faboo mama

That’s the sign outside Chronicle Wine Cellar.  I wouldn’t know anything about the prices though.  They’re only open “when the flag is out” and I’ve only seen the flag out 3 times in the past year and all 3 times we either didn’t need wine or the kids were acting up, so the thought of going into a wine shop was far in the back of our minds.  One of these days I’m going to take $40 and go there and get a bottle of wine.  One of these days they’ll be open when I need to get a bottle.

We attended the Cherry Blossom Festival in Little Tokyo yesterday. It was a lot bigger and more fun that I expected. Kudos to the organizers of the event. As usual, with things like this in Los Angeles, it emcompassed all of Asia (though Indians were not represented at all), so we got to see things from all along the Pacific.

We started out our morning in the Plaza. Our original plan was to have get some coffee and pastries from Homeboy Bakeries but they were closed. So we wound up in the Japanse Plaza at the bakery there. BTW, they had surprising good coffee and the baked goodies we got were tasty. While we had our coffee, we sat outside the shop and watched this group. I guess they’re jazz singers and usually they’d be using a piano…I don’t know, I hadn’t had my coffee when they were introduced. Anyway, later on in their set, they sang Sukiyaki but the original Japanese song. I know some of the Japanese, but I know the English like everyone else. My husband asked me, “What is this song?” I was shocked. Mr. Music didn’t know this song? “It’s Sukiyaki!”. He looked at me, “How do you know that? See, I told you you know everything.” Whatever.

Something totally unexpected and random, Red Hat Society singing on stage. Yes. You read that right. I have pictures if you don’t believe me. We walked around, everyone and their brother were giving away trips to Hawaii. There was a section for kids with bouncy thingies. We watched a Hawaiian group play. Ilia liked that because she has a ukelele too. The kids made Chinese lanterns, something that took a lot longer than expected. There were quite a few tables set up for kids. They could learn origami, do a fish kites, paint a pet rock or make a lantern.

We walked around a bit, and looked for lunch. That should have been an easy task, but most of the places we usually eat at were closed. We wound up at an okay place, but $1.50 Kirin on tap. How could we not? Really? After lunch, we went to rejoin the crowds on the street. We caught the tailend of the Kabuki dancer.

Ilia loved it, but Alton did not enjoy the music. Then we went on the other side of the stage to see the Geisha dancers:

We also got a chance to watch the Japanese groups (I call them dance crews, since I’ve never seen them do anything but dance) do a dance in a circle. There were 4 “crews” and random people in a circle doing a dance who’s name is escaping me right now. It’s always fun to watch and it was even better to see more people under the age of 60 involved.

My little girl just loved all the dancing and the music. She wants a taiko, she wants a kimono, she wants to learn hula and kabuki. She wants to learn Japanese! That she wants to broaden her horizons and learn more about the world means the weekend was a success.

Well, you know it’s time to see half-naked people in the City of Angeles just based on the events happening. This weekend is the unofficial kickoff to Spring in LA. So many things to do, I’m wondering how I’ll sleep this weekend. The best part: Most of them are free.

Obviously, we’ll be at LACMA celebrating opening night of Jazz on Friday night. I heard that Les Claypool is also playing tomorrow night. Who knew he was still around?

Oh and the Getty’s Friday off the 405 series also starts on Friday night.  Since my idea of fun doesn’t include being anywhere near the 405 on a Friday night, I won’t be here, but I’ll try to make it one day.  It’ll be like me cheating on LACMA.

The Brewery kicks off their spring ArtWalk on Saturday, April 5th. If you haven’t been, you’re missing out on some kind of wonderful. The restaurant onsite is overprice, but the last times we went they also had someone grilling burgers.  We’ll be doing this on April 6th and grilling afterwards.  We live nearby, so if you’re willing, come on by.

The Brewery ArtWalk is a twice annual open studio weekend at the worlds largest art colony. Each artwalk, over 100 resident artists participate. During this event, you will have the opportunity to see new works, discover new favorites, speak with the artists and purchase artworks directly from the artists at studio prices.

The Brewery Art Walk takes place:
April 5th and 6th, from
11:00 am - 6:00 pm

Admission is free and so is parking. Come support LA’s finest artists, take home some great works and and dine at the onsite restaurant. If you have questions or require more information, please contact us via email (click here)

The Brewery is home to over 100 artist-residents and the art you see is usually for sale.  So if you see something you like, feel free to ask a price.

Over in Little Tokyo is the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.  It’s going on all weekend too.  Parking stinks so plan ahead.  The event is free to enter.  We caught the tailend of this a few years ago and have sworn we’d go back to see the event.

Descanso Gardens is having A World of Good Weekend.  It’s $7 for adults, $5 for kids 5+.  You get to enjoy all the festival happenings and the gardens.  The happenings:

APRIL 5 & 6: A WORLD OF GOOD WEEKEND
This is your personal invitation to enjoy acres and acres of spectacular
Gardens, health-conscious salad-making demos, kid’s crafts, world music and fun
for everyone.

Salad Days: Salad Making Demonstrations
Saturday and Sunday, April 5 and 6 - 11 a.m. to noon
Magnolia Lawn
Chef de Cuisine Tiana Driggins tosses in her knowledge and celebrates Descanso’s 2008 Center Circle Edible Estates Demonstration Garden with a delicious and interesting salad demonstration.

Kids’ Veggie People Craft Table
Saturday and Sunday, April 5 and 6 - noon to 3 - Main Lawn

Music: Robby Longley
Saturday, April 5 only - 1 to 3 p.m. - Under the Oaks Theater
A beautifully orchestrated fusion of neo-classical/flamenco world music will be here for your enjoyment.

Music: Banshee in the Kitchen
Sunday, April 6 only - 1 to 3 p.m. - Under the Oaks Theater
Don’t miss the combination of traditional Celtic music, spiced jazz and rock.

That’s just a few of the big and interesting-to-me things going on.  If you’re in LA, I hope you can make it even just one of these events.  Otherwise, stay tuned because you know I’ll have pictures galore!

This is my leftover steak from dinner last night.  Now, here’s an America I really and truly love.  With steak sauce.

For brussels sprouts sauteed in garlic butter.

In attempting to pretend to almost clean up one sliver of countertop in the kitchen, I ran across a bowl with one and a half egg yolks in it.  I boiled two eggs this morning for the little girl.  She ate the egg whites an at least tried to eat half of one yolk, but she really doesn’t feel them.  Since she was a baby, she has refused to eat boiled egg yolk.  Now, if my husband makes (ugh) over easy eggs, she has no problem eating the runny center.

I don’t get it.  This girl eats deep-friend shrimp heads, eyeballs and all.  She eats natto like it’s going out of style.  But somehow, in some weird way, boiled egg yolks are gross.

How did I miss the last 3 days? OMG…I could have sworn my last post was on Sunday night. Oh man!

So, some catch up…My neighbor had a birthday party on Sat. night. Mariachis, birria, and lots and lots of tequila. Let’s just say that a few of the guys are covered in bruises from falling, and on Sunday everyone was swearing off tequila and drinking.

Sunday, I took the kids downtown. We actually started going over to The Grove, but their were limos outside, the line to get into the parking structure was ridiculous and so I left. Ran into to police action in my old neighborhood. And (shoot me now!) finally got out of the area in 20 minutes, leaving me thrilled that I no longer live in the Fairfax district. It only took almost 40 minutes to drive the 8 miles to downtown. Then we went home, picked up Adrian and went to Olvera Street for Las Posadas. Interesting…I don’t know about the life-sized wooden nativity scene. That kinda freaked me. Ooh! I finally went to the Iglesia Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles. I had no idea that there were two churches there! Pictures will be posted later.

Yesterday, I did some more work in the yard. I went to town and everyone was oohing and aahing. It looks that good. Today, while Adrian’s visiting his mom, I think I’m going to install a walkway. My neighbors across the street (brother to the neighbor who had the birthday party on Sat.) had a party last night. There were tacos and tamales. YUM! And tequila. It was funny because they were making what I’ve always called “sodaritas”: tequila, lime, salt and Squirt. Loads of those were ingested. While we were there, Ilia learned some of her body parts in Spanish from a 12 yr. old girl who just adored her. In return, she taught the little girl some ballet.

So, that’s out weekend in a nutshell, not including the people we’ve had over. Now, we’re getting ready for New Year’s. Last year was so much fun sitting out on the front porch and watching all the fireworks for a few hours. If you’re in LA and I don’t hate you, feel free to come by.

That’s where we had dinner last night. I highly suggest not ever eating there again. Um…let’s see, we got there a little around 7:40. I went in to be seated and was seated immediately. Right next to the station where the waiters punch in their orders and stuff. About 10 minutes later, I finally caught the eye of a standing waiter and ordered two beers from him. He ran away before I could order drinks for the kids. He came back and we got the drinks. The only kid friendly drinks they have are water, 7-up or Coke. Yeah, the kids got water. In red kegger cups. Swanky.

The menu is big. It’s a seafood restaurant, so naturally you’ll want to try that. In the back of the restaurant you can see the tanks where they keep the huge crabs, lobsters and fish. They have curiosity-making stuff on the menu like Crystallized Chicken Feet and Jellyfish (that’s one dish), or the Live Steam Frogs in some kind of sauce. What looked really good was the Crispy Duck Chin in Meggie Sauce. Lots of frog, shark fin, and bit o’ birds on the menu along with the tried and true. We stuck with tried and true.

We finally got someone to take our order around 8:15 and the food arrived around 8:30. For appetizer, we ordered the Soy Duck:

Doesn’t that look tasty? That’s fried tofu on the side. Starving and eager to get some duck, I took a bite and was utterly disappointed. I didn’t even know you can make dry duck. It was tough, chewy and just disgusting. Ilia and Adrian ate the tofu and they liked it I guess.

It was fried, with these pepper, garlic, ginger bits all over it. The crispy bits were tasty. The crab was dry. I mean, it was actually drier than the duck. Let’s put it this way, the crab meat tasted like I was eating straight from a shredder. A spicy shredder. Bleeeh. At this point, I’m sitting there thinking, “Now, why do I let Adrian pick places when they suck 95% of the time?” Oooh…our Scallops with Chinese Yevon Chives is here:

Not dry. Not exciting either. The best part about this dish was the snow peas. Those were perfectly crunchy, sweet with a hint of ginger and made the other items in the dish that much blander. Seriously though, scallops aren’t that hard to cook. They’re like the tofu of the mollusk world. These were white blobs on my plate. They actually almost tasted just as bad as tofu, they were so dull. What it needed was a splash of rice vinegar, but the waiters were done with us for the rest of the night, so I had to suffer. The crispy bits from the crab with the scallops was pretty good though.

The next dish out was our Kung Pao Prawns. Okay, so like when I see ‘prawn’, I think ‘really big shrimp’. I don’t think ’shrimp’. This dish was Kung Pao Shrimp:

I don’t know…I’m not hep to the Kung Pao when the peanuts aren’t cooked. It all seems so half-assed. I’ve stopped eating kung pao in Asian areas because I’ve noticed that they don’t make it spicy enough for us. This kung pao was weak and way too sweet. The peppers just laid there, like couldn’t be bothered to give us a kick and the shrimp, while not dry were tough and chewy.

The last dishes to come out where the rice. We got steamed rice and minced beef fried rice. Oh glory be, that fried rice was probably the best fried rice I’ve had in a while. Better than the last two Chinese restaurants we at in Alhambra and those places had awesome fried rice. Naturally, I don’t have a picture of it.

Between the bad service and the horrible food, I can honestly say that free crab or not, I’ll not be eating there again.

Can someone please explain the green bean casserole thing to me? Black people don’t eat that (super-blanket statement here). What I mean is that I’ve never met a black person who’s made it and everyone I know was introduced to it via a friend from college. I mean, it’s not like part of our traditional holiday meals, y’know?

Let me interject a funny story here: So it’s me, 2 Filipino guys, 2 Latino guys, 3 Egyptian guys and a white guy. All of us had spent the holidays with friends. So we’re sitting around talking about our experiences. Everything gets quiet and one guy who spent the holidays with his girlfriend’s family said, “Green bean casserole.” All of us looked up, looks of horror spread across our faces. One of the Latino guys said, “Yeah. What was up with that?” We all turned to the white guy. He said, “Beats me. My mom makes it every year and no one eats it.”

My friends just say, “It like turkey at Thanksgiving. You just do it.” That’s not satisfactory to me. This is a dish that is visually unappealing to me and taste-wise lives up to its looks. I understand that Campbell’s developed the recipe, but it seems pretty strange to me that a large chunk of America eats something every holiday based on a manufacturer’s recipe. It’s just that people get excited over it, but from what I’ve seen it’s always the one dish that mostly untouched.

So, why? Is it the taste? Do you do it just for tradition sake? Do your guest genuinely like it? I’m curious.

One of my favorite things on the internet is watching what people do with food. Especially cake decorators. I can barely make one layer of a cake not fall apart, so when people manage to make cakes in the shape of characters or scenes, I’m fascinated.

Here in Los Angeles, there are a number of bakeries that specialize in vanity cakes (my term) and I love to look at windows to see what they’ve created. But the internet opens it up to the whole world. You can peek into the world of the 8′ tall cake for some girl’s 1st birthday or the celebratory race car cake for a winner. I just found Mike’s Amazing Cakes. This is beyond shapes. This is pure artistry.