Tag: food

In Soviet Orange County, Raoul Eat You

I was premature in my whining about Apple. The next day my shiny new Macbook Pro arrived, courtesy of my new job. I now have a new girlfriend and all the past one’s sins are forgotten.

However, my shoulder fell off again. MRI on Tuesday. Wish me luck, or a broken leg if that’s traditional, or at least some opiates from the god-damned doctors.

I rediscovered tonight that good pasta with just a couple spoons of sauce and some parmesan is one of life’s great cheap pleasures.

Today’s quote is from eyeteeth: “Who’s down with D.S.T.? Everyone with S.A.D.!”

vive Pescadou

I had one of the great meals of my life last night at Pescadou Bistro. They put on a holiday prix fixe, and mom and I went to the early seating, which was cheaper and also got us home before the… stuff started down on the peninsula.

Three courses, choice in each. I had the quail and foie gras over baby lettuce, with pears. Entree choice was filet mignon with peppercorn sauce, mashed potatoes, and endive. Dessert was a warm chocolate cake with creme fraiche. The other options were a first course of lobster bisque, a second of seabass or venison, and a third of an apple/camembert tart.

Pescadou is serious French food, which doesn’t mean stuffy or expensive or pretentious, but it does mean attention to detail and tradition. It also means reasonable portion sizes, unlike the U.S. tradition in celebratory meals of forcing an entire farm down your throat.

Everything was made… just… perfectly. The owner and staff are friends after years of going there. It’s more like showing up to someone’s house in a medium sized southern French town for dinner than it is like a restaurant. It’s nothing like any other restaurant around here, that’s for sure.

The three course prix fixe was $52. With tax and tip and two glasses of wine for mom and some fizzy water for me, $80/person. That’s about as expensive as a meal can get there. The usual dinner prix fixe is $25.

Please don’t change, Pescadou.

today

Woke up somehow hung over without having consumed any alcohol.

Cat barf on carpet.

First attempt to make coffee unsuccessful because I did not use water.

Opened cat food can in wrong direction so that minute particles of wet cat food went in my eye. Eye care advice: do not put cat food in your eye.

Inexplicable communication from government agency regarding money.

Rushed shower to meet friends for lunch. Therefore had not completely removed soap from hands before putting in contact lenses. Eye care advice: do not put soap on a contact lens and then place it in your eye.

Lunch with friends was good!

Santa Ana wind gusts to 60 mph. High tension lines flailing in traffic with arcing and explosions. Trash cans bouncing down the street like Rover from The Prisoner. Big-ass brush fire up off Santiago with at least one severe burn victim.

Inability to clean house; spiral of shame.

Kéan Coffee: Good coffee. Ibuprofen and ranitidine. LA Times food section full of inexcusably bad writing, particularly from S. Irene Virbila. I maintain that she is one of the Andy Kaufman clones or possibly a tulpa manifestation of the narrator of The Debt to Pleasure. Examples today:

A fresh spirit is blowing through the Paris dining scene… …A friend who loves wine told me about Le Villaret, a small bistro with stone and half-timbered walls in the the 11th arrondissement, Paris’ equivalent to Silver Lake.

Also, a recipe for Blanquette de Veaux (HOW MANY VEALS ARE TO BE USED?)

Another writer suggests fancying-up mac ‘n’ cheese: My personal cheese advisor Steven Jenkins, who wrote the definitive guide “Cheese Primer,” suggests bringing the dish up to 2006 cheese-aisle standards by using a fresh goat’s milk cheese, mascarpone, Gorgonzola dolce and a sheep’s milk cheese from Spain (manchego, Idiazábal, Roncal) or from France (Ossau-Iraty). The combination is almost other-worldly, much more nuanced than the predictable original.

Start the reactor.

Back to cleaning; spiral of shame deepens. Fortunately, maternal flight delayed from 7 until 10:30 pm. Then, flight delayed further. Uh oh, I know where this is going. Yep! The flight will now miss the curfew for SNA and be diverted to LAX.

Folks I’m going to drive into L.A. to meet a flight at LAX at 1 am now. I wonder what I’ll put in my eye first?

items

  • Driving down Chapman in Orange today I saw a woman in a witch costume. By “witch costume” I mean the full Wicked Witch of the West outfit with conical black hat, flowing black garments, weird shoes. I could not figure out what this meant on the day after Thanksgiving in Southern California. As a bonus, the entire effect was ruined by the large neon pink duffel bag she was carrying.
  • The cranberry ginger cherry relish made by salome_st_john is Cranberry Crack.
  • culfinglin is a very cool person and I enjoyed the long convo over coffee today tremendously.
  • The “Holiday Season” has arrived in the traditional way here in Southern California. Today I was tailgated by my first SUV-with-grille-mounted-wreath of the season!
  • My cat has been staring at me a lot lately.
  • The new Pynchon has arrived. I am simultaneously eager to start it and afraid of its bulk. It’s like having an entire ten pound cheesecake in the house.