LA in september

aaaaaaand we are back. in the southland that is. sylla has opened a new store, my book is about to come out, school started again so we are both slightly busy.

i drove down from oregon with my mother and ate a lot of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (the optimal road trip food if you ask me - we should write something on this topic), and also had surprisingly decent sushi in redding, calif. REDDING. it was our stop-over for the night, and while i did not have time to discover any other charms of that city, i did have a very nice dinner there. this, unlike PB&J, is a rare occurrence on a road trip.

LA greeted us with heat and humidity, ornery people on campus, and wonderful food. we had dinner at the bar at mozza, where we sampled 5 pasta dishes. i will be working that one off for days. we had breakfast on the terrace of the pain quotidien and saw some actor or another sipping coffee at urth café. we had sushi at my local favorite place (ajisai) and felt almost at home.

today the city was split in two because the triathlon course stretched from the beach to downtown, and tomorrow my neighborhood will become a mad-house because Barack Obama will be at a fundraiser at a restaurant down my street.

LA baby, LA.

welcome to the middle of summer

here we are, in the dog days of summer. summer weather has finally reached oregon and i am in mexico city, where we await summer rains in the afternoon. in oregon and mexico all is green and opulent, and there as here i look forward to languid meals with friends and family.
simple pleasures for complicated times (hello debt rating downgrades, sudan, syria, looting in london and tea-party advances towards 2012) - as the world seems to be spinning off its axis, need a little break from the madness and will focus on tacos al pastor, cold beers and tequila. provided i don't indulge too much in the latter, there will be more posts this week.

welcome to the beginning of Spring

Another season, another quarter. I am teaching a class on the history of food in Latin America. The title of the class? FEED ME! It's about time I taught to my mundane interests, rather than the interest posted on my department profile. And what better way to teach student that economics really does matter than to trace the history of the potato, or measure the effect of the fall in the price of coffee on social transformation in Brazil. Of course, there will be presentations on the regional variations in pupusa fillings, and the centrality of the cacao bean to everything from pre-columbian trade to Upper-East Side hostess gifts.

On the issue of potatoes, above a picture of yours truly, enjoying the Belgian miracle of frites on the Place Jourdan in Brussels last week. These are, by far, the best frites in Brussels. The Best.

And now, for an entirely new year.

It's 2011. I am already exhausted. Am back in LA, have about a zillion students in one class, a new dog, and 8 deadlines that I need to meet by the end of the month. I also have veggies in the fridge, coconut milk and red curry paste, and if I find keffir leaves on my way back tonite, there might be home made vegetable curry for dinner...
I get very lazy in the kitchen when I am in LA. For one, the markets just are not what I have become used to in Oregon - I'm sorry Hollywood Farmer's Market, I am just not that into you. The second issue is that I mainly cook for myself here - the flat is hardly set up for dinner parties, and in LA, people eat out, a lot. And there's good reason to - amazing Ethiopian, Mexican, Japanese - sushi, robata, you name it, the list is long, and so many of these places are within walking distance.
All this to say, it's most likely that there'll be restaurant reviews of sorts and reports on scrumptious foods eaten for a while and few, if any, cooking experiences.
But, in case you missed this from the first paragraph, and without further ado - let me introduce you to my favorite hot-dog!