Gastronomy 101

Oh man ... I can't believe it's been a week since my last post. There's been kind of a lot going on lately and it's been hard to get motivated to write about what I'm eating or whatever. But at the same time, it's a lovely time to be eating. Spring is evolving gently into summer and things are growing and ripening everywhere. And I've been getting in the mood to really go to the farmer's market again. I must admit I am a sporadic attendee when the weather is colder and the stalls are mostly sporting hearty greens and knobbly root vegetables. But when the weather is nice and the tables are filled to overflowing with juicy fruits and berries, I am very enthusiastic to go to the market. So I recently made my first foray of the season back to my most local market. It was really nice to go back to my mellow market on the quiet side street and check out what I could find. Unlike some other small markets, here you can always find something unique or interesting

Check it out - I maybe found my new local watering hole - or as close as I'm going to get for now. Read my la.foodbloging review of The Village Idiot .

I do a lot of blogging about things I make or places I've been. But what about those nights I am just too lazy? To lazy to cook and too lazy to leave the house? We all have those nights, so I thought it might be useful to talk about delivery every once in a while. I would say that 97% of the time we get delivery, it's Thai food. We've been experimenting lately, because our once-standard place, Wild Orchid has gone and turned into a vegan cafe. The vegan cafe is actually pretty good, but it's not Thai food. On a recent exhausted and lazy Friday night, we decided to try Pink Pepper, in Hollywood. I have eaten in the actual restaurant once, ages ago, but this was our first try at delivery. The food took an average amount of time to get to our place. Some delivery gets here faster, but this is one of the farther places we've ordered from as well. And we didn't sit there starving waiting for the food to come. Plus the delivery guy liked our dog and that always gives

I have to admit that I have some romantic notions about country farmhouses and Western european peasants. I sometimes envision this pastoral life that's closer to Marie Antoinette's Petite Hameau than to any actual reality. But this romantic vision gives me an enthusiasm for making anything that reminds me of country kitchens and old world root cellars - pickles, preserves, crusty loaves of bread, and soups full of herbs in little bundle. Whenever I see these kind of recipes, I have to make them, while daydreaming that I have a large kitchen in a cottage somewhere and a little larder full of neatly labelled jars . That's nowhere near the truth, but it's still fun to pretend for a minute. So of course when I saw a recipe in Fine Cooking for pickled carrots, I had to make them. First of all, they looked delicious. Second of all, they'll keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks, so I could make a purchased bunch of carrots last. I am also a new pickle enthusiast. F

J. and I are having some serious nostalgia for our days in Tokyo already, so we had to get out butts to Gonpachi, which opened on La Cienega at the end of March, to try the homemade soba and the sumiyaki. Read all about it on la.foodblogging: Gonpachi - Kushi Soba .

Oh sad day ... this was our last full day in Japan. It was a Sunday and Sunday we had especially reserved for the Harajuku district. Sunday is when the teenagers come out in all their fashion glory. This is where Gwen Stefani's entourage pretends to come from, and this is where you can see authentic Gothic Lolitas, cosplayers (people who dress like anime characters), gothic maids, and other fashion subcultures like wamono , and decora . But first, we had to pretend we weren't just there to gawk, so we went to the Meiji-jingu temple. I like this temple, because as you walk up to it, you pass a section of barrels dedicated to the temple. On one side is a wall of sake: On the other a wall of fine burgundies: I was kind of sad that you didn't get to take a glass as you stroll through. Bu I suppose it was sacred now that it was dedicated to the temple. The Meiji period was the period where Japan really opened up to the West, and the wine is a symbol of these new ties with the o

Our eighth day in Tokyo brought us beautiful weather, so we headed out for a picnic lunch in the park. Shinjuku-gyoen is a large park that was originally the family residence of a wealthy family. The park has been open to the public as gardens since 1949. The gardens here are in several different styles: French Formal, English Landscape, and Japanese traditional. You can wander the landscapes of three countries in an afternoon. There are also 1,500 cherry trees here and on this Saturday each one had several picnickers under it enjoying the blossoms and their food. We stopped first at a depachika for our lunch. I got two rice balls, and a fruit salad that at 500 yen, was cheaper than most of the individual pieces of fruit. I also, as you can see drank my first and only soda of the trip, a grape Fanta. Something about the sunny weather made me want it. One thing I love about buying Japanese food to go is that they always provide you with everything you need to eat it, no matter what you