Rice is nice

The tiny little store Sunny Blue is on Santa Monica's Main Street - a hippy, trendy yet still a little funky stretch of stores just blocks from the beach.

Like many small - even micro - businesses, Sunny Blue has figured out how to concentrate on doing something simple and doing it well. Sunny Blue has two products for sale. Frozen yogurt, and Omusubi, Japanese rice balls.

Treasures of the Lagoon - a teaser

I'm honored to have been asked to post a few words and photos about our trip to Venice at Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise, a delicious blog authored by our friend and neighbor Sean.

This photo is just a teaser for what you can find there. We explore Venice's Pescheria, or fish market.

And "delicious" is the right word - Sean is a cook and host extraordinaire. His blog will make you hungry! Go HERE to read my post - and after you read my post, explore the rest of Sean's blog.

Gnarly, dude

Perched on top of the cashier's office/convenience store at the Chevron station at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard is an animatronic pelican that talks.

"Whoa, dude!" you hear a voice say as you're pumping gas. "Great set of wheels! Cool car!" It has the voice of the quintessential California surf-stoner, Jeff Spicoli.

The thing's beak opens and shuts, and the wings give a quiver. Then the whole thing swivels left, then right. Then it stops and goes silent. A minute later, it starts up again.

"Welcome to the station, dude!"

OK, this is both gnarly AND creepy. I don't want to have a stoned robot pelican talk to me while I'm pumping gas.

It looks demented, truly.

What about you, dude?

Payoff!

Payoff for a lot of hard work, that is! 

I'd like to congratulate my friend Heather for her good fortune, which was announced here:

EXCLUSIVE: Lifetime has put in development Mrs. G’s Bigger Love, an original movie project executive produced by Jennifer Love Hewitt. Written by Julie Golden, the film is based on an entry in Heather Gatticio’s blog Derfwad Manor.

I've been reading Mrs. G since I started blogging - indeed, she's one of the writers who inspires me. I attended a gathering of Southern California women bloggers drawn together by East Coast blogger Bossy, and followed the reports of Bossy's next visit to Seattle.

Mrs. G. wrote a hilarious post about the event, relating how she'd prepared for the gathering by purchasing a pair of Spanx, Empowered by the presence of so many talented women, she ends up in the ladies' room,  cutting the offending garment off her body with a pair of nail scissors.

Now, her wry, tender, thought-provoking and always funny musings on modern life, family, and customer service at Michael's craft stores will find a larger audience - and reap her a financial reward for all her hard work.

I love success stories!

Inspired once again, let's all go out and each make one of our own!

Thematic Photographic - Mellow yellow

Carmi at the blog Written, Inc. posts a weekly photo challenge. This week, the theme is "Mellow Yellow."

Shoot a yellow-themed photograph. And share it. Here

These pretty yellow peppers at the Santa Monica Wednesday Farmers' Market are certainly mellow. Not only their soft, subtle color, but also their flavor. These are sweet peppers, not hot.

North of the border

Oh, Canada!

 In 1991, a Canadian reporter asked both parties' candidates for prime minister what their thoughts were on poutine. They both avoided the question and walked away. Clearly, breaching the subject of poutine was a shocking violation of protocol.

Like many comfort foods, this Quebecois fast-food dish is considered a bit declasse. But what can you expect of french fries doused in gravy and topped with cheese curds?

C-ch-changes

On to a new adventure....!

A co-worker is retiring, and cleaning out her office. Since our department is being dissolved, with no foreseen future, suddenly almost thirty years of paperwork, documentation, reports and records she's kept is obsolete. She's having quite the time throwing everything away!

It's liberating yet sad. Everything changes.

I've experienced this kind of feeling only once, when we sold my Mother's house. We took what we wanted, contracted an estate sale person, and walked away. It was a weird, yet oddly satisfying feeling.

How about you, have you ever walked away without a care from something that was once part of your life?

Quickening

In Southern California, winter is the time of rebirth. Autumn's sere Santa Ana winds are over, and spring's heat waves are yet to come. The rain has begun to fall, and when I go out in the mornings for my walk, I can see the new life burgeoning on the hillsides and in the oak woods around me.

For a brief few days in spring, the west-facing hill on our street is a sight of astonishing beauty, a brilliant mass of bright yellow flowers of the wild mustard, or brassica rapa. Its beauty is brief. It grows rampantly, goes quickly to seed, and soon the property owner's hired crew will have brush-cleared the hill bald.

But that's in the coming year. Now, in December, you can see the seedlings sprout everywhere on the hillside.

If you've ever grown radishes in your garden, you'll recognize these wee, kidney-shaped leaves, sprouting in pairs and frosted with a slight grey-blue bloom. Brassicas have a clear family resemblance, as obvious as a persistent family nose or chin.

Even now, the moment is fleeting - here some mustard seedlings have graduated to the next stage, with the jagged, toothy young leaves furling out. These will become tall, gangly jagged-edged monsters, like the other members of the Brassica family..

Once I noticed this new life springing out, it was easy to see it everywhere I looked.

Here, in the front yard, my narcissus bulbs are poking their shoots out of the soil. They are well on their way to blooming in January.

Elsewhere, there are other new leaves coming up amid the old. These are the shoots of Amaryllis belladonna, the magnificent Naked Lady flowers. These shoots will become huge, rank strap-like leaves that swamp and choke out everything around them in spring, then suddenly disappear as the plant goes dormant. The huge, crystalline pink flowers will appear suddenly in the dry days of autumn as if by magic.

And then the rains will come again, coaxing the new shoots out of the ground again.

Ladyface taste

La Blanche witbier

 Ladyface Mountain is in the Santa Monica Mountains, south of the 101 highway in Agoura Hills. It's a 2031 foot summit, with some challenging trails up to a beautiful viewpoint.

We have not hiked it, although we might try this spring. But we've found a great place to have a beer after the hike, and I think this research is worth exploring. Ladyface Alehouse & Brasserie is located at the foot of the mountain, just off Kanan Dume Road.

Ladyface Ale Companie exterior

Ladyface Ale Companie is a craft brewery that specializes in California, French, and Belgian style ales. It's established in an Agoura Hills shopping center building that looks from the outside like any Olive Garden, Applebees or TGIFridays, but when you go inside you realize it's something different.

La Blonde Belgian Ale

There are communal tables, posters of Adolphe Mucha-style Arte Nouveau languid ladies, and there is beer. Oh, yes, beer. You can smell that yeasty funk in the air when you enter. Along the back wall are huge steel tanks full of beer.

The seasonal Trappistine dark ale

One of the things that's nice about Ladyface Ale is that they offer tasting portions of their ales. You can buy a 5 ounce little glass of draft ale to see if you like it, before you commit to a larger glass.

The menu is geared toward brasserie-style offerings. Classic French sandwiches like Croque Madame and Croque Monsieur; moules frites and steak frites; French onion soup and cheese plates. But it's a little more eclectic than that.

Pickles and marinated olives

You can get fried and battered fish & chips. You can get pulled pork sliders. And you can get locally sourced roast chicken, meats and farmers' market fresh vegetables.

Merguez sausage and couscous

I ordered a plate of merguez sausage - Moroccan-style lamb sausage flavored with spices and orange peel. It was served with Israeli couscous and spinach, studded with pine nuts and currants. It was delicious, and perfect with the Santa Barbara syrah that I switched to after my tastes of ale.

Pork shank

[The Man I Love] ordered the roasted Niman Ranch pork shank - and this was a superstar offering. Served with braised red cabbage and little dumplings garnished with mustard seeds, this was amazingly delicious. Smoky, tender, and flavorful. He enjoyed a glass of Weizenbock, a medium-dark German-style wheatbeer with it.

The quality of the drinks and food and the inventive combinations of flavors was wonderful, but the most amazing thing about it was the value. The tasting portion made it economical to try different ales without breaking the bank - or overindulging. And the entrees were priced at $15 each, for generous portions. Entrees of this quality in Santa Monica would have cost $28 or more!

You all can go ahead and climb the mountain. We'll meet you afterwards for a beer and some snacks!