Calvin {Hearts} Alice

Calvin Trillin wrote a love letter to his wife, Alice, after she died. He had written often about her while she was alive. But in this missive he tried to set the record straight. I don't know why he bothered at all since most of the readers of his past and current writings never even met Alice in person. She became whomever her husband the author and they the readers wanted her to be. I wish I could have known her, however. She sounded like quite a broad. I was especially heartened to learn that "one of the most negative words she could use in describing someone was 'passive.'" I, too, use that as a diss. And like many people who have elevated Calvin and Alice's relationship as the epitome of a long and happy marriage (after my parents' and those conducted by some others I know), I wonder if I'd ever love or be loved like how Calvin loves Alice. With Valentine's Day right around the corner, it's always good to be active, optimistic, and to just try.

Dairy Diego

Because I walk miles and miles whenever I cover a trade show, I don't feel guilty for loading up on food and skipping trips to the gym. Because it's hard to snack and interview executives at the same time, I make a point to start my day right by eating breakfast and drinking lots of green tea.

I started my second day of covering an action sports trade event in San Diego with a plate of fresh fruit and a bowl of yogurt from Strauss Creamery at my hotel's restaurant, Rice. The blackberries were too tart for my preference and the melons weren't ripe enough. But the mangoes were just right and the raspberries packed the right amount of acidic punch in my mouth.

The blueberries floated in the thick yogurt, which struck the right balance between sour and sweet. Now I know why some people are such fanatics for the whole milk (there's a thick layer of cream that clots on the top), yogurt and other dairy products made by the family-owned Strauss Creamery.

While yesterday I ODed on protein, today I stocked up on dairy products. But I did add a bit of meat to my diet, sharing a charcuterie plate with Max at Cafe Chloe. I always try to eat at Cafe Chloe at least once whenever I'm in San Diego. It's that good! The French-style eatery is cute with its marble-top bistro tables and cheese stands. But the location in downtown San Diego is a little too grungy for a pleasant al fresco experience. Vagrants walk by screaming expletives and dump trucks chug up the street to yet another construction site. I've had my share of charcuterie, but I liked that Cafe Chloe included some pickled Brussels sprouts. They weren't as tangy as the cornichons.

Max had eaten at Cafe Chloe the previous night, when he eyed another customer relishing the gooey macaroni and cheese. The Italian-style elbow macaroni was drowning in a rich sauce of milk and gorgonzola. The macaroni was spared a too mushy fate by pieces of nearly burnt pancetta.

Max and I also shared a salad because we knew that our arteries needed a bit of break from the charcuterie and macaroni and cheese. The most basic salad on the menu, the mix of butterleaf lettuce, cucumbers and radishes reiterated the rule that you need only three ingredients to make a salad. I couldn't quite figure out why the cook sprinkled paprika on the salad. Perhaps for a pop of color against the pale green lettuce leaves and light yellow mustard vinaigrette?

Max accused me of trying to get him fat when I ordered the bread pudding for dessert. Since I was sharing the dish with him, I also risked turning myself into a tub of lard. But I told him that we were going to burn half the calories from the bread pudding on our walk back to the convention center from the restaurant. Besides, today's my sister's birthday (Happy Birthday, Tu!). So we were celebrating her naissance with the bread pudding, which was more like a bread souffle. I think the chunks of bread soaked in an egg mixture overnight. Having fully absorbed the eggs, they baked light and fluffy. I thought the thin layer of bananas squeezed between the bread was delicious but too soft. It might have been nice if the chef had sprinkled ground almonds in that middle layer.

Bland Diego

Emili christened the naval port city of San Diego as Bland Diego. I think that's because the politics and culture are bleh in comparison to Los Angeles. But I must say that the food scene is thriving in this Republican town. Perhaps the locals are eating and drinking away their worries as their real estate plummets in value.

In town to cover an action sports trade show, I fortified myself at lunch with a smoked salmon BLT sandwich in my hotel's restaurant, which is peculiarly named Rice even though it doesn't offer Asian cuisine. I must have been more drained than usual, because I misread the menu, assuming that the sandwich contained bacon made of smoked salmon instead of pork. It was actually layered with both smoked salmon and porcine bacon. How decadent. The double dose of protein helped me wade through the throngs of surfers and skaters who were already boozing up at 3 p.m. while their retail customers were queuing for appointments at their booths.

Figuring that since I already maxed out on my protein quota, I might as well go all the way. For dinner with my friend and local resident Arturo, I picked Sally's out of a list of five candidates that he suggested. We shared the duck quesadilla onto which the chef squirted dots of wasabi sauce. Intending to dine on lamb (I love cute furry creatures!), I had picked a syrah from a winery called Concilience in Santa Barbara, Calif. To my surprise, the syrah wasn't too heavy for the duck quesadilla. Or perhaps my palate was lightened by the bubbles from the Moet & Chandon rose champagne that I had at my hotel with Arturo before walking to Sally's. Cheers to the bubbly!

This is my lamb, resting against a pile composed of mashed potatoes and a potato and corn fritter.

For dessert, Arturo and I shared the trio of creme brulee, which, from left to right, were flavored with ginger, dark chocolate and dulce de leche. It was too bad that Arturo's special lady friend couldn't join us for dinner. We could have had a little ramekin for each person. Still, I had no problem in cleaning up the pots. Arturo's favorite was dulce de leche. Mine was dark chocolate. We both agreed that the ginger was unique -- and perhaps a little too novel. I remembered that I have a recipe for ginger pot au creme, which I tried once seven years ago when I was living in Berkeley, Calif. Unfortunately, because my then-oven's thermometer was inaccurate, the pot au creme didn't cook thoroughly in its water bath. Inspired by Sally's, I think it's time to give that recipe another go in my appropriately gauged oven in Los Angeles.

Oranges in the Air

Less than a week after I received my first shipment from the fruit of the month club, another box from Harry & David arrived at the office today. It was the February shipment of Royal oranges. For a second, I wondered whether Todd had signed me up in the fruit of the week program. That's a lot of vitamin C! I flirted with the idea of selling the sweet seedless oranges on the black market. After all, this winter's frost decimated a wide swath of California's citrus crop, driving prices up at the grocery stores. I eventually decided to share my healthy bounty with my cubemates and tried my hand at juggling.

Pears and Plushies

Thanks to Todd, 2007 is going to be very fruity. For Christmas, my favorite photographer gave me a year-long membership to Harry & David's fruit of the month club. January's pick was Royal Riviera pears, which were sweet, juicy and as big as my face.

The pears were ripening so fast that I didn't know what to do with them. Though a recipe for pear Waldorf salad was included in the box, I was craving a warm dish in this rather nippy SoCal winter. So last night I baked the pears in honey.

Moist and spongey, the pears reminded me of a cross between angel food cake and marzipan.

Not quite nerdy enough to bake pears two nights in a row, I called my friend Emmie tonight to ask her out for dinner. An illustrator who owns her own greeting card company, Emmie told me about a reception for a new plushy exhibit at Gallery 1988. I risk being blacklisted by the Plushies for Ethical Treatment of Animals for saying this, but in my opinion, a plushy is a fancy schmancy term for a stuffed animal. You know how some people elevate a comic book by referring to it as a graphic novel? The same goes for a plushy. I have a soft spot for stuffed toys that are shorter than 8 inches. My collection of petite plushies include a baby Buddha, R2D2, a sock piggy made by my sister and Anpanman's nemesis, Baikinman. I liked how Gallery 1988 used food to heighten the whimsical ambience at its exhibition. The powder sugar robots on the brownies were modeled after the plushy machine that hid a girl doll in its gray chest.

The fuzzy navels went fast. After 90 minutes, all the gallery staffer had to offer me was a shot of peach Schnappes.

The gallery was so crowded that there was no room for chairs. How I wanted to take a rest on this plushy plant. The only problem was that I would have had a flower critter poke me in the butt.

The plushies weren't limited to those with a Los Angeles provenance. This bogger traveled all the way from the Netherlands, which is the home of its creators, the design duo known as Sauerkids.

The Food and Music Club can't ignore the plushy food. The plushies resembling sushi were cute but not so original. The bacon toy, however, looked more like a red tapeworm. My favorite stuffed tribute to food was the bagel trio: Miss Sexy Bagel, Lovestruck Mr. Bagel and Gentleman Caller Mr. Bagel, from left to right.

After the show, Emmie, three new friends and I turned ourselves into human plushies at M Cafe de Chaya with a tuna burger, macrobiotic sushi and a seitan BBQ sandwich. Because I had previously written about the seitan BBQ sandwich, I didn't bother to take another picture of it, even if I had chosen the wasabi sweet potato salad instead of french fries as my side dish for tonight's meal. I couldn't help snapping a photo of the mango-topped Pinkberry frozen yogurt that I had for dessert. I don't know why, but the men outnumbered women by 3 to 1 in Pinkberry. They all must be watching their girlish figures!

Swedish Sunday, Take Two

Continuing my adventures from last Sunday, and proving my ineptitude in reading instructions and assembling things with my bare hands, I finally finished building the butcher block I bought from Ikea. It took me six days to figure out how to fit the four mini planks under the top wood block and keep the metal cylinders in their slots. I cheated by not screwing the big block onto the four legs. Since I don't have a power drill, it'd take me another week to attach the four screws by hand. It'll take me another six months before I get around to oiling the big block of wood. But my kitchen addition does look quite nice and gives me some extra counter space.

Blobs on Paper and the Plate

Emili, Missy and I carpooled to Newport Beach, Calif., yesterday to check out an artsy-fartsy bash sponsored by a bunch of action sports companies. While guitarists crooned on the makeshift stage built in the middle of the Orange County Museum of Art, the surfy partygoers milled around the photographs, woodblock prints and drawings created by surfy artists. How many ways can an ocean wave be conjured on a dry surface? Plenty. And the crowd snapped up the pieces which were priced from $50 for a screenprinted poster to $18,000 for a 10' by 8' sheet decorated with mixed media that illustrated what I thought was a schizophrenic's mind. I couldn't figure out why some pieces were selling. But then I chatted with a pro female longboard surfer whose eyes widened when she thought that I surf (I don't; I tried once in Cabo San Lucas and nearly died). Hooked on the thrill of dancing on water, she surfs every single day in Oceanside, Calif. No wonder the surfers want to be surrounded by visual reminders of the ocean on land.

This piece was an exception to the wave motif. I told Emili that the ghosts from Pac-Man got stuck in the domes of St. Petersburg.

My fondness for blobs extended to the late dinner Emili, Missy and I grabbed at Brite Spot after returning to L.A. Missy ordered my usual of a soy chicken fried steak with two eggs cooked over-easy. So I tried the soy meatball sub and potato salad.

Swedish Sunday

Missy woke me up at 9 a.m. to let me know that she was going to pick me up in 45 minutes and drive me to Ikea's annual sale. She was eager to arrive just as the doors open at 10 o'clock. Why did I agree to share a Swedish Sunday with her at such an early hour?

Because I wanted to get the best deal on a three-foot-long crocodile that will be the gift for a photographer's third child. I should probably include a pack of contraceptives for the father as well.

Big toys need little friends. On sale for 25 cents, this stuffed octopus was tangled in the care label attached to it.

Missy and I made it out of Ikea in two hours. I thought that was rather long but Missy said it was an average performance. Darting through the showrooms and up and down the aisles, digging through crates for duvet covers and waiting for my butcher block kit to arrive at the furniture pick-up got us hungry. So we both ate eggs benedict with smoked salmon at Home near my house. Swedes like salmon, ja?

Motocross Meal

On New Year's Day, Lisa, Anlon and I skipped through "The Incredibles" to land on the edibly snarky snippets featuring Edna, the pint-sized designer whose larger-than-life proclamations evoked Diana Vreeland crossed with Mr. Magoo. While Vreeland once exclaimed that pink is the navy blue of India, the computer-generated Edna scolded silly visitors not to distract her from the now. In tribute to Edna, I've decided to give my own SoCal fashionista spin on such maxims. The Year of the Pig is about the color pink, love and barter economies, I say. It's also about seeking new adventures. Even more than last year? Yes! Because if you tell yourself that this year you will have the time of your life, meet the love of your life and be the most fabulous in your life, then you will wake up every day happy, positive and optimistic. And even on Dec. 31, if you realized that none of that came true, then at least you know that you did the best you could and had loads of fun.

I kicked off New Adventures 2007 by going to my first tailgating party and motocross competition. The BBQ was a Mexican fiesta with Coors Light and PBR, courtesy of an action sports company. Missy, her hubby Cory and I wandered the packed parking lot of Angel Stadium in Anaheim for nearly half an hour in search of the black RV. We were told to look for the floating blimp bearing the company's logo. Our search was in vain, for the RV was decorated at the last minute with beach umbrellas instead. Still, it was a good time. This is the racetrack for the Amp'd Mobile Supercross competition. There was even a three-lap competition for 7- and 8-year-old bikers. I think my favorite racer is James Stewart.

You can't go to a stadium sporting event without eating some bratwurst. The one on the right is mine, topped with sauerkraut, onions and peppers. Missy ordered the Italian sausage with peppers. She stole some of my sauerkraut.

I was very lady-like in eating the bratwurst with a plastic fork and knife. Dotted with fried onions, the roll served as a cushy pillow for the sausage and toppings. When I told Missy that we forgot to get paper napkins, Cory, who was sitting between us and munching on his nachos, said we could wipe our greasy mitts on his pants.