it was only a matter of time before I found myself in a room with another food blogger. But wait! I had not one food blogging holiday guest, but two!...

So now you know what wine is and how to taste it , now let's say you're standing in the store, trying to pick out a wine. Just what does all that stuff on the labels mean? The most important thing to know is that there are only a few elements on a wine label and depending on what part of the world the wine is from, the label will be trying to convey different things. Don't worry about it. Unless you are a super-expert in wine, those things on the label aren't going to help you much anyway, particularly with European wine. But knowing what those things are, will help you to at least keep track of features of wines you liked so that you can pick similar wines in the future. American Labels: American labels are all about two things: the winery and the grape. When you read an American label, you are mostly going to get information about the winery it came from, and the type of grape that mostly makes up the wine. It will also on there the wine region that the wine came fro...

Mmmm ... I tried the fanciest-schmanciest donuts in L.A. this weekend. Read about it on la.foodblogging .

Yesterday, after a long break for the holidays, we returned to the farmer's market. We decided to hit up the Beverly Hills market yesterday, since we hadn't yet been there and it makes up one of the four markets that surround us on Sundays (Melrose Place, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Larchmont). There's been a sudden cold snap, which means the citrus crop is struggling and various weather worries have farmers scrambling. I wasn't surprised to see some slim pickings on this market day. Still, we came away with some interesting finds. Our first stop was at the balsamic vinegar guy, who lured us in with claims of the best balsamic we would ever have. (It wasn't ... but a friend's parents once treated me to some 100 year balsamic from Modena, so it's not really fair). He kept us there by feeding us every flavor he had: 18 year balsamic from Modena, Black Mission fig balsamic, raspberry balsamic, truffle oil, garlic & basil balsamic, sun dried tomato balsami...

Well, it's been a while since I have done a post in the "restaurant" category on here, since most of my restaurant reviews have been in the la.foodblogging category lately. But this post isn't so much of a review as a need to explain that in the past two days I have had some bad food experiences that have sapped my will to deal with food at all. Perhaps if I exorcise these demons, I can move on. I don't often write really bad things about the places I go, because often things I find bad about a place are only subjectively bad. Only if something is objectively bad do I feel like I can talk about it freely. The things that follow, I think, are objectively bad experiences and so I put them out there as a cautionary tale. Okay, so these aren't really restaurants, per se, but I got food at them, so I'm going to allow it. * Largo : Some friends and I went to Largo on Fairfax on Friday night to see Zach Galifianakis and some other comedians. The unfortunate thin...

Perhaps the most important area in the kitchen is your special stash of spices. Spices (along with their special friends, herbs) turn "ingredients" into a "delicious meal." Spices can define where a dish comes from or at least, what cuisine inspired it. They can change a dish from savory to sweet. Spices can turn a type of food you dislike into one you can eat. One of the few things I remember from junior high history is how popular pepper was in Europe once it was brought back from the east, as illustrated by a learning device called "Newscast from the Past" where a commercial for "Pepper! From the Holy Lands!" demonstrated how a pile of black pepper could make a big maggoty piece of meat palatable. Yum! If you want to do any sort of cooking at all, it's important that you have at least a minimal spice rack. So here is the scoop on some basic spices you may want to include. CARDAMOM : Cardamom is a member of the ginger family that is native ...

Okay, there's going to be a long story first, so if you're not into that kind of thing, you can just skip to the end for the recipe. This year was a first for me. It was the first time I spent Christmas in Los Angeles, even though I have lived here a total of 11 years. I have been at home with my family for Christmas except for one year when I was with my family in Hawaii, and two years where I went to Louisiana with an ex-fiance. But I have never spent a Christmas here, without some kind of family event taking place. But this year, my brother was up north with his fiancee's family, and my parents were living it up in New Zealand. So, my Christmas this year was on a much smaller scale than in past years, but what it lacked in grandeur it made up for in coziness and fun. TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS: When I was little Christmas was a really big deal. Christmas had lots of activities and traditions associated with it. Christmas started at the beginning of December, when the local ba...

I've been evaluating my blog and have realized that, while I have lots of nifty posts, I don't really have a good overall explanation of what exactly this blog is all about, and what one can expect to find here. So I'm creating this post and will link to it in the sidebar for anyone who's interested. I am not a professional chef. I have not been cooking for years. I am not an expert who is going to make beautiful and amazing and complicated dishes to "wow" you. I am, in fact, quite the opposite. I am a total beginner. I've always lived in places with miniscule kitchens and concerned myself with schoolwork and studying and working and not paid the least bit of attention to what I was eating every day. And that's what this blog is all about. It's about me learning where my food comes from, how to make it properly, and how to enjoy it to the utmost. It's no fun to learn by myself, so I started the blog to keep track of what I learn, kind of like a...

It's not often that gourmet product purveyors offer to give the likes of little ole me fabulous gifts, so when I got an e-mail from fellow food blogger Erin , with the news that Alejandro & Martin were giving away 800 boxes of free artisanal olive oil in December, and then gave me the code to get in on the olive-y action, I jumped right on that bandwagon. Alejandro Levins and his partner Michelle import artisanal olive oils from small producers that they gather from around the world. The oils are fiercely protected from the demons heat and light, and are only sold through the website and not to stores, to ensure the proper care and handling at all times on their way to you. Only a short time after ordering it, I received a super-cute wooden box that was packed with four slender bottles of different olive oils from different areas of the world, with different flavor profiles. J. and I took the plethora of La Brea Bakery bread we had left over from our New Year's Eve gatheri...

* Du-Pars has reopened in the Farmer's Market after a crazy long renovation. Unfortunately, the reports are underwhelming. Colleen Cuisine calls it "Sub-par's" citing lukewarm coffee, meh french toast, and grossest of all, a tuna melt consisting of cold tuna salad on raisin bread ... raisin bread! with unmelted cheese. Barf. My friend and former neighbor, and french toast expert was very excited about the opening date, since she loves the french toast at the Studio City location. Sadly, she too pronounced it disgusting saying of the french toast: "There was so much extra egg I thought I was eating an omelet with bread." She almost called up Studio City to tell them the Farmer's Market people were doing the french toast wrong, in hopes that they might school them. I don't blame her. DuPars Restaurant & Bakery Farmer's Market 6333 W. 3rd St. (Third & Fairfax) (323) 933-8446 Studio City 12036 Ventura Blvd. (east of Laurel Canyon) (818) 766...

As I have said before, I always like to accomodate those who have found their way here via Google search only to discover that my blog does not contain what they are looking for. So today when I saw that someone was searching for "gay bar in san luis obispo," I wanted desperately to help, since I have many fond memories of the gay bar in San Luis Obispo. Unfortunately, I can't help, because I do not have a time machine. IThe gay bar in S.L.O. is long gone, alas. I don't think anything new has come along to replace it, either. But if you know of something, post it! I will know where to go when next I go home. My husband will love it! Sadly, it's hard to find out where to go, because the gay community up there is pretty low key. If you happened to watch the Surreal Life when Alexis Arquette was on i t , you would know exactly why. So if this searching person is new to the Central Coast and looking for companionship, I would say you are going to have to start with ...

In all of the holiday hullaballoo, I have not mentioned one or two websites that have pinged my radar lately. The first is Eater L.A. , a new venture from the Curbed.com group of sites. Eater LA is a new blog that covers the restaurant and bar scene in Los Angeles and so far it has proven to be a pretty valuable resource for what's going on, eating and drinking-wise, in L.A. Since I first checked it out, I have gotten hooked and a part of my regular evening routine now is to update myself on all the entries and report to my husband any important information that we need to know. The second is a new group blog called Side Order of Ham--A Feeding Friendzy, in which friends in several different locations blog about food. Most of the entries are by one Steen, a Los Angeles local who can have all of my oysters and sushi in exchange for all of her cilantro and alcohol. She's got some mouthwatering recipes and food experiments posted and a jealousy inducing rundown of her Christmas ...