Idle weekend

The sun rose in the morning.

The sun set in the evening.

I didn't do anything this weekend.

Early alert

It's just a month away from the Theodore Payne Foundation's Spring Garden Tour here in Southern California.

If you enjoyed my posts on this tour last year and live in Southern California, don't miss this great tour of gardens using water-wise landscaping and native plants. It's April 9th and 10th. You can buy your tickets in advance, or go to one of the gardens on the day of the tour and buy them there.

For only $20 per person, you can visit 35 gardens over two days, at your own pace.

If you don't live in Southern California but love gardening, you might want to schedule a visit.

Anyone taking the tour who wants some company - contact me!

FAD Friday

If you quail at fowl language, beware! This post might just ruffle your feathers!

In honor of the doyenne of Derfward Manor, and her beloved aunt, it's Fuck a Duck Friday!

Brooding over something? The world driving you cuckoo? This is where you can grouse if you need to, squawk about something, or cackle at the bird-brains in your life! Don't be a silly goose, let loose!

I have a confession to make - I started Weight Watchers again on Monday. I'm using the online version. I did this about 8 years ago and successfully lost 15 pounds, but eventually it crept back on me. So now I've started again. But Fuck a Duck! it's hard! It's tough to resist all those little nibbles and bits, and how about cheese on sandwiches? And I really need that glass of wine at the end of the day - I force myself to earn 4 activity points to pay for it. It's been less than a week, too! Fuck a Duck! How am I going to survive?

Support where it's needed

Today, I've been observing some bullying behavior on the part of some protesters trying to disrupt a fundraiser for a worthy cause.

If you are in West LA. and have the evening free, please consider supporting this event. There are silent auctions, fashions and accessories for sale, and free food and drink samples from local restaurants.

Don't let the bullies win.

Snow-balls and Ya Ka Mein

We were strolling down Magazine Street in New Orleans' Touro neighborhood, just uptown from the Garden District, and passed the Magazine Deli Snow-ball stand, at Magazine and Aline Streets.


Later, after lunch, we stopped by and it was open. Snow-balls are a purely New Orleans variation on the typical American Snow-cone, made with shaved ice flavored with syrup. There is an amazing variety of flavors and combinations. You can read Ed Branley's essay about Snow-balls here.


We were so full from lunch that we only had room for a kid-size snow-ball each. Mine was pina colada.


[The Man I Love] had half and half raspberry and cherry. It made his tongue purple.


What was more intriguing than the icy treats, though, was the other items on menu. The stand advertises hot tamales, meat pies, crawfish pies and something called Ya-Ka-Mein.

What's Ya-Ka-Mein? we asked.

The counter man told us it was a Chinese-style noodle soup made with beef. "It's real good," he said.

After we got home to Los Angeles, I looked it up. Now I'm sorry we didn't take a chance and try it then and there. Like Snow-balls, Ya-Ka-Mein is another one of New Orleans' unique food traditions.

Also called Yakameen, Jackameen, Yackamee, sometimes shortened to Yocka, it's served in bars, corner stores and small street stands like the Magazine Deli, traditional in the black community. It's a beef soup made with spaghetti noodles, meat - usually beef - onions and a halved hard-boiled egg. The soup is seasoned with soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, and garnished with chopped scallions. You can customize it with a bit of hot sauce, a dash of Cajun spices, or even ketchup. You eat it on the street with a plastic fork or spork.

Some say it was brought back to New Orleans from veterans of the Korean war, adapting an Asian recipe to American ingredients. But others point to a little known aspect of New Orleans history, when during the 19th century Chinese railroad workers settled in the city near the Chinese Mission at Tulane and Rampart Streets, creating a Chinatown community of shops, laundries, restaurants and markets.

Like menudo, chicken noodle soup, Japanese ramen, and Vietnamese pho, it's one of humankind's infinite variations on warm, flavorful liquid nourishment that soothes the ailing, settles the stomach, and calms the aching head. Ya-Ka-Mein is claimed to cure hangovers, and is also called Ole Sober.

It's one more thing on the list of reasons I have to go back to New Orleans.

And how about those crawfish pies?

Dining Alone - Up in the Air

There are often times when you Dine Alone even while sharing an extremely crowded space with other people. Recently, I spent three hours on a plane, in Coach, in the middle seat - Dining Alone.

Every element of a plane's interior is calculated to cram the highest number of people inside. In order to accomplish this without making passengers crazed, the Boeing Company, manufacturer of most of our airlines, have experts on their staff who specialize in understanding passengers' perception of comfort.

Sometimes it's an optical illusion. Airplane interior designers can trick passengers into having a sense of roominess by putting the widest part of the plane at eye level - about 48".

Today, the typical economy class airline seat is 17 inches wide with a "pitch" - which is defined as the space between your seatback and the surface of the seat in front of you - between 31 and 33 inches. You can get your tape measure out and see what that space looks like.

It's not surprising then, that the most critical element in making passengers comfortable is whether the middle seat is occupied. I would assert that this is especially the case if you happen to be the seat's occupant.

I am all too familiar with the middle seat. Traveling with my family - two full-grown men - I end up between them, giving them the extra elbow room on Aisle or Window.

This last flight, my seat was separated from my husband's, so I got the middle seat and didn't even have the luxury of being able to snooze on a friendly neighboring shoulder.

My seat mates were an older man who spent the flight reading legal documents, and a young college-age boy, who put his earbuds in and promptly went to sleep. I tucked my elbows in and read my book, until the attendants came by with the refreshment cart.

No one expects much from airline food anymore, but Delta Airlines now offers a cheese and fruit plate. Described as "a delectable assortment" it offers "Aged Cheddar, Havarti, and Smoked Fontina, paired with juicy green grapes, pecan halves, dried apricots, and served with crackers."

A Delta photo accompanying a 2009 newspaper article shows red, not green grapes, and a wedge of what looks like sage derby - but who's quibbling?

I ordered it, along with a little bottle of red wine.

What I actually got was a bit different. On a little white plastic tray, there were two slices of apple - one slice green-skinned and the other red. There were two sealed plastic packets with three sesame crackers inside each one. A little plastic pot held some kind of pale golden fruity jelly. There were three servings of cheese. One pale, probably Monterey Jack; one mottled orange and pale - probably Cojack; rectangular pieces about the size and texture of a bar of cheap hotel soap. The third was a wedge of domestic brie or camembert. No nuts, no dried apricots.

I cracked the seal on the little bottle, and poured myself about an inch of wine. I spread a little of the jelly and used it to glue down a sliver of jack cheese to a cracker.

The apples were crisp and actually had some flavor. A bite of apple followed by a bite of Cojack mellowed the tannin in the cheap wine.

Since my expectations were already low, it was surprisingly pleasant.

The only item that wasn't palatable was the "brie" - younger than the infant screaming in the seat across the aisle, it was quite cold and covered with a rind as powdery as talc, tasting of mold.

In "The Gastronomical Me," M.F. K. Fisher writes of her experience with airline food, on a flight she took from California to Guadalajara in the 1940s. In those days, airlines served substantial meals, though the quality was as iffy as today. A sealed cup of hot consomme, cottage cheese with a canned pear half, jello salad and three sandwiches on tasteless white bread lay nestled in a plastic tray enclosed in paper boxes and wrappings.

She ignores the ersatz salads, and combines the fillings from the sandwiches all together in one, which she seasons with the salt and pepper from tiny shakers included in the meal tray. She half empties a cup of water, reaches into her purse, and

"I poured in a good shot of bourbon from my flask, looked out of the window and toasted a cloud...and almost at once felt even better than I had before...

It turned out very well. It was a pleasant lunch, small yet nourishing, and I concocted it with a neatness and intense dispatch impossible anywhere but high above the earth, so that it was not ridiculous or gross or even finicky while I did it.

When I had finished I drank the bonne bouche of water and bourbon in my cup, rolled up all the odds and ends of paper into a little plug for one of the elaborate number of holes in the tray, and put all the cups and plates and uneaten things of food as best I could in the remaining places."

Yes, in those days you could still bring liquid on board.

I thought about her as I poured another inch of wine into my plastic glass and nibbled the last of the cheese, listening to the dull roar of the engines and the buzzing of my seatmate's earbuds as we soared above the clouds.

Each day more

Every day there's more signs of spring. Here our red plum tree is bursting into blossom.

The apricot tree is a little more shy. These three blossoms burst open ahead of all their buddies. A happy bee noticed.

Morning on the mountain

This is the western side of the canyon, just kissed with the gold of the rising sun peaking over the mountains of the eastern side.

At the same time, a cold wind from the northwest is blowing a swath of cloud over the crest, and it glows with light.

Weekly Jack

Yesterday morning I patted Jack on the head. A few minutes later I noticed my hand was stained blue with something.

Jack had gotten into something. Blue paint? Time to investigate.

He's a Blue Dog!