but sand will still fly off your shoes in the most unpredictable way…

a messload of legal hubbubery between the California Coastal Commission and David Geffen has resulted in a little coastal access pathway leading from the PCH to the nice stretch of beach in front of some expensive houses.
despite the security guy (who takes long lunch breaks in between taking advantage of people who aren’t sure of the legality of what they’re trying to do) it’s public land, as long as you stay on wet sand.
this being high tide season it’s a great place to wander, and get a glimpse of Eli Broad dressed in white on his white chair sitting for his morning tan.

we forgot to wear our “I heart MOCA” pins and refrained from partaking in his outdoor shower, but we did scavenge a nice piece of shale or something that must have come from his bathroom or pit o’ fire BBQ.
in the hopes it came from the latter, we’ll serve up some foie gras or stinky cheese on it soon, in honor of public access.

gotta love them stockings… mo shepherd shermans here and here…

but most of this cooking stuff is really about High Chefery. we have Chefs with Designer Footwear, Chefs Undercover (writing “tales from the trade” novelettes, with titles such as “Under Hot Water,” “Hung High and Dry Like a Cold Cut,” “Kept in the Dark and Fed Shit – My Life as a Mushroom in So and So’s kitchen”), Chefs as Celebrities—full scale photos of them in their pearly white outfits on the walls of their establishments or previously mentioned mugshots on said assorted condiment labels—and Chefs That Are Too Busy to Care, by far the saddest and the most pandemic of the lot.

real cooking, to me, is a matter of keeping relativity in mind—comparing what you start out with (or what’s in your fridge) and what you end up eating. a chef once told me the reason he loves baking is because the end product is larger than the dough. meat, he said, “always tends to shrink.” (“unless you eat it raw,” says the sheepherding-is-the-new-yoga members of this family.)

cooking is also a matter of scale. i’d rather have a really small piece of something fabulous than a million pieces of something half-assed, because the “ever-wanting” feeling is way more satisfying than having had my fill.

here’s a professional of the “ever wanting” group.

After one knee surgery, two months crate rest, and a gabillion bones courtesy of Slankers, Canine Sherman rises again…

today’s agenda is to cover everything with chocolate. we’ve got: candied tangerine peels (after eating the inside of a tangerine from Westfield Farms the immediate thought is what to do with the outside), candied ginger (ok, i bought those), bananas (which we’ll freeze and eat as if we’re on Catalina Island), coffee beans (no duh), and cacao beans (how recursive).

it’s sort of a magical process, bringing the temperature up, then down, then slightly up until the chocolate is perfectly tempered for dipping. then sit back and watch the surface as it turns into a lovely matte sheen, turning each piece of tangerine peel into a small reflection of sunset.

a long time ago a fashion-senseless lady advised a friend of mine that wearing stripes as a “wide” girl would only accentuate her wideness. instead of telling her that fashion is how you carry it, not how it carries you, she relegated my friend to the “dark coffin of low self-esteem,” full of oversized & earth-toned cotton separates from CP Shades. 25 years later, i still blame this lady for the email i receive at the start of every new year from my still stripe-less friend that gives a generic greeting and a profound “word of the year.” barf.

in grad school after the Northridge earthquake a bunch of us dyed our hair blue. (or at least we tried to, my hair is black, so i first bleached it, which made it yellow, and then the blue dye turned me into a martian.) several students who had red-tagged apartments were staying with my roommate and i, and one of the guys let us paint his toenails blue. the next day, after working in the wood shop all day he came home and said “now i know why you girls all paint your nails. you have a shitty day, but when you take your socks off it makes you smile.”

now that’s the best reason to wear anything… so, clearly – this outfit from Commes Des Garcons must accentuate the kidneys?

courtesy of patspapers