Vers l'absurde

Her Royal Highness.

Things people have offered me that I will not eat:

• Turnips
• Condiments
• Bananas, unless they come topped with ice cream
  

Things her royal highness, otherwise known as my family's dog, will not eat even if she is starving and this is the only option offered:

• Dog food
• Beef
  
• Duck
• Mushy rice (only rice that is not mushy)
  
• Anything flavoured with onions
• Apples
  

True, we have not fed my dog the vast array of food that I've consumed, but I've eaten a lot more random foods than my dog, yet the picky wretch has more dislikes than I do. For instance, we have not fed her seafood, save shrimp which she loves, but I bet she would turn her nose up at it unless it was toro or caviar. It somehow doesn't seem right, that she gets to be so picky. And I don't know of another dog who'd rather starve than not eat food she didn't like. Thus, it's just not right that her dislike list is longer than mine. But look at how cute she is! And below, look at her checking out my fake little dog and then promptly losing interest. Because unless they're edible, other things are just not interesting.

Sugar and stupidity.

"Do you want to go to a wedding tomorrow night?"

Idiot me, when caught off-guard, I always respond "yes". I bet I would respond in the affirmative if someone randomly asked me, "Do you want to get lunch" or "Do you want to take a BB gun and shoot raccoons?" I have this weird knee-jerk "yes" response, and only afterwards do I actually think of what I agreed to. Seriously, someday some random person will ask me, "Hey, do you want to get married?" and I will say yes because I do before I think and wow, won't that be an adventure. And by adventure, I mean interesting mess.

Incidentally, do you ever entertain the notion of marrying someone just because everyone else would have near-heart attacks reading your wedding announcement? I do. Sadly, I have lots of options along those lines. And each option would be HYSTERICAL. I can make myself laugh thinking of people's reactions. And that, in a nutshell, is why I am nowhere near ready to get married yet.

Anyway, back to the wedding. Stupid Nick was in town (I really need to come up with a nickname for him, but can't. Fuckhead's already taken, so is Stupidhead.. I think this just leaves Big Dumb Moron, so henceforth he will be BDM, at least for this post).

I know I have talked about BDM before, and probably at nauseating length. For, you see, seven years of him being in love with me has left me with lots of fodder. He visited me - without really asking me, hrm - when I was in Paris. He was the only one with whom I really ever had "the talk". He's hit on me in front of boyfriends, and has offered to take me to El Bulli when I was practically sprawled across another guy's lap and obviously going home with this other guy that night. BDM's casually brought up the idea of us getting married a couple of times. The cincher is that he has done all of this while dating another girl, the same girl, and really, I feel sort of bad for her. Because I really don't encourage this, unless by encourage you mean being his friend, because we have known each other for seven years, but hi, after seven years of dating other guys and NOT HIM you think he would get the point. Or at least give up. Believe me, I am not harboring any secret hope of us ever getting together. Besides, if I said the word I know he'd dump his girlfriend, he's already offered of his own voilition.

Anyhow. He was in town over Thanksgiving weekend, and had a family wedding to go to, and idiot that I am, said that sure, I'd love to go.

And then we got off the phone, after making plans to meet up for drinks after dinner, and then I realised what I had agreed to. It would have been like this, but five hundred times worse because everyone would think that I was his girlfriend, BUT I AM NOT, and that would not have been easily explained, why he brought a girl who was not his girlfriend while he actually has a girlfriend and oh my gosh, I have a headache thinking of it already.

Luckily, the wedding seating chart couldn't be changed so I couldn't go. Thankfully. Even though I love going to weddings, and this one was in a very pretty place, but THE HEADACHE. Not to mention, I would have had to have dealt with him for a whole night, and I can't even tolerate 2 hours of drinking with him because inevitably, he will bring up marriage again and blahblahblah even though I will ask him about his girlfriend and how she is doing and ooh, the latest article of hers that I read was very interesting (she is a journalist). This last time, he said that he could never see himself married to his girlfriend even though they have been dating off and on for something like SIX years now, but wait! I would make a perfect marriage candidate! I cook! I am educated! And will never make more money! And inevitably, he will get all touchy feely like we are dating BUT WE ARE NOT and to the point where I start to shoot him dirty looks and give pleading looks to the bartender begging him for more alcohol so that I don't punch BDM in the face.

Oh shit. I hope I didn't somewhere in there agree to go to a wedding with him in two weeks. Seriously, I need someone who will hit me every time I talk before I think. But then I would be waaay bruised.

Which gives rise to the question, why do I even hang out with him? And the answer to that is found in the second paragraph of this post. Because more often than not, I respond "yes". Because I don't think.

And this time, well! He invited me up to his family's cabin in Tahoe for New Year's Eve. I asked him for a run-down of the guest list, and interesting, no girlfriend was on it, but some of my good friends who I haven't seen in over a year are, and I am an idiot for considering flying up there, because I haven't been to Tahoe in awhile. Because like that's not just a disaster waiting to happen, being stuck in a cabin with BDM over New Year's Eve.

Not to mention, Tahoe shares a border with Nevada and is close to Reno. And if someone proposes marriage, I might be that idiot who says yes because I'm drunk and it's a funny idea.

In other news, I went back to like the happiest breakfast (okay, any meal, they have good soups and sandwiches and salads too) place ever, which I used to go to often but then I had to go to the horrible East coast for school and regretfully haven't gotten in the habit of going back to since I've been back, and the waiters - okay, just one waiter - has apparently started recognizing me ("Hey, didn't you use to come in here like a lot and then you didn't come for a very long time and now you're back?"), and now he's calling me "hot stuff" which is so funny and amusing and what it comes down to is that I like it when people in restaurants recognise me (why else do you think I ate at the same restaurant in Paris at least once a week?), I am a sucker for it, and do you think that if I flirt with him enough I will get free red velvet cake out of it? Because I love me my red velvet cake. and I am not above shameless flirting if it means I can get it for free.


I mean, look at it. Mmmm. So yummy. So worth future shameless flirting.

My most favourite dish at Thanksgiving

This year, I volunteered to make the mashed potatoes. In that bowl, you see 10 pounds of mashed potatoes, along with untold amounts of butter and garlic. Well, 10 pounds less approximately two pounds which I consumed while "tasting" to make sure that it was good.

(I also made the stuffing - well, dressing, since I didn't stuff it in any poultry - and this weird caramelised onions and quinoa dish, but nothing says happiness like a big fat bowl of mashed potatoes. Good thing I saved some to eat.. NOW.)

And no, I am not off shopping those post-Thanksgiving sales. As much as I love to help the economy, I hate crowds even more. I become practically a recluse on the weekends, not leaving my apartment (except when someone else offers to drive or we are going drinking) because the weekends are when everyone else runs their errands and yuck, lots of people. So I am instead making cupcakes (pictures to be posted later, they are baking right now) to bring down to my cousin, who just had her baby! More people in my already vast family! (My mother is one of nine, my father one of eight.) We could so totally have a commune, my family, what with all the people in it. Or at least take over a small country.

Cookies and champagne.*

I didn't have caviar. I didn't even have cheese. But by golly, I had fresh out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies.

Accompany that with some champagne (or sparkling wine, if you're nitpicky with your terms), a good friend (to talk with, not to eat, obviously), and it makes for a perfect Tuesday night dinner.

Take a multi-vitamin if you think you're missing any important nutrients, but I think that this little decadent meal hits all the important food groups (remember: they use grapes to make the bubbly) except for veggies, which I think are overrated anyway.

And hey! Happy Thanksgiving, to those you who celebrate it. And for those of you who don't - erm, just eat yourself into a frenzy. It's the same thing.


*Not as catchy as "Chinese food and porn", which a friend used as a pickup line once, and as horribly cheesy that is, it worked.

Chicken heaven.

When I first went off meal plan in college (my sophomore year; I couldn't stand cafeteria food), I had to truly cook for myself or starve (or eat out a lot, and options around a college campus are always limited to fast food, it seems, although Providence did have good restaurants). And while I'm an avid meat eater, I simply could NOT abide the feel of raw meat. It is gross, really. Really really gross. That summer, when my mom was showing me simple chicken recipes, I refused to touch the raw chicken and made her deal with it. And so when I went to off to school that fall, unbeknownst to me, my father packed a whole bunch of latex gloves in my suitcase so that I wouldn't have to touch raw meat when preparing it for myself.

It made a real good impression on my roommate, let me tell you, when I opened said suitcase and there were all those latex gloves there. Who knows what she was thinking.

Anyway, I got over my fear of raw meat (because basically, donning rubber gloves to cook smote of a person with too many issues to deal with, and there was no option of me becoming a vegetarian, please), because I'd buy meat in parts - you know, chicken breasts, steak, lamb chops, pork chops, lots of steak.. meat that, while I generally knew what part of the animal it was from, was disassociated with actually being from an animal because a steak doesn't really resemble an entire cow.

And all was good.

However, for the past couple of years, I've been fascinated by the thought of roasting a chicken. I love roast chicken. It's is perhaps the ultimate comfort food. And generally, I'd sate such a craving by buying a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket - so simple! Just pop in the oven and reheat!

But me being me, I got the idea in my head that I wanted to make my own roast chicken. By myself. No shortcuts - well, save buying an already killed, defeathered, and degutted chicken. No way I was doing any of that myself. I'm not that into preparing stuff from scratch.

So I bought a chicken.

Have you ever handled an entire raw chicken. It's just so... real.

I've dissected a cadaver - twice, as a matter of fact - and that's gross. And smelly. Formaldehyde just does NOT dissipate. There is nothing more attractive than walking home after a long day of dissection reeking of formaldehyde from head to toe. But somehow, having that thin layer of latex protecting my flesh from the other made dissection slightly tolerable. Slightly. Very slightly. Actually, dissecting a cadaver isn't that horrific - the head, hands, and feet are covered until the very end because they dry out quickly, so it's rather impersonal (albeit stinky). Until you get to the head, and for me, the hands. Then it hits you that this is a real preserved human body in front of you, and YOU ARE CUTTING IT TO PIECES. Funny how taking the handsaw to get into the chest cavity doesn't make such an impression - for me, it was the hands, which are especially creepy, what with their preserved skin and yellow nails and all. And fat? Preserved fat is yellow, and globby, and YUCKY and GROSS and SMELLY and you can pick it off with tweezers although it is really hard because even in death, fat just does not want to separate from your body, and it is really icky...

Enough. I can talk about how gross cadaver dissection is for forever, but I'm talking about roast chicken here, not about how med school was sucky for so many reasons. But aren't you enjoying the lovely imagery now?

Anyway. Handling a raw entire chicken, even headless - there is something creepy about it. Especially when you wash it, dry it, and massage it with salt and pepper. I get chills thinking about it now. It is just icky icky icky.

But hell. A roast chicken? While my brain might rebel against the thought of touching a raw chicken, but my stomach... it wanted a roast chicken, dammit.

So like any good student, I did my research. I read a lot about roasting chickens, and came to the consensus that I could go crazy trying to reconcile all the different techniques. Brining - either wet or dry - the chicken overnight (or over a couple of nights). Sticking herbs under the skin. Sticking butter under the skin. Stuffing the chicken. Not stuffing the chicken. Figuring out what to stuff the chicken with if stuffing. Trissing thte chicken. Not trussing the chicken. Using a roasting rack. Not using a roasting rack. Creating a mock roasting rack with a variety of vegetables. Searing the chicken in a cast iron pan on the stove. Searing the chicken in the oven. Keeping the oven the same temperature. Figuring out what temperature the chicken should be at in the thigh and in the breast. Covering the chicken wtih foil in case in case it starts burning. Turning the chicken over. Not touching the turkey at all during the roasting process. Creating a foil tent after taking the turkey out.

So on, and so forth.

It made me a little bit crazy reading all of this.

In the end, I took bits and pieces from these three recipes, picking the parts that were easiest for me to follow, so I can add to all the mass confusion.

• Prepped the chicken the night before, washing it, rubbing it with salt and pepper (3/4 t. of salt to every pound of meat - I had a 5.5 lb bruiser on my hands, obviously not as much pepper!). I also stuffed two sprigs of rosemary underneath the skin on the breast.

So, a little digression here. Apparently I'm some kind of moron, because I couldn't figure out 100% for certain which side was the breast just by looking at it. Chickens are deceptively complex that way. So I had to go back to the good ol' internet and look at many many many pictures in order to figure out which way went up. Of course, I stuffed the rosemary in the backside of the turkey instead of in the breast side. Sigh. Back to what I did.

• Let the chicken rest overnight in the fridge, with plastic covering it but leaving a small hole for ventilation.
• Chopped up potatoes and onions for the chicken to rest on while roasting, and tossed them with a touch of olive oil.
  
• Rubbed the chicken with some olive oil. Ergh. Oil and cold chicken skin. Ergh.
• Stuffed another couple of sprigs of rosemary into the chicken cavity, because I forgot to do that the night before.
  
• Did not truss the turkey. It did seem rather indecent to let the chicken be all wantonly untrussed, but it was just too much damn work.
  
• After preheating the oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit, cooked the chicken in the hot oven for 20 minutes, then turned the oven down to 400 for the rest of the cooking time.
• Added a cup of water when turning the oven temperature down.
  
• Let the chicken roast for.. um, no idea. Probably about ninety minutes. We'd started drinking and watching Sleeping Beauty well before this time.
• Took the chicken out when it was nice and brown, and wiggling the thigh was easy.
  

And that was it. Really. No fancy turning, no meat thermometers. And it was fine.

(No turning because I was scared of the chicken falling and splattering on the floor, taking the pan with the pan juices and potatoes and onions with it. If I could figure out a safe way to do it, I would have, but I couldn't.)

Better than fine, actually. Roast chicken is just amazing in its simplicity. And it smells so good!

I took the pan juices and reduced them with a touch of cornstarch to make a gravy.


Oh, and after letting the chicken rest on my cutting board and draining the pan of pan juices, I stuck the potatoes and onions leftover in the pan under the broiler for a couple of minutes to brown them further. I can't impress upon you how amazing the onions were after roasting in chicken fat for over an hour. The potatoes were good, sure, but ooh, those onions. Like butter, they were. Next time, I'm using more onions and fewer potatoes.


I am now going to roast a chicken like every single week. Okay, month. Or whenever I can get enough people over to eat said roasted chicken.

After we got back from drinking that night, however, apparently all the yummy roast chicken smells decided to congregate in my bedroom, which really wasn't that appetizing at 2 in the morning when I was trying to fall asleep.


And like any good cook, I used the leftover chicken bones to make a chicken stock. After roasting the chicken bones in the oven for an hour, I stuck them in a pot with some chopped up onions, carrots, and celery, along with some bay leaves, poured water over to cover, and let it barely simmer for a couple of hours. There was some skimming action, some straining action, all with the end result of my now having 6 cups of chicken stock in my freezer, just waiting for me to do fun things with it!

A day of leisure.

Seriously, being in school is great. Being in school and having them cancel class is even greater, because then I feel like they're just telling me to go out and have fun - as opposed to what, I don't know, since wow! The quarter system is all sorts of easy since they tell me I should only take 3 classes at a time, as opposed to the 4 or 5 I used to take on the semester system so life is really a breeze right now. It's also great because I get to bill 20 hours of work a week when I only work 3. If only life could always be like that.

Anyway. What did I do with my "day off"? Let's see..

Wednesday night: Jetted down to the OC to see Raul Malo (lead singer of the now disbanded Mavericks). The biggest fans, the louded applauders? My friend's father and all his friends. I was slightly scared that one of them was actually going to rush the stage, he was having THAT much fun.My friends and I sat further back from the stage (as opposed to rightatthefootofit, as all the adults were) so we could drink instead. I would like to point out that when we saw the Mavericks last, on New Year's Eve, all the people my age went home early (due to being really really drunk, mostly) while all the adults managed to get backstage and party with the band until the wee hours of the morning. (I have had it pointed out to me that I'm technically an adult now. But I don't think so).

Like New Year's Eve, me and my two friends went to bed just as the adults were opening another couple bottles of wine. We're weak. Just so weak.

Thursday morning: Coffee and sitting around on the beach (clad, sadly, as it was a touch chilly in the morning). I'm sorry that I don't have pics, but I have profiled this place extensively in the past. So you can see more pictures there. The picture above is from September, but it pretty much looked like that yesterday. Pretty and sunny.

Thursday late morning: Window-shopping in Laguna Beach with a friend who unfortunately has to start working again the week after Thanksgiving. Now who am I going to kill time with? I don't know anyone else who has random days midweek off. Poop.

Thursday lunch: No visit to the OC is now complete without a trip to Shibucho. Sushi was as great as ever, especially the sardine and the Spanish mackerel. I could eat sushi every night for dinner and be happy. Mm. I want more now just thinking about it. Note to self: either learn basic Japanese or go back with a friend who speaks Japanese. I always feel like they're talking about me (or I'm just paranoid), and I wanna know what they're saying.

Thursday afternoon: Window-shopping in South Coast Plaza, primarily trying out perfume at Saks. Found out that the people at Bond No. 9 (which appealingly - or perhaps not-so-appealingly, depending - has perfumes named after different places in NYC) will custom-blend several of their scents together to create you a new fragrance that is UNIQUELY yours. Too much fun! Unfortunately, the lady in charge of this special task was away, and apparently has irregular hours. "She breezes in for a couple of hours every week, when she feels like it", we were told. So helpful. In other notes, South Coast is way smaller than I thought it remember it being. We were in and out of there like that.

Thursday afternoon, cont'd: We were on a roll. We wanted more perfume. You know, every day needs a purpose, and Thursday's was finding perfume. So back to Beverly Hills it was, hitting first Barneys then the Saks there. After smelling practically all the perfumes at both stores, we were perfume-d out. So I got dropped off at home, where I took a nap. Mm. I love me my naps. I can sleep anywhere, anytime. It is fantastic. I remember how freshman year in college, I used to visit the boys upstairs while they were busy playing Grand Theft Auto on the school network against other guys in the dorm, and I used to fall asleep every afternoon without fail while watching them. Then I'd usually follow that up with another nap in my own room. And believe me, I sleep plenty at night. This ability to fall asleep is especially good when travelling.

Thursday evening: Hey, I had to do my alum interview! On the way there, I "had" to walk through Nordstrom, and have finally narrowed down my fragrance choices to this and this. Or both. I just might buy both. After all, they serve different purposes, n'est-ce pas? And I have been looking for a new fragrance for almost a year now. Not that I don't already have enough perfume, but still. I swear, I haven't bought new perfume in like a year and a half! That is practically an eternity for me!

Anyway, where were we. Right. Alum interview. It was amusing, as earlier in the week I'd left a voicemail for the boy I was to interview, and his mother called me back asking if it was okay if he called me after 9:30pm. Jump through hoops, they will. The interview was fine, the boy was cute in an endearing high school sort of way, and I hope that this one gets in. But then, I generally hope that all the students I interview get in.

So look! I was actually productive yesterday! I did something useful besides shop for perfume.

Then I met up with Jen at Stitch n' Bitch, where I also got to meet Gwen and Laurie, and hopefully they will come over soon for drinks as they are both lovely lovely people and I'm glad I got to meet them. I did not have a project to work on, but rather was that annoying project-less person who just talks and talks while other people are trying to count stitches. Sorry! Next time, I will have another baby blanket to work on, I promise!

Thursday night: Exhausted after a long long day of doing nothing, I went home and lay on the couch with a glass of wine.

Unfortunately, I actually have to go to a seminar today. Work, on a Friday. The indignity of it all! Unless I can figure out how to get out of it.. hm. Perhaps I will go see a movie while pondering how to not attend this seminar. Because Walk the Line? SO excited for it, and Joaquin Phoenix is hot even though he is weird.

And y'all, go add yourselves to my map (conveniently located in the left sidebar) because hi, I know that not all the visitors to this site are me continually reloading my page in a narcissistic manner. So join in the fun!

School, schmool.

Babies everywhere!

And babies mean baby showers, which are just an interesting phenomenon. A bunch of girls sitting around (sometimes guys too, but they seem to end up in front of the television watching football) playing silly shower games and oohing and aahing over presents brought.

It also marks the practical end, in my eyes, of ever receiving presents again for the parents, for all presents will go to your children and you will be IGNORED forevermore because face it, little kids are way cuter and then you become a part of your children, instead of your children being a part of you.


Anyhow, I had a baby shower to attend this weekend (the one for the girl in my advisory group), for which I made strawberry cupcakes, using, ooh, fresh strawberries. (I was primarily inspired by this recipe, though I didn't use it because it called for cake flour and milk, neither of which I ever have around, and I was too lazy to buy some.) Even though I increased the amount of ingredients to make 36 cupcakes (the original recipe made 24), I somehow ended up with only 23 cupcakes, which was just bizarre. For the frosting, I adapted this cream cheese frosting, which, if you'll note, makes enough frosting for 36 cupcakes. However, even though I only had 23 cupcakes, it was just enough to frost all of them (with, admittedly, an abundance of frosting). People need to get their measurements right, I swear, for otherwise, how is the innocent home cook going to know how to predict such discrepancies?


And I didn't mean to make the frosting so supersonic pink, but I barely dipped the tip of the spoon into my red food paste colouring, and next thing you knew - ahhh, neon pink! I was aiming more for pastel (this being for a baby shower for a girl), but that didn't happen so much. The colour didn't impair the taste any, though. But boy, was I glad that I stuck to clear sprinkles instead of the pink or red I was going to buy - that just would have been too much, I think.


Here's a close-up of a cupcake. Look at how you can see fresh strawberry bits!




My mother didn't like the fact that I'd decided to make a quilt with blue and yellow as the primary colours, but it made so much sense to me as my cousin met her now-husband in their first year at UCLA. (First week, if I recall correctly.) But since I only had 10 days notice on this most recent baby shower for my friend, well, there was not going to be any quilt made. So instead, I went shopping (which I seem to do a lot of recently, but hey, why not?).


Baby sections of stores are SO overwhelming. It's all these bright colours and cute things, all of which you want to buy. I stayed away from clothes and instead went for the toys, because rugrats grow really fast and toys are everlasting. Plus, being the superdork I am, I went for the educational toys, because not just any toys will do. I love Fisher-Price as on the packaging, they list how their toys are developmentally appropriate. For instance, the Rock-a-Stack on the left (didn't everyone have one of these growing up? I think mine is still around somewhere) says that its developmental benefits are: stimulating the senses, developing motor skills, and encouraging cognitive abilities. The Roll-a-Rounds Pet Pal Rounds on the right develop motor skills and stimulate the senses. I mean, they're just toys. Do they really need such lofty descriptives? One could argue that a wooden spoon could help develop motor skills and stimulate the senses as well, but whatever. There are plenty of pictures of me playing with wooden spoons and pots, and I turned out alright. Anyway, I'm a particular fan of the Roll-a-Rounds because they are fun to play with, even though someone pointed out that they looked like cat toys. Cats, babies, all the same thing, right?

(I also bought a cloth books, but I couldn't find them online so oh well. Because it is never too early to start reading to your baby.)

I am not going to get into the stupid baby shower games we had to play, however. I don't see what these stupid games have to do with babies at all (finding as many paper clips as you can in a bowl of rice while blindfolded?), although I do like the ones where you can't say a certain word because I am really good at them and am like a HAWK when it comes to monitoring people in that regard.

Anyway! I'm sure that my other pregnant cousin will have a baby shower soon (she's not due until the spring), so I might as well get cracking on another baby blanket. Because it's not like I go to school or anything.

Adventures in Downtown LA.

Last night, for whatever reason, Jen and I decided to be all cultured and go on an art walk in Downtown LA. Okay, we read that there were going to be a couple of openings and we wanted wine. No, really, we wanted to be cultured. I swear. After battling east-bound traffic to get downtown (who the hell are all these people wanting to go INTO downtown at the end of the workday?!), I executed this slightly-scary and highly illegal rapid U-turn to get a parking spot I'd spied on the street, and we were off.

Here, let's give you a blow-by-blow map, complete with numbers and all.


The red 'x' is obviously where my car was parked, and where we began and ended our journey.

1. Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). All the exhibition spaces were closed, save two. One featured this old VW bug that had been taken apart and hung from the ceiling all stretched out, the other were these amusing line drawings.


2. No art here. But we were starting to get away from the nice safe part of downtown with MOCA and the Disney Concert Hall and similar structures, and to the scary smelly parts of downtown. It was almost like the opening to a Law and Order: SVU episode where two girls are walking around somewhere dark and smelly and then BAM! Something bad happens. Maybe this art walk was a farce; we certainly didn't see anyone else walking around. Maybe it was a trick and they were taking us into the heart of downtown to kidnap us and sell us off into slavery. You never know.
   


3. PHEW. MORE GALLERIES. At Pharmaka we saw pieces from the collection of Paul Ruscha, a fascinating one being "Dinner with Dubya", where, if I recall correctly, Bush, Sadaam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Tom Cruise, and Brooke Shields. Next door, at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, were some disturbing paintings I don't ever want hung in my house. Next to that, at El Nopal Press, were Russian prints that were fun to look at, however the environment was marred by the little heathens running around the room and the otherwise unhospitability of the people there. Finally, at Bert Green Fine Art were these massively overpriced canvases. The kind of stuff where you look at it, and are like, hrm, with a bit of practice I could pull something very similar off, if only I had my own airbrush. Or maybe just spray cans of paint.
   


4. No art, but a very yummy smelling pizza place. So tempted. So very tempted. But no. There was art to be seen.


5. Okay, more art. At the de Soto gallery was finally something I would be interested in. Unfortunately, they do not have a website and obviously I don't remember the name of the artist. Okay, after extensive googling I finally found the website, and the name of the artist, Michael Haussman. Unfortunately, there seems to be another, more popular, guy with the same name and I'm tired of sifting through pages right now to find more about him. But he did paintings of bullfighters and bulls. My favourite, unfortunately, was the one he was painting on the wall of the gallery. Sigh.
   


6. Hey, we're in Little Tokyo now! Next was the MOCA exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary, Ecstasy: In and about altered states. Tons of people were here, not surprisingly. And the theme - well, the title tells you all. A particularly interesting piece was the LSD fountain. Awesome. I also liked the Takashi Muramaki mushrooms. I would like one for my living room. It would be cooler than my boring coffee table. And Jen, eagle-eyed as ever, pointed out the girl who plays Paris on the Gilmore Girls (no, she was not an exhibit, but rather a visitor to the museum). I actually recognised her too, but that's only because I religiously watch GG. Logan? So over him. Rory needs to get her ass back to Yale and stop being a whiny baby. Okay, sorry for that digression. Anyway, IMDB says that Liza Weil is 5'4, but I think that's a big fat lie as that is about how tall I am, and I felt like I towered over her.
   


7. Okay, we were done with art. Obviously we weren't done with the walking, however. We walked down to check out this Cuban restaurant (called, imaginatively, Cuban Cafe), but I had to ixnay it because it looked cheesy and there was nobody there. Plus, it had a "B" health rating, which actually, generally doesn't bother me that much (when you get down to "C", then I'll stop going). Although, now that I look them up, I'm doubly glad we didn't go because, hello, they got points off for being "improperly cleaned" and "deterioration/unapproved materials".
   


8. Ah, now this is the fun part of the night. "There's the Disney Concert Hall!" we exclaimed, which meant that we were close to the car. But HAHA! Downtown LA is tricky! There is a HILL. A steep one that goes up, oh, about 4 stories in the span of a teeny tiny block. And we just realised that we had to get up said hill.


9. This is where we tried to be sneaky and walk to the top of a parking structure, figuring that when we got to the top, we could blithely walk across and end up at the top of the hill without too much effort. This probably would have worked, had we not climbed up four flights of stairs to find that the exit was LOCKED. Foiled!


10. So we walked up the damn hill ourselves. And then we realised that the street where my car was parked? Ah, yes, on this weird mystery street that actually required walking up more steps to get access to it. Downtown is like an MC Escher drawing. But luckily, there was this nice escalator that we rode on to cut out more damn stair walking.

And finally, we were back at my car, after TWO-AND-A-HALF hours of walking. That is a lot of walking, let me tell you. Using the handy dandy gmaps pedometer, I calculated that we roughly walked 3.03 miles. However, I we walked far more than that because, hey, we had to walk around each gallery, and the Geffen Contemporary was gigantic (relatively speaking). So really, we must have walked at least 3.5 miles. And then there was our footwear.


Great boots, n'est-ce pas? However, would you please note the heels on said boots? The ones on the left were what Jen was wearing - I'm not sure those are the exact ones, but they're close enough, and on the right were mine. So observe the heel. On the website where I bought my boots, they say that they have a 2.25 inch heel but they lie because I just measured them and it is more like 3.25. They are comfortable, or will be moreso once I stick some nice Dr. Scholl's inserts to make it more like I'm walking on nice cottony surfaces rather than pavement. Jen's boots have a 2 inch heel. I mean, walking around 3.5 miles in those boots was more like walking, oh, I dunno, 5 or 6 miles in sneakers. Maybe more.

It's a good thing I decided not to keep these boots. Because I would have worn them. And then my feet would have surely rebelled and, I don't know, refused to keep on walking.

And then there was that stupid hill we had to get up. That's gotta be another half a mile, in terms of exertion. So I'm going to say we walked 7 miles, because that's how much my feet hurt now.

We obviously had to reward ourselves for walking so damn much. So off it was to AOC for some cheese, yummy chicken liver crostinis with pancetta (I am going to figure out how to make that chicken liver spread someday soon), and wine. Mmm, wine. Bad service for the first time ever, though. However, that's not going to keep me from going back and getting those crostinis, I'll just not to sit at the end of the bar again.

Or, at least, until I figure out how to make them. Mmm.

[Update] My prayers have been answered: scroll down.

But yay for all the culture. Art, "exploring downtown LA" (ie, walking all over the damn place), and good food. A good night, I have to say.

Cookbook art.

Among the many many things I like to collect are old cookbooks. I'm not really sure when I started doing this, but when I find myself in antique shops I look for three things: teacups, books on manners and etiquette, and cookbooks. Although, of late, I've slowed down on teacups because I don't have any room for them now, and books on manners are a bit harder to find. And this post is about cookbooks, anyway. I swear, I don't think about food and food-related items 24/7. It just seems like I do.

I can't really pin down what makes a cookbook worth my buying it. It can't be any ol' cookbook; there has to be something special about it. What that special quality is, however, I'm not sure. It needs to catch my eye in some way. It's just something intangible.

When I was in the far far hinterlands of upstate New York in the spring, we made sure to stop by the local mill-turned-antique warehouse. And yes, I picked up a couple of cookbooks. Here's one of them:


Andrew Warhol? Not the same Warhol of pop art fame? The book was published in 1961, which was certainly the right time, or thereabouts. And that completely cinched the deal, the book was mine.

Unfortunately, when I got home and googled whether or not it was the same Andy Warhol who did the illustrations, I came across the fact that while they were indeed credited to the Warhol I was thinking of, some other guy did them, which shouldn't be terribly surprising, given the troubles with authenticating a Warhol.

Regardless, the book is endearing in its own way, a lovely glimpse into a different time when they made things called Pasadena canapés (ingredients: Cheddar cheese spread, flour, butter - mix together and bake, then slice and serve) and lamb kidneys on skewers - although, to be fair, there are some intriguing recipes like swiss venison stew and honey orange cupcakes.

Of course, I buy new cookbooks too - I love the ones with full page photos that bleed into the margins. My latest acquisition is the newest Donna Hay cookbook. Whether or not I'll actually cook from it (or any other cookbook in my small-but-growing collection) is moot. I just like the pictures.

Pre-holiday holiday party.

One of the reasons for Friday's woefully meager post was that, well, I had a party Saturday night, and I was focusing all my energies on that, including to the exclusion of writing this wretched paper I have. Grad school is great until you actually have to produce written text. So instead of writing the paper, I made dip. (Usually I toil over hot stoves and ovens.) Lots of dip. Because it was easy and all I had to do was either toss ingredients into a blender or stir it by hand. Because I was technically supposed to be writing a paper, you see, not playing in the kitchen.


I'll identify the dip according to the colour of the bowl that it's in.

• Purple: edamame dip
• Yellow: roasted red pepper and goat cheese
• Green: spinach dip
• Blue square: artichoke olive dip
• Blue circle: provençal bean dip (recipe from the NYTimes)
• Pink: caramelised onion dip
• Pink with gold rim: benedictine (also from the NYTimes)

And there were radishes, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, baby carrots, red peppers and bread for the dipping and spreading.

I can't take all the credit for the plating - a friend came over early to do that with me. And so we could start drinking two hours before everyone else arrived.

Since I made all the dips, I knew what went in all of them. And I hate sour cream and mayonnaise like nothing else in the world. As a matter of fact, I was making faces and holding my breath as making dips with those bases. But other people seem to like them. So I didn't have any of those dips, and have no idea how they taste. However, the artichoke olive dip? Amazing. Sooo good. Hence why there was so little of that particular dip left at the start of the party. Another of my favourites was the provençal bean dip - rather like garlicky hummus, with a hint of rosemary.


I also made cheesecake brownies (roughly using this recipe, but sans raspberries as really, I don't like to mix fruit and chocolate).

Next time, it's chips and salsa from the supermarket for everyone.

I jest. There is this latent Martha Stewart in me that won't allow such shortcuts when I host people.


There was also a lot of alcohol. A lot. Yet somehow, I have more wine now than when I started. And beer. (Thanks Jen! It will be chilling in my fridge for whenever you come over, as I certainly won't touch it.)

Note to self: Over the course of a night, you are allowed only two mint juleps, max. Make that any drink that has a sugary base. You may have all the tonic- or club soda-based drinks you want, but only two that involve simple syrup or juice as a mixer.


You know, I'm not sure who wrote this. It's such a guy thing. However, it's far preferable to someone stealing my doormat, which happened at my last party. Then again, I didn't have a doormat this time 'round to steal.

(I've already returned the library books, no fear. I just never erase my whiteboard.)


Cleanup is always my least-favourite part of the evening, but it was mercifully easy as I went the plastic cup route instead of real glass. I was tempted by the luxury of using real glasses, but pragmaticism took over as that would have been just more crap to clean (although I suppose I could have thrown it all into the dishwasher). Your sink also smells really good anytime you throw citrus fruit into the food disposal.


I love having parties, because then people come to you and you don't have to leave, and I can walk around barefoot and just crawl into bed after everyone leaves. I'm already planning my next one. Really, not so sure why I'm in school. If I could make a living out of being a perpetual hostess, I would. Then again, I only enjoy entertaining people I like. So I'd have to be a selective hostess. I'm working on it.

But grr. There is still a paper to write. At least I have tons of leftover dip to munch on while I do so.

Currently addicted to proscuitto.

Even though summer is technically over, and the nights here are starting to get cold cooler - there's still nothing like a dinner of proscuitto e melone, with some torn basil scattered atop and it all drizzled with a touch of balsamic vinegar.

The only thing better would be eating it while actually in Italy, perhaps on a terrace in Positano or in a Tuscan backyard or on a balcony in Florence overlooking the city, but you know, we can't have everything now, can we.

School ties.

It's that time of year, where eager high school seniors apply to the colleges of their dreams, jumping through hoops in the hopes of being accepted to the place which will mark the beginning of the rest of their lives.

Or something like that.

And one of the little items to check off on the to-do list are interviews with alums from their college of choice.

Everyone knows that these interviews mean crap. The alumni interview has very little pull in the overall decision as to whether or not you get accepted. (A couple of years ago, I had four interviews to conduct: the three that I actually talked to didn't get in, the one who refused an interview was accepted. Hrm, wonder if that says anything about me..) Yet high school seniors go through it anyway, because every little bit helps. It signifies true interest in the school. It might be that extra little push that forces you over into the "admit" pile rather than the "denied" one.

So on, and so forth.

As an interviewer, we get a list of guidelines to follow, which are somewhat helpful. But you have to wonder what happened in the past for the following ones to actually have been included.

• Meeting with students in public places: Many alumni meet with applicants in coffee shops, which tend to be mutually acceptable. Avoid meeting with students in unusual places, like a bus terminal (no matter how public that may seem, it still worries parents), or any place that could be construed as a bar (remember that the applicants are all underage).


• Don’t feel you have to give every student a “Brown wants you” message; given the 15% admission rate, this may unfairly raise expectations.


• Do convey respect for each student, along with the message that Brown is a great place with a lot to offer. This applies even to students who may not particularly impress you, as sometimes the talents or qualities for which the Admission Office may admit a student may not be evident during the interview.

Well darn. Where's the fun now?