12.28.2008

Building Porn

The former Ray Vines Chrysler-Plymouth-Imperial Dealership, one of the last remaining examples of Googie architecture in Long Beach.

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Constructed in 1963, for automobile dealer Ray Vines. I am not sure who the architect was, the permit states that it was designed by architecture firm John Case and Associates. However, I have read that it was designed by Paul B. Clayton, who designed a number of mid-century buildings, including the beloved, Johnnie's Broiler. I'll try and keep looking for architect information. 

Located at 4201 E. Willow Street, Long Beach.

This building is currently for sale- let's hope the City has no plans to demolish this gem.

12.27.2008

Coconut goodness.

The only thing better than coconut shrimp at a restaurant is coconut shrimp you can make at home for a fraction of the price!

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The perfect dish to remind us how much we love (and miss) summer. 

12.26.2008

I'll admit I'm a garden ho

The question I get asked the most my other gardeners at the community garden is "So is anyone helping you with your plot?" I have been asked this at least 10 times.
I was a little taken aback by the question, as it made me wonder, exactly how much time am I going to have to spend out here? I have a full-time job and only two days off a week. Everyone was making it sound like this is really difficult!

However, the time spent out there has been thoroughly enjoyable for me. While I would be happy to accept the help of my husband or anyone else in family, I love being at the garden. I can easily toil the day away weeding, planting, watering and planning what I want to start next.

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I cannot believe how much I enjoy doing this.

12.24.2008

Handmade holidays

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This year's recession-slash-general doom and gloom that everyone thinks is going to stay through 2009, prompted the husband and I to opt out of the gift giving part of this holiday season. While neither one of us (that we know of) is heading towards job loss or anything concerning, but we just decided that with the purchase of a house, a wedding and a lot in between, that is seemed totally unnecessary to go out and buy each other a bunch of crap.

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It made things easier and a hell of a lot less stressful. We had a great thanksgiving dinner, followed by a relaxing day hanging out at home (no malls!). Tomorrow, we will have a nice Christmas dinner and spend the evening relaxing around a fire and most likely watching a classic holiday flick. This whole financial malaise has really got me thinking about consumerism, our excesses, the loss of personal-ness in everything we seem to care for. And it really motivated me to decide that from now on, I am really going to try and only give out homemade gifts. Yeah, it's easy to say now because I don't have to think about christmas again for 11 months, but I'm really going to try. Not only for the holidays, but for birthdays, house warmings, anniversaries, etc...

Just looking around the internet I have already compiled a list of possible gifts that can be easily made at home. Of course, knitting gifts will always top that list, but I have some other hand-made gift ideas too...

A succulent arranged in a pretty pot;

Something yummy, like madelines, spiced nuts or fancy cookies in a chinese take-out box;

Bath salts in a pretty jar;

The possibilities are endless, if you are a crafting junkie like myself! I better start planning now...

12.18.2008

I sware this is not just a cooking blog...

But I have been seriously kicking ass in the kitchen lately. My office was having a holiday potluck, so I decided to make a tasty treat for the event. I found a nice recipe for lemon bars and since I already had all the ingredients on hand, they seemed like the easiest option. Like most of my recent cooking adventures, this was my first time making lemon bars. I made a crusty dough out of flour, butter and powdered sugar. It was baked at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Pardon the crappy picture, the lighting in my kitchen is terrible, and I am still figuring out how to deal.
Then I mixed eggs, sugar, flour and lemon juice together and poured the mixture over the cooked crust. Everything was placed back into the oven and baked for 20 minutes.

Oh my god. These are soooooo gooood. And way too easy to make!

Recipe here.

12.14.2008

Thanksgiving

This was the first thanksgiving where I cooked. In the past, I was never really interested in cooking and the thought of getting up at 6am to prepare everything was not something I wanted to do on my day off. However, ever since we bought the house, I have really enjoyed making food and challenging myself to create new and interesting dishes. Cooking a giant turkey from scratch seemed like it would be the next appropriate milestone in my quest to become a good (maybe great?) cook. Perhaps I should have achieved this important milestone prior to inviting my family and friends over for a holiday dinner, as it was quite possible that my little experiment could fail and we would all be eating shrimp cocktails and hummus with pita bread for dinner instead of yummy turkey. Instead of the proposed disastrous scenario, everything turned out lovely.

It seems there are just as many ways too cook turkey as there are to skin kittens. I didn't do a lot of research on turkey cooking, but I did notice a few contrasting schools of thought, such as the brined vs. not brined crowd, the stuffed vs. not stuffed, basted vs. no basting, and of course breast up vs. breast down.
Ultimately, I decided to go with tradition and ignore all the blogs, cookbooks and commentary. I called my mom and asked her what she does. She told I didn't need to buy a brined turkey, so I got a regular, fresh one. She has always stuffed her turkeys, so I did the same and made a chestnut and sage stuffing which I placed into the turkey's chest and neck. I roasted chestnuts in the oven, which was surprisingly easy to do. The turkey's skin was basted in a mixture of olive oil, sage, poultry seasoning, salt, pepper and smoked paprika. For side dishes, I made mashed potatoes from scratch and a traditional green bean casserole, something we had never eaten in my family before. I basted the turkey every half hour and cooked it for about 5.5 hours. Everything turned out amazing.

For dessert, I didn't want to make the traditional pumpkin pie, as my family isn't too crazy about it. So this year, I decided to keep pumpkin in the dish, but make a cheesecake instead of pie. I made a yummy crust out of ginger snap cookies.


And combined pumpkin puree with the cheesecake batter. I baked the cheesecake in a water bath, a cooking method I have never used before. It was strange to do, but it worked quite well.

The cheesecake was very good. So all in all, Thanksgiving 2008 was a successful experiment!

My Funny Frog's Thanksgiving Menu
Roast Turkey with
Green Bean Casserole, recipe printed on can of Trader Joe's fried onions