28 Jan 2014 16 Comments
in Food, Humor, On the Road Tags: Ava Gardner, food, Frank Sinatra, humor, Jim Croce, Koffi, Marilyn Monroe, Palm Springs, Riviera, Twin Palms
As if my previous post wasn’t cruel enough for readers in the American midwest and east who once again suffer the unwelcome descent of the Arctic into their midst, we decided to spend the weekend by the pool in Palm Springs.
Bloody Mary & Imogen poolside
Actually, it was a Sunday memorial for my wife’s maternal grandmother that drew us to the desert. But we thought why not make a weekend of it, and so found a swanky hotel with an atomic age theme and settled in. More
24 Jan 2014 12 Comments
in Food, Humor Tags: barbecue, California, Camping, carne asada, Endless Summer, grilling, Malibu, Mexican food, tequila, Winter
I had just finished lunch of Mexican food and ice-cold beer with my father and brothers, and was now standing outside the Home Depot in my t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, waiting for a customer service associate to swap out my empty Amerigas propane tank for a full one.
I would be barbecuing for friends this evening, and needed my back-up tank full just in case. After all, I’d had to use the Weber to cook my Christmas dinner when the main propane tank went dry. And suddenly, thinking of this, I had a moment of sadness. It was mid-January. Another 80-degree day, another cold beer, another barbecue… and what happened to winter, to whisky and braises?? We can’t even go skiing because there’s no snow in the mountains. As I write this, many of the mountains are, in fact, on fire.
Happy, lightly dressed girls, camping in January
I know it’s difficult for those of you friends in the Midwest, on the East Coast, and in Canada, Iceland, the British Isles and beyond, swallowed by various polar vortices, nor’easters, blizzards, ice storms and so on, to have much sympathy for our plight. More
07 Jan 2014 16 Comments
in Food, Humor Tags: Bud Light, commercials, football, Green Bay Packers, humor, quinoa, San Francisco 49ers, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, tailgating, TV
It was Sunday afternoon, and I was doing something I rarely do — watching football. It was a playoff game, a classic match-up — the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Green Bay Packers at Green Bay, where the temperature at game time was predicted to be 0 degrees.
I kind of like that sort of football. Especially if I’ve got a few beers in the fridge. And San Francisco is the closest we in Los Angeles have to team to root for.
It was the first inning, er… quarter, I mean. The ‘Niners were up 6-0 and seemed to be moving the ball at will. Then a guy on the Packers got hurt, and they went to commercial. More
27 Dec 2013 20 Comments
in Food, Humor, Recipes Tags: California, cauliflower soup, Christmas, Delta Propane, food, humor, prime rib, Scott Murphy hat, truffles, Weber grill
All I can say is that I’m lucky I live in California.
We were in the early stages of Christmas dinner with our friends, Debra and Ernie, when the stove flickered off.
Frustrated, I moved the cauliflower and truffle soup I was preparing to a different burner, assuming that was the problem. But one after another, I tried all five burners and got no flame. And then a sinking realization washed over me — I rushed out to the propane tank, checked the meter. It read “0”. In other words, empty.
Cauliflower soup cooking on the Weber side burner
(For those of you big city dwellers who live your lives in piped-in natural-gas comfort and have no idea what this means, here’s a crash course: We country folk have big propane tanks outside our houses and have to have gas delivered. Usually this is no problem, as we pre-buy our propane and the propane companies are good about not letting their customers’ tanks run low. What a time for them to fail their charge!) More
24 Dec 2013 6 Comments
in Humor, Observations Tags: Christmas, food, giant swallowtail butterfly, humor, mule deer, Papilio cresphontes, reindeer, Topanga State Park, yuzu
The other morning, I was in the kitchen with my wife and 3-year-old daughter Imogen, when I noticed something small either rolling, hopping, flitting or scurrying through the grasses down the hill.
I stared at the object for sometime before I felt confident it was not an animal and was simply some piece of tumbling debris. Then my wife made a gasping sound and pointed. There, precisely at the point from which the mystery object had began its descent, standing stock still and staring in at us, was a deer.
After a few moments, comfortable that we posed no threat, the deer continue munching on whatever portion of our garden it was decimating. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 