House of sauce

I don't know why, but our refrigerator is overcrowded with sauces, condiments and pickled things.

Today I had to perform an olive purge. There were brined kalamatas in a jar, Greek olives in oil. There were plastic containers from, respectively, the olive bars at Gelsons, Vons, and the deli at Whole Foods, each containing assorted, spiced Tunisian, little green picholine, and oil-dried herbed black olives.

There were 5 jars of green stuffed olives for serving with martinis. We had Spanish olives stuffed with pimientos, garlic-stuffed olives, bleu cheese stuffed olives, almond stuffed olives, and tipsy olives bottled in vermouth. Many jars had only two or three olives floating in their briny liquid.

Combine the duplicates, toss the ones that have been around a little too long - I ended up tossing 8 jars into the recycling container!

Then there are pickles. Kosher dills, bread-and-butter pickles, gherkins, hot pickled pepperocinis, sauerkraut, sweet pickle relish, muffaletta olive relish, Indian mango pickle, pickled pearl onions (for serving with Gibsons), Major Grey's chutney, and home-made Moroccan preserved lemon.

Our refrigerator contains so many varieties of sauces it could be considered a veritable Sauce Museum. Worcestershire, teriyaki, tartar, cocktail, Tabasco, Frank's, "Mo Hotta Mo Betta", harissa, Pickapeppa, Thai curry paste, black bean sauce, nuoc mam, soy sauce, hoisin, ketchup, and at least 4 different bottles of barbecue sauce [The Man I Love] got in a mail-order assortment package.

Green salsa, fresh salsa ("fire roasted tomatoes") Pace Picante sauce, and not one but TWO bottles of Jardine's chipotle salsa. Both open.

French's mustard, grainy mustard, Phillipe's mustard, Grey Poupon, Chinese mustard, Colman's mustard and horseradish.

Without intending to sow marital discord, I feel perfectly justified in blaming this state of affairs on [The Man I Love]. He is constitutionally incapable of leaving a store without pickles or sauces. I recall one shopping trip when I unpacked Jamaican mango hot sauce, kim-chee and Texas-style pickled okra from the same bag.

And all I asked him to do was pick up milk on the way home from work.

Overabundance

With summer comes abundance. The garden overflows with fruit and blossom.

Cheesecake at the Museum

When I visited the California Heritage Museum, I was attracted by the displays of decorative arts that reflected the California lifestyle of the early 20th Century. Its home is an 1890s-era landmark house in Ocean Park, and its exhibits are displayed in the house as if people lived there and used them.

Its current exhibit, however, is considerably less homey. Up through June 29th (so hurry and see it!) is the exhibit "Lights, Camera, Glamour! the Photography of George Hurrell."

Hurrell was a studio photographer beginning in the 1930. He virtually created the glamour pin-up shot. His photographs sizzle with sex and Hollywood allure. Joan Crawford's mascara'ed lashes close seductively against her flawless porcelain cheek as she glances at the camera. Shadows play across the brow of Jean Harlow as she runs her hand through her blonde curls. Garbo's graceful hand is highlighted against the darkness of her gown. Jane Russell reclines in the straw, and her blouse slips off her shoulder.

Hurrell's career was a long one - he continued working well into his 80s. You'll be surprised to see the classic rock and pop albums that feature his photographs on the covers. A young shirtless Arnold Schwartzenegger broods with Teutonic power. A photo of Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren is a startling reminder of the disco era.

The exhibit includes a separate room, behind a red velvet curtain, with Hurrell's nude photos. Hugh Hefner asked Hurrell to photograph some of his girlfriends, including Playmate Shannon Tweed. Joan Collins - at the age of 50! - did a nude spread for Hurrell to be featured in Playboy. Damn, why can't I look that good?

What I found the most charming in the "Nude Room" (as the docent called it) were the studies of a little known starlet of the 30s named Gigi Parrish.* Her graceful pose looked as elegant as a Matisse odalisque. How different her perky little breasts and sleek flanks were from the pneumatic lushness of Hugh's playmates.

He made Hollywood's actors look like the stars they were - larger than life and more beautiful, like gods and goddesses. Even Jimmy Durante fares well in Hurrell's lens.

Oddly the one actor this didn't work for - at least not here - is Clark Gable. Here is the only photograph I've ever seen where he doesn't look sexy. He looks like a big-eared dork!

If you want to learn more about George Hurrell, check the website of his estate. You can read a bio of his fascinating life, and purchase photos. But in the meantime, if you want to see the Governator's biceps, Joan Crawford's lashes, and some sexy Hollywood glamour, catch this exhibit before it closes on June 29th.

*Footnote: Interesting factoid - Gigi Parrish was the wife of painter and illustrator Dillwyn Parrish. Parrish fell in love with his Laguna Beach neighbor, and encouraged her to begin her career as a culinary writer. In 1938 Dillwyn Parrish and M.F. K. Fisher divorced their respective spouses and married one another. He was the love of her life.

Vintage California

This weekend I went to the 8th Annual Antique and Contemporary Tile Sale at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica.

I learned about it from the City of Santa Monica's Cultural newsletter, The Palette. If you live on the West Side, it's worth subscribing to. Announcing arts and cultural events weekly, it reads like an email from a good buddy. I might not have cared about the Tile Sale if The Palette hadn't made it sound so interesting - and I'm so glad I did.

The museum is located in an old house in Ocean Park, surrounded by a nice open space that hosts the Farmer's Market on Sunday mornings, and that was where the vendors were set up for the sale. There were modern art tiles and tile artisans as well as dealers of antique tiles - but all of the tiles hearkened back to the craftsman era at the beginning of the 20th Century, and particularly to the great potteries that thrived here in California during that era. In addition to the tiles, 20th Century California and Mexican antiques and crafts were displayed and sold.

The antique tiles are treasures - with prices to match. But the pieces on display were amazing - beautiful and...well...also unusual. Here's an antique tile mural with a theme you don't see everywhere:

It's great to see that this art is still being continued by artists today - and many of them are working right here in Southern California. I'm giving links to them here, since they were kind enough to let me take photos. Do go visit Malibu Tile Works, Laird Plumleigh, Lorna Auerbach and Native Tiles & Ceramics. Sherry Stevens doesn't have a website, but you can email her to find out about her tiles, which feature mermaids. She's at ssmermania(at)verizon(dot)net.

What I really enjoyed were the antiques. The items on display reflected the theme of early 20th Century California, so there were vases and bowls from California potteries like Bauer and Catalina. I yearned for this incredible Catalina stepped vase:

But its price was higher than my monthly car payment, so all I can do is dream. There were lots of kitschy Mexican tourist souvenirs from the 30s and 40s - carved and painted wooden sombrero-wearing siesta-nappers, prints and oil paintings of bullfighters, senoritas with swirling skirts, and saddle-blanketed burros. There was furniture painted with polychrome flowers, pony-skin rugs, wrought-iron lamp-bases, and tooled leather barrel chairs. Some pieces were fine art, others were thrift-store treasures. But all of it was wonderful to look at.

Isn't this great? These are menu covers and advertising prints for cruise ship lines in the 30s.

If you like this kind of thing, sign up for The Palette, and I'm sure there will be a notice next year. Or, if you can't wait until next year, check out the Golden California Antiques Show this october in Glendale. Disclaimer: I've never been there. But if the offerings are like they were here, I think I might just check it out. Contact me if you want to go with!

I got Tagged!!!

Tootsie Farklepants tagged me with a meme. Here's the deal:

The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

OK - I picked up a book I just finished - "Free Food for Millionaires" by Min Jin Lee. Good novel about a young Korean-American woman college graduate finding her way in New York.

Jay sank his head in the pillow. Then he sprang up and pulled on a white T-shirt and the pair of sweatpants that had been draped over the armchair. He needed coffee.

Here's who I'm tagging:

BipolarLawyerCook

Everybody Knows

Just Another Blog (From LA)

Stoopid Stuff

Table Conversation

It's an eclectic group, for sure. We'll get some interesting selections.

My Dad

This is my Dad eating caviar off a trash-can lid.

It's Cincinnati, Ohio, 1968 or 1969. We lived on a winding cul-de-sac in a subdivision. The sunblasted patio was too hot to sit on when Dad came home from work, so he would set up a folding lawn chair in the driveway, in front of the garage. He would use a garbage can for a table. There he would sip his evening martini and nibble on pistachios or other salty snacks. Sometimes our neighbor would join him.

My mother tolerated this inelegance, I think, with good humor. Once, she bought him a jar of Romanoff lumpfish caviar from the "gourmet foods" section at Kroger. It became a family joke.

I remember a lot of things about my Dad. His loud sneezes. His corny jokes. He liked peanut brittle. He sometimes made corn bread on weekend mornings. He liked to eat sardines on crackers.

He had a fondness for Pogo comics. He introduced us all to Chinese food, with trips to Chinatown when we lived in Chicago. He taught me how to use chopsticks.

He liked to sit in the living room after dinner, listening to records - Tchiakovsky's 5th Symphony was one of his favorites.

In 1975 after I graduated from college, I lived in Greenwich Village, and worked in off-off Broadway theatres. Dad commuted into the city from New Jersey to his job Midtown. Every month or so, he took me out to lunch. He liked to go to the Japanese joints on Third Avenue. He never asked questions about my louche life, or my strange attire. He just bought me sushi, and taught me how to eat it. He always slipped a twenty into my hand for cab fare when we said goodbye.

He had to be the only man in Rumson, New Jersey, in 1971 who owned a Japanese Kamado green clay grill. When he was Vice President of the electronics plant he worked for, his fondest friends were the custodians. He smoked cheap, stinky cigars, and after I married he invited my husband to join him for one on the back porch whenever we visited.

There were four of us kids. We grew up and we moved away. We went to SoHo, Seattle and Pasadena. We went to Rochester, and to Ithaca; Tianjin and Guangxi. We circled out and came back to visit. My dad loved us all, and he especially loved his eight grandchildren and one great-grandaughter.

Here's my Dad in 1954 with me, his first child.

Here's my dad with me and Brother One:

Here's my dad when the third pregnancy turned out to be Brother Two and Brother Three:

Here's me with my Dad in 1957. He's letting me go off on my own, yet he's always been there behind me with a helpful hand in case I need it.

On the shoulder

Sometimes in life you just have to pull the car over to the side of the road.

In the more than ten years since I've lived in L.A., I've been commuting to work by the same road - Highway One, Pacific Coast Highway. Each morning I drive past the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it's clear and sunlit. Sometimes it's shrouded in fog. I come around the bend past Topanga Canyon Boulevard and see the curve of the beach below the site of the Getty Villa. Sometimes there's someone walking on the sand. Or a dog leaping in and out of the waves. I pass the cars of surfers parked south of Gladstones, and get a glimpse of them out on their boards in the water. A traffic jam is sometimes rewarded by the sight of dolphins leaping.

I often wish I were down there on the beach. But I keep my hands on the wheel and focus on the road, and off to work I go.

Except this morning.

I pulled over on the shoulder and parked the car, letting the morning traffic pass me by. I picked my way down the sandy bluff to the beach. I walked through the soft sand until I came to the hard-packed tidal sand. These guys kindly shared their beach with me.

I followed the birds down to the seaweed-covered rocks. I filled my lungs with the smell of the ocean. I listened to the waves advance on the beach, and then retreat, sighing. I just took a few minutes. Then I was back in the car.

I walked in to work still feeling the sand between my toes.

Color of the day - Aqua

I had a day to myself. I was wearing a fine cotton tunic that was the clear, pure aqua of water in a swimming pool.

And it seemed like I saw that color everywhere I went that day.

I went to get my brows threaded at an Indian beauty shop in Culver City - the beautician uses a twisted thread instead of wax; much less painful, and no burns from hot wax, either. At the cashier counter, there they were, glittering at me, delicate glass bangles in aqua and gold - $5 for six!

As I drove home, I saw aqua taverns

A sign with a flash of aqua
An aqua bike
In the store - Oh, delicious aqua!
Best of all? This gorgeous aqua ride!

Wouldn't you like to cruise in this? (yes - I admit - it was being towed on Venice Boulevard.)

Treasures

[The Man I Love] took a trip to New York, and brought back some treasures for me from a little Tibetan import shop downtown. They carry silks, textiles, and jewelry. He brought me two tunics made of the lightest cotton muslin, one in pale aqua and the other in cherry-blossom pink. A pair of turquoise earrings. And two scarves, one rough-woven with indigo stripes, the other a delicious pink silk spotted with gold.

Aren't the colors delectable?