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March 9, 2010

Downtown LA – Finally

Our family has lived in Los Angeles for 4 ½ years now and we’ve visited neighborhoods from Santa Monica to Silverlake. But one area that we never manage to get to is Downtown.

For the husband’s birthday, we decided to take ourselves out of the westside and into the

center of the city. Our extremely patient and generous friend agreed to watch our boys (along with her 2 boys) for our 18 hour downtown adventure.

We started at our hotel, The Omni in California Plaza. We got a good deal on Expedia that included parking and a deluxe breakfast. The hotel was beautiful and our room was in the corner with a view of California Plaza. It’s more of a business traveler hotel, but it was great for us with a clean, comfy room in a convenient location.

Our plan was to spend the afternoon walking around and doing a mini pub

crawl, but the weather wasn’t cooperating and it was pouring rain. We took the hotel car to The Must Bar on 5th and Spring and considered never leaving. We loved it there. We sat at the bar and the husband ordered a black sangria and I had the Allagash beer recommended by the bartender (they had gluten-free beer, too!). The menu looked very good, but we had dinner reservations so we tried the cheese plate. The best thing about the cheese plate was that you could order whatever you wanted, it wasn’t already made. We got a robusto (aged gruyere), manchego, figs, and smokey bacon jam. If you haven’t tried bacon jam you must try it. Here it was what tasted like bacon in a small bowl of warm honey. (I had it at The Six Restaurant in West LA and it was more like a salsa and also very good).

The guy sitting next me had a lovely plate of what he said was salmon on polenta fries (Not Yo Mama’s Fish Sticks, salmon with scallion grits) that he orders every time he comes. And that’s what I loved about the place. Everyone seemed to know each other, but were welcoming just the same.

We reluctantly left there and walked up 5th Street to Grand to try a well-known LA restaurant, the Water Grill. A friend recommended it and said that it’s consistently good.

I’m always skeptical of restaurants that appear in tourist guidebooks, like this one, but I needn’t have been. It was fantastic. We started a sampler plate of oysters and I don’t know what I loved more, the oysters or the sauces to go with it. Our plain salad of mixed greens was ok, but pretty salty, however the main course more than made up for that. I had the Nantucket Bay Scallops with Kurobata Pork Belly. The pork belly was the melt in your mouth kind and the scallops were perfectly cooked. They were lying on top of creamy polenta, which is always good. And it was.

The wine list was way overpriced so we both got single glasses of wine. I think the desserts were the best part of the entire evening. We shared a budino and a scoop of salted caramel ice cream. I think I gained 5 pounds on the dessert alone, but it was so worth it. The budino was rich and delightful I can’t stop thinking about it.

After dinner we had nice walk back to our hotel and our downtown adventure was over. It was 10:30. Ok, maybe adventure is a bit of stretch, but we had a great time.

March 1, 2010

Roasted Chicken with Green Garlic

A friend stopped by my Gluten-Free Goodies booth at the farmers’ market today and told me about Green Garlic.

You can only get it for a very short time in the Spring and only at farmers’

markets. It looks like a leek and when I went to buy it I checked with the seller to make sure I had the right root vegetable.

He said to use it like garlic, except you can use the entire vegetable, stalk and all. It has a milder taste, and my friend suggested making aioli, which I thought was a fantastic idea. But I forgot to buy eggs so I had to scour the fridge to see what we had.

The 6-year-old and I bought a free range chicken yesterday and were planning to roast it. I couldn’t find a recipe for Green garlic and Chicken so I turned to Twitter. Amelia of Eating Made Easy saved the day with a great recipe.

She said, in 140 characters, to cut the green garlic in half and place it in the cavity of the chicken along with two lemon halfs. I cut up a bulb and rubbed it on the chicken with olive oil and fresh rosemary from our yard. I sprinkled sea salt on the chicken and roasted it at 400 degrees for about an hour. It was wonderful. The chicken was tender and moist with a light flavor.

I served it with Red Chard that I also got at the farmers’ market. I cut up the rest of the green garlic (once again, stalks and all) and sauted it with olive oil. I added freshly washed, so still slightly wet, chard (I got this from Epicurious) and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. It was very nice.

Then I cheated and rounded off the meal with Trader Joe’s Frozen Mashed Potatoes (they’re really good!) and a sparkling wine.
The best part is that the husband I had dinner after the kids went to bed and were able to have a lovely meal together. Fabulous.

February 25, 2010

Lego Birthday

My brother was giving me a hard time that my blogs aren’t hard hitting enough. So today I’m going to talk about Legos.

My boys love them. For the older one’s 6th birthday we gave him a choice between going to Legoland and having a birthday party and he picked Legoland. But he’s 6 and didn’t understand that when you pick one thing you don’t get the other.

Unfortunately, I’m weak and feel guilty about not being supermom and that means throwing a birthday party, too. I’m not a crafty gal, but since we’re also not made of money, I thought I would try to save some by making as much as I could to create a Lego-themed party.

After the disaster of a cake from the 4-year-old’s birthday, I decided to be simple: chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. I made it in the shape of a Lego by using a rectangular cake and putting six cupcakes on top while frosting with it with green frosting. It was cute.

The piñata, not so much. Growing up, I made plenty of piñatas in elementary school, but all I remember was paper mache and paint. I called up my crafty teacher friend the Wednesday night before the Friday party and this is what she had to say. “What? You need to start making it now. Like, right now.” I did not.

Instead I bought a generic piñata and rigged it to look like a Lego. I found an empty box and made the kids and their friends eat 6 plastic cups full of apple sauce. I glued the apple sauce cups to the box to look like a Lego block and painted it green. Sweet, I thought, until it turned into another crafting disaster. Green washable paint doesn’t stick to plastic and it peels right off. So on a day when I was sick and should have been resting or working, I painted the plastic with faux stained glass paint and then painted with regular kids paint. It worked fine and here’s the result. Yep, you can definitely tell I made it.

January 28, 2010

Amelia's Eating Made Easy

I absolutely love talking to Amelia. She has masters degrees in nutrition and public health and is one of the most knowledgeable people I know. Not only is she a personal chef, but she also does nutritional counseling, puts out a newsletter, blogs, and teaches cooking classes. As part of my new series on local small businesses, I’m profiling Amelia’s company Eating Made Easy, formerly Amelia’s Meels.

Amelia’s approach to food and nutrition is very reasonable, which is why I enjoy talking to her. She isn’t advising cutting out all carbohydrates or never having a cupcake again. She’s giving clients manageable lifestyle changes.

“People are always looking for a quick fix and there isn’t one,” she said.

Take, for example, cleanses. These popular remedies are used by some people at the beginning of the year to try to detoxify after the gluttony of the holidays. They are supposed to clean out your system and help you lose weight in the process, but do they work?

No. No they don’t. “It’s so preposterous,” she said. “It’s like saying ‘I’m going to take a razorblade to your skin because you got a sunburn.”

What is the best way to detox after you’ve been brutal to your body? Eat more fruits and vegetables and limit caffeine and alcohol. “The majority of people have all the systems they need for toxins to leave their body within 24 to 48 hours. There isn’t anything so toxic unless they are drinking Windex.”

Having a personal chef has always been an unrealized dream of mine. When Amelia gets a new client she caters the menu to each person’s dietary needs – gluten-free, vegan, peanut allergy – no problem.

The same is true with weight loss and nutrition counseling. If the goal is to lose weight, she figures out what works best for that person’s lifestyle. That might mean eating less sugar or cutting down on smoothies. If someone eats fast food everyday at lunch, she figures out a way to cut a certain number of calories so that person can lose weight – maybe no fries one day, or half a bun the next, or cut out the soda to save 200 calories.

She also had some advice that I think might help me lose a couple of pounds. I’m a sucker for those fluffy stories on yahoo or in doctor’s office magazines that tell me what to eat to make my stomach flatter. Nuts and oatmeal are always on the list so of course I put walnuts or almonds in everything so that I don’t have to do crunches. Well, apparently adding 500 calories to an already full diet will not give me a sick pack.

Speaking of advice, Amelia’s blog is also a great source. When friends ask her questions like, Which yogurt is good for me and which one is the nutritional equivalent to a candy bar? Here’s your answer.

“The main thing I would want people to know is that I’m not here to preach to you what you should be eating, but teach you how to make a healthy lifestyle a reality no matter what your life is like,” she said. “I want to inspire you to love healthy food as much as you love unhealthy food.”
To learn more about Amelia visit her blog. To contact her about personal chef services, nutritional or weight loss counseling, or cooking classes email her at info@eating-made-easy.com or call her at 310-484-6140.

This is part of a series I’m doing on local small business. I don’t get paid for this, but because I have a small business I want to highlight other entrepreneurs I believe in.

January 26, 2010

Quinoa with Garlic, Spinach and Dried Cherries

I had a very busy weekend which meant I wasn’t around to cook for my kids. I had a pleasant reminder of this when my husband said to them, “Isn’t it nice to have Mommy home for dinner?” Let me just say, I’m always home for dinner!!! I mouthed something I can’t repeat here.

To make up for my two evening absence, I took the 5-year-old to the Trader Joe’s yesterday to help me pick out something to make for dinner. We had 20 minutes before picking up the 4-year-old. We spent 10 of those minutes talking about ice cream, one of my favorite subjects. When we finally pulled ourselves away from the freezer section we ended up at the dried fruit area. I wanted to cook quinoa and I had a hankering for cherries after having a lentil, brown rice, and cherry salad from Urban Green Cuisine. There were four different kinds of cherries so I asked the woman standing next to me what I should get. She told me to buy Montmorency Cherries because they are packed with antioxidants. I get all of my cooking tips from random people I run into at the grocery store, so I bought them. The 5-year-old promised he’d eat whatever meal I came up with that involved cherries (He did not).

Here’s what I came up with:
Quinoa with Garlic, Spinach and Dried Cherries

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil and add 1 cup quinoa. Simmer for about 12 minutes or until it’s fluffy and the water is gone.

While that’s cooking, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil (or grapeseed oil) in a pan with a heaping teaspoon of minced garlic. Saute 1 bunch or a 6 oz. bag of spinach until wilted.

When the quinoa is ready, mix it into the spinach and add a ½ cup of dried cherries. Sprinkle with grated or shaved Parmigiano and Reggiano cheese and serve.

January 6, 2010

Brown Rice Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes and Spinach

Last night I was feeling ambitious and bloated from the holidays so I made a light dinner for the family. I roasted cherry tomatoes and garlic cloves with olive oil in the oven while I sauteed spinach on the stove. I tossed it all together with more olive oil, brown rice penne pasta, basil and parmesan cheese. It was lovely.

>Doesn’t really make up for eating leftover tamales everyday since New Year’s, but lovely.

My bad attitude about the holidays (tired, sick, too much to do) followed me into the New Year’s celebrations. I was tired and I didn’t want to cook anymore and I definitely did not want to have our annual party. Well, I got outvoted and my husband invited people over for New Year’s Eve.

It was a potluck, but of course I made way too much food. I made posole, gluten-free vegan chocolate cake with a chocolate/cinnamon frosting and salted caramel drizzled on top, coffee flan, homemade pinto beans, and tamales. A couple of friends came over Wednesday afternoon and helped me make the tamales in preparation for Thursday night.

Tamales, if you haven’t attempted, are very time consuming. My mom used to make them when we were kids and it was a two day affair. She does not have good memories of it. While I was shopping at Trader Joe’s I got a frantic call from her. “Don’t make tamales,” she said. “It’s too much work and you’ll be too tired to enjoy New Year’s Eve. Don’t make them!”

It wasn’t that bad. You start by making the dough, which is made of masa (ground corn flour), lard or shortening (I used vegan butter and regular butter in an attempt to be somewhat healthy), baking powder, salt, and water. After you’ve soaked the corn husks for two hours, you spread the filling in the husks. I bought carnitas, green chile, tomatillo sauce and jack cheese from Trader Joe’s. (I bought the corn husks and masa from Top Valu in Culver City, my new favorite grocery store.) One by one, we spread the masa dough in the husks, added the filling and folded them together. Then we put the wrapped tamales in a steamer. Several hours and 50 tamales later we were done.

It ended up being a great time. It was one of those rare occasions where all the kids were in good moods and got along, leaving the moms in the kitchen to cook.

After everyone left and I put my kids to bed, I made coffee flan with Starbucks Via coffee. I hope no one was lactose intolerant because it had whole milk, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk. Delightful.

On Thursday, I made the cake, beans, and my mom’s posole, which is soup with pork, chili (I used a can of chile colorado), and hominy. My mom has no real recipes, just vague directions. She said to put everything in the pot with chunks of onion and garlic and add some water or broth. I used gluten-free chicken broth and water. It turned out great. Spicy, but not too hot and the pork was really tender.

As the night wore on I broke out the Abuelita, which is Mexican chocolate. I melted it with sweetened condensed milk, whole milk, and one packet of Starbuck’s Via instant coffee. I served it with a shot of Kahlua and it was fantastic.

This was not a low calorie New Year’s Eve, but everything was gluten-free and the party was really fun. It started at 6 and the last people left after midnight. It was a lovely and happy New Year’s Eve.