Pink Saturday - Sweet dreams

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

I was visiting an antique show at a local exhibit hall. And I encountered this inviting and elegant chaise longue. Upholstered in pink velour, its frame is wood carved with floral elements, and painted in pretty colors.


Doesn't it look inviting? Wouldn't you like to recline on it, with a good book?

Chaise longue is French. It translates to "long chair." In America, it's been mistakenly changed to "chaise lounge" - a chair for lounging in?

This chaise longue was part of a bedroom suite on display at the show. There was a queen-sized bed, two end tables, and a dresser with a bombe front, and a mirror.


All beautifully painted with flowers, roses, and ornate hardware. The seller told me that the suite was Italian, dating from around the 1930s.

The price? $15,000.00 for the set.

A little much for a chair to lounge in.

But, oh, how pretty!

What kind of dreams would you have sleeping in that bed?

Thematic Photographic - at rest

Each week Carmi at Written, Inc. has challenged readers with a theme for photographic inspiration. This week the photographic challenge continues with the theme "at rest."

It's the Santa Monica Pier on a beautiful day.

Those fish will catch themselves.

Jack at play

Jack is a young dog, and he loves to play with other dogs. He has a couple of neighborhood friends, but when he goes out for a walk, we keep him on the leash, so his playing is pretty controlled and constrained.

Since his recent great breakthrough in learning to ride in the car, we've been able to take him not only to our local hiking trails, but also to a Dog Park. The one we like is in Calabasas, California, called the Bark Park.

There's a grassy fenced area, and another area covered with bark mulch. There's also a nice little fenced space with piped water to a doggie-height bowl. The first time we went, you could go into either area, but in recent weeks they've closed the grassy space for lawn rehab, and we're only allowed to use the bark mulch area.

Each time we've gone, Jack has had a blast. There's always a cohort of dogs - ranging from giant Newfoundlands to tiny Chihuahuas. The dog owners are fun to talk with. There is a core group of "regulars" - some of them retired folks who visit at the same time each day. I have never seen a badly behaved dog at the park.

The dogs wander alone, and then gravitate towards one another. They ignore one another, and then they roll on the ground together. They may cluster in front of one park bench with a human being, or they might range together to investigate the perimeter fence. An entire pack might start chasing around and around and around the park, going through the legs of standing humans, or slithering beneath the park benches.

When they exhaust themselves, they lie down together, like Jack and this sweet brindle Akita-cross girlie we met the other day. She licked his face!

It's hilarious. [The Man I Love] has likened it to watching an aquarium full of fish interacting with one another. Watching them play and ramble makes you smile and is one of the most relaxing things a human being can do.

Adventures in Eating

A little while back I posted about a small handful of wild mushrooms that a friend had brought us from the Pacific Northwest.*

We intended to saute them in butter and cream, but as it turned out, our cream was turned and I only found out about it after I poured it into the pan of sauted mushrooms and it curdled. Yuk! I had to throw them away.

Well, today I got a second chance for some spring chanterelles. My next door neighbor pulled up in his driveway while I was on the street chatting with a couple of dog-walking neighbors. "Hey!" he said. "You want some mushrooms?"


He held out a huge orange chanterelle, flecked with dark loam. It was the size of my hand. And he had a whole bag full.

"Where'd you get them?" we asked.

"In the park," meaning here in our Topanga State Park. He gave two of us the mushrooms - the third woman demurred. He told us how to clean them and cook them.

I brought them inside and showed them to [The Man I Love] who tonight is smoking a whole chicken on the Weber. The menu also includes mashed potatoes and asparagus - and chanterelles would be a great accompaniment.

When I told him our neighbor had gathered them in the park, he was a little leery, so I looked up chanterelles online, and compared the photos and descriptions to the specimens I had.

Cantharellus cibarieus - or the Golden Chanterelle - grow throughout the world, and are quite commonly found in northern Europe and the Pacific Northwest. They are considered the best wild mushroom in the world, with a delicate, almost fruity/peppery flavor. A subspecies called Cantharellus californicus grows in Southern California oak forests - and appears to be the mushroom my neighbor brought to us.

There is a toxic mushroom that looks superficially like the chanterelle, but when I compared its photo and characteristics with my mushrooms, I could easily identify mine as chanterelles.

One of the key characteristics are the mushroom's gills - the chanterelle's gills are not actually true gills (which are separate structures), but just features of the mushroom's surface. The way you can tell the difference is that they fork as they run up the funnel-shaped stem.


See how the gills fork as they reach the mushroom's cap? The toxic mushroom doesn't do that.

Anyway - my neighbor is an accomplished chef, and I trust him. So - here goes.


I've read that you're not supposed to use water to clean chanterelles, because their delicate flesh will soak up the water and get soggy. Unfortunately, these had so much loamy soil on them and inside the delicate gills that water was a must. My neighbor suggested I blast them hard and fast with the faucet once, and then try to rub the soil off. I did that - and also peeled away some of the dirtier surfaces. I tried to blot off as much of the water that clung to them as I could. I cut them up in chunks and strips. The thick stems were meaty and yielded quite a lot of firm golden flesh.


Then, following my neighbor's directions and a recipe I found online, I tossed the pieces with olive oil, some dried thyme, and salt in a foil-lined baking pan, and roasted them in a 400 degree oven and set the timer for 15 minutes.

Roasting them in an open pan is good, says my neighbor, because it allows the liquid to boil out of them.


After roasting for 20 minutes, they were golden in color, and a lot of liquid had accumulated in the pan. Since the chicken had to sit for 10 minutes after it came off the fire, I turned off the heat in the oven and let the mushrooms sit for the same amount of time. That reduced the liquid down and deepened the color of the 'shrooms.

Here they are, spooned onto the chicken breast meat. The chicken was juicy and slightly smoky from being cooked in the Weber, and the mushrooms were perfect with them - a rich flavor and a nice meaty texture.


Here's a picture of dinner - chicken, asparagus, mashed potatoes and mushrooms. All delicious, and - so far - no ill effects.

I'm posting this now, an hour after eating. So if you're reading this post, you won't know if we were wrong to trust our neighbor's expertise.

Unless -

Several other neighbors were given chanterelles, too. So if there's a big newspaper story tomorrow morning about an entire Southern California community being stricken by toxic mushrooms, you will know I made a b-i-i-i-i-g mistake.

What do you think - would you eat wild mushrooms gathered from the woods?

*PS - I think the mushrooms we were given a few weeks ago were what is called hedgehog mushrooms, not chanterelles. Check out their gills.

L.A. Street food

Sweets and snacks for sale in Winston Alley

This week we've been hearing about a new event called the L.A. Street Food Fest. Two smart young entrepreneurs have gathered some of Los Angeles's most popular street food vendors at a local event space for a tasting festival. The event mingles traditional street food vendors, like Nina's and Carmen's Antojitos, who used to appear at the Breed Street Food Fair, and some of the new, young food vendors that serve the late-night crowds, like the Coolhaus ice-cream truck, the Kabob truck, the Asian taco vendors, the grilled cheese sandwich truck and the fried chicken truck.

The NomNom truck, selling Vietnamese sandwiches and fusion-style tacos, driving in Santa Monica

These new trucks are a true phenomenon - the new wave of food entrepreneurs, young creative chefs trying a non-traditional business plan. They plot routes that bring them near nightclubs and bars at night, and at busy workplaces by day - broadcasting their locations by Twitter so that their fans know where to find them.

We thought a festival of trucks sounded pretty cool, so we headed out for it. It was supposed to start at 11:00 am, and we got there around 11:30. Well, the traffic was crazy, and the sidewalk was packed with people. There was a line for the entry that wrapped around the corner. As we drove past the gate and turned left on 6th, there were scores of people walking up the hill toward the event location from the subway station at 7th and Figueroa.

Clearly the Fest had attracted a huge following. But we had no desire to stand in the lines and battle the crowds. It was time for Plan B.

We headed downtown, and went to Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet, for a French dip sandwich and an expertly mixed cocktail - a weekend indulgence, mind you, but you can't go to Cole's and not have a cocktail.

After we ate, we decided to take a walk around. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and, besides, we needed to walk off those cocktails.

Cole's is on 6th just west of Los Angeles Street - chaotic, bustling Los Angeles Street, in the middle of the Toy District. This section of downtown where wholesalers of goods such as toys, electronic gadgets, party supplies and novelties mingle with pet stores, beauty supply stores, homeless shelters and lingerie dealers is a crowded, noisy neighborhood bordered by Los Angeles Street on the West and San Pedro Street on the East, between Third Street and Fifth Street.


And today it was in fine form - packed with people, everyone out in the street. Shopkeepers touted their prices and wares through microphones wired into tinny-sounding boomboxes. Music pounded out from passing cars and from other shops. People stood on the sidewalk waving merchandise to attract customers - lots of Valentine-themed things today, like teddy bears and helium balloons and even bird cages with parakeets, the bars twined with sparkling mylar garlands of valentine hearts.

The sidewalk also teemed with scores of street food vendors, ranging from conventional taco trucks to more makeshift efforts.

This vendor fans the coals beneath roasting ears of corn.

There were lots of vendors selling Los Angeles' favorite bacon dogs.

This woman was making homemade tortillas using a traditional tortilla press. She's also heating cecina, or salted aged beef, on her comal, or griddle as a filling for her quesadillas.

While just a few storefronts away, this woman was also making quesadillas, only with blue corn masa harina. Note her cart - it's fashioned from a folding stroller, with condiments and utensils in the trays and hanging in plastic bags tied to the push handle.


Another vendor was selling fruit smoothies from a cooler in the trunk of her car.

There's a little alley that goes behind Winston Street, and if you walk down it past a party-wares store - pinatas and toys glittering in the sudden bright sun - you end up in a wide courtyard where people have all kinds of things laid out for sale.

The old warehouse buildings with their boarded up windows are painted in bright colors - pink, blue, red - and the vendors who set up their ad-hoc shops in the alley have striped umbrellas to shade them from the hot sun of an uncharacteristically warm February Saturday. Valentines gift baskets wrapped in ribboned cellophane crackled in the breeze that fluttered the pink and pastel baby clothes hung out on display, and the tissue streamers of pinatas from the party store.

Lots of people lined up for the taco trailer that looks like its been here forever. There are CD vendors, socks and underwear vendors. People set up a box in the middle of the pavement and begin selling from it. There was a guy selling toasted nuts and seeds from small trays tied to a fancy wheeled walker.

This vendor is selling fried plantains, dressed with sauce and crema. They smelled amazing!


Here at the intersection of two alleys, there are several vendors selling all kinds of food, clothing, and jewelry.

Paleteros, or ice cream bar salesmen, roll their carts up and down the street, their brass bells jingling. On the corner of Los Angeles Street and Fourth this little boy is fascinated with the many pictures of flavored ice cream bars.


Here a woman is selling horchata and cantelope agua fresca from plastic vitroleros in a shopping cart.

The official L.A. Street Food Fest was too much of a success for us to deal with, but in a happy coincidence, our afternoon was spent at a Los Angeles street food festival that was a bit more authentic.

I applaud the idea of young entrepreneurs taking to the streets in catering trucks, to serve their own gourmet creations to late-night crowds, using social networking to gain followers, parking outside nightclubs to feed the hunger of those who party hearty. It's interesting to see the creativity behind these new trucks and their menus.


But I wonder if the popularity of the new trend will have unintended consequences on L.A.'s traditional street food vendors. If food trucks are being bought by culinary school graduates to sell snacks to nightclubbers, will the prices of such trucks soar, and access to permits and licenses become more difficult? Sure, it will become easier to grab a Korean taco, cupcake, or bento box at 2:00 am in West Hollywood after a night of bar-hopping. But will there still be trucks to serve daytime gardeners and construction workers $1.50 tacos for lunch at their worksites in the hills of Brentwood?

The downtown street food scene is a tier below taco trucks as far as mobility and earning potential is concerned. You can't stock much food in a shopping cart or portable cooler, and the Health Department will never countenance a propane burner mounted on a stroller. These food vendors are designed to be swiftly dismantled and hidden from the authorities if raided.

Perhaps the food cart is a secondary job taken on in addition to another job as a domestic or laborer. Or perhaps these vendors are undocumented, and can only earn money in this mobile and off-the-books manner. Even so, their families' well-being depends on their ability to stand on a sunny sidewalk on a Saturday, over a sizzling hot griddle. How much is a day's take after expenses, I wonder, for $1 quesadillas or ears of roasted corn?

The downtown street cooks are just as creative entrepreneurs as the architecture students who sell green-tea ice cream sandwiches from pink-painted catering trucks. They are inventive cooks, persistent salespeople, and improvise their means of production.

The other day I was wondering what I would chose to do, if I ever had to start a business. What product would I sell? What skill do I have that I could bring to such an effort? How much would I be willing to risk to make it a success - or just break even?

It seems to me that a woman who decides that people might buy fried plantains like her mother used to make, or quesadillas like they made in her home town deserves some applause for trying to make a go of it in a tough world.

View from a window

Dinner by the Santa Monica Pier. We had a table by the window. It was just 5:30 pm and the sun had gone down into the sea. The Pier, with the carousel and the ferris wheel, seen through palm leaves.

We did it again

January 16th came and went. What was going on? We were busy. Our son was flying back to college after winter break. We had things going on at work. The annual budget process. An important committee meeting. An event. An unexpected car breakdown.

A couple of days ago, something made me think about it. Oh, hell!

We forgot our anniversary! Again!

It's been 23 years now, and for some reason, this keeps happening. We forget our wedding anniversary. One year, we were hanging out at home, going about our business, and my mother called, uncharacteristically, in the middle of the week.

"Congratulations!" she said.

"What for?" I asked.

"It's your wedding anniversary!" she said.

Ooops.

For several years, [The Man I Love] and I couldn't agree on which day it was. We knew the month, but there was a difference of opinion on the actual date. It was far too embarrassing to consult Mom again, so we went online and had to look it up at King County's vital statistics website.

We met in March of 1986, and [The Man I Love] moved into my little single woman's bungalow the following fall. We lived together for a while, and then got married - I know it was January! What year was it again? We appeared before a judge at the courthouse, with two friends as witnesses. No family - they all lived so far away it would have been foolish to make them travel. We drove down to the courthouse with our car packed for a short honeymoon at a cottage at the shore - our dog in the back seat. We left him in the care of the garage attendant while we said our vows.

As we walked up the hill from the garage to the courthouse on Third, we encountered a friend. "Hi there!" she said,"I'm on jury duty. What are you guys here for?"

"Oh," we said. "We're getting married."

We've been together ever since. It's been a good time, except for the fact that we can't remember to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

We managed to get it together enough to celebrate it in style on our Twentieth....I think. What did we do again? We went somewhere? Did something nice? I know it was something cool.

So, this year, dammit, we forgot again. But at least we remembered that we forgot, before Valentine's Day, so - this Sunday, we're going to do something nice together.

Hope you all have a wonderful day with your favorite sweetie!

Thematic Photographic - on the road

Each week Carmi at Written, Inc. has challenged readers with a theme for photographic inspiration. This week the photographic challenge continues with the theme "On the road."


Here's a birthday cake displayed in a downtown bakery's case. A wrecker pulls a crashed car back onto the road as a fire engine waits. "Happy birthday!" says the inscription. The cake is ringed with sharp lightning-bolt symbols all around.

It's a SigAlert in sugar!

Whose birthday cake is this?

Cooking a dinosaur

Did I mention that [The Man I Love] loves vegetables in the brassica family? That's cabbages to you - the whole cabbage clan. Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard greens and kale.

Last week at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market I picked up a bunch of kale - a variety called Tuscan black kale. It's also called nero di Toscano, lacinato, cavolo nero, and dinosaur kale.


Kale is rich in folic acid, Vitamin K and Vitamin C and beta carotene, so it's good for you. Unlike the frilled and ruffled Siberian kales and ornamental kale, cavolo nero has narrow leaves with pebbly-textured foliage in a deep blue-green color. I don't know why it's called "dinosaur" - maybe its texture is supposed to be like the giant reptiles' skin.


To prepare it, strip the thick central stem from the leaves. Then chop it as fine or as rough as you like. I chopped it into pieces about 1" by 2".

Greens like kale, collards and mustard have a bitterness that is complimented by rich fat. Cooking bitter greens with pork is a tradition in many cultures.


In Tuscany, the pork of choice is pancetta - a salt-cured pork belly like bacon. In U.S. supermarkets, you find it sliced from a roll - like a spiral of bacon.

Chop the pancetta and saute it in olive oil until it's brown. While the pancetta browns, I chopped up an onion and peeled three cloves of garlic, and smashed them with a knife blade. When the pancetta is just a bit crispy, I took it out and put the onions and garlic into the combined fat from the pancetta and the olive oil. If there's too much fat, pour some of it out.


Let the onions and garlic cook over medium heat until they are golden - about 15 - 20 minutes. Then, add the chopped kale, and about a cup of broth - chicken broth is good, but you can use any nice broth.


With the greens and broth, add a teaspoon or so of dried thyme, a couple of bay leaves, and some chopped parsley.


Bring it all to a boil, and then cover it and cook for about an hour. You can keep it at a simmer on the stove or you can cook it in a 350 degree oven.


When its done, the kale is deep dark green and smells rich and flavorful. The taste is intense, dark, with a touch of bitterness that's a perfect foil to meat. We served it alongside a roast pork tenderloin. The next day, we cooked some pasta, and tossed it with butter and the warmed-up leftover kale.


Black Tuscan kale. It's good and it's good for you.