Oh, hello there.

No, I was not in a terrible accident which prevented me from updating my blog for the last 5 (!!!) months. And no, Rob was not so disgusted by his Julie Powell moment that he forbade me from ever food blogging again. My absence has a very simple and much less interesting explanation: I've gone back to school.

It was all very sudden, you see, and every time I thought, I need to update Delicious Coma, I was immediately distracted by the hundreds of anatomy flashcards I needed to memorize. No one grades you on your food blogging. Priorities were set. I apologize.

So it was all very sudden, but it was also very right, because the career I'm going back to school for combines so much that is important to me: good food, healthy living, sustainable farming, education and community involvement. I'm applying for a masters program to become a registered dietitian with a focus in community nutrition. Rather than helping those who already sick, I want to help people keep from getting sick by improving how they eat. I want to spread my love of vegetables -- the weird ones (purslane!), the ugly ones (kohlrabi!), the ones everyone is supposed the hate (beets! broccoli! kale!).

Unfortunately, a bachelors degree in film production doesn't prepare you very adequately for a masters of science degree, so I have about a year of science prerequisites to complete, core classes like physiology, organic chemistry and microbiology that I have to take while still working full-time. So you see why there is little time for blogging. Or tweeting or reading other people's blogs or attending PR dinners or even eating a dinner that isn't a bowl of Whole Foods organic soup dashed down at my desk before I leave work for a class that ends at 10 PM.

I still have pictures on my camera from March.

I can't promise the next semester will be any different, or the one after that, or the one after that. But I'm still here and I hope you'll stick around too. I think it'll be worth it.

* I was going to write a post about how much I still love the South Central Farmers' CSA boxes, especially in winter because the produce lasts for a full two weeks. But it's not winter anymore, so just take my word for it.

Kerk Burgers:
A guest post by Rob Kerkovich

The Kerk and his burgers.

What better way to celebrate a weekend in the desert than by eating a juicy, succulent hamburger? I still remember the first time I ever ate a hamburger… It was 1982. My precocious mother fetched some ground chuck from our local butcher and--

OK wait. Stop. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. When Anjali, for some unknown reason, first asked me to contribute a post about hamburgers, I was totally flattered. But then I remembered something. Certain reputable sources have stated that the only people who write food blogs are wealthy Asians… I’m not Asian. And I’m closer to being Asian than I am wealthy. Regardless, I said, “Y’know what? Racial stereotypes be damned! I’m on board!” And I couldn’t wait to get started.

Then, last night, we watched Julie & Julia…

And now -- now I just don’t know if I can write anything about food. Anything that would connect me, in any way, to Julie Powell -- even if it’s writing just ONE food blog post -- would make me die inside. I just can’t do it. The Julia scenes were amazing, obviously, but the Julie parts? The only piece of Julie Powell’s story that I enjoyed was when her heart was broken, Ralph Wiggum-style, once the news reached her that Julia Child kinda thought she was bullshit.

The rest of the time, she either threw temper tantrums or made the same frowny faces that toddlers make when they’ve filled their diapers. She never apologized for any of her behavior, with the exception of blogging some weird rhetorical question in which she drops that she MAY be treating her husband poorly. And the only thing she learns, the biggest lesson she walks away with, is “make sure you finish what you start.” I’m sorry, that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to learn from one of Aesop’s fables, not from dramatic films that take themselves seriously enough to send out SAG screeners.

Wait! Now I too am suddenly overcome by wanting to draw thin connections between myself and Julia Child!

- We’re both 6’2”

- Neither of us liked Julie Powell

- I also find things “hotter than a stiff cock”

Oh my God! She’s so inspiring! I’m going to go out there and become totally self-absorbed and then my friend will call me a bitch but I’ll be cool with it! Then every time I eat stuff I’ve made in front of my friends I’m going to talk about how awesome it tastes!

I have gotten off track. Part of me wants to just stop right now and go out on a really spiteful note… But no. No, Julie Powell has taught me to finish what I started. So...KERK BURGERS!

Kerk burgers. Photo styling by Rob.

Being no stranger to self-absorption, Kerk Burgers are called Kerk Burgers because I named them after myself. Just like how I sing songs to Anjali such as “Kerks Just Want to Have Fun” and “Living on a Kerk” These burgers are my only legacy. And they’re not even that impressive so I doubt my legacy will last very long. [Ed note: Don't believe it.]

Get yourself some ground beef. We’re doing this whole sustainable thing now so we got grass fed meat from the Atwater Village Farmers’ Market. And by “we” I mean “Anjali,” since I’m terrified of farmers’ markets.

Then it’s just a matter of securing the following, incredibly rare ingredients:

-salt

-freshly ground pepper

-garlic powder

-diced onions

-Worcestershire sauce

The hardest thing to find (the Worcestershire sauce) is available in most specialty “ethnic” supermarkets. Chances are they’ll be sold out though, so just buy in bulk online.

Take a little of each ingredient and work it into a patty (I like to do it patty by patty, instead of mixing it all in one bowl). I wish I could be more specific about the amount of each ingredient, but just eyeball it. I mean, it’s salt and pepper and garlic powder and onions and Worcestershire sauce. It’d be delicious on toast.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re a little priss. So anytime you touch raw ground meat, you’re gonna want to wipe off your hands off whenever you put it down. So, do what I do, and get someone to add the ingredients while you hold the meat and bark out “more!” or “less!” It’s a great group activity. You’ll love it. You’ll feel like you’re in an 80’s commercial for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Get out the old people, it’s time to make burgers!

Once your patties are made, throw them on a grill -- preferably one that is hot enough to cook meat -- and cook them so that you can then put them in a bun and eat them. I’d give cooking times and temperatures, but I’m still trying to figure all that out every time I make these. Of course, if you read food blogs, you probably know how to grill a hamburger, or are versed enough in cooking to know how to not screw it up, so I’ll leave the whole cooking part up to you, you little gastronomical savants you…

OK. That’s it.

When he's not criticizing food bloggers or making burgers, Rob enjoys teaching cats to read Google Maps and making funny videos about babies, football and Teen Wolf.

Smoke is seductive. It's why I love bacon, Lapsang Souchong tea, bonito flakes and smoked paprika, the dusky taste of campfires on my plate and in my cup. It's also why I asked for a stovetop smoker for Christmas this year.

The Cameron stovetop smoker is a compact rectangular pan with a lid that comes with four different types of wood chips and fairly straightforward instructions. My mind started racing soon after it arrived, visions of smoked salmon and smoked sea salt and smoked fennel began filling my head. Basically I wanted to smoke everything in my kitchen, just to see.

And with that, let's take a break to discuss how owning a smoker can lead to grave misunderstandings. For example, when you are in the car with your parents over the holidays and you turn to your sister and say, "I can't wait to get back to LA so I can smoke something," she will look at you like you are insane and you will remind yourself to specify what you are smoking so people won't suspect you of being a delinquent. Except that when you turn to a coworker a few weeks later and say, "I'm excited about smoking mushrooms on Saturday," he will look at you like you are insane and ask if that's even possible.

So be careful. And for the record, this is the only way I know how to smoke mushrooms.

I used shiitake, oyster and king oyster mushrooms, purchased at a Korean market for a ridiculously affordable price. The mushrooms soaked up the smoke like little sponges, softening and becoming intensely earthy. Were I a vegetarian or vegan trying to add a bacon-like note to a dish, I'd much prefer these to a strip of fake striped meat.

After bringing them to a friend's birthday BBQ, I froze the leftovers by laying them out individually on a sheet pan in the freezer until solid, then threw them into a freezer bag. (I'm addicted to doing this as a way to save ingredients. I blame my thrifty Presbyterian missionary background.) With kale, chopped yellow onion and a big handful of Pecorino Romano, they made a wonderful cold-weather pasta dish -- inspired by my friend Lydia -- and would undoubtedly be a great addition to risotto.

If you love mushrooms as much as I do, you'll also want to check out Machine Project's FungiFest 2010 starting this weekend. Mushroom gelato from Scoops! Need I say more?

Smoked Mushrooms

1 pound mushrooms of your choice
Olive oil
Salt
Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Clean the mushrooms by either giving them a quick rinse or just brushing them free of debris. Snap off and discard the tough stems (if using varieties like shiitake, cremini and portabella) and place mushrooms in a large bowl. Drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil and a good pinch of salt and toss to distribute.

Smoke in a stovetop smoker according to manufacturer's instructions for 20 minutes, using the wood chips of your choice. (I did one batch with cherry and one batch with alder, and preferred the alder.) After smoking the mushrooms should be soft and slightly browned. If eating the mushrooms on their own, drizzle with balsamic vinegar and serve warm or at room temperature.

We Southern Californians live in a mystical land of year-round farmers markets which in the dead of sunny, 80-degree winter feature tables of dazzling citrus, local avocados and vials of unicorn tears collected by blond virgins under a blue moon.

Fine. Not quite that mystical -- but almost. All the farmers markets near my mom's neighborhood outside Seattle shut down between October and May, which to my spoiled LA ears sounded like a joke the first time I heard it. The market between October and May is my very favorite time, months of beets and black kale and crinkled Savoy cabbage. Remind me not to complain about the lack of weather and weird winter heat the next time you see me. Just say: "Meyer lemons and Oro Blanco grapefruits" and I'll get it.

Or just point to my new calendar: the beautiful Southland Produce Calendar from Krank Press, a Christmas gift from my sister Joanna, who obviously knows my love of seasonal vegetables and efficient time management. Each month features a linocut of a different vegetable and a list of what is in season, alongside a list of what to plant in your garden, all done in striking red and blue letterpress. It's a perpetual calendar, which means I'll be able to use it year after year as a garden journal, although at the moment I'm happy to just admire it on my wall.

Also cool is the fact that Krank Press is based in Silver Lake, just down the street from me. If seasonal produce isn't your thing, check out their Odd Birds of LA or Los Angeles in History calendars. Then go outside in short sleeves, just because you're in LA and it's January and you can.

For a long time I didn't understand why anyone would choose dried beans over canned. They were cheaper, sure, but saving a couple bucks didn't seem worth the hours spent producing a pot of unevenly cooked legumes, some hard as little marbles, others so soft their skins floated behind them like ragged capes. A can opener and a quick rinse made much more sense to me.

Then I discovered the Parsons Method.

Russ Parsons mentions it in his kitchen science book for non-science geeks, How to Read a French Fry, but rather in passing, not in the solemn tones you would expect from one who is about to change the way you think about beans and how you cook them forever. (Okay, it's true. I don't actually know what tone I'd expect in a life-changing bean manifesto, but there would probably be lightning. And maybe a chorus of angels.)

His method is this: cook your beans in a dutch oven in a low oven instead of on the stove. You don't have to soak them first. And you can add salt during the cooking.

My dutch oven.

It's simple, I know. But there's magic in the even oven heat and early salting, which leaves each bean soft, whole and deeply seasoned. Plus, no soaking means you can add beans to the menu a couple hours before dinner, rather than the night before.

Another crucial component is, of course, the beans. The older they are, the longer they will take to cook and the greater the risk of uneven cooking. I usually avoid beans at mainstream grocery stores, where they have an unpredictable turnaround time, and purchase instead from Latin or Middle Eastern markets, bulk goods stores like Naturewell or farmers markets. And I have only heard good things about Rancho Gordo's heirloom beans, which ship for a flat rate of $8.

Besides extreme age, there are two other factors which lead to beans that never soften: hard water and acidic ingredients like tomatoes or vinegar. Salt is not on this list, despite the widespread belief that salt prevents beans from softening. According to kitchen-science guru Harold McGee, salt does slow the rate at which beans absorb water, but they eventually soften and cook through. I've been salting my beans for over a year now and it has never interfered with the cooking process.

Also: I really need to start dropping the phrase "salting my beans" into casual conversation.

Beans -- The Parsons Method

Measure out your beans, then wash them and pick out any bits of dirt or straw. (One cup of dry beans makes about 3 cups cooked.) If you are using chickpeas, you'll need to soak the beans overnight in cold water; for all other beans no soaking is required.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Put the beans in a heavy dutch oven and add 2 1/2 cups of water for every cup of beans. Put the lid on the pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Transfer the pot to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, then add 2 teaspoons of salt for every cup of dry beans. Stir and return to the oven for another 30-40 minutes. If you suspect your beans are very fresh, start checking them after they have been in the oven for a total of 50 minutes. Chickpeas will need the full 70 minutes and often even more.

Beef chili with pumpkin.

If you'll be using the beans for another dish, you can either drain them and use them immediately, or let them cool in their cooking liquid and refrigerate, liquid and all. If you'll be eating the beans on their own, you can add more flavor by sauteing aromatics like onions, carrots and celery in oil or bacon fat in the dutch oven before adding the dry beans. Drop in a bay leaf or the herb or spice of your choice. As long as you don't add anything acidic before the beans are fully cooked, you can simmer whatever you like along with the beans.

I used this batch of beans (pinquitos, from a stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market) to make beef chili with pumpkin, using grass-fed ground beef from J & J -- the perfect meal for a rainy December night.

Cathy from Gastronomy Blog is full of good ideas. For instance, San Gabriel Valley eaters have her to thank for the handy acronym for the impossible-to-remember JTYH Restaurant: Justin Timberlake, You're Hot! Easy, right? You'll never embarrass yourself in front of the Chinese knife-cut noodle set again thanks to Cathy.

But perhaps her best idea to date is EAT MY BLOG, a blogger bake sale benefiting the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. As soon as she sent out the call for blogger-bakers, I offered to help, and joined Laurie from G-ma's Bakery and Diana from Diana Takes a Bite on the planning committee. Several weeks, hundreds of emails, forty-plus bakers and one planning dinner at Canelé later, the sale is on and I couldn't be more excited.

Click here for the full-size menu.

Come out to Zeke's Smokehouse this Saturday, December 5th from 10 AM to 4 PM and pick up treats like pear and walnut mini coffee cakes, pumpkin swirl brownies, rose and sweet corn macarons and orange and saffron caramels. There will be a couple vegan options and some gluten-free goods as well. Everything will be priced from $1 to $3 and all proceeds will go to the LA Regional Food Bank, which provides food to the hungry all over LA. Rob and I spent one Saturday morning volunteering there, building bags of food for the elderly, and I can personally vouch for the important and inspiring work they do. (You can read more about the LA Regional Food Bank here and find out how to volunteer with them here.)

I'll be making black sesame cupcakes with matcha frosting and cranberry caramel almond tarts, should you want to eat my blog, but no matter what, this Saturday's sale should be a great time. Just ask this guy, who clearly understands how fun baking can be:

Icing a cake, year unknown. From the LAPL Photo Collection.

EAT MY BLOG
Saturday, December 5th from 10 AM to 4 PM
Zeke's Smokehouse
7100 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046

UPDATE: The event was a huge success, selling out in the early afternoon and raising $3,000 for the LA Food Bank. Take a look at Cathy's write-up and photos for more details. Thanks to all the bakers and sweets eaters who stopped by!

I come from a long line of Presbyterian missionaries who spent time in West Africa, India and Thailand. If you're thinking The Poisonwood Bible or Mormons in bike helmets, you can stop. My extended family's time overseas led to a love of board games, sweetened condensed milk and singalongs, but we are not an overtly evangelical bunch.

This may be why I never really learned guilt. Not like my Catholic or Jewish friends anyway, whose mothers -- it is usually their mothers -- seemingly heaped on the guilt daily, like the big spoonfuls of sugar I used to dump in my morning cornflakes. It probably sounds strange to those who grew up with a fully-developed sense of guilt, but I almost never feel guilty.

Except that lately I feel guilty every time I eat meat.

Let me first say straight out that I am not a vegetarian and do not think there is anything fundamentally wrong with eating another living creature, although I have no problem with those who choose to forgo meat and/or animal products entirely. What I do find fundamentally wrong is the entire intensive meat farming industry, the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), the "high stocking densities," the antibiotics and growth hormones, the rows and rows of animals living and dying in misery, so that we can buy our boneless, skinless, tasteless chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound. It's not right. And I don't feel right eating it.

It's hard to not feel helpless, confronted with statistics that sketch out the sprawling, stinking behemoth that is the factory farming industry. But I've reached the point where I can't look at a piece of intensively farmed meat without visions of sad cows and suicidal pigs dancing through my head, so no matter how ineffectual it feels, I've decided to only eat sustainably farmed meat from now on.

This means only grass-fed beef, lamb, bison and goat, pastured chicken and duck and humanely raised pork. It also means a lot more research and work when I go shopping. Part of the problem is that the language surrounding meat and its origins is purposely vague, misleading and often meaningless. "Natural" means only that the meat is free of artificial colors and preservatives. "Organic" means the animal ate a completely organic diet, was not given hormones or antibiotics and was allowed access to the outdoors, but this could mean just a small door leading to a tiny concrete yard. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee the life of an organic chicken was any less horrific than that of its conventional cousin.

So I am turning to farmers markets, where shopping for humanely-raised meat is cheaper than Whole Foods and much more rewarding: I can actually look the farmer in the eye and ask him how his animals lived and died. The number of meat vendors at LA-area farmers markets is miniscule compared to the number of produce vendors, but seems to be growing steadily. I can personally recommend the pastured (jidori) chicken from Ana's Farm at the Alhambra Farmers Market and the grass-fed beef from J&J at the Atwater Village Farmers Market (and other markets throughout the week).

The one caveat? I am making an exception for special ethnic restaurants, simply because I am a weak, food-obsessed person who cannot live without soup dumplings from Din Tai Fung, boat noodles from Sapp and fried chicken from Kyochon. They are only occasional indulgences, so I don't feel guilty about the decision.

...Okay, maybe just a little. But my overwhelming feeling is relief. I am no longer hiding behind passivity and the mantra "What I don't know can't hurt me!" As I finish off the last of a small roast chicken -- small because it grew at a normal pace, without a freakishly large breast -- I am not swallowing guilt, shame or fear. Only chicken, really good chicken.

Some inspiration (and more thorough, eloquent thoughts on the meat industry):

There are days when I wish I lived anywhere but LA. I can't face the traffic battle to my job in Beverly Hills, can't stand the looks from women with Botox-frozen faces and their tiny dogs, can't fight the tide of noisepeoplesmogmallscarsbillboardsmoney. It makes me want to find a small cabin in the woods and move right in.

But then I go somewhere like Wat Dong Moon Lek, a new Thai restaurant just a few blocks from my house, and remember there are no Thai noodles in the woods. It's a major flaw in my plan.

The chalkboard menu.

Wat Dong Moon Lek has been open for a few months, but since a write-up in the LA Times last week, business has exploded. I stopped by with Jessica, who has been talking to me about the place for several weeks, and the owner immediately recognized her and greeted us warmly. "You came here even before the article!" she told Jessica. On this Tuesday night all the tables were full, but service was speedy and exceptionally attentive.

Rambutan salad.

I had to get the rambutan salad, cool slippery orbs of fruit dressed with coconut milk and garnished with sesame seeds, sliced onions, Thai chilis and cooked shrimp. Rambutans are a pink, prickly-skinned, lychee-like fruit which I don't think I've ever even seen in the U.S., let alone eaten in a salad that so expertly balances the sweet and the savory. Tiny explosions of nuttiness and heat went off in my mouth as I chewed, the sweet rambutan flesh mingling with the salty coconut milk, and I was reminded of how when I was growing up my dad would fill a plate with sliced pineapple from the salad bar at Sizzler and eat it dipped in salt. Sweet, salty, sour -- it's a synergy even my nine-year-old self appreciated, though I still found the whole pineapple-with-salt thing super weird.

Wat Dong Moon Lek noodles with beef.

We both got small bowls of the restaurant's namesake noodles with beef, surprisingly large portions of medium-rare meat, rice stick noodles and bean sprouts swimming in beefy broth, garnished with thinly sliced lettuce and a sprinkle of white pepper. The broth tasted familiar though I had never before eaten this style of noodle soup, which is the specialty of a particular shop adjacent to a temple in Bangkok. I realized it reminded me of beef Cup Noodles, which sounds terrible but listen! Obviously the fresh broth in Wat Dong Moon Lek's noodle soup is worlds away from the thin, sad stuff you find in a paper-topped cup, with a body and intensity Nissin could never replicate, but to tell you the truth I loved beef Cup Noodles as a kid. And these noodles are like the grown-up version I never knew existed.

Chile peppercorn with pork.

I had wanted to round out the meal with khao man gai, Thailand's version of Hainanese chicken rice, but they had already run out so we ordered chile peppercorn with pork, tender pieces of meat in a dry red curry speckled with Thai basil leaves and a branch of soft green peppercorns. Each mouthful was a spicy, balanced blast of flavor and I found myself picking out the peppercorns to nibble on even after I was full.

Coconut smoothie.

Linda Burum's description of the sophisticated dessert offerings had my betsu-bara rumbling, but unfortunately they had run out of dessert so I had to content myself with the icy dregs of my refreshing, not-too-sweet coconut smoothie.

I couldn't be happier to finally have a good Thai place in Silver Lake. A GOOD Thai place with inventive food, friendly service and an exuberant turquoise interior complete with colorful chalkboard pictures of Obama and Elvis. The LA Times coverage has the small space bursting at the seams right now and a midweek visit is the way to go, but hopefully things will settle down soon. I'll be checking back for khao man gai and desserts next week.

(Psst...it's cash only, so bring your Hamiltons.)

Wat Dong Moon Lek
4356 Fountain Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 666-5993

Don't tell my boyfriend, but I often daydream about moving to a foreign country noted for its cuisine -- say, Italy or Thailand -- and becoming fluent enough in that country's language to attend culinary school there. Fuschia Dunlop lived that dream, becoming the first foreigner to enroll in a professional training course at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu, China. I was excited when my cookbook club picked her Sichuanese cookbook, Land of Plenty, because I read her memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, while working at a particularly mind-numbing temp job. Tales of eating fish-fragrant pork slivers and learning to master the searing heat of the wok were the perfect antidote for endless data entry, I discovered. I hoped her recipes would be just as good.

Before starting to cook, a few of us took a field trip to the 99 Ranch Market in Arcadia to stock up on staples like Shaoxing rice wine, wood ear mushrooms and Sichuan pepper, a strange, tongue-numbing spice that is an essential element in Sichuanese cuisine. Its numbing coolness provides an intriguing counterpoint to the spicy heat of the chiles used liberally in many Sichuanese dishes, kind of like jumping into a cold pool after a long sauna bake.

Spicy cucumber salad.

We met on a scorching summer day to eat some dishes from the book and talk about the recipes. Like many Asian cuisines, Sichuanese food is fairly straightforward once you have the right ingredients. Often dishes require just a few ingredients yet have a surprising depth of flavor, like the Zucchini Slivers with Garlic I made or Ellen's Spicy Cucumber Salad. Because the recipes are so spare, they demand the freshest, best-tasting vegetables, something I discovered after making the Haricots Verts in Ginger Sauce with green beans that were a bit tough and starchy. After a short blanching and light dressing with ginger, Chinese vinegar and sesame oil, the beans were tough, starchy and tasted faintly of ginger-sesame. Lesson learned.

Of the 23 flavors in the Sichuanese culinary canon, probably the most distinctive is "hot and numbing flavor" (ma la wei xing), a combination of spicy chiles and cooling Sichuan pepper. One of the first recipes I attempted was ma po dou fu -- tofu simmered in chile oil and a small amount of ground meat, sprinkled with Sichuan pepper -- and I was hooked on the odd, numbing sensation, as well as the comforting flavors of the dish. Strangely enough, the combination of chili bean paste and ground beef reminds me of bolognese sauce. In a good way.

Another flavor unique to Sichuan is "fish fragrant flavor" (yu xiang wei xing), which does not taste or smell like fish, but is based on the seasonings traditionally used with fish: Sichuanese chili bean paste, garlic, ginger and scallions. For the meeting, Lily made Fish-Fragrant Eggplants, buttery chunks of fried eggplant soaked in a chili-red sauce spiked with ginger and garlic. I didn't want to stop eating it.

While cooking through the book, I kept thinking back on Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper and wishing I was reading it at the same time, so I could figure out the stories behind the dishes. The two books should be sold together, a boxed set for those who dream of moving far away and cooking their hearts out, but can't because they love their boyfriends who have to stay in LA for career reasons. Or is that too specific a readership?

My recommendation: get both books. Read, cook and dream.

I recently joined the Culinary Historians of Southern California, thereby fulfilling my dream of being a member of an organization with both a quarterly newsletter and a treasurer. YES. Further proof that CHSC and I were meant to be: it is closely affiliated with the LA Public Library and it hosts free monthly talks by noted food experts. Like Jonathan Gold, whose recent talk on "The Rise of Regional Cuisines in the San Gabriel Valley" covered a list of 25 or so restaurants which for him have defined regional Asian cuisine in the area. It was less like a lecture from a college professor and more like a peek into the journal of a man passionate about his hobby -- in this case, seeking out the best knife-cut noodles, Taiwanese slush and fake dogmeat in the county.

I won't regurgitate the whole list here, but I did want to bring up something I've been thinking about in the week since he spoke, a point he brought up when talking about number 15 on his list, the Taiwanese restaurant Nice Time Deli. He hated it for a long time. He hated the food, the stinky tofu and bitter melon, and couldn't understand why it always seemed to be packed with people clearly relishing their meals. But he kept eating there. He said he looked around the dining room, saw a roomful of professional-looking Taiwanese ex-pats who had obviously gone out of their way to eat at this restaurant and he decided to figure out what he was missing. Two months and sixteen meals later, he finally did.

I repeat: he ate there seventeen times before he started to actually enjoy himself, a mind-boggling feat for which I have the utmost respect.

While it's true that most food bloggers lack both the expense account and the time needed to dine at a restaurant 15+ times before publishing their opinions, many are also missing something even more crucial: a totally open mind. It was humbling to hear that Jonathan Gold -- arguably one of the most knowledgeable restaurant reviewers in the country, certainly one of the most respected -- sat back at the end of the meal and admitted to himself, I don't get this yet. He assumed the problem was not the food; it was him.

And then he ate and he ate until finally he understood the appeal of bitter melon ("not bitter like coffee, not bitter like dark chocolate -- bitter like cancer medicine"). Until maybe tofu that smelled like an alleyway of rotting garbage started to almost make sense.

I strive to be like that, a person who has devoted a good chunk of his life to learning all he can about the subject that interests him most, respected by others as an expert -- yet still able to say humbly and honestly, "I still have more to learn."

Because the only thing more bitter than bitter melon is a critic who thinks he knows it all. Right?

In Japan every place -- even the smallest, most unremarkable village -- is famous for something. Hokkaido is known for its rich and flavorful milk, its light-bodied, buttery style of ramen and a crab with freakishly long legs full of sweet, delicate meat. All were in attendance this past weekend at the Mitsuwa Hokkaido Fair 2009 -- all except the butter in the ramen, but more on that later.

My friends Mel and Steve, who went to the festival last year, invited me down to the Torrance Mitsuwa on Sunday during the pre-lunch hour, cautioning that the ramen booth had run out the year before. I got there early and wandered around, relishing the familiar sound of "Irasshaimase!" being belted out by tiny uniformed ladies proffering treats. Between the supermarket and the food court, a strip of booths selling Hokkaido specialties had sprung up and I couldn't resist the rows of golden karei-pan (curry bread) at Pullman Bakery. I also eyed the Yubari meron-pan (melon bread made from a special Hokkaido muskmelon) and shiro-taiyaki (white, fish-shaped cakes filled with sweet red bean paste), but decided to wait until after the ramen.

Mel and Steve arrived and we lined up at Shingen Ramen. Steve craned his neck looking for the miso-butter ramen they had eaten at last year's festival, but only straightforward shio ramen was to be found. I was pretty happy about the prospect of any sort of ramen in my belly, but the more Steve talked about the rich miso broth kissed with a bit of famous Hokkaido butter, the more I started craning my neck looking for miso-butter ramen. But, as the old saying goes, a ramen bowl in the hand is worth two in the bush. I sat down before my bowl of shio ramen with only joy in my heart.

The broth was clean and powerfully salty, the noodles springy, the whole bowl surprisingly free of the usual porky grease. It was like a ramen deconstructed, each component simple but nearly flawless.

I would have eaten it with some butter though, had they offered. I'm just saying.

Dessert number one was my still-warm curry pan, a crunchy-coated roll miraculously filled with rich curry, a study in textures and contrasting flavors. I could write a paper about the synergy of crunchy-soft bread, squishy curry and smooth potato chunk...but I'd rather just eat another curry pan.

Dessert number two was a shiro-taiyaki. Or two actually, because I really like taiyaki. It's my second favorite Japanese festival food.* I once even made a purse with a felt applique of a taiyaki and the phrase "I want to eat taiyaki" embroidered on it in Japanese, so you see how I serious I am about this little pancake fish. But I had never tried shiro (white) taiyaki and was wondering how MJ Shokudo managed to keep their tai so vampire pale, when the first bite made it clear: mochi flour. Freshly grilled, the little fish was addictively chewy with a crisp outer skin and smooth, sweet bean center. Forget mochi ice cream balls, people. Mochi is magical when it's warm. MAGICAL.

The melon pan was unfortunately sold out, so there was no dessert number three. But that's okay. I scoped out the market's candy aisles and ogled the Hokkaido crab for sale before heading home, feeling a little sad my pretend Japan day was over. As my former students would say, it was very enjoy! Shall we do it again next year?

* My very favorite Japanese festival food is jaga-bataa ("potato butter"), simply a well-steamed potato topped with a giant chunk of butter. You salt it to taste and eat it in a bowl with chopsticks. Simple and fantastically satisfying.

Although Delicious Coma tends to focus more on fermenting cabbage than upcoming food events, a few interesting meals devoted to good causes have come my way and I wanted to write them up.

The first event combines two of my favorite things: Julia Child and the Los Angeles Public Library. How can you go wrong? This Thursday at Cafe Pinot, executive chef Kevin Meehan will be presenting four courses from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, plus wine pairings and dessert. The $75 prix fixe meal is sponsored by Young Literati, the library's membership group for younger, hipper readers which raises money to do fantastic things like buy more educational materials for young patrons and expand literacy programs throughout the library's 72 branches.

The event is just two days away, but there is still room, so make a reservation by emailing literati@lapl.org or calling Lori Enterline at (213) 228-7542. You can also make a reservation online.

Happy eating and reading! (I'm assuming it's alright to do both at this dinner.)

Cafe Pinot
700 W. Fifth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
(Right next to the Central Library)

Sundays are inextricably linked with pickled cabbage for me. When I was small, Sunday was jook day with my dad, a post-church ritual involving hot rice porridge, tiny dried shrimp and a can of pickled cabbage.* My mother, fearful of her children OD-ing on salt, always put away the pickled cabbage before I had my fill, so I remember those mornings as warm and slow and filled with an aching desire for more slippery, crunchy, salty bites of pickled cabbage.

Making red cabbage sauerkraut.

So when I heard about Machine Project's Krautfest '09, a Sunday dedicated to learning how to make not one but two types of pickled cabbage, it was a no-brainer. I was there, despite the long list of items to bring and the napa cabbage brining that had to happen the night before. No one ever said love was easy.

Shredding cabbage on a giant mandoline.

Machine Project was less crowded than it had been during Fallen Fruit's Public Fruit Jam, but the attendees were just as friendly, a buzzing roomful of people excited about making pickles. First we learned the simple art of sauerkraut making from Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, the couple behind the blog Homegrown Evolution. After shredding a head of cabbage, I massaged in about a tablespoon of salt by hand, then dumped it into a small bucket and beat it to a juicy pulp with the bottom of a glass jar. (Others used beer bottles or their fists.) Dump in the other half, beat, repeat -- until all three heads of cabbage sat, mashed and juicy, in the bucket. That was it. In order to age properly, the cabbage must remain submerged in the brine, so we were given plastic zipper bags to fill with salt water and use as sauerkraut weights, along with the instructions to "Pick out anything that looks weird" as the cabbage ages, a process which should take anywhere from a few days to two weeks. To figure out if it's done, "Just taste it," said Kelly. "It's done when it tastes ready to you."

After writing our names on our buckets and stowing them away, it was time to master the slightly more complicated art of kimchi making from the mother-daughter team behind Granny Choe Kimchi, Oghee and Connie Choe. The kimchi ingredient list had sent me to California Market on Beverly the day before, where I had no trouble finding ground Korean chili pepper, a ginormous head of napa cabbage and gat, Korean mustard greens. We were instructed to brine the napa cabbage the night before, peeling off all the leaves and soaking them in a gallon of water mixed with half a cup of salt. We also had to bring a small shredded daikon, a whole head of peeled garlic, a piece of peeled ginger, an onion (which actually should have been a bunch of green onions) and a little sugar and salt.

Mama Choe instructed us to cut up all the cabbage and put it in the bowl along with the chili pepper. Many people had brought the wrong type of chili powder, so Daughter Choe walked around with a giant sack and a teacup, dispensing Korean chili powder to anyone who needed it. Then came the garlic and ginger, crushed in a garlic press, followed by the onion, chopped fine, the daikon and the chopped mustard greens. A tablespoon of sugar and two teaspoons of salt were mixed with a cup of water and dumped in, along with a bit of cooked rice to aid fermentation.

Passing out kimchi samples.

I pulled on plastic gloves and set to work mixing everything in the bowl, massaging the cabbage to soften it. The Choes walked around adding a few pieces of their own mature kimchi to each bowl to help jump-start fermentation. I packed my young kimchi into a big jar and sat back to admire it, pleased at how much it looked like real kimchi.

Choucroute garnie.

Kimchi making was over, but there was one last pickled cabbage pleasure: choucroute garnie, the Alsatian specialty of cooked sauerkraut and smoked meats, made for us by Jean-Paul Monsche, an Alsatian friend of the Homegrown Evolution crew. Before we dug in, Jean-Paul told us a bit about the history of the dish and the special place it holds in Alsatian culture. He claimed his rendition wasn't perfect, but I thought it was fantastic, redolent with smoky meat, the sauerkraut mellow and tender. Perhaps I should have been born in Alsace, where my consumption of massive amounts of pickled cabbage would have been a point of regional pride rather than cause for alarm.

I'm so proud of my kimchi.

Oh well. The 10 pounds of cabbage currently fermenting in my kitchen will hopefully help me get over the childhood trauma of never having enough pickled cabbage.

* Pam of Rants and Craves recently wrote a lovely post about her own weekend jook mornings with her family. She strikes me as the kind of mom who would let her boy eat as much pickled cabbage as he wanted though.

You may not know this about me, but in addition to being a food nerd, I am also a productivity geek, which means I neatly label my spices, I clean out my refrigerator regularly and I made this kind of embarrassing grocery list template organized around the layout of my local Trader Joe's. (I can totally send you the Word doc if you shop at the TJ's in Silver Lake, just let me know.) So it probably comes as no surprise that I have a system in place for organizing the recipes I find online. It's not perfect, but I thought I'd write it up in case it might help any other food and productivity nerds out there.

Click on any screenshot for a full-size view.

It all starts with Google Reader, the hub of my blog reading and where I am most likely to find a recipe I want to keep for later. If I'm in a hurry, I'll just star the recipe so I'll be able to find it easily later. (Extra credit keyboard shortcut geek tip: Just hit S to star an entry in Google Reader.)

If I have a little more time, I immediately save the recipe in Delicious, tagging it with "recipe" plus a mix of general and specific tags, so I have the ability later to search for either a general category of recipes or a specific main ingredient. When I have a larger chunk of time and the desire to obsessively organize, I go through all my starred items and add the recipes to Delicious. Unstarring an item (geek tip: hit S again) after saving it, tagged neatly, is a wonderfully satisfying feeling, like how it felt to empty your school binder at the end of the year in junior high.

...You're getting a deep look into my psyche here, people. I hope you appreciate it.

Here's where we kick into Mac-specific nerd mode because the best and most convenient aspect of saving recipes in Delicious is that I can look them up with Quicksilver, the application launcher program any good geek should be using on her Mac. (You can read more about Quicksilver here: "Why Quicksilver is Still the Greatest Mac App of All Time.") I just pull up Quicksilver -- with a keyboard shortcut, of course -- and type in any word from the name of the recipe to get a list of saved items with that word. I highlight the recipe, hit Return and the recipe page opens up in a new tab in my browser. Quicksilver is also adaptive, so if every time I search for "lentils" I choose Orangette's flawless lentil salad recipe, that item will begin appearing at the top of the list.

I've also been playing around with Evernote, which goes beyond storing bookmarks, allowing you to copy and paste the actual website content -- helpful in case your recipe comes from a blog that closes up shop -- and save documents, photos and even handwritten notes, so if you go to a party and eat an amazing pavlova, you can ask the hostess to write up the recipe on a napkin and save that alongside a photo you snapped of the dessert wine served at the party. It has the potential to be the ultimate recipe box, but I've only just started using it and have yet to reach those heights.

So that's it. Is it all rather underwhelming? Does the idea of accessing a recipe with just two keystrokes and a keyword leave you absolutely cold? Sorry, my friend, it's a geek thing. I like to save time looking up recipes so I have more time to cook. And eat. And, you know, lie around the house rereading the Harry Potter books. Whatever.

Fellow geeks, how do you store your recipes online?

1) That it is acceptable to eat ice cream at least once a day, every day.

2) That riding my scooter becomes the perfect pastime.

Don't get me wrong, I almost always like riding my scooter. But chilly midwinter scootering can't compare to a sunny August afternoon ride, sunglasses on, arms recklessly bare, my little Buddy 125 humming happily beneath me. There's nothing better than that. Except maybe ice cream.

Which is why fellow scooter rider Javier (a.k.a. Teenage Glutster) and I decided to combine the two and have an ice cream scooter crawl, starting with scoops at Scoops, ending with beer floats at The Golden State and trying to avoid any sugar-fueled collisions in between.

We met at Scoops in the early afternoon, so early that the ice cream was mostly untouched, still mounded in creamy swirls and somehow looking even more irresistible. Javier, his lady friend and I split two double scoops: one cup of vegan salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom, which Javier wisely sprinkled with chopped peanuts, and one cup of black currant-sour cream and vanilla-whiskey. I view the combining of two flavors of ice cream in one cup something of an art form and I think we really nailed it this time, especially the salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom with the peanuts. The peanuts were crucial. The other cup worked just because the black currant-sour cream was one of the best Scoops flavors I've ever eaten, rich and tangy with a deep berry taste.

As we were finishing, Jessica -- my passenger/lady friend -- arrived and we worked out a game plan while she polished off a scoop of ice cream.

The next stop was Helados Pops, just a couple blocks away. A tiny shop specializing in sorbets flavored with Central and South American fruits, it was the place I was most excited to bring Javier to, mainly because I was so curious about all the flavors. Javier immediately started chatting with the woman behind the counter, who dished out brightly colored samples of nance (a yellow crabapple-like fruit with a slightly funky taste), arrayán (a kind of guava), marañón (cashew apple, a yellow fruit with a sweet taste reminiscent of pineapple) and lúcuma (egg fruit, a dry-fleshed fruit from Peru with a unique caramel flavor). We ended up getting scoops of the last three in a pint container, along with a half-scoop of the nance because we asked nicely. Lúcuma, the only non-sorbet of the bunch, was the flavor that most interested Javier due to its rarity outside of South America. My favorite was the arrayán: green, slightly sour and utterly refreshing. They also make arrayán paletas!

Next we made a brief savory stop at Mush Bakery for fresh lahmajun, to halt the onset of acute sugar shock. At 90 cents each, they were an amazingly affordable curative.

Bhan Kanom is my favorite place in Thai Town for sweets, so I assumed they would also serve a good Thai slush, but although the ingredients were intriguing -- palm toddy? -- the ice was chunky rather than slushy and drowned in a syrup that tasted like children's cough medicine. Never again.

Thankfully, our last stop was a sure thing: award-winning beer floats at The Golden State. The ride from Thai Town to Fairfax was the longest of the day, so by the time we arrived we were more than ready to get out of the sun and relax with our floats. Jason, one of The Golden State's co-owners, welcomed us with his usual laid-back friendliness and set about making us a couple floats when we told him our ice cream mission. First up was Old Rasputin with Scoop's signature Brown Bread gelato, a now-classic combination of rich, dark stout and creamy, brown sugar-tinged ice cream. Our second float was a lucky off-menu score, a summery combo of The Bruery's Hottenroth Berliner Weisse and strawberry-basil gelato. Jason pointed out that the sour ale makes the float taste almost like it's made with champagne. It was light and refreshing, undoubtedly my favorite of the two, at least on that warm summer day.

After draining our glasses, we sat back and sighed, contented and full of ice cream, looking forward to a leisurely ride home. We're already discussing our next scooter crawl: a San Gabriel Valley winter hotpot marathon. Who's in?

Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649

Helados Pops
1010 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 660-2900

Mush Bakery
5224 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 662-2010

Bhan Kanom
5271 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 871-8030

The Golden State
426 N Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-8331