Gastronomy 101

Hey you guys! It's Restaurant Week in Los Angeles! If you have never heard of this, I encourage you to check it out. During restaurant week, local restaurants show off their goods by offering fixed price menus at reduced prices. There are three tiers of prices: Deluxe Dining: Lunch is $16 and dinner is $28 for three courses. Premier Dining: Lunch is $22 and dinner is $34 for three courses. Fine Dining: Lunch is $28 and dinner is $44 for three courses. In all cases, it is a bargain. It is a chance to revisit that old standby that you just kind of keep overlooking these days or to try a place that is normally out of your league. There are options for everyone and the menus are available online so you can see if they appeal to you. There are many vegetarian and even some vegan options for those with restrictions. The list of participating restaurants, their price level, and menus is here: Participating Restaurants . I always take full advantage of Restaurant Week, and it usually works...

I am about to put a recipe up here for porcini mushroom soup. I am also about to put a picture up of the soup I made. The two soups are similar in idea, but they are not the same soup. So why I am I putting a recipe for one soup up when I made a different soup? Well, because ... the recipe I'm putting is the recipe I meant to make, and it looks like a really good recipe .. but some things happened along the way, as they do, and I ended up with a different soup. First, I couldn't find porcini mushrooms at the store. The only dried mushrooms were in the Asian section, so I ended up with shiitake mushrooms instead. I would have liked the correct mushrooms, but we can't always get what we want, eh? Then I came to the part in the recipe where it said "tomatoes." I'm able to eat tomatoes when they're in a soup, usually, but I really don't like tomatoes. If I have control over whether tomatoes can be in something or not, sorry, but they're outta there. Af...