Eats. I posted them.

Danish breakfast sort of- its Egg and Tomate without tomate, plus bacon. The tomate was unfortunately busy turning itself into a white fuzzy goo, and could not find room in the busy schedule it had lined up for breakfast. Bacon is a good friend though and offered to chip in.



Braised lamb and potatoes in my flea market cast iron pot. I think these are the most iron rich eats in the world. Cures anemia instantly. Even though I suspect the pan had some iron it shed into the sauce, it all tasted good:

End result- spinach with dressing from previous post, braised lamb, potatoes and the braising sauce (thyme, sage, garlic, butter, red wine and veggie broth, reduced and thickened with cornstarch)


Mini quiche. Saved for a rainy day.

Invention is the redheaded stepchild of Mother Necessity

Gentle Reader (s?),

Some bad things happened in the kitchen over the last several weeks. Our plucky, and some might say, obsessively tidy (might) Ms. E, actually had a brief and specialized case of amnesia about what sorts of actions are required to lead to clean dishes. Then some ants, which are always hovering opportunistically in the building, discovered a hole not yet sprayed with organic ant killing spray under the fridge and suddenly, washing dishes meant dealing with ants, and dealing with ants meant washing dishes, and there were all these community meetings and things, and...well...lets just say I didn't cook too much for a bit.

However. On Saturday August 2nd and Sunday August 3rd, I did great battle against foul minions of chaos; Ants and Dishes, and prevailed. See? Clean Kitchen.

I even scrubbed my stove. I took a picture of the stove, it was that shiny clean (it could only have been cleaner when I moved in and took the plastic off of it) when I finished.


Of course in the...cough cough...unspecified length of time that my kitchen was in a state of distress, I ran out of food. So tonight I recycled withered lemongrass, wilted lettuces, the one egg, an old chicken carcass and some leftover wonton skins from a dumpling project, and got to work on dinner.

This is the end result:

Its salad greens with parm, and fried chicken lemongrass things. I also wanted to say that one thing I take pretty seriously is salad dressing.

Lecture break now: I don't hold with store bought dressing. Thats madness. Do you have any idea how much high fructose corn syrup and poly unsaturated fat is in there? What about maldextrose, guar gum, xanthan and stabilizers? And you are supposed to pay 3 bucks because the preservatives are on the house? Whyyyy??? Don't go down that road folks. Real food= you know what the ingredients look like. Much of my motivation for cooking comes from looking at the ingredients list on pre-made food and thinking what percent of it I know the health benefits of. Even that fried stuff thai dipping sauce, which comes from my grocery is simple- its just sugar, chili, vinegar, garlic and water- I checked.

So for posterity I give you this motto: salad dressing is just vinegar (maybe oil) plus fun anything else you have in your house. Tonight's dressing- featured in the unmarked glass bottle involved the following three ingredients and some oil:



Other things I might put in salad dressing include mustard, herbs, pepper, salt, sugar, bbq sauce (the kind where I know the ingredients), and so on. I also have a small library of vinegars- but mostly I use quality balsamic or white vinegar.

And that is the saga of how I returned to my kitchen and my blogging duties.

Action Shot

Here I am facilitating for my life. Its in the blood after all- momma's the meeting lady and dad is the concerned citizen demanding accountability from the government, so I was bound to end up with 15 people staring at me and demanding I change decades of government policies they don't like, which were created before I was born I suppose.

Madness- Post for Dad 2

Today was a crazy day. I had my camera with me because I intended to photograph a Joshua Tree at our community meeting in the AV tonight. In the AM I took a picture of my new haircut:










Then at 11:42 we had an earthquake:









And I ended up outside, milling around with other confused coworkers. I'm okay and so is SoCal but I'm not really ready to talk about it.


Then we went to the Antelope Valley and had our community meeting. I didn't get a picture of the elusive Joshua Tree, but here are some oil rigs and rock formations (the rock formations partly caused by fault lines.)

For Dad- part 1

For my dad who has requested that I have some kind of web-based photo updates of my life I will be posting a few favorite pictures of LA that I've taken and posted someplace else. Here is my cat taking a sunday snooze, and some recently or still in assembly furniture from my apartment.

Falling behind

Living life apparently makes blogging challenging. I don't know how most people do this. Thankfully I tend to be the only person reading myself, so only I know how shamefully bad I've been at keeping my commitment to myself to make art and food. Oh well.

This week I took fish tacos in a delightful, but unorthodox direction. I started with Salmon which I pan fried and coated in a teriyaki glaze (thusly learning how Teriyaki is made...thank you Joy of Cooking!). Usually at this point my fish tacos either get lettuce or napa cabbage (usually lettuce- raw cabbage is a little too sulphur-y for me), but this time, fortune intervened in the form of brussel sprouts and shallots rapidly headed towards inedible in the bottom of my fridge. They got sauteed and became the delicious cabbage base. Then cumin black beans, mango pinapple habanero salsa (that mango was also in need of rescue) and the avocado (tritto) and some sour cream. It was devine. I've been making these with mostly mild fishes like snapper and catfish, but frankly I like the more aggressive flavor of the salmon. Although this would make a perfect vegetarian meal without fish, since everything else is really stellar already. And it gets major health points, unless you are a pig like me.

Of course I inevitably forgot the jicama which is now going to languish in the fridge like all the above ingredients until I have some kind of brain wave.

Also. I have a backdated shout out to my "stella fella" that never got in here, so I'll throw this one out there too- it's yogurt chive potato salad with my beloved purple potatoes. After a week or so, the last uneaten bowlful turned a spectacular bright blue- not sure if that was a reaction from the chives or the yogurt, but sadly it was so blue that even my hungry, completely out of food self decided to steer clear. It was such a waste! Next time I'll just bring potato salad to work for breakfast, potential mockery of peers be damned!

Limeade and yummy.

Pre-limeade- I squeezed a zillion limes. Or you know...10, but my wrist was sore.

Being a thrifty Scot (just one of the many ethnic groups I flexibly identify with depending on which characteristic I currently chose to justify with a poor understanding of stereotypes and genetics) I decided not to waste all that lovely zest which is now hanging out in my freezer waiting for new opportunities.

After making simple syrup, and adding seltzer, I ended up with the most delicious lime fizzy drink. Sooo good- its the first citrus juice I've drunk in two months.

This is my work garden, and the remainders of the BBQ salad mentioned in my last post. I am so excited to keep growing the garden- this weekend I am going to acquire bigger containers and hopefully some back-up flourescents so i can start transplanting the bigger plants (just look at the nasturtiums) to pots. We also planted some peas, tomatoes and a salad mix today.