Photo Essay

I stumbled upon this lovely Swedish girl's blog yesterday via A Cup of Jo (a girl who is responsible for my new found love and understanding of suspenders), and loved this photo post she did, so I'm copying it with all respect to Miss Emilie. You should do one too, and let me know so I can link your post at the bottom of this one, okay?

a picture of one of the best times of your life

a picture of you with someone you love

(w/ my dad)

a picture you miiiiiight have edited to make yourself more attractive

(to be fair, my sister took and edited this photo...but yeah, my skin doesn't really look that good normally)

the youngest picture you can find of yourself in digital form

(I'm the baby)

a picture of a time in your life that’s over, but you wish it wasn’t

(try as I might, I can't think of a time that doesn't belong in the past...I guess that's pretty healthy, no?)

a picture of you showing off a new haircut/color

(It's a wig. Trust me, after one epically failed blond attempt, I would never go there again.)

a picture of you truly being yourself

a picture of how you’d like the world to see you

(photo by my sister)

a picture of you being ridiculous

(photo by my sister from The McNugginiti shoot)


a picture of you when you were anything but happy

Summer of 2007

a picture of you that you had no idea was being taken

(by Jonah Ray, from the Grilled Cheese Competition)

a picture of you making a goofy face at the camera

(I was a weird kid)

a picture of you drunk

a picture of you when you were a different person than you are now

(with my then-boyfriend's daughter, the beautiful Audrey)

a picture of you on your birthday

(photo by Joel, June 2008)

a picture that describes how you’d like to spend every day

(photo by my sister, from the yet-to-be-released Ham Drank photo shoot)

Untarnished

It's been a long time since I've had my heart broken. I've been let down, sure, disappointed and even hurt in a few instances since I started dating again two years ago...but even then I felt in control of the situation. I wonder about my capacity to love someone new sometimes. I feel very strongly that it would take a lot to break my heart at this point in my life - I mean truly break it in that wretchedly painful, all encompassing way that you don't realize exists until it happens to you for the first time. The kind that hurts so bad but is somewhat comforting because it lets you know that you are human, that you are capable of love.

A friend of mine has been going through that recently, and it's been hard for me to relate. I've realized I blocked out that sensation, those terrible memories of the time you felt like your world was literally crumbling. If I really think about it though, I can conjure up those emotions, but it leaves me with a hollow and empty feeling, so I try to sympathize with this friend from a neutral point of view as best I can. But when you attempt to do that, you're left with shitty sentiments like "just don't think about it" and "you'll find someone new", which everyone knows does the exact opposite of what's intended. So instead we drink, and I point out attractive people, but we always end up talking about the past.

The past is such a dick sometimes, the way it sneaks up to bite you on the ass. I think about my past way to much. Some stupid little insignificant thing I said or did years ago will suddenly pop into my head and I'll literally grimace at the thought of it. Maybe it's because I'm overly sentimental.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm utterly single right now. No prospects on the horizon, no potential broken hearts and none in the recent past...I can't say that I mind it very much. My therapist/astrologer says that June will be a good month for me, love-wise. I don't necessarily believe in astrology, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited. I'll be 29 in less than two weeks. I'm starting it with a clean slate, an untarnished heart, an open mind, and a big party.

Domestic Tuesday - Crispy Black Bean Cakes

The list of things I miss about living in San Francisco is short, and mainly consists of food and drinks, and people I miss eating and drinking with:

• Happy hour at Hog Island with Becky for dollar oysters and two dollar beers
• Rosamunde with Chad for weisswurst sausage w/ chili (oh my god, their chili) and taking them "to go next door" to Toronado and ordering a beer I'd never heard of (and also sneaking next door to the pizza place to steal a plastic knife)
• My dear, sweet Zeitgeist for pints of Racer 5 while jealously eyeing everyone else's bloody mary's (I loathe tomato juice), and imbibing in their "I don't want to know where this meat comes from" delicious burgers

My favorite breakfast in the city, actually most people's favorite breakfast in the city as evidence by the hours-long line every weekend, was at Dottie's True Blue Cafe on Jones. Anything you ordered was sure to be to-die-for, and made the long wait so worth it. My favorite thing on the menu was the black bean cakes and eggs, and I would break down and order it every time, even though pancakes or french toast would be what I had been in the mood for...they were just that good.

So when I found a recipe for crispy black bean cakes in an issue of Food and Wine magazine that sounded very much like the ones I knew and loved from Dottie's, I knew I had to give it a try. But instead of making these for breakfast, I decided instead to make smaller cakes, and turn it into an appetizer for the season finale of Lost pot luck. I tweaked the recipe a little, and they were a huge hit.

I've already sung the praises of my new food processor, and this recipe was MADE for this fine piece of machinery. It's not necessary, of course, but with it, this is seriously one of the easiest things I've ever made.

Ya know my eyeball's penchant for getting all hurty and stingy whenever an onion so much as gets a paper cut in my general vicinity? Well the food processor takes care of that (almost completely). Yay!

They should bottle this scent and sell it as cologne. Yum.

One can is from the 99 Cents Only store, the other is from my local ethnic food store. Deal with it.

Rinse the beans off to avoid over saltiness and add one can to the food processor and puree.

If your cat is weird like mine and will eat anything (seriously, he LOVES artichokes) feed him a couple beans.

Add the other can of whole beans to the pureed garlic/onion/bean mix and stir.

This is where I added my own crap. The green chili's just happened to be hanging out in my fridge, leftover from a cornbread I had made, and they went really well in this dish. I also added a few shakes of hot sauce (Tapitio, in this case) which I highly recommend.

This is either the nasty part, if you're like me and hate using your bare fingers when cooking (food under my nails = PUKE), or the fun part, if you're a total freak. I made golf ball size balls (heh...balls) out of the mix and flattened them out just a bit. Then you coat them in the flour, dip them in the egg, followed by a coat of the breadcrumbs...then you wash your hands cause your fingers are coated in egg, flour and bread crumbs and it feel reeeeally gross.

Next, throw em in some sizzling vegetable oil, flipping them when they brown on one side.

Seriously, these are fucking goooood. Top with guacamole and sour cream, or whatever the hell you want (hummus? mango salsa? something else that I can't think of right now?)


My Lost Pot Luck friends adored these little fuckers. Ben, the hardest man alive to please, voted them even-better than Jonah's yummy ahi tuna.


The ahi was pretty damn good, too.

I may have bribed him, though.

Naw, they were really that good.

Recipe:
Cripsy Black Bean Cakes
Adapted from Food and Wine Magazine

Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for frying
1 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 large garlic clove, minced
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
few dashes hot sauce
Two 15-ounce cans black beans, drained
Two tablespoons diced green chili
1 1/4 cups plain dry bread crumbs
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, beaten

Directions
-In a medium skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook over moderate heat just until softened, about 3 minutes. Add the cumin and cayenne and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Scrape the onion mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Add 1 1/2 cups of the beans and pulse until the mixture is finely chopped but not smooth. Scrape the mixture into a medium bowl. Mix in the remaining whole beans and 1/2 cup of the bread crumbs, the hot sauce, and the green chili, and season with salt and pepper. Form the mixture into desired size.
-Put the flour, beaten eggs and the remaining 3/4 cup of bread crumbs into 3 shallow bowls. Dust each black bean cake with the flour, tapping off the excess. Dip the cakes in the egg and then in the bread crumbs, pressing so that the bread crumbs adhere.
-In a very large skillet, heat 1/8 inch of oil until shimmering. Add the cakes and fry over moderate heat until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels.

Favorite Family Stories

-The only reason my dad got out of fighting in the Vietnam War was because he had the ability to crack four eggs at once. You see, he was enlisted in the Army Reserve, which exempted him from being called to duty in Vietnam because it wasn't an "active" war (really, a PR move on the administrations part more anything), but in order to skirt around that rule, President Johnson disbanded a bunch of Army Reserve units in California and told the recruits that if they weren't able to find a spot in another unit, they'd be called into active duty. Long story.

Obviously, the other units were very full and taking very few new recruits (which was the point). My dad happened to know a guy who was a cook in an Air Force Reserve unit in Riverside. They needed another cook, and my dad got a chance to try out for the spot. As my dad tells it, the head cook was a huge, intimidating dude, but when my dad showed him that he could crack two eggs in each hand at once (learned from years of being a short-order cook), the head cook brightened up and offered my dad the position right away, thus saving my father from fighting in a dirty war.

-My grandfather George, a strikingly handsome immigrant from Eastern Europe, fell in love with his best friend's sister - my grandmother Thelma, a petite and adorable girl of the same origins. When my grandmother's family, along with my teenaged grandma, moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles during the Depression, George followed - determined to marry my grandma. She wasn't interested though, and George spent a good couple years living in the den of my maternal family's house, watching as Thelma went on dates and ignored the letters he would write to her, professing his love. Finally she relented, though. He died before I was born. Thelma is 98 now, and still has those letters he wrote to her in Yiddish, tucked away in her closet.

-My father's uncle, Murray, grew up in Chicago. An immigrant, he was very poor as it was the height of the Great Depression, and the story was, he would always swear that when he was rich someday, he would eat cake for breakfast every morning. He ran away from home at 17 and joined the Youth Conservation Corps, building bridges and roads across the country. He fought in the Philippians during WWII as a Master Sargent. When he came home, he did well in construction, and bought a trailer-park retirement center when he finally retired. I visited his home in the desert when I was a kid. I snuck a peek into the fridge, and remember seeing a cake on the top shelf, halfway gone. He ate cake for breakfast every morning until the day he died.

What is your favorite family story?

Domestic Tuesday - Guest Domestic of the Vegan Persuasion

Oh hai. Just wondering, can we just pretend that the title "Domestic Tuesday" is more of a suggestion than an actual scheduled thing? I mean, the "domestic" part is fine, it's just the whole "Tuesday" concept that sometime alludes me. I'll try to be more punctual from now on. Promise.

Secondly, all the photos I took for this entry are stuck on my camera, as I had forgotten to put the memory card in, and can't seem to upload the software to get them off. So aside from the three photos sent to me by the guest domestic, I'm going to include photos of her which I have pillaged off her Flickr captioned by reasons why she is awesome, in lieu of cooking photos. Cool? No? I don't care.

Domestic Tuesday - Guest Domestic of the Vegan Persuasion

Hey look! I got someone else to not only make me dinner, but to also write a blog post about it! Man, am I lazy or what??? Actually, I chose my friend Meghan ("Judy Gloom", to those of you knowledgeable of roller derby) to be the "Guest" in this edition of "Guest Domestic" because, not only is she an awesome cook, she's also a kick ass writer, as you can see for yourself at her blog, The Hollywood Librarian.

I also chose Meg because she is an undeniably healthy person (one the inspirations behind my recent interest in getting in shape) but she also adores food and has a healthy attitude towards eating, which I've found to be a rare thing with women, sadly. So I asked her to create her favorite vegan dish for me, knowing full well that it would closely resemble the awesome seitan dish she made for me a while back. I don't think I would ever have given seitan a second glace (except perhaps a dirty look) had I not tried Meghan's version. This is some seriously yummy stuff, so don't be afraid to give it a shot, even if you're a gluttonous carnivore, like myself. Alright, I'll shut up now and let her take over.

Our Domestic - Miss Judy Gloom

Most of the time when I tell people that I'm a pescetarian, I receive puzzled looks in response. So, the longer story behind my dietary restrictions is that I was a vegetarian for 10 years until I reincorporated fish into my diet about four years ago (a person who eats fish, but not red meat or poultry = pesceterian). Up until recently, I was a "restaurant pesceterian," but lately, I've been trying to cook occasionally with fish at home. My invitation to guestblog here came as a result of the Ahi tuna tacos I made for a post-gym dinner a few weeks ago.

Meghan rides her bike all over the place, including, but not limited to: Hollywood, greater Los Angeles, through European cities during rainstorms, to my house when I promise to drive.

All of that said, old habits die hard. Most of my favorite, tried and true recipes are vegan. So, when Georgia asked me to blog here, I decided to go Meghan Classic and whip up some Jerk Seitan, which is always a big hit among the omnivores (seitan = a high-protein, vegetarian "wheat meat"). I've tried a few different jerk marinade recipes, and this one is my fave.

She indulges, encourages, and fully participates in my penchant for drinking and being silly.

The secret is the sauce, so really, you could use any protein you want here -- I've done it with tofu, and I imagine it would be good with shrimp. And of course, there's always chicken, which is the traditional vehicle for this killer Caribbean marinade.

She has killer fashion sense. See that grey dress she's wearing in the above photo? The next day I went out and bought it (it's this dress, and it's the most flattering thing I've ever worn), and now we have to check up with each other every time we go out together if one of us wants to wear it, to make sure the other isn't. She's only slightly irritated by this, which is sweet.

For this occasion, I made my own seitan. It's a little more time-consuming, but worth it. The quality is far superior to the store-bought stuff, it's much less expensive, and this recipe (my favorite!) yields a ton. I wind up freezing about 2/3 of it for later use.

I went with Meghan to a clothing swap a couple weeks ago, and ended up leaving with pretty much everything she brought. Like I said, girl's got style.

This recipe requires a food processor. I believe Georgia recently wrote about her love affair with a new Cuisinart. I don't know what I'd do without mine.

See that red-haired girl on the far left? That's Meghan. See that dude giving the middle finger? That's Anthony fucking Bordain, with whom she ate dinner and then ended up in his book (along with this lovely blogger). Yeah, she wins at life.

Jamaican Jerk Marinade (from one of my favorite cookbooks, the Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook)

2 c chopped green onion
1 c apple cider vinegar
1 c soy sauce
1/4 c safflower or sunflower oil
3 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno pepper (sliced, seeds and all)
1 1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

Place all ingredients in a food processor and puree. This recipe will yield about 2 1/2 cups, which is way more than you'll need for a 3-4 person dinner. Feel free to halve the recipe, or do what I do and freeze the remaining sauce. I usually get three meals (serving 3-4 people each) from one batch of this sauce.

Did I mention that she's also a Librarian??? It's true.

Let your protein soak in the marinade for about an hour before serving. Heat some oil in a frying pan and brown your meat, adding additional sauce as desired.

Like I said before, she's an awesome cook.

I served this with coconut rice (prepare basmati or jasmine rice as you normally would, but throw in a cup of coconut milk and a few slices of fresh ginger. Toss with pineapple, fresh cilantro and toasted coconut). I also served with baked sweet potatoes. Just scrub em down, stab each a couple of times with a fork, and bake at 400 for about an hour. Sweet potatoes are so good for you...though my doctor remarked during a recent office visit that over-consumption of beta carotene is turning my hands orange. No shit.

Words fail the photo above (that's Meggy in red). But I can say she is the most sensitive tough-guy I've ever met.
photo via Charlie Chu

Drizzle everything with a bit of the cooked marinade and serve!

Thank you, Meghan! It was a truly delicious dinner, despite the fact that you insisted you marinated the seitan too long (you didn't, it was great). The only reason I didn't eat more, is because I had eaten buffalo wings at Big Wangs a couple hours earlier, and didn't want to tell you because I was scared I'd hurt your feelings. Eep!!!

Edited to add food photos!!!

Randoms - Faff Edition

In honor of the lovely Hillary at Two L's Please, and the sweet post she wrote about me and my humble little place in the bloggy world, I'm going to take a page from her book and do a Friday Faff - Thursday Edition, meaning the following post are some odds and ends currently taking up space in my brain.

I started this blog a little over two years ago. I know it probably gets annoying, but it's hard not to compare your life in a before and after kind of way when you've had some sort of big change. For me, that change was leaving my boyfriend of five years as well as his daughter whom I loved, and moving from San Francisco, back to Los Angeles. I started this blog knowing that the break-up was imminent, and through the blog I was able to get a lot of my thoughts in order.

I know the idea of a blog is super passe to some people, but I'll never be embarrassed to be part of that nerdy blog culture. All the writing gigs I've gotten, my improved writing skills and subsequent realization that I was actually good at putting my thoughts and ideas into words, well those things never would have happened had I not started this blog. I had practically never written before starting The State That I Am In, which I don't tell very many people. I had been an avid reader since I was a small child, and entertained the idea of someday putting all my crazy thoughts and fantasies onto paper, but the confidence was just never there.

This blog has made me closer to my family and friends. It's made me understand myself more and given me a brighter, more optimistic outlook on life. And it's also given me a strange relationship with other bloggers whom I feel like I know very well, even thought we've never, and may not ever, met in person. You can find a list of those people in my blog roll on the left sidebar, but a couple of those girls I can picture having a round of drinks with and feel like I've known forever are the aforementioned Hillary, Rachel at Diary of Why, Miss Hope Dies Last, and the ever-hilarious LiLu. There are a ton of bloggers whom I am obsessed with, but those four ladies feel like old friends.

Whew...well that was unexpectidally emotional. Moving on!

Remember all those "scenes from my lunch break" photos I've been taking for the past year or so? Let me refresh your memory:

Well I turned them into an art project of sorts. My kitchen wall needed some decorations, so I had the photos printed and then painted some little frames in the manner of this old Domestic Tuesday project, but much cuter. See:



I was thinking of starting an Etsy shop and attemping to sell them, but I haven't yet perfected them, nor do I know if anyone would be intersted in buying such a thing. A few of the photos are of not-great quality, as I took them before I got my swanky little new camera, but I've been taking more and plan on adding to the collection every month or so. So I guess if you'd like to buy one or a few, let me know. I was thinking around $5 each would be good. I don't know, email me and we can hash it out. georgiaisyourfriend@gmail.com

In conclusion, since this post hasn't been very "faffy", here is a photo set of Elvis eating Pocky:

He does this weird thing whenever I offer him something...he'll graze his teeth across it before he takes it. Such a strange cat, this one.