View from the Kitchen

Back from Low Sodium Land

Good grief people. I have seen the future and it's not PRETTY. I had to make an emergency trip to Merced last week, (five long, cow-field laden, anti-abortion billboard screaming hours) to help care for my elderly great uncle. He never had kids and retired at 55 from a government job. So basically if you can find him in the Merck Manual under anal retentive. And I don't mean that casually, like referencing someone who insists on having the cabinet doors shut, I mean someone who's deeply, deeply anal retentive. He lives in an assisted living place that is lovely, and doesn't have that stench. It looks like a wonderful hotel, with a beautiful dining room. Each guest has their own apartment complete with a fridge, but no stove and they all get together for meals and sing alongs. Most are ambulatory, but there are a few who rely on wheelchair's. The dining room rocks. There are two chefs, nice guys, who know all the residents by name. Meals are HUGE event. I guess they are for most of us, but it's striking when everyone is seated 30 minutes before the servers are scheduled to appear. The hilarious thing is that the residents line up 30 deep for the salad bar, before anything is on the salad bar. They stand canes and walkers in hand (and some in wheelchairs) waiting to pounce on the beets and shredded carrots. They do this knowing that the staff NEVER runs out of anything, and despite the fact that if they wanted to they could ask one of the sweet faced high school servers to make them a salad to order. I think it's for the gossip. They gossip in that line, peering into each other's lives like Mrs. Kravitz into Sabrina and Darren's window. They know who's been sitting in whose Lazy Boy recliners watching Wheel of Fortune until all hours. They know whose doctors appointments went well, and whose didn't, and whose kids never come to visit. They often act like a group of catty, junior high kids. I stood there once when one of the residents took a large amount of bacon, and another resident started oinking like a pig. This place is resort-like, in terms of how lovely it is and how accomodating the staff are, but my 87 year old great uncle told me very matter of factly, that he had been told "they send all the hard cases" there. As if it were a juvenile detention center, and the residents were there for being popped for shoplifting. The food honestly isn't bad, for spice-less, salt-free options. but if it were up to me the dessert cart would be endless and served at every meal. There would be biscuits and gravy and huge slabs of bacon with every breakfast. I don't understand why people who are in their 80's and 90's don't just indulge in real butter, whole fat, and real sugar. But you see them shaking their pink packets into their iced tea. Man, every day I live past 80 is going to be about INDULGENCE. I just want to climb on the table and yell, (which wouldn't be out of line, given their average age) "Live a little!"

posted by PerfectPear @ Monday, January 31, 2005 2 Comments

Birthday Party Help!

I need a perfect white cake. It's G's birthday on Friday and I need a recipe for a perfectly sweet, white layered cake... because that's what he wants. No mouse, no lemon curd, no red velvet, no flourless. Help!

posted by PerfectPear @ Wednesday, January 26, 2005 1 Comments

TAMALES

My drive home is one culinary adventure after another. I go from mid-Wilshire, near the fabulous and kind of mysterious sign that screams "Miracle Mile", through Korea town, Silverlake, Echo Park, Atwater Village, and Eagle Rock and Pasadena. Sometimes I'm in little bit of psychic pain thinking about all of the little, tiny places that with undiscovered (by me, at least) culinary joys. I pass this cool looking Asian market, where there are always cardigan clad older Korean and Chinese folks streaming out of there no matter what time I pass by. There's some kind of annex attached to it, where they actually sell the cardigans and through the cloudy windows you can see teapots and bamboo containers stacked to the ceiling. I always think, wow, what could be having for dinner if I stopped there? There are karaoke bars with sushi signs and Pho restaurants and a couple of Oaxacan places. I drive along Beverly, with the Boba shops next to the taco joints, next to the hair salons. Then when traffic on Beverly inches towards Vermont, there are all these carnecerias and El Salvadoran Puperserias. Some of them have counters where inevitably someone's leaning over scooping something amazing into their mouth, and I want to roll down the window and scream, "What is that?! Is it good?" There are also women, somebodies grandmother and mother, sitting on milk crates in front of little grills, or coolers. Or there are blankets with crates of mangos or other fruit, just waiting to be eaten. The shortest detour would take me to 7th Street where Mama's Hot Tamales houses tamales from Honduras and El Salvador and Oaxaca. There are places called "Delores" that call my name, with girls leaning on counters next to a huge bowl full of oranges. And I think, "What are those for? What are they paired with?"

posted by PerfectPear @ Friday, January 21, 2005 0 Comments

Meat Freak

When G goes out of town I become like the BIGGEST carnivore ever. Burned bacon, pink centered tri-tip slathered in horse radish, roast beef sandwiches, steaks with the baked potato left totally untouched, and even a gigantic burger, oh my. What's that about? He's not the kind of run-from-the-room vegetarian, who looks down his nose at meat eaters. But I can't help myself. I have a hard time eating one vegetable while he's gone. Some kind of misplaced adolescent-like, culinary rebellion. I was a vegetarian for five years, until I started running seriously. I was training for my first marathon and on an 18 mile long, long run I started fantasizing about eggs and peanut butter, COMBINED. So I knew I needed to break down and have a little more protein. And I'm sorry, I can't that many lentils and soy makes me queasy. Anyway, that was my excuse then. Now I'm just INTO it.

posted by PerfectPear @ Tuesday, January 11, 2005 2 Comments

Smoke Rings

That's what I do for a living. I blow smoke rings up Hollywood's hoo-hah. Seriously. Let me give you a little window into my world. Yesterday at the same moment that the world learned that Jen and Brad had broken up, a fire alarm went off in my building and we had to evacuate. Five floors of people poured out onto the pavement in the pouring rain, for twenty minutes. Panic spread through the crowd. NOT about the prospect of a fire. NOT about the prospect of anything dangerous. No. No. It was far more sickening. Our news show might have to miss their lead and break-in to programming with the news. GASP. We might have to follow CNN. Then when we did get back into the building, soaking wet, cold and weary, we had an emergency meeting to discuss how we should handle the break-up, whether we should make editing changes removing offending images of Jen and Brad, whether we should break into the International news and share the tragedy with the world. The panic and mayhem was so awful you might have thought 147,000 people had been wiped off the face of the earth.

posted by PerfectPear @ Saturday, January 08, 2005 5 Comments

Six Decades of Recipes

Six decades. More than a thousand recipes. All in one book. I love it. I love the illustrations and sections with titles like, "The Egg and Us", "Baking Sheets", "Grits" and "Splitting and Decorating Cakes". This year is going to taste GREAT. The only thing I dislike is the yellow colored, recipe titles, which are a little hard to read in dim lighting, but maybe the editors didn't expect food geeks like me to read this tome in bed.

I dove right into The Gourmet Cookbook with the first cookie recipe from the "Cookies, Bars, And Confections" section, "Tiny Chocolate Chip Cookies". They were enormously satifying for little, bitty cookies. I don't know about "jewel-like" but these cookies are fast, fast, fast from beginning to end. My only complaint is that they were too tiny to cool on my new cooling racks, which made my dog, Savannah really happy. (She's not really the greatest judge, considering she happily licks flour and baking soda off the floor.)

posted by PerfectPear @ Thursday, January 06, 2005 1 Comments

You're a Food Geek if...

... you have cookbooks in your car.
... you actually feel drunk when you receive The Gourmet Cookbook.
... you're late for everything, except dinner reservations at Chez Panisse.
... you don't trust people who "don't get" truffles.
... you think Chef's are cooler than rock stars.
... nine out of ten of your Christmas presents belong in the kitchen.
... you fantasize about kitchen islands, and knives, and organic fruit.
... you plan a trip based on where the greatest cooking classes are.

posted by PerfectPear @ Wednesday, January 05, 2005 2 Comments

Action Item from Self-Admitted Silly Girl

Food blogs are silly. They are a way for me to vent, kill time and entertain my numbed-by-Paris-Hilton mind. I'm grateful that I discovered this outlet this year and you're awfully nice to indulge my "Look at me! Look at me!" urge. (And honestly I've never really been good at cartwheels).

Action Against Hunger (www.actionagainsthunger.org) isn't silly, or indulgent and I hope, if you haven't given in some way to the Tsunami Relief efforts you'll consider making a donation to them. If you feel like you can't afford it, I understand, but maybe you could take a can of soup to lunch and send the cash their way. I'm just saying.

And hey, Happy New Year my friends. I hope your year is filled with wonderful moments shared with friends and family, and friends you haven't even met yet over food that's moving and thought-provoking and even, inspirational. And I hope you'll email me every fabulous detail.

posted by PerfectPear @ Tuesday, January 04, 2005 0 Comments