TV. Food. Pop Culture.
On this week’s Watch What Crappens, Matt Whitfield (Yahoo), Ben Mandelker, (bsideblog) and Ronnie Karam (TVgasm) meet up in a mall for a noisy podcast all about the Giudice indictment, the winter wonderland fighting on RHOC, and the already infamous “Mom?…Help…ME” call on Princesses Long Island. As a bonus, we’ve included a fashion teardown of a four year old. Come on in!
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Kobawoo House in Koreatown is hardly a discovery. The place has been packing in eager diners for years and years, with hungry patrons lining up to taste the restaurant’s famed pork belly bossam (not to mention the expert seafood pancake also found on the menu). What exactly is bossam? It’s basically meat that gets rolled up in pickled radish or cabbage. That’s the simplistic, white-man’s version at least. Don’t worry — I have pictures.
Continue reading “THINGS I ATE: Korean Grub at Kobawoo House”
It’s been a second since I last posted a recipe from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking from the book. In fact, I have been doing a lot of cooking over the past month or so, but I’ve simply been too lazy to post it here on the blog. Well, enough is enough! I’m going to get back in the Adventures in Domesticity zone and try to work through this crazy backlog of photos I’ve taken. Seriously, it’s stressing me out. I need to get this stuff up on the blog.
Anyhoo, first off the waiting list is Enchiladas Verde (or as Rick officially calls them, Tomatillo-Sauced Enchiladas with Spinach and Mushrooms. It’s kind of a classic, and if there’s anything I’m great at doing, it’s screwing up a classic. Check out my results after the jump…
Continue reading “ADVENTURES IN DOMESTICITY: Enchiladas Verde Edition”
As some of you may have read on my Facebook pages or Twitter or Instagram, this lil’ site has been nominated by LA Weekly for Best TV Blog. I’m really flattered and honored to make the cut, but now LA Weekly has poked at the competitive BEAST that lurks inside me. The beast that wants to WIN.
In all seriousness, I’m really psyched about this. My blog has never been in the running for anything (sad), and for LA Weekly to nominate it means that I must be doing something right (or at least their standards are very low). If y’all could help me bring home the big trophy, that would be even awesome-r.
The process is so simple that even a monkey could do it (a monkey who can read and type, that is). Just follow this link, click on “B-Side Blog” in the TV category, enter a name and email and vote! The polls close on 7/18; so just do it now and get it over with. And yes, I am needy and demanding.
Of course, you can also send some love to my friends and fellow nominees A Socialite Life, D-Listed, KCET Food, The Minty, and Alie Ward. But no obligaysh, as they say.
Once again, here’s the link! Polls close tomorrow!
http://polls.laweekly.com/polls/law/webawardsfinalists2013/
Thanks!!
Well, The Real Housewives of Orange County have gone up to Whistler for one of their looniest vacations of all time. This two-episode bonanza wasn’t as crazy as, say, anything we’ve seen from New York (Scary Island remains the high watermark for Real Housewives vacations), but from Vicki screaming about multiple partners on the bunny slope to Tamra getting her tongue stuck on a wall, this has been one strange jaunt. I, of course, loved every minute of it.
To the photocap!
Continue reading “REAL HOUSEWIVES OF OC PHOTOCAP: Takes A Lickin’ and Keeps on Stickin’”
Recently I was invited to an event hosted by a group called Bibimbap Backpackers at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The purpose of the shindig was to promote awareness of Korean cuisine as a healthy, mainstream option — particularly bibimbap. For the uninitiated, bibimbap is pretty much a big ol’ rice bowl with various veggies and even meats strewn about artfully on top. It all gets mixed around fabulously, and voila! An excellent meal is born.
Pics of the event after the jump…
As many of you know, I really enjoy cooking. In fact, most of my blog posts for the last few months have centered around food and recipes. One might actually get the impression that I’m a skilled home cook. I’m really not. I just know how to follow directions well. Otherwise, I’m a lost baby deer. A fawn, if you will.
This is particularly a problem when I go to a farmer’s market here in Los Angeles. Some vibrant veggie will catch my eye, I’ll buy it, and then I’ll realize I have no idea what to do with it. That’s exactly what happened to me recently after a bountiful trip to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market where I emerged with two beautiful heirloom tomatoes and a dearth of ideas. Sure, I could have made a Caprese salad with them, but I wanted to try something new. Or at least a twist on the classic. [btw, just read this paragraph over, and it so pretentious I want to hurl myself off my balcony. But I’m too lazy to rewrite it. Anyhoo…]
As mild panic and buyer’s remorse began to set in, I leafed through my cookbooks in search of the perfect recipe to highlight the flavor of my heirlooms. The winning candidate came from Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegetarian book Plenty, which offered up an intriguing “Marinated Buffalo Mozzarella and Tomato” option. It was in the same realm as a Caprese but unique enough to capture my attention.
Pics of the recipe after the jump…
Continue reading “ADVENTURES IN DOMESTICITY: Marinated Mozzarella and Tomato Edition”
Garlic. It’s the best. Who doesn’t love garlic, aside from vampires and other similarly closed-minded ghouls? I’ve recently been on a minor garlic quest to master the fine art of toum, a Lebanese garlic sauce formed from garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. One of my attempts (documented here) involved raw egg, which sent my mixture into aioli territory, which was delicious but not really what I was looking for.
It turns out that toum is not as simple as it would appear, and while normally that’s exactly the sort of challenge I embrace, I have to admit that I’ve thrown in the towel. Why? Well, I was recently at Jon’s grocery store in Los Feliz, and I came upon a no-frills container of “authentic garlic sauce” that claimed it was “great for dipping.” I’m not master chef, but it looked a hell of a lot like toum (spoiler alert: it pretty much was toum). Anyway, I indulged a whopping $2.50 on this sauce, and I can proudly state that my desire to make toum from scratch has fully dissipated.
Continue reading “THINGS I ATE: Garlic Fun, Courtesy of Delancey and Jon’s”
Well, we’re a few episodes into the latest season of Real Housewives of New Jersey, and I’m proud to report that Joe Gorga and his sister Teresa are still mad at each other. The two haven’t seen each other in a year (except, um, for that whole reunion thing they did together a few months ago on Bravo), but that all changed Sunday night when the two happened to run into each other at the gym. Who would have expected that? They were only mic’d up and toting camera crews. Totally organic!
Nevertheless, the two got into yet another spat, and I won’t bore you with the details, but the arc was the same as always: Teresa painted herself as a saint, used elliptical logic to exonerate her husband, got really mad, and flipped something over (in this case, a trash can). Sadly, this was the most exciting moment of the season.
In the end, Joe wound up grunting away on a weight machine like a feral baboon while Teresa huffed away with her trainer, Nicole Greco-Peepas — a.k.a. the future name of any daughter, pet, or houseplant that may come under my custodial care.
Continue reading “REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW JERSEY PHOTOCAP: Heavy Stuff, Man”
I love soft-shell crabs. How much? Well, on a recent visit to Father’s Office in Culver City, I skipped the restaurant’s famous burger in favor of a soft-shell crab special that was running that night. Let me emphasize something: I never skip the restaurant’s famous burger. Sure, Father’s Office has a full menu beyond its Father’s Office Burger, but in the ten or so years I’ve been going to Father’s Office, I have never, ever strayed from the burger. Leave it to my love for soft-shell crabs to mix things up.
You see, soft-shell crabs are highly seasonal, and there really aren’t too many spots in LA that serve them. Naturally, when I discovered that my little crabby friends were on the menu, I knew I had to pounce. I might not get another opportunity!
This of course leads to a significant question: was it worth eschewing the prized burger for a humble soft-shell crab?
Continue reading “THINGS I ATE: Soft-Shell Crabs at Father’s Office”
