Jon Favreau and Roy Choi hosted an El Jefe pop-up from one of my favorite movies tonight! Chef was everything, and so was this sandwich (and so was this soundtrack!).
Make a donation of $10 or more to sponsor my participation in San Diego Humane Society’s Walk for Animals and receive a bag of homemade beer bones made with repurposed spent grain locally sourced and generously donated by LA craft brewery, Progress Brewing!
You can donate HERE. Please put your address in the “Personal Note to Walk Participant” field if you want dog treats. If you’re in LA or SD, I can probably just meet up with you 🙂
I battle my obvious love of dogs on a daily basis.
I can’t watch a cute puppy video on youtube without clicking on all the related videos. Next thing I know, I’ve lost three hours of my life watching 103 videos in a puppy surprise playlist and have been crying for at least two of those hours. Just kidding. (I cried for all three.)
When Pammie asked if I wanted to do a walk for animals, I immediately said yes without knowing any details other than dogs were somehow involved. Her office organizes this huge fundraiser that includes a bake sale where homemade dog treats are sold for donations, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to combine my love for dogs with my love for baking and get involved.
I reached out to some local LA craft breweries, and Progress Brewing in El Monte was generous enough to donate some spent brewing grain towards my cause. I drove out to what the dude described as “east of east los” with nothing but a 5-gallon bucket and a friend to witness my death in case the dude chopped me up into little pieces and dumped my body in the mash tun (I did meet him on the internet, after all).
Kevin, the co-owner of Progress Brewing, was actually a really nice guy. He asked if I preferred “Black IPA” or “American Red” doggy biscuits! Ha. I went with American Red, obvi, since I’m not a fan of IPAs. Dogs are also allergic to hops, so if you’re going to repurpose spent grain, make sure the brewery didn’t mash hop the batch you’re getting.
It’s best to use the spent grains within the first few days after brewing, otherwise they’ll go bad. I used a FoodSaver and froze them in portion-sized bags for storing and later use, since they gave me around 40 pounds of grain.
Here’s a simple, all-natural recipe if you want to try making these at home:
Ingredients:
4 cups spent grain
2 cups organic barley flour
1 cup natural peanut butter
2 organic eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all of the ingredients and mix with your hands until a thick dough forms. Roll out the dough on a generously floured surface and cut out shapes with cookie cutters like this cute dog bone.
Line the biscuits on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, then reduce temperature to 225 degrees and continue baking for 2 hours. Cooking them the additional time at the lower temperature will help ensure they dry completely, extending their shelf life.
The dried biscuits will keep for 2 weeks in an airtight container and even longer if you freeze them in zipper bags. You can give them to your dogs straight from the freezer as a cool summer treat, or, if you’re in LA, in the dead of winter when it’s 90 degrees out!
He took me to Home Deeps to get a tire pressure gauge and made sure my car was safe to drive, but he also took me to Compton to get BBQ for dinner. Idk if he wants me to live or die, tbh.
My favorite place in LA is closing for good this weekend, so I had to go there one last time before I went home for the holidays. Deane and I cried into our last chocolate bread puddings ever, and then we ate our tears (@ Ramekin)
Anthony visited before his BBQ class in LA, and we tried one of LA’s best burgers. It was meh, felt more like a sandwich because it was served on a french roll, but the beers were excellent. My favorite burger in LA (and in life) is still from Plan Check!
Hopefully he learned some new skills from the BBQ Pitmaster for the next party he unwillingly lets me throw at his house.
The power went out in my apartment building again last week! I was already running late, and I had to go back upstairs in the dark to tell the maintenance guy to manually open the garage gate so I could get to fucking work already. This has happened three times in less than two months! And these are only the incidents that I know of, because I spend less than 50% of my time in this apartment (unless a burglar is reading this, in which case I’m home all the time. Plus I always keep my sharpest pair of fabric scissors within reach. And I’m not afraid to cut you.)
Once I get my new car situation settled, I’m moving out of this overpriced shit hole and torching it on yelp!
Every Tuesday, Deane and I go trolling for sweets in LA. We coincidentally started doing this on Fat Tuesday, not realizing it was Mardi Gras—we just wanted some pie! And so… Fat Tuesdays were born.
So far, we’ve been to Alcove (Los Feliz), The Pie Hole (DTLA), and Ramekin (Los Feliz). We went to Ramekin two Tuesdays in a row (and the Saturday in between!), because their chocolate bread pudding fixes things in the universe. So does their s’mores cookie. And their strawberry brick toast. That are all BAKED TO ORDER. Don’t even get me started on their earl grey ice cream.
Someday we’ll get to the other places on my sweets list, but today is not that day.
I wanted to tell you all my secrets, but you became one of them instead.
There’s a cafe in Los Feliz that has a table with drawers full of secrets inside. I didn’t leave one of my own tonight, partly because neither of us had a pen, but mostly because I was afraid someone I knew would find my note and recognize my impeccable penmanship.
And lately I’ve been thinking
I’m not feeling anything at all
Will I survive in the dead of night?
And now the lights are fading faster
Save me from my disaster
Indie rock music is more my bag, but I like to get turnt every once in a while! Ha. Fun times with Pammie, Christine and Cat! It was only the best concert I’ve ever been to IN MY LIFE.
(Ask me again after this weekend, though… I may or may not be reliving my youth at the Hoobastank show in West Hollywood this Friday.)
When my mom texts me to call her ASAP, I expect there to be some kind of emergency. Like my grandma is back in the hospital. Or there’s a new episode of Scandal on that night and her DVR isn’t working again. Yes, she considers that an emergency. And yes, I inherited her flair for the dramatic, obviously.
She just wanted to make sure that I got her earlier text to stop by Porto’s and bring home a dozen potato balls when I visit SD this weekend. I meannn. She also thinks that since I live in LA, I’m close to everything in LA. It will probably take me an hour to get to Porto’s after work on a Friday night! She’s lucky I love potato balls her.
Hiking Chantry Flats was like being in a goddamn fairy tale. It’s pretty much my favorite hike that I’ve done thus far. Unlike the Potato Chip Rock hike that tested my friendship with Pammie and Shi, not once did I think, “Fuck this bitch, I can go on without her!” Ha. Ask me again after we hike the Hollywood Sign…
I just need two more things to make this overpriced studio a home. Anyone know where I can get a good deal on a french bulldog and/or a couch in the south bay? I went furniture shopping this past weekend, and nothing seemed worth carrying up three flights of stairs or testing my friendships over.
I’m officially settled into my new home on Manhattan Beach Boulevard! I hired a moving company because I live in a third-floor walk-up, and I may or may not still be sore from bringing my TV up the other night! Ha. I was hoping the movers would look like Ryan Gosling à la Blue Valentine, and they did—except they looked less like Ryan Gosling in the first half of the movie and more like Ryan Gosling after they fast forwarded a decade and ripped his heart out (along with most of his hair). Them’s the breaks!
Much needed mo-pho-jitos at Manhattan Beach Post last weekend with my friends who came to visit and a one Marshall Faulk who is probably the biggest dick on earth.
He and his bevy of blondes were seated at a communal table with us. I had no idea who he was, of course, but Anthony has been a fan of his since he played for San Diego State. Marshall Faulk was such an asshole to Anthony when he tried to talk to him, though! Hey man, only me and my friends are allowed to be assholes to Anthony! Ha.
I gave my landlord a swanky electric wine opener for Christmas, so he invited me upstairs to try his favorite cab sauv before I left LA for the holidays. After a few glasses, he asked me if I had a visitor around 3am the night before. 3am??? #1 How dare you? And #2 that was a one-time thing, and I thought I was being discreet! Ha.
Anyway, he said he heard some noise at the door around three in the morning, but he (mistakenly) thought that I had somebody over, so he didn’t want to go downstairs and bother me. He went to bed and didn’t think anything of it until the next day when he noticed that the front door had been tampered with, and there were fresh scratch marks near the dead bolt. Apparently, someone tried to break into the house while I was dead asleep downstairs! Yikes.
If I knew someone was going to come here in the middle of the night looking for money, I would have woken up and looked with them. I OWN NOTHING! But seriously, according to my landlord, he’s ‘good with rifles’ (um, what?) and I’m pretty good with fabric scissors, so beware, burglars!
I forgot my cell phone in my car last night, and I didn’t realize it till almost midnight.
Can we just take a second to talk about my parking situation??? Okay so #1 I don’t have a designated parking spot. My garage is only big enough for my landlord’s BMW, his Mini Cooper and his diamond shoes. #2 I live on a one way street. If I can’t find parking (which is always), I have to go around the block and onto one of the busiest streets in Redondo before getting back on my street. Don’t even get me started on the street sweeping that happens twice a week. Sometimes, some asshole parks in the middle of two driveways and doesn’t leave enough room to park in front or behind them. And sometimes that asshole is me. But I digress.
It was already late, and I had to park two blocks away last night, so I considered staying off the grid till morning. Plus I had already taken my bra off, so I was in for the night. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to wake up for work without all the alarms I have set on my phone, so I grabbed my sharpest pair of fabric scissors (in case some beach bum tried to get crazy) and sprinted to my car. Okay so maybe it was more of a light jog. Get off me. Not only was I running with (fabric) scissors, but I was also running with no bra on, and that’s a dangerous situation in itself, amirite?
Shi came up to have lunch with me and watch 500 Days of Summer at Santa Monica Pier last night! LA doesn’t feel like home to me yet, but it felt like home when she was here ♥