Food | skinny girls & mayonnaise

Lunch in Little Tokyo

21 May 2013 20 Comments

by scolgin in Eating Out, Food, Humor Tags: Arthur Nakane, gaijin, imagawayaki, Little Tokyo, los angeles, Mitsura Café, MOCA, one man band, Totoro

When I was a lad, one of my favorite parts of L.A. to visit was Little Tokyo. I loved traveling downtown with my mom, walking around Japanese Village Plaza, grabbing an imagawayaki at the Mitsura Café, strolling through Japanese gardens at the New Otani Hotel or the Japanese/American Cultural Center, maybe popping into the warehouse-y MOCA Temporary Contemporary Museum.

Totoros of every size at the New Tokyo Lifestyle gift shop in Japanese Village Plaza

It’s a love I’ve passed along to my own children. So when, on a Mother’s Day, we’re trying to decide where to go on an adventure and for lunch, it is not a surprise to hear Flynn suggest: “Let’s go to Little Tokyo!” More

Hippies in Paradise

17 May 2013 35 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Observations Tags: Daniel Nevins, Gram Parsons, hippies, Inn of the Seventh Ray, Jim Morrison, Manson family, Neil Young, The Corral, Topanga

As my artist pal Daniel used to say, affecting his best Southern cop twang, “We got a hippy problem.”

Topanga Canyon was ground zero for hippies in the 1960s, and it never quite shed the mantle. Back then, the Manson family was camped out in their psychedelic bus down at the Rodeo Grounds, Neil Young was couch surfing and Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon twanged out new songs while Jim Morrison “let it roll, baby, roll” up at The Corral roadhouse (yes, that roadhouse).

Hippies having fun

Today, the canyon much like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco is more of a destination attraction for young hippies, the way affluent yoga students travel to Mysore, India, to pretend they like being ogled by old gurus. You see them walking barefoot and braless along the boulevard, guitars slung over the shoulders, sipping their chai teas and smiling a lot. Sometimes they even still hitchhike and carry signs like “Make love, not war.” More

Post #300

14 May 2013 9 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Observations Tags: Attempts in Domesticity, Belle Grove Plantation, Dear Leader, food, food blogs, Gourmandistan, Rachel's Table, Wordpress, writing

“How’s the blog going?” a friend asked somewhere around post #170 or so.

Great, I replied. My audience is growing. People seem to really like the blog.

“What’s your end game?” the friend asked. More

Mama Annie

10 May 2013 14 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Observations Tags: Andrea Cleall, Hawaiian cooking, Magic Maui Cookbook, Mama Annie, Mother's Day, Pouilly Fuisse, salmon, Sonoma, Wine Guerrilla

Some things change a lot over the years. Other things don’t change that much.

I remember coming out of my bedroom in the morning as a kid, and there was my mom — wild haired, rumpled bathrobe, cup of coffee — already cooking. Now, when we go to visit her in Sonoma, my children wake up early and find her, grandma now whom they call “Mama Annie” — wild haired, rumpled bathrobe, cup of coffee — already cooking.

Me and Mama Annie, back in the day

My parents were adventurous eaters, especially for the time. As I child, I ate escargot in French restaurants and learned to say Pouilly-Fuisse, sampled sashimi and sushi at the Joy of Tempura — the only Japanese restaurant in town — and was complemented on my chopsticks skills by old Chinese women at the Twin Dragon. More

Considering the Acorn

07 May 2013 6 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Observations Tags: acorn woodpecker, acorns, California, Chumash, Chumash Museum, Gram Parsons, native Americans, Tongva, Topanga

“Supposed to be a funeral. It’s been a bad, bad day.”
-Gram Parsons

The other day, my wife and I had a bad, bad day. She got stressed out about a proposal we were supposed to be sending out. Then she fell on the precarious stone pathway that leads down to the office. The mood devolved from there — she didn’t like our business, our house, the pathway to the office, the chickens or me. So I didn’t like her back.

Acorn woodpecker

It passed, things went back to normal. And I was sitting at my computer working on a project when I was distracted as I often am by movement in the trees outside. It was one of my favorite birds — the brilliantly red-crowned acorn woodpecker, hopping up the stout trunk of a towering oak. And I was reminded of how fortunate we are to live here amidst all this wild western beauty. Something I wish we could remember on those bad days. More

skinny girls & mayonnaise

Lunch in Little Tokyo

Hippies in Paradise

Post #300

Mama Annie

Considering the Acorn

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