A Foodie Sorta Day

Los Angeles, CA

Crab grass is tenacious

 Acquiring Dessert for Tomorrow

We were invited to a BBQ in Long Beach tomorrow.  We have 2 dog friends (we met them at dog beach when we all had Italian Greyhounds) that we haven't seen in many years so we let them know we are in town.  We were invited over for a back yard BBQ.  We asked what we could bring and they answered with the winning combination of dessert and beer.  Perfect!  More about this in tomorrow's post.  Today is about getting the dessert.

There is a Filipino Bakery that Donna has been eyeing for a week now.  They have a cake called Sans Rival (literally translated, Without Rival).  We decided that this is the dessert we would bring.  The bakery is only about a mile away so we walked and picked up 4 individual cakes.  It's a cake with layers of cashew meringue, French buttercream, and it's topped with chopped cashews.  We can't wait to try it tomorrow.

My Mom's Bakeshop

The Sans Rival Cakes

Another Checklist Item

Our next trip involved pulling the car out of its cubby hole and driving to Hollywood.  We left at around 2pm in hopes that traffic would be light.  We were after the famous Zankou Chicken.  Zankou is an Armenian and Mediterranean fast food restaurant with falafel, wraps, kebabs, shawerma, and rotisserie chicken.  We were there for the chicken.  It's the best!  We got a family meal featuring 1 whole chicken, hummus, turnip pickles, garlic paste, pitas, and more pickles.  Yes, a lot of pickles!  They are so good!  

The Original Zankou Chicken in Hollywood. 
They have branched out so check, there might be one near you!

A shot of our family meal.  Look at all those pickles!

 
We had some of the meal for late lunch, some of the meal for a small dinner, and there is still plenty left to make chicken salad sandwiches with the white meat, left over pitas, and cut up pickles.  

Echo Park Farmers Market

The weekly Echo Park Farmers Market is today.  It opens at 3pm so we walked through the park and up to the farmers market.  We love a good farmers market.  This farmers market was on the smaller side.  We didn't buy anything but I got some good photos.

The Grand Entrance

Kind of sparse but it was a good midpoint for a nice walk

We might be back next week for veg

They had a flower stand

I thought these candles looked great

There was a guy buying micro greens.  I bet he was a chef.

Now your greens can be purple and pink!

I complimented this vendor on their beautiful display
and then walked away without buying anything.

After returning from the farmers market, we got in our lounge attire and continued binging the shows we have been waiting to watch.  We finished Pretend It's A City on Netflix and we started Netflix's Cowboy Bebop.  Tomorrow is another day in Orange County catching up with friends.  There is something to look forward to every day!  Talk tomorrow.

Want to read about yesterday?  See it here.

 

Errands in Orange County

Irvine, CA

The "Giant" Wheel at Irvine Spectrum Center

To Orange County!

Today we head to Orange County to run a few errands.  Our first errand is lunch at The Irvine Spectrum Center (I don't think anyone actually says the Center part).  We both have friends that live in or near Irvine so The Spectrum is a convenient place to meet for a number of reasons I will go into right now.  There is plenty of parking, it is freeway close, there are many places to eat and shop, and there is ample outdoor seating which is great for keeping out of enclosed spaces and for bringing a dog if you want (Francis stayed home).  We decided to meet Linda (Donna's Friend) at 11:30 in front of the Giant Wheel (pictured above in all of its not giantness).  It's centrally located and there is seating around the faux grass.  The Giant Wheel isn't really that giant.  We have seen the wheels in Las Vegas, London, Seattle, and California Adventure and this Giant Wheel feels not giant compared to them.  It's not much taller than the palm trees that surround it.  I looked it up online to find out how tall it actually is and they leave the height part out, instead they list that there are "52,000 energy-efficient LED lights, the Giant Wheel is capable of projecting a dazzling 16 million color schemes."  Maybe they should have called it The Bright Wheel.

Linda was there waiting for us so we said our hellos and then Donna and Linda were off.  Steve, my lunch date, had a work meeting and couldn't meet until around 12:15.  This gave me 45 minutes to walk around and take photos and it gave Donna plenty of time to have lunch, catch up, and maybe do some shopping.

The word Center is prominent

The Hello Kitty Café seemed new. 
There were a lot of men with kids taking photos. 
I didn't have a kid with me so I felt weird taking photos
so I quickly snapped a shot and moved on.

This place sold baseball hats that had nothing to do with baseball

The Spectrum wins for number of rides even if they are small

The smallest Levi's store I have seen

I have been seeing a lot of Thrasher Magazine stuff around. 
I guess I always thought it was old stock but it
appears it is still a brand and thriving.  

Either time has stood still for 30 years or things have come full circle. 
I see so many pairs of Vans on kids the same age as when I was wearing them.

I took this photo because the building looks to merging into the sky
and it reminded me of this scene from The Simpson 
and then I noticed the Blackberry logo.  

Steve arrived right on time and we ate lunch and caught up.  We talked about his recent travel, our travel plans, and former coworkers and what they are up to now.  Donna was able to do some shopping but didn't find anything she wanted enough to lug around in the van for the next year.

Running Errands

Since we were out and about with the car we figured we would check off a few things we needed to do.  One was a checklist item, Visit The House!  

We drove up I5 and cut over on CA55 to Orange.  We wanted to visit our house we rent out.  We had some painting and landscaping done and wanted to see it in person.  We drove up the block and parked and then went for a walk around the block.  We were relieved that it looked great.  We moved out in 2007 and even though we have paid for improvements over the years and pay for yard service, we still get a false feeling that we abandoned it and it has been decaying over the past 15 years.  Thankfully this isn't the case and it fits in with the rest of the block.

Creeping on our house in Orange

After being pleasantly surprised by the house we headed to Jiffy Lube (I know I spoiled this yesterday and you all are super excited to hear about our oil change) for our oil exchange.  It is in the parking lot of our former local Home Depot so we left the car and went to pick up a gift at home depot.  

A SoCal Home Depot in its natural habitat

Either we found the Star Trek plants section
or they are painting succulents now.

We found the perfect gift and went back to claim our car at Jiffy Lube.  It turns out we have developed a small oil pan leak.  We were about a half a quart low so we need to keep an eye on it. I was hoping for some Jiffy Lube drama so I could keep the blog interesting and got it!

Just incase you don't know what a Jiffy Lube looks like

The drive back to LA was pretty normal.  Traffic on I5 to LA goes like this, 70 mph, 10 mph, 60 mph, 15 mph, 75 mph, 25 mph and so on.  It keeps you on your toes.  Also, it felt weird going to Orange County and then returning to LA when we did the exact opposite our whole lives.   

We put the car back into its tiny parking spot and then made dinner and watched, "Pretend It's a City" on Netflix.  It's a great documentary series on Fran Lebowitz.  Check it out maybe.

Yesterday we rode the World's Shortest Railway.  See it here.

MOCA, Market, and World's Shortest Railway

 Los Angeles, CA

Donna is art!

MOCA

Today we road the bus to The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). MOCA has been high on our list of things to do since the beginning of trip planning.  Donna has been going here since the late 80s (when it was The Temporary Contemporary) and she took me here soon after we started dating.  

Entrance to the museum is currently free, made possible by Carolyn Clark Powers.  It would have been "free" for us anyway thanks to our NARM Pass.  

I am not a robot, that says MOCA

Free!  My favorite word.

Currently the museum has only one floor open so it only took about an hour and a half to see everything.  There were some very cool interactive pieces.

A Piet Mondrian.  You probably recognize the style.

Witch House, you could go inside

Donna looking at photography on display

An original Yoko Ono

I liked the shadows this cast

Donna looking at a Mark Rothko

This is an interactive exhibit called Chromosaturation

It consists of 3 rooms lit with 3 different colors

The colors blend as you go around corners

They make you wear slippers so you don't
mar the perfectly white floor

This is Briccs 2

Also interactive

The MOCA sign we saw after leaving was more
interesting than the entrance sign IMHO

When we exited MOCA we saw the Kogi Food Truck and Ran to it only to find out it was only open for a private party.  

I took this before it "opened"

Angels Flight 

Our next checklist item is Angels Flight.  We keep track of Public Transit and Railway and Funiculars and this checks all of those boxes.  It also happens to be the World's Shortest Railway coming in at 298 ft. (91 meters for non-Americans).  

The Station at the top

There are 2 cars counterbalancing each other

$1 said in many ways
(we paid 50 cents because we have a Tap Card)

The seating matches the inline that it is on

Donna is inclined to ride funiculars! (see what I did?)

The cars cross exactly halfway

We might need to come back at night.  I see lights

A car at the top and a car at the bottom

The station at the bottom

There are stairs you can use going up the side.  I thought about racing it up but hunger won the day and we went to Grand Central Market instead.

Grand Central Market

Grand Central Market was another checklist item for us.  It's arguably fits in the top 100 open air markets in the world along with Pike's Place Market in Seattle and The Ferry Building in San Francisco.  To me, it felt more like an open air food stall place rather than a market.  I didn't get the idea that I could go there and buy ingredients to make an entire meal like I could at Pike's Place or The Ferry Building.  That's not a bad thing, just a different thing and there are many fine places to eat in the market.  We enjoyed a bagel at Wexler's Deli and a donut at Donut Man.  There are many other highly rated food stalls there so we may go back another day.

It seems like businesses were required to have a neon sign

The hall of neon and food stalls

More stalls

People seemed to love the sticky rice

We split a smoked sturgeon bagel

We didn't eat a Gummi Fried Egg

One of the coolest Donut signs I have seen

Picking our poison 

Doughnuts stuffed with strawberries, perfect for Instagram

There was a Jarritos Display that was Instagram worthy too

A plaque dedicated to the late Jonathan Gold

I doubt locals use this photo booth but it
does look very Twin Peaks inside

After The Market we walked through Grand Park (I didn't find it that grand) and then walked home.  After hydrating and resting a bit we pulled the van out of its tight spot and acted like an Angelino and drove 1 mile to Numero Uno Market.  I was too tired to walk a mile and then another mile with groceries.

Adventures in cooking with exotic ingredients

One of the things we like to do is visit markets when we travel.  It's interesting to see the fresh ingredients different places across the US and around the world have to offer.  We are in LA so we are going to Mexican markets.  Last time we were there we saw Loroco so we looked up a recipe and purchased the ingredients to make it.  We still have about 3 pounds of sweet rice that we are lugging around so we are trying to use it up. The recipe calls for regular rice but we used our sweet rice and it turned out great.  The dish is from El Salvador and the Loroco was $18.99 a pound but you only need a little for the recipe.  

We also made a Mexican inspired hot corn salad.  Both dishes turned out great and we had an adventure in cooking!

Our bag of Loroco

Donna cooking up some grub

Our Corn Salad

The loroco rice dish

It was another full day.  We checked 3 things off of our LA Area checklist and had a great time.  Now it's time to rest up for tomorrow's adventure!  Spoiler, we get an oil change.

Check out yesterday's adventure here.