La Cabanita

We had a lovely early dinner here with good pal Amy, after a riveting lecture series at the Crime Lab.

It turns out that fresh lime juice, Cazadores, and club soda is delicious! Made right, you'd never miss all the sweetness from the mix, and triple sec

Three chiles on a plate. Different stuffings, different sauces

Corned beef

I decided to get a jump on St. Patrick's day, and make corned beef in February! Could not have been easier, threw it in the crock pot in the morning, invited friends over in the evening to enjoy.

Taco truck

El Antojito Taco Truck in Gardena is the closest thing I have found to authentic, San Diego style (read: the best), taco shop mexican food out there. At least, north of the border. Lucky for me, it is close to my work!

They have some more daring meats like lengua, tripe, and others that I believe to be snout, or trunk or something like that. I am not that adventurous, so I stuck to carnitas, barbacoa and carne asada. I don't know why you would ever stray, they are so good. But I may have to try some mariscos next time, just to be well-rounded.

Gyoza

I made gyoza for dinner the other night. When I started to assemble them, it became apparent that these were not the same shape I had used in the past. So, they looked a little funky, but turned out really well. I guess I forgot to buy the round wonton skins at the store. I just looked at my prior post about gyoza, and I had mentioned that my steaming/frying technique could use some work. This go-around, they turned out really well. Maybe it had something to do with the non-stick pan I used from home.

Sazerac

Blackbird Cafe breakfast

New cocktail, Sneaky Pete

Making chili (again!), listening to soul

Sent from my iPhone

watching, reading, listening, looking, cooking

watching- finally getting to the last season of True Blood, making room for Breaking Bad
reading- Life by Keith Richards (flippin' FANtastic!!)
listening- to WTF with Marc Maron
looking- at everything with a photographer's eye. I'm participating in a contest. Well, it's more of a challenge throughout the month of february. Look for tweets with #febphotoaday. I'm so new to Twitter, and frankly, I don't really get it. But I figured I'd jump right in and see what all the fuss was about.

Spicy vegan chili

I made some delicious vegan chili for a Superbowl party on Sunday. It was spicy and good!! If you didn't know there wasn't meat in it, you wouldn't! The only two ingredients that were a little hard to find were the specific brand of vegan sausage the recipe called for, and chipotle powder. Both I ended up getting at Whole Foods. The recipe is from a new blog I'm following called What Would Cathy Eat? Interesting stuff....

A truck load of spices (chili powders, cumin, oregano, etc.)

Crumpled Field Roast vegan chipotle sausage

During cooking

With a little Tofutti sour cream to cool it down a bit

There was actually a contest, and although many people complemented my chili, alas, I did not win. But I thought it was great, so I'm calling it a success! Plus I got to taste like 8 other chilis.