Tag Archives: Food

Food Frenzy

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Restaurants, Style, Travel

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Okay, one last post about Los Angeles and I promise I will move on to a new topic. Can you tell that lengthy vacations are few and far between for me?

As I may have mentioned a few times before, Charlie and I have a tendency to eat and drink our way through most excursions. On our drive, I spent most of my time in the passenger’s seat squinting at the iPad, searching for ways to avoid fast food joints and arrive at some greasy, roadside haunt that would presumably be filled with locals. Typically, these establishments were no better than your average McDonald’s, but somehow the hunt seemed to justify the calorie count.

But I was really excited to reach LA, birthplace of the food truck. We’ve discovered some great carts and trucks in New York (quesadillas from Calexico are a weekly indulgence) and were excited to find a few new names to add to our list of favorites.  Well, it turns out that on the first Friday of every month, LA’s food trucks make their way over to Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice for a monthly food festival of sorts. The trucks stake out their spots in the early afternoon and keep serving food well into the night. And if you thought that you had seen every possible incarnation of food on wheels, think again. I’m pretty sure a new truck is born every minute. Here are a few of the trucks that caught our eyes.

In addition to good food, I love a good play on words.

I have to admit, the weather in California was much cooler than I had expected. I thought everyone ran around this state in cut-offs and midriff baring tank tops?? I ended up wearing a sweater more often than I’d like to admit. But enough of the weather. It was pretty hard work being a tourist and snapping all these photos, so we took a well-deserved break to try ice cream on a stick. Ice cream is always good, no matter the temperature outside.

What is this new style of potato, you ask? Well, it is a spud cut in a spiral shape, stretched out like a slinky, and impaled on a stick. Oh, and fried to a nice, golden hue.

And this last truck takes the cake, in my book.

Sometimes, I think owning a food truck would be grand. But the potential impact on my waistline is enough to steer me off that career path.

A Roadster’s Paradise

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Travel

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It might sound a little strange, considering I just mentioned that I drove 3,000 miles from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, but I actually don’t really like driving. People usually screw up their faces when I tell them this and say: “Really?!” Because, I know, it is the American dream to get their first car and feel the freedom that a long, empty stretch of highway brings on a sunny afternoon. Windows down, hair blowing, music blaring. Amber waves of grain rustling as the car passes by.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved our road trip. I’ve never had so much fun on a road trip and, in fact, didn’t know it was possible to enjoy 12 hours of sedentary driving for 5 days straight. But it is the routine of daily driving that I absolutely loathe. To me, autonomy is not behind the wheel, speeding across pavement every day just to go to work. Or the grocery store. Or the bookstore. And I really hate when my hair is blowing all around me.

This is why I live in a city like New York. I get the pleasure of riding a smelly, dirty, crowded subway every day. And I love it. The subway also indulges my need to multi-task, something that never works well when driving. Instead of staring at the line of cars moving slowly ahead of me, I get to stare at my book. All the countless subway rides I have taken the past few years have allowed me to finish many books and even a few issues of The New Yorker while I’m at it. For that reason alone, I consider the monthly subway pass worth every dollar they charge me. One hundred and four of those dollars, to be exact.

And it is because of this driving that I have a fond appreciation of Los Angeles, yet could never see myself living there. There is a highway to connect every corner of that sprawling city and Charlie and I spent a lot of time on it. But we had a great time exploring all the neighborhoods, especially Los Feliz, where we had an amazing brunch, and Santa Monica, where we shopped and walked along the beach. It was the perfect reward after our long drive and it felt so nice to savor the last few days of our vacation at a much slower pace.

Here are a few snaps from our adventures in LA.

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Most days – make that most every day! – I’ll go for a plain cup of jo. Just milk, please. But a vacation in LA felt like the appropriate time to sip a leisurely latte in a coffee shop.

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The sign in that last photo was a little disconcerting…

I love how different this city is from the one that I call home and I’m so happy that I finally got to explore it myself. (It seems to me that it is one of the few cities that New Yorkers feel they can make lofty generalizations about. Either LA is the NYC of the west or it is the most deplorable spot in the country. There never seems to be a middle ground!)

But, I will leave you to make you own judgements and with one more snapshot.

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This was taken in the gardens at the Getty Museum. Do you see all that SMOG hovering over the city in the distance? Unbelievable. It leaves a little lump in the back of my throat when I think about all the miles of gas we burned just to get here. It’s going to take a couple of mass transit rides to get rid of that guilt.

Food for a New Generation of Thought

08 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Cooking

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As if the post-college job search isn’t hard enough these days, a friend told me a particularly disconcerting story that I haven’t quite been able to shake. She went on an interview for a position with a large financial company where she met with a woman who had worked with the company for years. At one point, the woman asked my friend what she likes to do in her free time, to which my friend responded that she enjoys cooking.  At that, the woman looked at her in horror, surmising that my friend is merely a housewife in disguise, and said: “You really like to cook? I never cook anything.”

Now, aside from sharing in my friend’s shock over this interaction, I can’t help but wonder why we are so quick to equate cooking with domestic stereotypes. In fact, everywhere I look, I see encouraging signs that more people are cooking at home more frequently. With the resurgence of the locavore movement, not only are more people looking to their local farms for fresh vegetables and ingredients, but it is becoming increasingly cool and popular to do so. In some areas, dare I say, almost the norm. In Brooklyn, while you might not find a crop of tomatoes growing in a vacant lot, you will see that there are restaurants on every corner boasting a local, farm-fresh menu. The emphasis here is not on whom the responsibility falls for preparing the meal, but rather, on what you are putting into your body. Food is no longer a chore that a woman must endure. It many households, it is a ritual that has taken on new meaning.

I, for one, find few things more relaxing after a long day than leisurely preparing a meal with fresh ingredients and a glass of wine in hand. We can’t forget the wine, it’s crucial to the relaxation element. Oh, and the recipe. I will fully admit that I am rule-follower in most aspects of life, but especially in cooking. Throwing open the door to the refrigerator and concocting a dinner with whatever happens to be sitting idly inside is not my strong point. But give me a recipe to follow, and I’m in business.

Last week, I set out to conquer my fear of risotto. My first interaction with the creamy, rice-pasta last year ended disastrously and I have been avoiding it ever since. But my cravings overcame me and, after a thorough tutorial with my mother, I decided to fly solo. Now, as I mentioned, no culinary adventure starts without a recipe and you can find this recipe here.

After preparing all of my ingredients, I held my breath and began adding in the broth.

Few things test my resilience and arm muscles like the constant stirring of risotto. But I bent myself to the task, knowing a creamy, perfectly balanced, and smooth risotto would be worth the sweat. And I stirred.

And I stirred.

And I stirred some more.

And then, finally, my risotto reached the perfect, elusive consistency of soft, melt-in-your-mouth pasta. This may have been a small victory, but culinary accomplishments are far from drudgery to me.

GoogaMooga: The Great Wait

22 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Brooklyn

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After weeks of anticipation, I, along with most other revelers, left the Great GoogaMooga tired, hot, thirsty and slightly less hungry than when I arrived. If I haven’t adequately explained how excited I was for GoogaMooga, let me reiterate – this was supposed to be the culmination of everything I love about Brooklyn! Well-crafted, artisanal food, good music, beer, and a nice patch of green grass on which to enjoy it. Alas, this weekend missed the mark. Entirely.

Now, I know that a free food festival in Prospect Park is bound to attract a crowd. But as soon as we walked in on Saturday, we were faced with huge lines spanning across the park. Two friends left us in just twenty minutes. In order to get a  beer, we first had to wait on line to get our I.D.’s checked. Then wait on another line to put cash on a “Googamoula” card. Then find our way to bar and actually buy the drinks. We asked one person how long he had been waiting, and he admitted it took one hour and forty-five minutes just to get his I.D. checked! We quickly decided that drinks were unnecessary and went in search of food.

We settled on pizza from Roberta’s. We are big fans of Roberta’s work. No one does pizza quite like her. The Margarita is a true classic. And we tried a “Bee Sting,” with mozzarella, sopressata and this amazing honey-chili sauce that totally made up for the forty-five minute wait.

We lost our final friend soon after and Charlie and I did one more lap around the festival. By 4:00 pm, I saw that some vendors were already running out of food, with another 4 hours still to go! With our thirst getting the best of us, we braved a half hour line to get a bottle of aloe-flavored water and headed for the exit. Yes, it tastes as strange as it sounds.

I wanted so much to like GoogaMooga. It has the potential to be a great festival where people can eat, drink and actually listen to the music (we never even stopped once to listen to a band since we were so preoccupied with lines!). But it was so disorganized and poorly executed that we left exhausted and disappointed.

But, we did spot this great, retro car!

Looking to the Weekend Ahead

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Brooklyn

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Most of my weekends tend to revolve around food. But this weekend is going to involve food of epic proportions. It is the inaugural GoogaMooga festival, which, despite sounding like an infant’s first words, is actually a gathering of New York’s most desirable chefs, food entrepreneurs and musicians. This is the place where mere mortals can hope to rub shoulders with the likes of Tom Colicchio, Anthony Bourdain and other restaurant royalty. I have been counting down the days ever since my boyfriend, Charlie, managed to score tickets (it sold out within an hour!) I’ve scoured the website, read through every email, downloaded the app, and now I have 17 hours to decide which vendors to set my sights on tomorrow! Will I crave a slice of Roberta’s renouned pizza? Or a pork bun from Eddie Huang’s BaoHaus? Or maybe something savory from Saxelby Cheesemongers? It’s not a decision to be made lightly. I’ll be sure to give a full report of the day’s events and highlight all of my favorites!

So tell me, will anyone else be going to GoogaMooga?

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