First flowers

Today I captured these first daffodils of the season blooming in my front yard.

The botanical name for daffodils is Narcissus. Perhaps the flowers' beauty, coupled with its slight downward gaze, reminded early botanists of the beautiful youth in Greek myth, so enamored of his own image reflected in a pool that he fell in and drowned.

"Daffodil" is the common English name for the flower, and this name has been in use since at least the sixteenth century.

Large trumpet-flowered daffodils, like the ones Wordsworth describes in his poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," thrive in colder climates, where the bulbs need a period of cooling to spur them to grow again in the spring. Those of us who live in Southern regions can't grow these big beauties, because our winters never get cold enough for them.

We can, however, grow the little bunch-flowered Narcissus tazetta, or the Narcissus poeticus - the Poet's flower; also called Pheasant Eye for its golden corona rimmed with orange. This is the flower most closely associated with the legend of Narcissus.

My daffodils are Narcissus jonquila, and are commonly grown in Southern states. In fact, this species is so common in the South that many people there call all daffodils Jonquils.

The Paperwhite Narcissus, with its srongly fragrant flowers, can be enjoyed by both Southern and Northern gardeners - it grows freely in my California yard, but those in cold climates can grow it indoors in a bowl of pebbles, where it will bloom and perfume your house.

The wide variety of Narcissus species bloom over a long range during early winter and spring, so if you choose carefully, you can have daffodils in your garden from January through May.

"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
- William Wordsworth

Pink Saturday - I love this stuff!

Pink Saturday - Beverly, at the blog "How Sweet the Sound" hosts Pink Saturday. Let the color pink inspire you.

Some Saturdays, even if it's a weekend, we have to spend some time doing housework. No one loves doing housework, but I have to say, for the first time in my life I have found something that makes doing housework pleasant.

It's Meyer's Clean Day cleaning products. Now, I don't want you to think I'm going in for product endorsements. I know that the company touts its commitment to using natural, plant derived ingredients. I know they make biodegradable products. I know that their products are not animal-tested, and I know that they try to use ingredients that don't aggravate peoples' allergies. All very wonderful.

But you know why I love their products?

Their fragrance is heavenly.

I have been using their Rose Geranium scented dish detergent now for a couple of months, and I have to tell you that if I couldn't care less about anything else, the fact that I get to smell that incredible scent when I clean my frying pan is enough to make me want to spend the extra money it costs to buy Meyer's dish detergent instead of Joy.

As you can see if you click on the link, a 16 ounce bottle of dish detergent costs $3.99. At my local Von's you can get 30 ounces of Joy for $2.99. So at first glance, it might seem foolish to spend so much more on a different product.

But you know what? With the way things are in this world, we all need a little pleasure. And in this economy, if I can get a little extra pleasure out of something for only a couple of bucks - I think it's a pretty good deal.

Rose Geranium dish detergent makes your hands smell just like they do if you pluck a leaf from a scented geranium and rub it between your fingers. In the depths of winter, it brings you a whiff of early summer. It's well worth it.

Meyers has cleaning products for household and for pet clean up. You can get scents like Basil, Lavender, Lemon Verbena, Peppermint, or something called Baby Blossom for their baby products. I love Lemon Verbena, but hands down, my favorite is Rose Geranium. You can get all-purpose cleanser, toilet bowl cleaner, automatic dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent, and even scented candles. It's pink, too. Which makes it even better.

Because why not pay a little more for a simple pleasure that's PINK?

Open Window

"If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window. " - Andrew Wyeth

Painter Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep at his home this morning in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He was 91 years old.

His spare, beautiful, watercolor and tempera paintings of landscapes around his home are subtle, intimate, and - I think - imbued with a loneliness that speaks. His best known painting, "Christina's World," shows his neighbor Christina Olson, disabled in youth by polio, yearning for her home on a hill beyond her, as she crawls toward it.

This painting is called "Love in the Afternoon." He painted it in 1992.

Mysterious noodles

We've been checking the mail lately, waiting for a certain delivery - actually, some money someone owes us. We were promised it was "on the way."

So the other day when I came home and checked the mailbox, I found a slip from our mail carrier, telling us there was a "large envelope" awaiting pick-up.

The next morning, [The Man I Love] called me at work after he'd stopped at the post office.

"Was it the check?" I asked.

"No," he said. He sounded a little stunned. "It's noodles."


We opened it when we got home in the evening. It was packed inside two manila envelopes. Then wrapped in bubble wrap. The package beneath was wrapped in slick white and pink paper. Beneath that, a white box with beautiful calligraphy. And inside the box?


Noodles.

Quite beautiful noodles, four bundles wrapped in tissue paper emblazoned with gold seals and more black calligraphy. There were also two boxes containing pouches filled with liquid of some kind.

A printed brochure with pictures of a pretty Japanese landscape, cartoons of people drying noodles from wooden frames, diagrams showing how to cook the noodles, and photos of people in traditional clothing spinning noodles between the palms of their hands.

They must be pretty special noodles. Only every single bit of text was in Japanese, so we had absolutely no clue what they were.

We recognized the name of the sender - he is a distinguished Japanese gentleman who is a colleague of [The Man I Love.] I am hoping to hear back on this extraordinary gift of noodles, and what it means.

I'll let you know when I find out.

PROMPTuesday

This week’s PROMPTuesday asks that you post about your favorite — or “most awesome” things. What do you love? What can’t you live without? What do you like to watch on TV? What are your favorite websites? What do you use on your hair? (This last one is a requirement.)

It's not easy to think of something I can't live without. About the only thing I truly need to survive are my glasses, or contact lenses. I'm blinder than a bat without correction.

Living where I do, in a region that people call "fire prone" I am always made aware of the possibility of my home - and all my belonging - being destroyed in a fire. Last year at Thanksgiving, 55 homes in Malibu were destroyed before dawn.

I imagine that. I imagine being awakened from sleep to flee my home, without the chance to think, to choose; and knowing that when I return all will be ashes.

We're told to make lists of what to take with us, odd combinations of practical and sentimental things. Put the insurance documents in a fireproof box! And don't forget the baby pictures!

Every time the Santa Ana winds blow, as they are this week, we remind ourselves of the lists. Where's the box? Should I unplug the computer? Load the trunk? Point the car face-first out the driveway?

Every day some other piece, some other object gets added to the pile. Those cute shoes. The family silver Mom insisted I take. That book I was in the middle of. That clever little pin I found in that boutique.

Can you imagine them going, gone? The book's leaves lifting with the breath of the flames, charring, flaring, and crumbling? Would my bakelite bangle crack and shatter with the heat? In the bathroom, does the Pantene Extra Volume shampoo boil in its bottle before melting and then crisping into bubbled goo on the blackened shower tiles?

You can't think of that - it's too much. So you let go. You try to unmoor yourself from things. I can live without all this, you say. But the real question is - what will I mourn after it's lost?

Go play outside

Just so you don't have to look at my mug anymore! It's eighty degrees and sunny out here today! Go play outside!

Beautification initiative

Talk about shaggy!!

Okay. A New Year. Pledges for improvement. My doctor wants me to watch my cholesterol. My closets are a mess. I had my performance review at work, and want to work toward my Assigned Goals. I want to walk in the mountains more, do more writing, organize my bookcases and lose about five pounds.

Well, this weekend I took the first positive step towards improvement for the New Year. I got my brows done.


It was initially alarming to realize when the year counter clicked past 40 and kept on going, that my body and my face were changing. One of the interesting changes was the sudden sprouting of hairs on my upper lip. [The Man I Love] calls them my "catfish whiskers" and in the beginning even volunteered to help me pluck them out - but, sadly, as time progressed they became too abundant for him to deal with.

I have always had my brows shaped at my stylists', and it only seemed right to ask them to do a little number on the moustache, too. But about four years ago, I got burned by an unskilled cosmetologist. No lasting damage, thankfully, but who wants a moustache-shaped scab adorning her upper lip for two weeks?

In India and the Middle East, ladies remove unsightly hair from their faces using a twisted thread. Los Angeles has thriving immigrant communities, and there are beauty shops all over the place where threading replaces waxing for beauty.


I go to Rozina's beauty salon on Venice Boulevard in Culver City. Although there are always clients coming and going, there's usually not much of a wait, maybe just a few minutes. You sit back in the chair. The stylist combs your brow and if you have any special instructions, this is the time to give them. Then you close your eyes, and she starts in.

You hear the faint buzz of the thread spinning on itself, and feel the hairs pulled out with a slight tingle - no worse than tweezing; not as bad as the quick shock of waxing, but it takes longer. You have to help out by using your fingers to pull the skin around your eye taut, and then later to plump our your lip with your tongue to make the hairs easier to grab. The slight sting always makes my left eye water - not my right eye, only my left. Why is that?

It's over in about two minutes. You get a little swabbing of witch hazel, maybe a touch of the brush, and you're good to go.

There's usually Bollywood music playing on a TV over the little payment counter, so you can lie back and listen. The stylists chat among themselves or with their customers. Sometimes there's someone getting a haircut. Once I was here when a little boy about four years old was getting his first haircut. He was terrified, and screamed like a siren while his mother and the stylist murmured and pled with him. Poor little guy.

Good thing he wasn't getting his hairs pulled out by a thread!


There. All done. What do you think?

Eyebrow shaping costs about $8. The upper lip costs about the same. I drop a $20, and figure I've gotten a pretty good value.


Oops. Missed a hair!

Blue magic

Just south of the intersection of Echo Park and Sunset Boulevards, against a low concrete wall in front of a city parking lot, you might see a blue umbrella and a cluster of people.

There's a lot of street food sold in this neighborhood. On the southeast corner of Sunset and Echo Park, someone displays whole fruit stacked on milk crates on the sidewalk. On the northwest corner, across Sunset, a cart displays cut fruit, and a woman sells tostadas.

If you go around the corner on Logan Street, beneath the dense shade of fig trees, there's a taco trailer - not a truck, a trailer pulled by a full-size pickup - and people sit on upturned milk crates to eat.

But go through the parking lot, past the mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and head for the blue umbrella.

Two vendors set up shop here. One is a man cooking bacon dogs on a grill made out of a supermarket shopping cart. The other vendor is the reason we're here.

She wears a ball cap and an apron. She reaches into a plastic tub for a handful of blue-corn masa, and pats it between her hands into a flattened oval, then lays it on the hot propane-fired comal before her. She waits while it sputters lightly, then, using her fingers, she deftly flips it over to the other side. She sprinkles a handful of white Oaxacan cheese onto the seared dough, and then adds a spoonful of filling.

The first time I came here, the waiting crowd included three young men, and I wasn't sure where the line ended. One guy had a tiny terrier zipped into his sweatshirt. The dog was so cute I asked if I could take his picture, and what his name was.

"Tinker," he said. The little dog looked at me with bright eyes. A little kid came over to pet the dog.

The cocinera looked inquiringly at me. "What kind of fillings do you have?" I asked her.

"Pollo, flor de calabaza, mushroom, chorizo, chicharrones...."

That day I ordered two, one with squash blossoms and one with chorizo.

You can see them cooking here - the folded-over one has the chorizo and potato filling; the open-faced one has the squash blossom vegetable filling. After the cook patted them out and spread the filling, she served the guy with the dog his order.

"What kind did you get?" I asked the guy with the dog. "Huitlacoche," he said.

That was when I knew I had to come back here and bring [The Man I Love.]

If you don't already know what huitlacoche is, you might be taken aback at the most commonly heard translation. Huitlacoche, or Quitlachoche, is called "corn smut" in English. Not very nice sounding. It's a fungus that grows on corn, infecting the kernels, swelling and blackening them. It's considered a blight by American corn farmers, and until recently the USDA has actively tried to wipe it out on this side of the border.

But we human beings are peculiar - some of us find fungus delicious! Huitlacoche has a strong, woodsy taste like wild mushrooms, with a whiff of funk like blue cheese or even truffles.

Huitlacoche is used in Mexican cooking. In the American Southwest, the Zuni and Hopi people enjoy it. The Aztecs liked it so much they deliberately tried to induce it in corn. You can find it in some of the more high-end Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles, the ones celebrated in food magazines. The noted food writer James Beard tried to promote huitlacoche, even renaming it "Mexican truffles" in an attempt to make it sound more appetizing.

So now, on my second visit, I ask the cocinera for a quesadilla with huitlacoche. [The Man I Love] opts for the chorizo and potato.

While she cooks our quesadillas, people stop by and chat. Someone jokes about losing a job or starting a job - it's hard to follow the rapid Spanish and the laughter. A couple of ladies come by, eating paletas, or frozen fruit bars, and stay to talk. The cocinera uses her bare hands to fix the food, but when we pay, she puts a plastic bag on her hand to handle the money. Her assistant, a young man, takes the bills from her gloved hand and makes our change. Our quesadillas cost us $3 each.

At the front of the cart, you can scoop up chopped onions and cilantro, pickled red onion, nopales, and choose from two salsas. Grab a napkin from the package tied on the cart, and buy a Coke from a tub full of ice by the side.

We take our paper plates into the parking lot, where the concrete base of a streetlight makes the perfect table to enjoy our quesadillas. The filling is very juicy, so I tip a little of the liquid on the ground so it won't make the tortilla soggy.

The huitlacoche is an almost alarming deep black color, but the filling is more of a mixture of vegetables; the huitlacoche with chopped onion and yellow corn kernels and probably some chile, too. By the time I'm done my mouth is tingling fiercely. As anticipated, the taste is delicious - earthy, funky and complex, the white Oaxacan cheese a perfect foil for it. Pickled nopales strips and some pickled red onion that gave a refreshing, crunchy contrast.

[The Man I Love] enjoys his papas and chorizo quesadilla. The red oil of the chile in the sausage permeates the soft potatoes, coloring them orange.

I'm standing in a parking lot, balancing a paper plate on the base of a streetlight, and having one of the most memorable culinary experiences of my life.

This is why I love living in Los Angeles.

One hundred and eight minutes

Yesterday we had an experience that crystalizes for me what it's like to live in L.A.

We pulled into a parking lot off of Logan Street, just south of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. We put enough change in the meter for 2 hours.

Here's what we did.

Marveled at the terra cotta decorations on an historic building.

Stopped at a taco trailer and ate a taco - his was chorizo, mine al pastor.

Ate blue-corn quesadillas from an illegal street vendor, with potatoes and chorizo for him, and - for me, huitlacoche. Garnished with pickled red onions and nopales.

Bought a horchata smoothie from a Thai woman at an ice-cream store, to cool the chile burn.

Checked out an artsy boutique with a militant pro-Latina, pro-Native American vibe.

Walked up a 1920's era flight of steps to a broad avenue of palm trees with a view - in one direction - the skyscrapers of downtown, and - in the other direction - the Hollywood sign.

Saw a glimpse of golden domes behind the cover of trees and the houses. Walked through the neighborhood to find it, while rock bands rehearsed in nearby garages.

Climbed a path through Elysian Park and saw Dodger Stadium.

Asked three guys with jailhouse tattoos about the golden domed building. "I don't know, man, I think it's like a Buddhist church or something. There's a path that takes you there if you follow the road."

Followed the path through a grassy parkland with arching pine trees and verdant green grass.

Climbed a heart-stopping hill to the end of a street and found Saint Andrew's Ukrainian Orthodox church with its golden domes. Admired the restored 1920s bungalow across the street.

Walked down to Sunset Boulevard, passed a Cambodian restaurant, a shuttered cocktail bar and black-painted nightclub, closed during the brightness of the day.

Bought a papier mache figure from the militant boutique.

Passed a trendy beauty shop, a fashion boutique, an antique store, a 99 cent store, a dental clinic painted with colorful murals.

Passed a fruit vendor and exchanged a pleasant greeting with a random guy on the corner who blessed us.

Bought fresh tortillas.

Got back to the car and there were twelve minutes left on the meter.

So, to recap:

Tacos
Quesadillas
Multicultural ice cream
Exercise
Hollywood sign
Garage bands
Dodger Stadium
Three cholos
Beautiful religious monument
Historic restored buildings
Nightclub
Handcrafted folk art
Antique store
Murals
Being blessed by a random guy
Fruit vendor
Tortillas

Los Angeles in one hundred and eight minutes.