Adventure Wednesday... Swimsuit Edition!

For our last mid-week adventure before Tom's new job, we decided to make a whole day of it and experience some California sunshine together.

We took a leisurely morning drive down Sunset Boulevard, hitting it two blocks from our home and following it along the strip, past the homes in the shi-shi hills, and winding through Pacific Palisades. Finally, the scenery breaks and we're facing ocean.  This, my friends, is the edge of the continental United States.  And it's beautiful.

Turning left, we pulled into the parking lot of Will Rogers Beach, a quieter stretch of sea and surf located between Santa Monica and Malibu.

Will Rogers Beach
Photo via VisitUSA

On this beautifully sunny morning, it was my goal to get my exercise by swimming in the Pacific.  I grew up visiting the dunes of Lake Michigan and the Floridian beaches of the Atlantic, so if I don't get to big, open waters at least a few times a year, I start to yearn for it.

Will Rogers is pleasantly sandy and currently graded "A" for water cleanliness, so I slathered on the sunblock and headed straight in.  The Pacific is as cold as ever!  Far closer to brisk Lake Michigan in June than to the cozy Atlantic.  But I still have a significant layer of insulating blubber (one of those times when those pounds come in handy) so I warmed up quickly and found myself body-surfing through waves.  Tom was with me, though without the insulation, he was slower to acclimate and faster to have his lips turn blue.  Nonetheless, we spent about a half-hour laughing together as the gigantic waves floated and carried us closer to shore.  Occasionally a wave would break right in front of us, drenching us completely.  Thank goodness I remembered not to wear my glasses (which hadn't been the case a few years ago, when I said goodbye to my frames from college as they were swept away with the tide.)

I was debuting my "stylish" suit, which I'd purchased several months ago but hadn't taken the opportunity to wear yet.  (I usually wear heavy-duty lap-swimmin' suits to work out at the pool.)  It's the retro navy Kiyonna suit that I included in my imaginary beach party outfit post, and it's lovely!  It is also, however, not ideal for movement.  Designed to be versatile, it can be tied in many different ways. The straps are very stretchy, and extend around the side of the bust (leaving the opportunity, for instance, to make it strapless by wrapping the straps around the ribcage.  It is unfortunate, however, that the straps, when tied in place, don't really do anything to keep the bust in place.  My suit fits perfectly, but every time I jumped a powerful wave, my boobs jumped ship too.  Thank goodness Tom and I were the only ones on that stretch of beach!  Kiyonna, if you're listening... please know that those of us who are active swimmers could really use a cute retro suit that doesn't cause a wardrobe malfunction.  For now, please know that the Ava Convertible swimsuit is for decorative use only!

It is cute for those purposes, at least. Here I am, post-swim.
Ava Convertible suit by Kiyonna
Sunglasses by Brooks Brothers
Towel by Target

After our oceanic adventure, we toweled off and headed back to Hollywood, where Tom had requested a stop at the newly-opened New York City import, Papaya King - famous for bringing hot dogs and tropical drinks together.  Tom ordered some curly fries and a non-dairy smoothie; I had a dog with roasted onions and 6 ounces of virgin piña colada. 

Pretty much what it looked like,
though the photo is via Los Angeles Times

It was planned into our daily calories, but that didn't stop Richard from bringing it up 200 times in class after I had sent him my food log.  (He's against the consumption of nitrates, and I get that, but to me... in limited quantity, on infrequent occasion, there is nothing wrong with having a premium hot dog.)  All told, I thought Papaya King's dogs and fries (I tried one of Tom's) were better than Pink's but not as good as Skooby's.

After a trip home to rinse off the sand and salt (and hot dog grease), we headed back out to scope out the location of our next Supper Club 600... but that, my friends, is a surprise adventure for another Wednesday!

I'm signing off to get some work done... but I'll be back tomorrow with not one but two recipes, one of which was a blazing disaster that - I hope - will make you laugh.  Until then, keep taking care of you!

Adventure Wednesday at Eat Real Festival

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I visited the Los Angeles Eat Real Festival - a celebration of all foods local, artisan and real.  Meeting Aarti Sequeira was certainly a highlight of my day, but we also had fun exploring the exhibitions and checking out the food at the festival.

We made our way to Culver City that morning, and Tom dropped me off at the Helms Bakery District so I wouldn't be late for one of the presentations I wanted see.  He parked in one of the city lots, where the festival so kindly picked up guests by shuttle.  Their transportation was well-organized! 

It may be called Helms Bakery, but the bread factory is long gone - it's now a series of
furniture boutiques. I love that the vintage sign for the bread factory is still there.

   

I made it just in time to watch a Fern Richardson's presentation on urban gardening.  I love following Fern's blog, Life on the Balcony. Her tales of gardening outside her apartment window make me yearn to begin my own balcony garden.  I'm definitely on my way!

Here's gardener Fern, mid-demonstration.
Isn't Fern an apt name for her?

During her presentation, she demonstrated the proper way to use a strawberry planter.   I didn't realize that you needed to pull the plant through from the inside, so as to keep roots intact.  She showed how to layer each plant with soil and keep the root systems horizontal, growing out the side toward the sun.  I also didn't realize there are "ever-bearing" strawberries that will have three separate cycles in the Southern California climate. I think it's time to start our own strawberries.

I'd love something like this, available at Home Depot.

The only down-side of urban gardening in a multi-family unit is that you can't necessarily protect your plants.  I asked about that during her presentation, since we have a history of people dropping cigarette butts (or even PEEING) in our succulent planters.  I just don't understand people.  Fern had a variety of suggestions, from tying down planters to planting thorny flowers, and I will definitely give them a try once I start gardening in earnest.

After Fern's presentation, we headed outside, where the food trucks were parked.  There was a LOT of food available.

Most of them had exotic ingredients like Belcampo's tallow fries. We did not try these.

 
  

We also did not try A Rockin' Ice either, though we were interested to see
their syrups are natural and they even offer sucralose zero-calorie ices.

  

Here's the menu for Flat Iron.

We waited in line at Flat Iron for maybe a half-hour or more, planning to try their gazpacho - but when we ordered, we were warned it was extremely spicy (and I'm a wuss) so I got salad instead. Tom ordered the squash without cheese, but they delivered it with cheese.  We declined to stay for another half-hour waiting for another order, and that turns out to have been a good decision - because I had already burned to a crisp. We forgot to bring sunscreen and didn't realize so much of the festival was outside.  (Seriously, I am STILL peeling from that day.)

Tom's fatoush salad from The Hungry Nomad.

  

A much faster truck, The Hungry Nomad, had a very flavorful fatoush salad that was perfect for Tom.  Not too many lentils, lots of herbs. Yum.

An ice cream sandwich from Coolhaus.

   

A popular artisan ice cream truck, Coolhaus, had yummy sandwiches, but I found myself wishing for just a bite. I think a bite-sized ice cream sandwich recipe is in our future, you and I.

Mexican Coke with cane sugar was all the rage - better for us and the environment
with its glass container & lack of corn syrup.

   

Another lovely addition to the festival was the widely available trash/recycling/compost bins, each trio of which was hosted by a specialist to help guests determine the appropriate disposal for their waste.  It definitely helped me!

Sustain LA - a group that helps companies navigate green waste disposal - provided the helpful service.

   

We enjoyed meeting volunteers...

Including the team from Food Forward, which organizes volunteers to pick excess fruit from donors' trees, to help feed the hungry in Los Angeles.  We'll be volunteering to help pick - but that's an adventure for another Wednesday!

   

...and meeting artisans...

Including the team from The Farmer's Kitchen, where I had my extra-mindful meal on Sunday!
They're hosting a tomato canning class soon, and I'm hoping to join in & store up fresh heirlooms for winter.

   

...and even meeting animals!

SOME PIG(s).
I hope the piglets didn't know how much pork was being served around them.

   

I think this duck knew about the confit, though. He seemed very practical about it.

   

We took one purchase home - a loaf of squaw bread made by Homeboy Bakery, which is connected to an amazing organization with a helluva mission statement: "Jobs, not jails. Homeboy Industries assists at-risk and formerly-gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education."  

  


It was excellent bread - and it's an excellent cause. If you're local, I hope you'll try to buy their products at nearby farmer's markets. And if you're anywhere near a Ralph's grocery store, you can support them by purchasing their tortilla chips and salsas, which will help fund the programs.I do think there are a few improvements to be made to next year's Eat Real Fest.

For starters, without easily-accessed or centralized information, it was hard to know what was going on, and where.  It took us awhile to find the stage where Fern from Life on the Balcony was speaking, and when I asked a few of the festival volunteers, they had no idea where it was, either.  Several posted locations with schedules of presentations and speakers would have been much more helpful (especially at the presentation locations.)  And while I support their desire to avoid unnecessary waste with printed maps, there are other ways to solve that problem. How cool would it have been to distribute maps and schedules that were printed on seed paper? It would send a little of Eat Real home with festival-goers, where they could grow their own veggies or flowers.  I can't imagine it would be hard to forge a sponsorship with a company like Botanical Paperworks.

Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the appearance of food that was neither local nor real.  I don't mind artisan food trucks, but... why was Chipotle there? They didn't seem to have a sponsorship.  They're glorified fast food, and McDonald's held a minority share of the company as recently as 2006.  I'd much rather see a locally-owned, locally-sourced burrito company than a national chain. 

I also kind of wished there was more available for those eating healthy. There were real ingredients, locally sourced, but not a whole lot that wasn't fatty or sugary or fried.  It's a food festival, so I didn't expect to find a world of low-calorie options. And at least there were no deep-fried fair food offerings.

Those things aside, I hope that Eat Real Festival will continue to grow, and I look forward to attending again next year.  (This time, though, I'll be sure to wear sunscreen!)

How about you? Are you eating real food this week? And what are you doing to help your community eat real, too?

I'll be back tomorrow with a summery snack - and until then, take care of you!

A Glee-ful Adventure Wednesday

OK.  I'll admit it.  I'm the kind of person who likes musical theater.

And musical TV.  And singing.  And sing-alongs.  Yep, that's me.  In fact, I used to sing a lot more often, in plays, in choirs, in cars...  It's not a particular gift of mine, but it's something I really enjoy doing.  There's just something about lifting your voice that lifts your spirits.

So when I found out about The Music Center's free Friday Night Sing-Alongs, I was in.  And when they announced a Glee Sing-Along, I was all in.

Tom and I have watched Glee together since the beginning.  As former musical theater performers (and current musical theater nerds) we hoped it would be as fun as our own drama club experiences.  And auto-tune aside, it is.  It may be the T.V. equivalent of eating Planter's Cheese Balls, but there's no denying that it's infectious.  (Plus, we have a Glee spec script in the works for our writing portfolio... so we have to watch it.  We tune in because it's a professional thing, and not because we're waiting to hear the next strange thing to tumble out of Brittany S. Pierce's mouth.  Like, "did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?"  Riiight.  Professional.  That's what we keep telling ourselves.)

The Sing-Alongs are sponsored by Active Arts, the Music Center organization which encourages Angelenos to express themselves creatively.  (They also sponsor, among other things, Dance Downtown.  You may recall from previous Adventure Wednesdays that we've attended the Cumbia and Bollywood nights.)  Each sing-along takes place at the Keck Amphitheatre at Walt Disney Music Hall.

Have you seen (or been to) Disney Hall yet?  It's a gorgeous space designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, and it has really spiced up the look of downtown LA since it opened in 2003.  In fact, I had just moved to LA when it was being finished, and on my commute home from a job downtown, I happened to see it the first day the shiny facade was up.  It was before they dampened the patina, so I felt nearly blinded by the reflection of the sun!  Fortunately, it's not so shiny and blinding anymore... but it IS damn beautiful.

Photo by Carol McKinney Highsmith

  
It's incredibly beautiful inside, too - but that's for another adventure.  For the Glee Sing-Along, we were outside, in the Keck Amphitheater.  Before that night, I didn't even know it existed!  You certainly can't see it from below.  But if you were flying over the building, you'd see it's tucked into the roof on the side.

See it there? The little circular amphitheater?
Photo is not by me, but I could not find a credit.

So we headed downtown, parked at the Music Center, and then climbed the several flights of stairs leading to the amphitheatre.  (Thank goodness I've been exercising... that's the kind of thing I wouldn't have been able to do a year ago!  Hurrah for non-scale victories.)  It was a lovely, breezy space... and filled with fellow nerds ready to get their Gleek on.

The amphitheatre was pretty full!  Singers are holding their lyric sheets, which were distributed before the music started.

   
 
The event is designed for non-professionals to sing to their out-of-tune hearts' content, so it didn't matter if people messed up, or didn't sound perfect.  It was just a bunch of like-minded folks, coming together in song. 

Singers were accompanied by a live band with a songleader - they were terrific.

   


We joined in for tunes like "Defying Gravity," "Jesse's Girl," and "Firework" - and it was a total blast. Most fun for me, I think, was hearing Tom sing.  He does it so rarely!

Tom, waiting for the boys' part to come up.

  
There's one sing-along left for the summer, so if you're local and like to belt out swanky songs, you should think about going to the Rat Pack Night, on August 19.  Sammy, Frank, Dean... how can you go wrong?  All you need to do is line up at the amphitheater in advance (we got there about 45 minutes before the Glee sing-along, and that worked out perfectly.)  They'll give you your free ticket and lyrics, and it's up to you, ladies and tramps, to do it your way.

After the Glee sing-along, we stopped by an Echo Park vegan restaurant called Sage  - which we'd heard serves jackfruit.  And since we've been on a jackfruit kick lately, we thought we'd try it out.

I had jackfruit tacos, with purple cabbage slaw and black beans.

   

Tom had barbecue jackfruit, with kale and potato chips.  I have to say... I thought ours was better.

  


One particularly nice thing about the restaurant is that they also make their own vegan ice cream, called Kind Kreme.

I tried the carrot-coconut-ginger... very flavorful.

   


Since Tom can't have much dairy, he'd never been able to try a date shake in Palm Springs, but Kind Kreme offered their vegan version of a date shake!  No pictures of that, alas... it was gone before I had a chance to snap a picture.   

Outings like this... all of our Adventure Wednesdays, really... remind us that there is so much out there, that is wonderful and fun.  That we have absolutely no excuses to be bored.  And since boredom can sometimes lead to bored-eating, it's important that we keep ourselves engaged in our lives.  How are you keeping yourselves entertained?  What new things are you trying?  Because, really, trying new things is just another great way to take care of yourself.

Adventure Wednesday at U.C. Sunnydale

Yesterday was a rough day. I think I was experiencing the grief that didn't show up Monday, which was the two-year anniversary of my mom's passing.  I could not shake bone-deep blues, even when I pulled myself out of the house to do a little thrift window-shopping.  Fortunately, Tom helped to get me going for class last night.  I was so grateful for all of my friends there. Especially Joanne, who surprised me with fresh flowers from her garden.  (Also Kat, who brought me a terrific photo of the first Oscars at the Biltmore.)  I tell you, Slimmons is the most supportive community a girl could ask for, exercise-based or not.

But today? Today is Adventure Wednesday, and I'm taking you on a journey to U.C. Sunnydale, alma mater of one Buffy Summers.





Well, kind of.  U.C. Sunnydale doesn't really exist, but it was shot on the campus of UCLA, where we recently accompanied David (of Keep It Up, David fame) to see the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra perform the scores for a few silent film shorts.  David had invited us after hearing that Tom was a big Chaplin geek (and me, too - to a less obsessive extent.) We were both thrilled to join him!

We are undoubtedly nerd-fans. Here we are with Charlie at the
Hollywood Wax Museum. Photo care of (and including) one Ms. A.R.H.
And... hey, we used to look different. This was last summer.

I'd never been to the UCLA campus before - it's beautiful.  Both David and I remarked that it reminded us of our own alma mater, University of Michigan.

The buildings are similarly classic-looking. This one is the library.

Here is Royce Hall, where we saw the orchestra perform.

It's home to all kinds of beautiful flowers.

Anybody know what these are? I'd love to plant them someday.

Lovely trees, too.

Not-so-lovely stairs. Mastering the art of the climb really needs to be my next fitness quest.

While we were there, the cheer squad was having their professional pictures taken.

I've heard of bare feet, but this is ridiculous.  Wokka-wokka-wokka!

We met up with David with just enough time to do the standard blogger portraits before the show started.

Tom in his dapper new haircut, wearing his grandfather's tweed jacket which fits for the first time in years.
I, with hair swept by the wind, in my vintage lemon necklace from Dazzles in Palm Springs.

Plus David looking sleek in his jacket.  Good we all had outer layers - it was chilly!

 The performance itself was really terrific.  The orchestra played beautifully, and in perfect time with the movies (A Dog's Life which I had seen before, and Shoulder Arms which I hadn't.)  They were introduced by Leonard Maltin, who is such a wonderful font of film knowledge.  And I think this marks the first time I've ever heard a hand-saw played live with an orchestra...  there's a dance hall section with a morose soprano, and the saw solo was amazing (and sounded very much like a morose soprano!)

One of my favorite parts of the evening was the opening short film, an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon by Walt Disney, which featured the premiere of a brand new score written for the occasion by Alexander Rannie.  The score was brilliant, and unlike the Chaplin scores, the Oswald score featured a very involved percussion accompaniment, with delightful (and delightfully complex) musical sound effects.  It was like watching a foley artist working live.  (Don't know about foley artists?  Here's a little video about one of Disney's foley artists.)




You can watch the Oswald cartoon, "Trolley Troubles," but it doesn't have the brilliant new score. I hope Disney will re-release it.





After our evening of silent film, we parted ways with David and headed to a nearby Persian/Iranian restaurant called Javan, which we'd found on Yelp.  Tom and I both enjoy Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern food, but we'd never tried specifically Iranian food before.  As always, we were up for an adventure!

When we sat down, they brought us a basket of nearly paper-thin lavash bread.

It came with  butter, and the strangest bread accompaniment I've ever seen: raw onion.
But it was the sweetest, lightest onion I've ever eaten. Amazing with the lavash, and so surprising.

Since I am a fan of Indian Lassi, I ordered a yogurt drink. I didn't realize it would
be salty and savory - so every time I drank, I had to remind myself that it was
not going to be sweet. Reminded me of the Crystal Pepsi experience!

We shared a small side of mixed veggie pickles...

...and a side salad...

...with feta on the side.  I only ate a little.

Tom ordered a roasted eggplant stew, which was tasty.

I had a chicken stew in this amazing pomegranate-walnut sauce. I expected it to be like Honey-Walnut Shrimp, but the walnuts were ground into the the sauce, which made for a really nice texture and flavor.

Plus basmati rice.

Here's another example of how the portion sizes of restaurants are jacked up.  I ate a half lavash with butter and onion, a cup of the pickles and a cup of the salad, plus 2 ounces of chicken, 1 cup of rice, and 1/4 cup of the sauce... which was a really filling.  And yet, here is what was left over:

The leftovers were about the same size of my healthy and filling portion.
You can see the yogurt drink was not my thing, but hey, it's an adventure!

Again, a trip to the restaurant shows me that I can eat healthfully when I'm out - provided I make the right choices and eat the right portions.

And speaking of right portions... here is part six of my week of food loggin'.  It's good to be back, because as you can see, I can adjust by the end of the night if I haven't gotten enough calories, or enough of a particular food group.  (In this case, fat/protein, thus the peanut butter dessert and the random dinner egg white.)

Tuesday, May 24 - 1409 calories
Breakfast - 1/2 cup greek yogurt, 1/2 cup rhubarb parfait, 1/2 cup honey oat cereal, 1 boiled egg
Lunch - 1 pear, Tom's "fried" rice (Pam, 2/3 cup rice, 1/2 an eggplant, 1/2 an onion, 1/2 cup mushrooms, 1 clove garlic, 1 tb ginger, 1/2 tb light soy sauce, 1 egg)
Dinner - chicken wrap sandwich (low-cal tortilla, 1 tsp Vegenaise, 1 oz brie, 2 oz chicken, 2 cherry tomatoes, 1/2 cup spinach), 1.5 cups roasted cauliflower, 1 oz goat cheese, 1 cup strawberries, 1 egg white, dessert (1 tb natural peanut butter, 1 tsp powdered sugar mixed together, with 12 chocolate chips)
Beverages -12 oz skim milk, 44 oz water

All right.  I'm off to do some writing, and I hope you all have a lovely and productive day, too. Take care of you!

Adventure Wednesday in 1950s Downtown

We go adventuring every Wednesday in order to treat ourselves for self-care well done, to help us refill our creativity wells, to feel a part of our city, and to explore what it has to offer.  But this week, in celebration of my fist 50 pounds lost, Tom surprised me by whisking me off downtown for an overnight adventure.  So we indulged in everything that beautiful 1950 has to offer.

Or, well, it felt like the 1950s, because we snagged an unusually reasonable room at the Biltmore Hotel, a Los Angeles landmark.

We're collectors of vintage Los Angeles postcards, and we have one just like this.

Here is the hotel, today.

You might know it as an early host of the Academy Awards ceremonies.  Or you might know it as the place you first encountered Slimer in Ghostbusters.




Or perhaps as the place where Betty Draper floated down the staircase in Season 2 of Mad Men.

If you come back later this week, you might catch me floating down this same staircase on Fashion Friday.

Dramatic!

We chose to celebrate my negative 50 lbs in 1950s here, and not only because we love the retro aesthetic. It gave us the chance to do some adventuring with food and exercise, plus it helped us focus on writing together, as a creative retreat.  We're coming close to a particular writing deadline of ours, so we the took the time to be collaborate while cooped up in luxury (and away from distracting cats and friends and chores and TVs.)

We started out with lunch and tea in the Rendezvous Gallery.

It came with a vintage tea set, complete with tea cozy.

My tea was called "Green Passion," and it was delicious.

Especially with a touch of floral honey. Yes, I admit it. I took these home. They were too cute to abandon!

I lunched on - what else? - a Los Angeles vintage classic, the cobb salad.

It doesn't have to be an unhealthy choice, as long as you leave the majority of the bacon,
half the avocado and bleu cheese, and 99.9% of the dressing, which was in a pitcher the size of my fist.

Following lunch, we explored the hotel a little bit.  After all, we had it all to ourselves.  Except, of course, all of the Red Bull employees.

And the cast & crew of True Blood.

No, we didn't see the actors. Even though we found a call sheet that someone had dropped on the ground, so we knew what time they'd be arriving.  I'm not paparazzi.  (And I don't watch the show.)

We were especially excited to check out (and make use of) the lovely Biltmore Athletic Club, which is free for all guests.  I've visited in the past, and the swimming pool is hands-down my favorite indoor pool in Los Angeles.   I spent over an hour doing snorkle-laps and absorbing the atmosphere.

Don't you just want to jump into your screen?

We even did some excellent brainstorm work while enjoying the perfectly hot-bathtub-like whirlpool.

I loved the lounge chairs. I felt like I was on the deck in "The Lady Eve."

They had a tremendous number of treadmill and elliptical machines, all with personal TVs.
There were also weight machines and free weights. A great gym for a hotel!

We managed to finish a nice chunk of our script, and even caught a movie before bed (Josh Radnor's writer/directorial debut, HappyThankYouMorePlease - which I definitely liked, but didn't love.)

In the morning, we took a few blocks' stroll to breakfast at Clifton's Cafeteria - the oldest surviving Los Angeles restaurant.

Man, I hardly recognize my silhouette anymore!

Once part of a chain of Southern California cafeterias (each with a different elaborate theme), the downtown Clifton's is the last that remains of the bunch. 

It's jam-packed with woodland kitsch.

Legend has it that the crude robotic raccoons and the (kind of) immersive theming
inspired Walt Disney in the creation of Disneyland.

Even the food offerings are retro-kitschy. 

Though very plentiful, and very affordable.

Our breakfast, which included an egg white/veggie omelet with potatoes,
pancakes and grilled potatoes, two servings of whole wheat toast,
strawberries and a bottle of water, came to a grand total of $14.

Worth a trip, whether you're a history buff, a fan of things strange and corny, or just a little light in the wallet these days.

All in all, our celebratory trip downtown was both relaxing and productive, which was exactly what we needed to be.  Now we're tucked back into our Hollywood condo, trying hard not to be distracted by the kittens or the laundry while we finish up our script.  Wish us luck!

I'll be back tomorrow with a bit of honesty and a request for you all. Until then, I hope you'll find some adventure of your own... and take care of you while doing it!