faboo mama

I know I still need to write about the Spring ArtNight Pasadena we attended on Friday. But before I delve into that, here’s a photo of the kids at Pasadena City Hall.

Image by fabooj via Flickr

Yesterday, driving in Pasadena we drove past the California Cactus Center (see my blog post on LA Metblog for a review of the store) and dropped in to check it out.  If you’ve ever shopped for succulents or cactus, you know expensive they are.  We saw some really beautiful and small plants that were flirting with the edges of $90!  Happily, they did have 3″ pots that are comparable to watch you find at any nursery, with the added advantage of actual healthy and happy plants.  I already have enough cactus for my small needs and I went agave and echevarria crazy last year.  Now, my goal is more crassula.

But first, this photo is of the baseball plants (Klipnoors) we got, we saw a few of them that were pretty nice and big and $$$, these tiny guys were affordable.  We also got living rock, but the focus are the new crassula, I’ll just post the pics and let you drool:

I can’t wait to put them in their spots and watch them spill over the ground.

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.

The Chronicle Wine Cellar is located at 913 East California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91106. We are hidden just behind the Pie N’Burger shop. Cellar hours are Monday through Friday 11:30am - 6:30pm, Saturday 10:00am - 4:30pm, and Sunday 11:30am - 5:00pm.

How could I blog on a day like today? It was in the mid-70s with clear blue skies and the Doo Dah Parade was on! If my photo album is any indication, the last time we went to the Doo Dah parade I was 3 months pregnant with my oldest. So, when I found out that the cancelled Doo Dah parade was back on, I knew that Jan. 20th where I would be.

It’s been so long since I’ve gone to a parade that I forgot the main rule: Bring a chair. Ack! We got to Old Town around 11am and the parade was set to start around 11:30. I usually watch from the beginning, but since we parked near the end of the route, we went for something new. The first thing that alerted Alton to the fact that this wasn’t just a regular day was the requisite fighter planes flying over the parade route:

That got their attention. The planes flew over the route doing tricks probably 4 or 5 times. The kids thought it was cool. I was waiting for plane bits to rain down on my head. Speaking of the kids:

Too cute! Oh, before I get into this, you can see more of my photos in my Doo Dah Parade set. My blog loads too slow already, so I’m not going to load this down with too many photos.

The Doo Dah Parade is in Pasadena, which seems to be synonymous with “liberal” to many people, I’d have to agree. In fact, I always thought “liberal white guilt” was some stupid right wing phrase before I actually hung out in Pasadena. Those Boomers…wow! Anyway, it is pretty liberal and the politics do come out in the parade. The parade opened with lots and lots of people on bikes:

One of the first entries is the Los Angeles French Quarter Synchronized Baguette Brigade. It was pretty funny, they all had bread, drawn on moustaches and unlit cigarettes:

Soon we saw presidential candidate Frank Tambanelli:

Reverend Billy and Savitri D of The Church of Stop Shopping were co-Grand Marshalls of the parade.

Sigh…yes, that’s Code Pink behind him. Code Pink was repped hard in the parade. They were everywhere.

So, we’re sitting on our corner and nothing is happening, though you could just hear lots of cheers. Curiosity took hold and this is what I saw:

Standing ovations all around! It was insane. They had the Chain Gang with them, which always a crowd pleaser:

Not a crowd pleaser:

His sign says, Demoncracy is my kinda goverment.

Now, what’s funny is that this guy and Lady Liberty got into a scuffle over the Constitution. He snatched it from her and started to pretend to stomp on it. I started yelling at him to leave my civil liberties alone and people were cheering on Lady Liberty. A few minutes after this photo was taken, Lady Liberty ran back over to me and gave me gift:

I told Lady Liberty, that I’m raising my kids to defend their rights and to defend The Consititution. She took off before I could get a photo of her with the kids.

Then the Wild Bunch of Hollywood came along and got more cheers:

I’m so bummed this came out blurry, my camera battery was slowly dying. But 4 guys dressed as old ladies in motor wheel chairs were there:

Each guy represented a letter in the word ‘VOTE’ and each had poster with 2 sayings on it like, “A vote is a terrible thing to waste” or “‘Tis better to have voted and lost, than not to vote at all.”

There were more social commentary in some of the entries, but I won’t post photos. The best were these zombies who had things like laptops, Xbox’s, iPod’s or widescreen TV boxes chained to them. They all had signs that looked like Visa’s logo with pretty clever sayings on it. I told one lady, “Don’t worry, Bush wants to give you $800 so you can go shopping again!” And everyone started laughing and talking about how incredibly stupid our president thinks we are.

Oh…duh! So, I’m all into politics and crap, but I was with the parade by myself with the two kids. I say this as an explanation of why I was unable to get good shots of the Kucinich and Obama entries. Oh and there was this bitch in a wheelchair and some dick in a brown jacket who kept standing right in front of us. The best I got was this:

The sign says: Kucinich is 4 U, Are you 4 Him?

And this one:

The Obama entry is behind the bees.

So that’s that and I’m a liar, because this is picture heavy and long. Oh well. You’ll live.

Thanks for looking!

Man…who knew that actually leaving the house could be so draining…we started out headed toward (evil) Michaels because I needed felt for that stupid Hello Kitty doll. So we did that, then got wrapped up in Christmas stuff. Adrian wants a Christmas tree. I’m against it. He figures because there are kids that Christmas should be forced on them.

I told him that I don’t want any part of it. I tried to ignore it, but he’s got such bad taste that I had to say something. The ornaments he was oohing and aahing over were hideous. Like overweight undereducated platinum blond big hair hideous. You know they were the ornamental equivalent of Christmas sweaters with sequins and rhinestones. There is no way in hell that stuff was coming into my house. Then we saw the white glittery tree with lights attached. It was spinning and hooked up to it was an obnoxious sound system playing obnoxious Christmas songs. I started toward the knitting needles to gouge my eardrums. Adrian said, “Oh man, we need that!” Good Lord almighty! Needless to say, a pointless discussion ensued and I’ll never get those minutes back.

Then we headed to Old Town, which I didn’t want to do but the (evil) Container Store is there and we need, um…containers. Not that I bought any. Every time I walk into that store with the best of plans, but then I walk out indignant at the exorbitant prices. There was a $13 lipstick container. I’m sure if I owned a store, that place would be heaven for me (not counting the hundreds of online stores that sell the same stuff for way cheaper), but I don’t, so it’s not. I don’t know what’s more offensive; that they sell cheap-looking products for high prices or that they act like their offerings are original and tack on higher prices. Then there’s the lines. IKEA has ridiculous lines, but at least they move. At this particular store, if there are 3 people in front of you, guaranteed it’s a 10 minute wait. Today, we stood in line for 13 minutes. To buy mounting tape (incredibly it’s actually cheaper there than everywhere else!).

On top of all of this, the kids were being incredible brats. There were tears and shrieks and the the kids were making noise too. Ugh.

We also ran into S & T. They were eating at the Nepalese restaurant we had considered eating at. That was pretty funny, since we last saw them at Thanksgiving, but hadn’t seen them at all in the past year.

Anyway, at the Container Store, Adrian was convinced that their rail system was overpriced, so we wound up at Home Depot where he was proven right (not really, but for the sake of argument…). That sucked up even more time, but luckily we managed not to spend a dime there (yay!).

So that was a very no good day.

Yes, we went to the LA Greekfest earlier, but we were hungry see and couldn’t decide on what to eat. I wanted kebabs, he wanted lamb chops…by all rights, that means we were destined for Middle Eastern food. Then I said, “You know…the Pasadena Greekfest is nearby and it’s cheaper to get in than the LA one.” The rest is history. We plopped down our $3 a head and entered.

This one was smaller than the LA Greekfest, but still nice. We pulled some cash out the ATM and headed inside the church for some home-cooking. Let’s see…we got that casserole sorta dish with the pasta tubes and ground beef (yum!), rice, chicken and mousaka. It was good, if a tad salty. I was stuffed, but Adrian didn’t like his food.

After lunch, we headed outside, and strolled a bit. Unfortunately, all the vendors were the same exact one from the week before, so we didn’t have much to look at. Ah, but there’s the beer garden. It’s Hillas time! Oh, but wait…what is that guy cooking over next to the stage?

Oh…it’s a wine booth. 4 tasters for $10 and he was cooking saganaki.

I had never heard of it and it looked interesting. Despite being stuffed, I decided we needed wine and cheese. We had 4 Greek wines–I had all reds–that were pretty okay. They all tasted like variances of Egri Bikavér, which is to say that they’re palatable, but nothing to right home about. The first wine I tasted was actually kinda crappy. It was too vinegary for me. But then I took my first bite of saganaki, and sipped the wine afterwards and it was delish! The wine actually tasted a bit sweeter. Each wine was a perfect match with the saganaki. The only thing that could have made it more delectable is some apple slices, maybe some Gala apples.

While eating, I noticed that some of the people there looked familiar. I had seen them at the LA Greekfest. I asked the wine guy, if he noticed the same people and he said, “Yeah, Greekfest groupies.” Ha! What killed me, was that many of them were wearing the same exact clothes they had on the week before. Strange.

Anyway, we went to watch the people dancing. The guys behind us struck up conversation, asking me about my shirt (the first one) and we come to learn that they had attended the Greekfest in Cardiff the week before. I told them what the wine guy said and they laughed. We split and went to get some cotton candy. Let me tell you, a baby and cotton candy don’t exactly mix. Alton had no idea what to do with and all 3 of us were pantomiming eating it. He finally got it and, naturally, liked it. We walked around again and wound up in the beer garden and got our Hillas.

We pretty much spent the next 3 hours sitting there and watching the people go by. I spent most of that time obsessing over the cheese, desperate to get another, unwilling to share it and unable to justify an extra $7 for it. I actually spent most of last week, calling cheese shops around the area to see who had some. I plan on making it for our dinner party in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I’ll share it with my guests. ;P

That’s the price of a crappy meal at Sitar Indian Cuisine in Pasadena. In all honesty, we should have walked out when the waitress with her shitty little attitude made a big stink out of bringing us a high chair. We both agreed we should have walked out after I cracked open the first batch of chicken samosas and the inside was like dry sand. When I told the waiter, he said, “Well, that’s how chicken is.” I should have just said, “Nevermind the rest of the meal and bring me my check.”

But, we didn’t. Instead, we got a lentil soup that was short on lentil and big on chicken fat taste. We got dried out seekh kabab. In fact, the only thing that wasn’t dried was the raw chicken leg I got, the saffron rice and the raita. Yes, that means the chicken in the chicken tikka masala was dry. Even the fish in the fish curry was dry. The eggplant/lentil/tomato thing we got was edible, if a little sweet.

Which leads me to heat. When people go into an Indian restaurant and are given the options: mild, medium or spicy and ask for medium, don’t give them mild. I’m so damn tired of Indian restaurants doing thing. What’s up with that? I want my heat. Give it to me!

So, if you feel like eating sawdust chicken or soup that makes you want to toss your cookies, by all means, go to Sitar Indian Cuisine it’s an experience you’ll never forget.

Especially if you have a blog.