Music To Eat By

I finally received my disabled bus pass in the mail.  It now costs me $14 a month instead of $75!  With that in mind, I took the bus out for a trial run today.

First off, given my new situation of not being employed, I have a lot of time on my hands on a daily basis.  I have been getting out of the house every day, and embarking on a journey, whether it is just to the Farmer's Market (and the Grove), or it's to Baja Fresh for a salad. 

Speaking of Baja Fresh, I have a pet peeve.  Why is it that a lot of "Mexican" eateries play "salsa" music instead of traditional Mexican music?  There is a vast difference from say, Celia Cruz and Ana Barbara.

I found myself today in Westwood, having started out going to the beach in Santa Monica, but stopping after traffic made me realize I would not get there until 5 p.m.  So, I walked around and found this Mexican restaurant, and went in for a late lunch.

I ordered soup and salad.

I didn't like either of them too much.  The salsa for the chips was better tasting. 

However, the music playing was salsa, and not Mexican.  Sheesh.

Ana Barbara - No Se Que Voy a Hacer



Celia Cruz - Bemba Colora

Schmuck

I was sitting on the bus stop and saw this food truck.  It made me laugh.

I spend a lot of my time these days just "sitting" and observing whatever.  It actually is pleasant.  I see a lot of stuff that I normally would miss.

Here's to the "shmuck" in all of us!

Who Says Money Doesn't Count?

It is funny how it comes about that certain people "know" you, for whatever reason.  For example, I always ordered food and booze from Yummy.com for years.  Then, after I experienced a significant depreciation in my income such that I was on food stamps and could not afford to pay the exorbitant prices from Yummy, it has been a good six months since I bought anything from the online store.

Until today.  I was mildly surprised that the delivery person actually went to my old apartment (in the same building) before she realized that I had moved!  She asked me, "uh, did you move?"

It cost me a little bit more, and I am not going to order on a regular basis, but I got what I wanted at this late hour, not to mention the recognition, and that is what counts.

"Kitchen Nightmares"

I am such a fan of Chef Ramsey, and I especially like watching marathons of his show, "Kitchen Nightmares." Forget all the bleeped out "fucks" and "bloody" and "shit" and all the other swear words that are part of the show. I find it fascinating that Ramsey is such a great chef that he can turn crap into shinola ... that is, if there are the ingredients and temperament to handle his very direct, in your face, recovery program.

Plus, it definitely makes me aware of the food I eat at restaurants ... cough, cough (barf, barf)!

Rebel Yell

Well, we all know I am a Billy Idol (ahem) "fan," but I also love Scooter (I am so a fan of house/techno/etc music).

Feeling like a "rebel" after tonight's encounter with some of the "best" of the left. Glad I ate at "the Bounty" and had a few drinks (ha ha, my bad) before I went to the "kos" meeting (for which they were handing out some sort of get something for free or whatever if you went over to the H.M.S. Bounty for drinks and shit afterward). Hell, I had the leftovers from my steak in my purse at the "meeting." But, then again, it's my stomping grounds for that old school bar feel. I cannot even imagine that any of those under 30 even get how cool this place is.

FDA Still Ineffective

As the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to approve genetically modified salmon, one thing seems certain: Shoppers staring at fillets in the seafood department will find it tough to pick out the conventional fish from the one created with genes from another species.

Oh great! Not only can I not eat shellfish bought at any local market because I cannot tell where it came from, and I sure as hell am not going to eat anything caught in the Gulf region, now I have to deal with fake fish masquarading as genuinely caught fresh fish?

I have to tell you that the move to buying only organic not only has paid off with great tasting food, coupled with a complete sense of security about the food, my shopping bill has been less then it was at my regular standard grocery store, even though the prices at Whole Foods are much higher. First off, though, I am buying less, and as a result, throwing away much less. That has always been a problem with fresh produce -- it rots before I have time to use it all.

This weekend I found these funny looking potatoes grown by a local farmer. They were so tiny that many of them did not even need to be cut up for my beef stew I was making in the crock pot. And they were in four distinct colors -- red, purple, yellow and white. They made the stew look fabulous, not to mention the grass fed cows that the beef came from and certified as organic, was tender and tasty.

America at its best - corporate profits over America's health! If it's FDA approved, run away, run away fast!

Don't Eat The Food

This is why I'm eating organic only.

Once again, the GOP shows how little it cares about people other than corporate interests. It's laughable to suggest that the FDA is a troubled agency, since it was the GOP who created those problems in the first place. They have denied the agencies ability to issue food recalls, instead relying on the classic Republican lie that self-regulation works. It doesn't, as we know from Wall Street to food. The FDA has been one of the more improved agencies during Obama's term and they're pushing for more corporate responsibility. If there's one thing the Republicans hate, it's corporate responsibility.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma says the bill, which has stalled in the Senate for more than a year, adds to the deficit and expands the power of an already troubled agency.

Advocates for the bill say it is crucial to strengthen the nation's toothless food safety oversight and would help prevent large outbreaks of tainted food.

Coburn's office said Wednesday the senator will object to bringing up the bill if his concerns aren't addressed. His objections are a major blow to supporters' chances of passing the legislation this year.

MMMMM, Korean Tacos!

I finally made it to a Koggi BBQ truck and had my very first Korean taco! Wow, is all I can say.

I heard of the Koggi truck about a year ago, when Twitter was starting to be "the rage" in personal communication. Koggi would tweet where they were going to be, and people would gather and wait. Of course, the food had to be good enough to make people want to wait 30 deep in a line just to get some Korean BBQ in a taco, with the best salsa that is not of Spanish origin (well, I'm pretty sure I saw/tasted some cilantro)!

You can see where their four trucks will be at their website. And you can also follow them via twitter.

I liked the tacos. I can't wait to try something else.

Time For Me To Go Organic

Growing up and coming of age in the era of hippies and communes and getting back to nature, was the beginning of a certain way of life that I practiced and espoused for nearly 50 years.

I was exposed at an early age as well to organic foods by my aunt, who would eat at offbeat restaurants with her toddlers in tow (I being five years older than her oldest), which I remember had food that tasted like shit, but we ate it, to doing the weekly grocery shopping every other week at the only organic grocery store in the Valley.

Hell, I even did a three year stint as a total vegetarian (not vegan). To this day, however, I still won't eat brown rice (laughing).

I raised my daughter on organic food, and I was a practitioner of homeopathy, so I was big on cell salts and other important nutrients that our bodies needed. I was around 15 when I was administered my last real antibiotic, and never took them from that age on. I had only one childhood illness, the chicken pox, which both my sister and I got at the same time, and my grandmother, who was a registered nurse, took care of us. When I had my first bout of tonsillitis, I did not see a doctor or take any antibiotics -- my grandmother made me stay in bed for a week, she took a small stick, wrapped cotton around it, stuck it in a bottle of Mercurochrome and swab my throat, and picking any of the little (turn away if you are squeamish) puss balls! Oh, and make me drink lots of hot tea with honey and eat crackers, which kind of scraped my sore throat, but then again, that was the purpose.

Gradually, though, with the kid out of the house and having a kid of her own, and getting older and not really wanting to "cook" so much, I ended up back at the old traditional grocery store (Ralphs) even though they do have a large selection of healthy and organic foods.

The past couple of years under the Bush administration, where corporate overseeing was at its lowest, and more and more foods entered the mainstream that were contaminated, I've begun to re-think my current eating style. With the Gulf oil spill, and the threat of contaminated fish and shell fish, not to mention the egg recall, I am officially embarking on an organic eating regime.

Although I am at odds with the CEO of Whole Foods' position on global warming (he's a denier), and I have officially boycotted that store since day one of this discovery, it is, in many ways, the only place to do a full on grocery shopping for the week. Strolling down the aisles had two impacts on me. One, was a reminder of what I used to see on a regular basis, that is, names and brands that you do not see at traditional grocery stores, and the lack thereof of those traditional brands. Only in today's environment, there are more and more of "green" brands to choose from, than I had as a 30 something, and most assuredly more than were there when I was a teenager.

The second thing I noticed was the price, and boy did I encounter "sticker shock!" My daughter keeps telling me to go to Trader Joe's, but I just don't like the one near me, it's so small and it only has a handful of things that I would actually buy on a regular basis, meaning I would still have to do extra shopping somewhere else. Whole Foods is definitely a one stop grocery store, like a Ralphs, just healthy, organic, and expensive!

However, I got some ground beef (for my home made chili) that certified the cows were grass fed, and the same same with some cubed steak (for my beef stew), as well as some free range organic chicken thighs, with skin and bone (I use these in the crock pot, with baked beans, bbq sauce and an onion). And, yes, I bought organic baked beans and organic bbq sauce, and organic onion! Not to mention a few carrots and a few potatoes for my stew, again all certified as grown by organic standards. I also bought two prepared meals that I could re-heat. I got out of there paying just $45, but I could have bought all of that for one-half the price at Ralphs (although none of it would have been organic or without preservatives or additives or other crap in it). However, I feel better just knowing I'm limiting a lot of things that could be introduced into my system by food. Hell, I was one of those that had those eggs that were tainted, and yes, I actually did get sick, but did not know what the source was until I read about the recall and confirmed my eggs. When I cook eggs, yes, I do undercook them, and for a reason. Scrambled eggs will continue to cook and get "harder" even after you've turned off the heat and moved the eggs to a dish. So I tend to cook my scrambled eggs "wet" as the term is applied. I also like soft-boiled eggs, again, something that is not fully cooked like hard-boiled eggs. I got very bad stomach cramps and a little bit of nausea, but experienced nothing more than that. But, that was the last straw, really, having those salmonella eggs in my house, and having eaten them (I almost made french toast with those eggs for my grandson, but for whatever reason, I never did -- and thank goodness for who knows what would have happened to his little stomach).

So, I'm back on the range again, where the food I am eating I can at least identify where it comes from and what is in it, even if I am paying through the nose for it!

Who Doesn't Love A Good (Hot) Dog?

For those that may not remember that I owned a hot dog cart, enjoy!

I'm watching a food show on best hot dogs in the world. It's funny that the ladies at Pinks said there's nothing like the aroma a fresh dogs and buns steaming ... it floats over the neighborhood.

I could smell our dogs all the way up the block from where the cart was. Our most ardent customers where the actual residents of the neighborhood. Second were those that worked in the area and could smell the dogs a block away.

In Los Angeles, there are rarely places to get good dogs. The main thing I went for were more expensive dogs, but Kosher and great tasting. I always told my daughter that people will come back for a great dog!

Here are pictures of our business/menu card:


I designed them myself (grins). That's my daughter when she was preggers with Zaire, and Yoon, who oversaw the operation at that time.

Pass The Salt, Please

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”

[snip]

By all appearances, this is a moment of reckoning for salt. High blood pressure is rising among adults and children. Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.

Since processed foods account for most of the salt in the American diet, national health officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Michelle Obama are urging food companies to greatly reduce their use of salt. Last month, the Institute of Medicine went further, urging the government to force companies to do so.

[snip]

Now, the industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.”

Well, DUH. You put it in EVERYTHING so that our diets are so fucked up with 20 times the amount of daily intake of salt that we are told is acceptable. Hell, even I have to take blood pressure medicine and watch my intake. I've actually switched to fake salt, potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, and I use kosher salt for cooking (you need just a small amount to get that taste that tons of table salt gives you).

But, hey, by now we know most Americans are stupid ... the dumbed down era we live in, Mickey D's and chicken nuggets and all. Watching the "naked chef" Jamie Oliver's short television show about trying to help American school's change their food program was disheartening. Oliver's efforts were not the disheartening part, it was the pushback from the school system and the government that was shocking.

So, let's keep on being obese and more importantly, eat more salt!

"The FDA has said it does not know where the contaminated tomatoes originated."

Speaking of the FDA, would you like some tomatoes in your salad?

MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida's tomato industry is in "complete collapse" and $40 million worth of tomatoes will rot unless federal regulators quickly trace the source of a salmonella outbreak and clear the state's produce, an industry official said on Tuesday.

"We probably have $40 million worth of product we can't sell. We've had to stop packing, stop picking," said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.

So, Did You Leave Food With The Postman?

Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers collect nonperishable items along their regular delivery routes, and the food is passed along to local food banks and pantries in the communities where it is collected.

"With rising prices for gasoline and food, an unbearable squeeze has been placed on family budgets, forcing many Americans to seek help for the first time from community food banks and pantries to get adequate nutrition," said NALC President William H. Young.

The carriers are asking donors to place food items such as canned meat and fish, soup, cereals, pasta and rice near their mailboxes.

This was last Saturday. I gave, did you?