Makin' a List, Eatin' It Twice

When I was a guest at the City of Hope for nearly a month last year, eating became an arduous chore. Open mouth, insert fork. Chew. Repeat.

It took me more than an hour to polish off a bowl of Cheerios. I could turn a plate of tuna fish on crackers into a two-hour lunch (without the martini). Five-course dinners at the French Laundry have been known to take less time.

Even though I no longer enjoyed eating food, I developed an obsessive, intellectual appetite for the stuff. I talked endlessly about food with anyone who entered the room. I even tried to talk the cleaning lady into smuggling in her homemade tamales (contraband for stem cell transplant patients). I watched the Food Network during half of my waking hours and spent the other half perusing food sites and blogs.

And I made countless lists. Lists of San Gabriel Valley banh mi restaurants, dim sum eateries, tea shops and LA County ramen joints. Lists of restaurants I wanted to visit, recipes I planned to try and parties I wanted to throw.

I think Wandering Chopsticks was responsible for at least half of the items on my lists. (I recently got to meet her when she came to my house to gather fruit - Open Mouth, Insert Citrus.) On the day before Independence Day, I followed one of her recommendations and headed to Tito's Market in El Monte for empanadas.

It seemed that everyone, from the LA Times to Chowhound to Yelp!, agreed with WC that these were the BEST empanadas in So. Cal. How could I miss?

Tito's is located on Garvey Ave., just east of Rosemead Blvd., on a stretch with equal parts Asian and Latin restaurants. I was able to cross off two items on my list by stopping at Baguette City for a $2.00 vegetarian banh mi sandwich before heading to the Argentinian Market.

The line for takeout food was snaking out the door, but the service was friendly and efficient. In less than five minutes I was placing my order for 8 chicken and 8 ground beef empanadas. They lived up to all the hype and, at $1.25 each, were worth the drive from Altadena to El Monte.

I served them with a pitcher of homemade Sangria, which we consumed before walking down to the Altadena Town and Country Club to see the Third of July fireworks.

Susan's Sassy Sangria
6 oranges (+ 2 sliced oranges for garnish)
4 large Meyers lemons
1 cup simple syrup
1 bottle red wine
1 cup brandy

Make the simple syrup by combining 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil and simmer until the sugar is completely dissolved. Let cool.

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and oranges into a pitcher. Add simple sugar, wine and brandy. Garnish with thin slices of orange.

Sangria is best made at least two hours before drinking so that the flavors can combine. This drink is easy, delicious and refreshing on a hot summer day, a balmy evening or. . . well, just about any time.

So. . . what's on your food list?

Road Trip!

Put me behind the steering wheel of my Prius for more than three hours, and the fantasies begin. No, I don't dream about Thelma and Louise-style adventures. I don't even give too much thought to the high price of gas since I'm averaging more than 50 miles to the gallon. What I fantasize about is food.

When I'm on the road in West Virginia, my favorite drinking while driving indulgence is RC Cola. If I can find it in a bottle, so much the better. Pair that with salty, crispy Wise Potato Chips (available only on the East Coast), and I really do think I'm all that and a bag of chips.

But when I'm on the road from LA to Sacramento and SF on that endless stretch called the I-5, I don't find general stores stocked with ice-cold pop or Wise Owl potato chips. So what did I munch and sip while driving along this arid route, where dust clouds are more common than cumulus clouds?

I filled a Nalgene bottle with home-brewed, sweet green tea. It's the drink of choice of half-Japanese, all Hillbilly transplants from West Virgnia to California. And instead of chowing chips, I munched on high-protein snacks like beef jerky, pistachio nuts and dried mangoes. It's all healthy, but somehow it seemed a little wrong for the road.

When I arrived in Rocklin (a suburb of Sacramento), my friend Barbara made sure I had my favorite breakfast: Greek yogurt with fresh berries, orange zest and a tiny bear squeeze of honey.

In San Francisco, I tried Bar Tartine for dinner. I paired a glass of White Bordeaux with raw scallops and thinly sliced radish and seaweed in a delicate sauce. When I was down to the last little scallop, I cut it into teeny-weeny bites so that I could draw out the experience. The lady sitting next to me at the bar had the same dish, and our simultaneous "mmmmm's" of pleasure were becoming a little embarrassing.

The rest of the menu blended sophisticated, high brow ingredients (e.g. quail egg, foie gras) with down-home, low-brow items (e.g. ramps, bone marrow, pork belly). Yes, you read that correctly - bone marrow.

Canines have been sucking out the fatty marrow from bones for centuries. My friend Mara uses the roasted marrow bones for the base of the richest soup you'll ever taste. And I learned last year that bone marrow isn't just rich in flavor. It's packed with stem cells, the miraculous little components that become red or white blood cells and platelets. What I didn't know is that you could roast three small bones, put them on a plate with a tiny scooping spoon and two pieces of toast and call it an appetizer for $13. Live and learn.

(I thought briefly about performing a "bone marrow transplant" by moving the bone from my neighbor's plate to my own, but I stayed focused on my scallops. Sometimes I can't resist a little cancer humor.)

Dessert was an across-the-brow favorite: chocolate souffle with a side of sour cherries, a crackling of toffee and a topping of homemade vanilla ice cream.

The real treat came after dinner, when Valencia St. became the parade route for the pre-Gay Pride parade on Sunday. Thousands of proud revelers packed the streets. When the scallop-loving woman next to me announced that there were "dykes on bikes," I looked askance, but she assured me that was the group's official moniker.

I won't describe all of my SF meals, but I will say that breakfast at my friend Sisi's came with one of the best views in the city.

A Room with a View

On the way back home, I was out of iced green tea, pistachios, mangoes and jerky, so I devoured miniature chocolate chip cookies from Tartine Bakery. When those were gone, I refueled at Foster Freeze with chilli cheese fries and a root beer freeze. Now that's road trip eating - junk food guaranteed to put some junk in the trunk.

What's your favorite road-trip indulgence?

The heat is on

I slurp steaming bowls of Japanese noodles at the best ramen joints in LA during the spring, fall and winter.

But when the weather turns hot and humid (or "mushiatsui" as the Japanese say), sucking down a bowl of ramen is about as appealing as chugging hot sake on a blazing beach. That's when my favorite Japanese chill-out lunch becomes a basket of cold soba (buckwheat) noodles with a cool dipping sauce.

I first ate cold soba noodles two decades ago on an August visit to Sado Island, the home of the venerable Japanese taiko group, Kodo. I trudged 2.5 miles from my tiny minshuku into town and ordered the same hand-made soba for lunch five days in a row.

When I joined two friends from A3m (Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches) in Little Tokyo for lunch last week, I felt like I was back on Sado Island. We wilted as we walked three blocks in triple-digit temperatures to the restaurant at the Kyoto Grand Hotel (formerly the New Otani). Once we arrived, the choice was easy. I ordered the cold soba noodles with a side of gooey, grated mountain potato (yama imo).

Besides being a cool, tasty treat, soba is a nutritional gold mine. Unlike nutrient-poor ramen and udon noodles, soba is packed with protein, iron and fiber.

I found these great instructions for preparing soba with dippping sauce from "just hungry," a Japanese ex-pat living in Perth. The most important thing I learned was to bathe the noodles in cold water to reduce the temperature and to get rid of pesky starch.

"Just hungry" is far more ambitious than I am on a hot summer day. (Heck, she's more ambitious than I am on ANY day.) She makes her own dipping sauce from homemade dashi, a rich seaweed stock. I settle for the stuff in a bottle, available from Mitsuwa or Whole Foods Markets.

I served my noodles on the bamboo basket trays my friend Carol brought back from Japan last summer. With a side of dipping sauce, a touch of wasabi, finely chopped green onions and slivers of dried seaweed, I'm one cool customer.

What's your favorite chill-out lunch?

Unhappy Hour

I made a date to meet a friend at NeoMeze for happy hour last night.

Neomeze's quarter-page ad in the Pasadena Weekly boasted that they were "PASADENA'S BEST HAPPY HOUR" with half off alcoholic beverages. This sounded promising because, as everyone knows, cheap drinks are the backbone of a good happy hour. Throw in some good grub, and I truly am happy for at least an hour.

The ad went on to list the restaurant's happy hours, Monday through Friday from 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm. My friend and I met at Neomeze on Monday at 5:30 pm, and their doors were LOCKED.

We walked a few doors down for $4.00 sangria and $5.00 tapas at BarCelona.

I called NeoMeze today and was told that their PR company must have made a mistake. I wonder what their PR company would suggest for turning an unhappy hour customer into a happy one.

(Please let me know if you have a favorite Pasadena-area happy hour spot.)

Hangin' with my Homies at the Homegirl Cafe

Did you know that it's possible to do good and eat good (er, well) at the same time?

A group of my Homies and I took the Gold Line from Pasadena to the Chinatown Station to pay a lunchtime visit to the Homegirl Cafe, an offspring of Homeboy Industries. The nonprofit organization "assists at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education. " The org. opened the Homeboy Bakery in 1998 and the cafe in 2004 in Boyle Heights and then moved to its current Chinatown-adjacent location in October 2007.

Since Homeboy Industries is in a gritty, industrial part of town, I wasn't expecting much.

The view from the Gold Line Station

But the architecture of Homeboy Industries, home of the Homegirl Cafe, could hold its own in downtown LA.

I was in for an even bigger surprise once we entered the cafe. Original artwork, fresh flowers, granite countertops and glass tile gave the cafe an upscale, not an in the 'hood, feel.

But the biggest surprise was the menu, consisting of traditional Latina cuisine with a contemporary twist. For example, Angela's Green Potion, lemonade with fresh spinach and mint, sounds disgusting and looks questionable, but tastes wonderfully fresh and delicious. And the nutrient quotient puts an Arnie Palmer to shame.

Looks like pond scum, tastes like yum yum.

The salads are filled with interesting, fresh ingredients, such as roasted corn, julienned apples and jicama or mangoes and come with a choice of zesty dressings (citrus, chipotle or cilantro).

Ana's Salad Martha's Salad are just $6.95 each.

And there's an impressive roster of creative tacos, including my selection, a salmon taco with jalapeno pesto and pico de gallo.

Tacos are just $2.45 each or three for $6.50.

My salmon taco and side of Frijoles Negros (black beans with sautéed garlic, onions and cilantro, topped with queso fresco) came to just $4.45.

Of course, when you add in the $2.50 for the parking meter, $2.50 for Gold Line passes and a $37 parking ticket, my lunchtime excursion cost me $48. OUCH!

Lessons Learned:
- Don't take the Gold Line from the Del Mar Station in Pasadena. Parking is not free.
- If you do attempt to park at the Del Mar Station and it's full on the Raymond side, try the entrance from Arroyo Parkway.
- Do NOT under any circumstances park on the street because you won't be able to make it back in two hours.
- Do take time to purchase some fresh baked goods from the Homeboy Bakery.
- Do also take time to visit the Homeboy store, where you can purchase merchandise with Homeboy mottos. I want a "Jobs Not Jail" T-Shirt.
- Do allow time for a leisurely lunch. This is not a fast food restaurant.
- Do arrive early for lunch. You're in for a 10 to 15 minute wait if you walk in at noon.
- Do consider returning for breakfast.
- Do keep checking the website. The latest endeavor, Homeboy Press, will publish a literary magazine in 2008.
- Do tell your friends. It's a treat to find good eats and good deeds under the same roof.

Homegirl Cafe
130 W. Bruno St. (at Alameda St.)
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Tel:	323-526-1254 ext. 301

Citrus Solar System

Who needs Styrofoam balls to create a solar system when citrus fruits come in at least eight different sizes, from a Mercury-sized lemon to a Jupiter-worthy pomelo.

Left to right: lemon, tangerine, orange, pink striped lemon, Meyers lemon, grapefruit, pomelo.

Swap-Meet

It's that time of year again when our fruit trees are heavy with avocados, oranges, Meyer lemons, grapefruits, pomelos and plums. We'll soon have hundreds of apricots for savoring and sharing.

Since noone in our family is a fan of the pomelo, an oversized citrus that looks like a grapefruit on steroids, I invited members of the localCooperative Food Exchange of Altadena to help themselves. Three local pomelo fans came by and harvested the last of the ripe fruit.

One of the harvesters brought fresh zuchinni from her garden in exchange
for the citrus. I like to think of the Co-op as the best "swap meet" in town.

This morning I found these treasures waiting on my front steps. They're a
gift from another grateful pomelo harvester. 

Alpine strawberry plants, pink striped lemons and recipes using pomelos

A closeup view of the pink-striped lemons and recipe for "spice market pomelo salad
with grilled shrimp and crispy shallots" Doesn't that sound yummy? Who knows.
I may become a fan of the giant citrus after all.