It's been a week since my little jaunt to Los Angeles and although it would have been super fun to hear back from the Top Chef folks, I have been really happy to get back to Langosta. I've had a few private dinners to cook for some folks, a wedding to plan, and plenty of time to soak up some L'Amour western wisdom.
I woke up early today and headed up to the B&B to sip a cup of coffee and give the staff an armload of empanadas and tortillas I bought yesterday at Co-op Tortilla in Santa Cruz. The moon tide was really really low so I took the opportunity to enjoy a rare moment of winter sun here and wandered out to the reef to wade through the tidal pools and look at the Chinese freighter shipwreck. Run aground in the 70's, there's a huge section of mast that is visible when the tide wanes and although I've not spotted any of it yet, there are big sections of anchor chain that run along the bottom of the reef and out to the near-by churning sea. While I'm looking for the chain, I always end up thinking about that old cartoon where someone inevitably pulls the link attatched to the ocean's drain plug and in a foaming whoosh of water the sea bubbles and gurgles down the tube.
I gingerly poked through the bubbling pools toeing around grumbling sea urchins, lathargic sea snails, and a bobbling juvenile blue puffer fish taking his time to make sure all of the slick rocks were polished and clean.
There's no way, in evaluating life, that I could ever be upset about the way things managed to turn out, Top Chef or not. Especially since there is a new grocery store here that sells 8 different types of Haribo Candy. Mmmmm...Addiction. Delicious.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Top Chef to Be?
I decided that the best thing for me to do while I relaxed in my Los Angeles Westin hotel room would be to officially order room service for the first time. An expensive venture, I know but hey, maybe if I actually make it on this show...it's something I could get used to.
This is the official update on how all of this is going to work out, in case any of you were wondering: I have absolutely NO idea. It's 6.48a here and I've already been up for an hour trying to convince myself that I'm not all that nervous about cooking today. The impossibly early hour is giving it away though. I'm nervous and desperately fighting off the Meloy urge to over-caffeinate (flashes the O.C. hand signals to Rebecca).
After missing my first connecting flight, I got here at 4am yesterday morning finding my bags, including all of my knives lost and the rental car lot empty. As I looked at the several families sleeping in the lobby of Advantage Rentals I thought "Dang this isn't such a good start." But smiles and jokes prevailed and I was soon driving the worst looking bright yellow Jeep Wrangler to the Westin to sleep in the greatest bed in the history of modern bedding.
The next morning I rounded up my bags, a phone charger, and a friend for lunch and drove out to Hollywood to find out where this nonsense was going down. "Les Deux" the super clubby and often seen (read scene) restaurant on North Las Palmas was where I would be testing my ability to endure four hours of nerves mixed with knives and flames. As soon as I snuck a peek inside I knew I had seen this place before in "The Hills." Yeah I've watched it...guilty as charged. Around 4pm or so I headed back to the hotel to finish up my application, iron out my new coat, and relax a bit.
I'm about to shower and shave my face before I head back over to Sunset. I figure I'll show up really early just in case everyone in LA is there. Gulp. That's all I know. There is absolutely no other information I can provide and trust me, I've looked. I don't know what I'll be doing. I don't know how long I'll be there. I don't know what the format is although I hope they just call it all off as soon as I walk in.
Delusional? Yeah, maybe. Over-caffeinated? You bet.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Remember me? Probably not...
A very brief account of what happens when you mess with the laws of nature. Enjoy.
Culinary Speed Bumps in the Road of Life and the Cultural Ramifications of Chocolate Cheese or Lost in Translation: A Guide to Surviving Really Really Bad Ideas
My guard went up instantly, and not without reason. The garishly colored sign posted in front of my favorite Costa Rican milk shake stand declared “A New Way to Enjoy Your Cheese” in the most eloquent Spanish I imagine they could find. Up until this very moment I had never even considered a new way to enjoy cheese even possible much less needed. I mean, it’s a perfect food already right? I was always the first to joke that cheese was perfect with everything but I was now very quickly regretting any glib cracks I had made in the past. I scanned the panel and read “Cheese Delicately Flavored with Chocolate” in the foreground over an image of rolling verdant pastureland and bucolic cattle grazing under lazy drifting clouds. Considering Spanish is not my first language, I had one of those cartoon-esque double takes, squeakily rubbing my eyes as I confirmed in fact that I had not misread anything. Dear God…I hadn’t.
Food, and more specifically eating, is an amazing thing; an overwhelmingly yet often overlooked sensual experience dictated by our own cultures, controlled by our own personal tastes and constantly compared to and even acting as a rival to sex. From the day we are born, we are told when to eat, what to eat and how we should eat it and aside from the tortured few who produce dishes with wasabi flavored foam (or anything on a menu in quotation marks for that matter), the majority of us don’t really question those rules.
But at what point did Americans get to have Apple Pie as their national dish while the Chinese got stuck with Thousand Year Eggs, a duck egg rolled in ash and lime and buried in the back yard for 100 days until the white coagulates black and jellied in the shell? As strangers, our first reaction when we come across little cultural gems like this is revulsion, cold sweats and maybe a touch of dry heaving most likely forgetting that to others, our everyday food could be just as exotic and quite possibly as disgusting sounding. Hot dogs…point and case.
So in my fledgling intercultural understanding, I figured I might need to step up, walk the walk, and at least try the most recent and completely unnecessary improvement on cheese before I declare it unfit for consumption. So, as I stood there eyeing the tray of now more-than-room temperature samples, my palms began to twitch just a bit in that “oh crap” clammy kind of way and the young girl in charge of manning the display of slightly sweating cubes of brown “cheese” wandered over.
“Would you like to try our new product?” she asked me with an enthusiastic smile. I told her I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. She repeated herself, a little slower this time, most likely guessing that the flustered gringo in front of her didn’t understand Spanish properly and needed a little help. I assuaged her doubts as I nabbed up a caramel colored chunk of choco-cheese and popped it in my mouth before I could justify running to the car.
For those first few seconds, I was ok as my brain told me “Mmmm Chocolate” but then it got confused somewhere in between chews and the message very quickly became “Oh no it ain’t chocolate. It’s cheeeeeese.” The cute sample girl beamed on with a broad smile that said one of two things: “Heh heh. I tried it too…pretty nasty, huh?” or “Mmmm chocolate cheese” but I really couldn’t tell as the tears began to well up and blur my vision. It was absolutely all I could do to get that tiny treat down and it took every ounce of my being to kindly thank her before briskly walking out into the rain feeling cheated, dejected and just down right bummed out.
I had done what I was morally obligated to do hadn’t I? Don’t knock until you try it, RIGHT?! In all of my own internal hemming and hawing about trying new things and having an open mind when it comes to culinary experiences, I overlooked a huge key point: You don’t always have to try something to determine if it’s not really a good idea. Many times you can take a quick look and use a little reasoning (read “common sense”) to make a sound decision. These things most likely can be safely avoided: experimental parachute testing, crocodile wrangling, crack cocaine, and cheese delicately flavored with chocolate.
Culinary Speed Bumps in the Road of Life and the Cultural Ramifications of Chocolate Cheese or Lost in Translation: A Guide to Surviving Really Really Bad Ideas
My guard went up instantly, and not without reason. The garishly colored sign posted in front of my favorite Costa Rican milk shake stand declared “A New Way to Enjoy Your Cheese” in the most eloquent Spanish I imagine they could find. Up until this very moment I had never even considered a new way to enjoy cheese even possible much less needed. I mean, it’s a perfect food already right? I was always the first to joke that cheese was perfect with everything but I was now very quickly regretting any glib cracks I had made in the past. I scanned the panel and read “Cheese Delicately Flavored with Chocolate” in the foreground over an image of rolling verdant pastureland and bucolic cattle grazing under lazy drifting clouds. Considering Spanish is not my first language, I had one of those cartoon-esque double takes, squeakily rubbing my eyes as I confirmed in fact that I had not misread anything. Dear God…I hadn’t.
Food, and more specifically eating, is an amazing thing; an overwhelmingly yet often overlooked sensual experience dictated by our own cultures, controlled by our own personal tastes and constantly compared to and even acting as a rival to sex. From the day we are born, we are told when to eat, what to eat and how we should eat it and aside from the tortured few who produce dishes with wasabi flavored foam (or anything on a menu in quotation marks for that matter), the majority of us don’t really question those rules.
But at what point did Americans get to have Apple Pie as their national dish while the Chinese got stuck with Thousand Year Eggs, a duck egg rolled in ash and lime and buried in the back yard for 100 days until the white coagulates black and jellied in the shell? As strangers, our first reaction when we come across little cultural gems like this is revulsion, cold sweats and maybe a touch of dry heaving most likely forgetting that to others, our everyday food could be just as exotic and quite possibly as disgusting sounding. Hot dogs…point and case.
So in my fledgling intercultural understanding, I figured I might need to step up, walk the walk, and at least try the most recent and completely unnecessary improvement on cheese before I declare it unfit for consumption. So, as I stood there eyeing the tray of now more-than-room temperature samples, my palms began to twitch just a bit in that “oh crap” clammy kind of way and the young girl in charge of manning the display of slightly sweating cubes of brown “cheese” wandered over.
“Would you like to try our new product?” she asked me with an enthusiastic smile. I told her I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. She repeated herself, a little slower this time, most likely guessing that the flustered gringo in front of her didn’t understand Spanish properly and needed a little help. I assuaged her doubts as I nabbed up a caramel colored chunk of choco-cheese and popped it in my mouth before I could justify running to the car.
For those first few seconds, I was ok as my brain told me “Mmmm Chocolate” but then it got confused somewhere in between chews and the message very quickly became “Oh no it ain’t chocolate. It’s cheeeeeese.” The cute sample girl beamed on with a broad smile that said one of two things: “Heh heh. I tried it too…pretty nasty, huh?” or “Mmmm chocolate cheese” but I really couldn’t tell as the tears began to well up and blur my vision. It was absolutely all I could do to get that tiny treat down and it took every ounce of my being to kindly thank her before briskly walking out into the rain feeling cheated, dejected and just down right bummed out.
I had done what I was morally obligated to do hadn’t I? Don’t knock until you try it, RIGHT?! In all of my own internal hemming and hawing about trying new things and having an open mind when it comes to culinary experiences, I overlooked a huge key point: You don’t always have to try something to determine if it’s not really a good idea. Many times you can take a quick look and use a little reasoning (read “common sense”) to make a sound decision. These things most likely can be safely avoided: experimental parachute testing, crocodile wrangling, crack cocaine, and cheese delicately flavored with chocolate.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Upon the Stormy Seas
I sat in a low slung salt air battered beach chair and watched the midday tide roll in as the air vibrated from the green season afternoon storm pushing through. It's remarkable how it seems like I can have a relatively busy week and still feel a sense of calm contentment knowing that the only thing that really mattered at that very moment was watching the pelicans swoop in and run out the line on the foamy right breaking waves.I've been fairly lax on keeping these pages updated, not because nothing is really happening but because I feel like the things I am loving right now might not come across all that interesting.
-I cooked six consecutive private three course meals for a couple from NYC.
-I ate some silly hot chiles from Jose the guard's home garden. He warned me "Tio (he calls me uncle) these are super hot" but I assumed that they couldn't be THAT hot considering the Ticos just don't eat spicy food. He was right though. They were super hot. He laughed. I cried. And then I laughed.
-I listened to a ton of music.
-I got full on pineapple.
-I read a page or two of Louis L'Amour, the unsung hero.
-I had a sip or two of Flor de Cana rum.
-Sleeping sleeping sleeping. I don't sleep late but I've been sleeping hard, a pleasant development considering I hadn't been sleeping too well in the states.
-I've been out at Las Casitas kayak surfing four days this week learning how to read the waves, catch them on the shoulder, bottom turn and use my paddle to turn back up the face of the wave. Each time I drop down the face of the wave feeling the spray come up over the nose, I laugh. Every time I paddle out into the break not sure if the next wave is going to pound down on my head and I punch through it and sling salt water everywhere with a whip of my head, I laugh. When I roll over in bed and I feel those two little muscles in my lower back tense and burn from another day in a boat, I grin and sleep like a stone.
-I have felt the healthiest I've felt in a long time.
-I am quickly adjusting to slower ways of life and Costa Rican handshakes.
(The painting above reminded me of this rediculous 3 Inches of Blood song, who by the way, Charles, have a new album out. PIRATE MEATAL...YAR!)
Monday, June 11, 2007
New Nicknames
After my momentary bursts of singing love songs in spanish and my panting relay of the crocodile story to the staff at Sueno del Mar, I now have two new nicknames: El cantante and El cocdrilo. I guess I could do worse...at the very least they aren't calling me gordito any more.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Cocodrilo en Salsa
So there we were...My friend Ashton, for the past few weeks, has been hounding me to paddle up the Langosta estuary with him in kayaks so finally out of lame excuses and feeling even lamer about being so lazy, I relented knowing that as soon as I sat in the boat it was probably going to be really fun anyway. We went and picked out boats, slathered on some sun screen, and dragged our goods down to the river's edge."You know, we're doing this at the most difficult time right?" Ashton asked as I fought the initial wobbles of being in a boat and we started our paddle up stream. The tide was going out and the current from the river was running shallow and strong towards the sea. "That's ok," I said, "I could use the exercize anyway", thinking about the load of "hey you got fat in the US" comments I've received from the Ticos.
After getting situated and remembering what I had been tought in my Chattahoochee kayak lesson from older days, we made it around the bend and up into the woods. I was shocked to see how quickly we left behind any trace of human influence and slid into through neighborhoods where the locals are river oysters an purple fiddler crabs lined up on the shore watching the strangers cruise past.
The further up we went the narrower the pass got and soon we were busy dodging the branches from either shore reaching down into the murky water. "The general estuary rule here is 'don't touch it'" Ashton said as we slid under our first low hanging branch. "That's the best way to get bitten by a weird spider or have one of those crazy tree snakes drop in your boat."
"Great" I thought to myself.
Despite my being green in a kayak I was having a great time learning how to paddle and steer and soon enough I finally felt comfortable enough that we could paddle one or two times and then coast in earsplittng silence up through the dense forrest.
After a slalom of four or five arched branches, we slid up, one in front of another, into a shallow lagoon, as far up as we were probably going to make it before the tide came in. I paddled once and coasted, saying over my shoulder "It looks like we've hit the end of the li..." and before I was even finished there was a huge cracking noise twenty five feet of the nose of my boat as a six foot crocodile freaked out and shot, Steeve Irwin style, straight out into the narrow pool.
What do you think my response was? Yup...scream like a girl. Yup...backpaddle and fast. I knew in my head that he was definitely way more scared than I was but I was having a hard time getting that info from my brain to my now charging arms. I was absolutely floored, laughing hysterically as I paddled hard, blasting past the branches I had gingerly snuck past fifteen minutes earlier. As I broke out into an open area (where I couldn't see any crocodiles) I finally stopped paddling and coasted, leaning back in the boat panting.
"That was insane," I said to Ashton.
"That happens all the time," he said.
"If that's the case...can we do this again tomorrow?" I asked guessing that there was probably no way I'd get to see that again in my whole life.
"Any time," he said.
We paddled back out, taking a break on the shore in front of the ocean before heading out to try my hand at kayak surfing...and now I'm addicted. Every time my arms ached as I rolled over in my sleep, I would grin and replay that lizzard ricocheting off the water in my mind.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Honestly
Honestly, sometimes I have little guilty twinges about my life. I sneak shifty little glances at my feet while I dig my toes into the sand, all the while somehow knowing I’m not supposed to enjoy this as much as I do.
In the past three to four weeks that I’ve been absent from the computer, there have been a ton of things going on probably better told in the timeless and efficient list form. I guess we’ll just start out right where we left off.
And away we go:
-Spent an exceptionally relaxing long weekend in San Jose including a day in the Mercado Central buying up the weirdest fruits we could find, finding tiny Costa Rican clothes for the now infamous collection, and eating bizarre cajeta candies.
-Cooked a dinner party for new and old Tica friends before being “dragged” out for an evening on the town. I had my first “Miami velvet rope” club experience which was only magnified by the fact we were nowhere near Miami.
-Caught a bleary-eyed flight back to Guanacaste for two more private dinners before packing up for my trip back to the US.
-In true Costa Rican networking form met a wonderful new client while waiting for our flight to the states to arrive. Apparently I’m now catering her 60th birthday party in Playa.Negra.
-Bought a ton of Louis L’Amour books. I’ve found that he’s actually really hard to find in book stores only confirming what I already know: He’s now obscure and therefore really cool.
-Catered a private dinner party for 14 eighteen year old girls. Needless to say it was more than a little disappointing to hear them express surprise that I had graduated from their school ten years prior. “What was Mr. Yeomans like WAY back then?” It was one of those moments.
-Watched my mom try beef cheek tacos. Smiled when she said “Hay, that’s pretty good.”
-Got addicted in an instant to the original “Legend of Zelda”
-Traveled to our nation’s capitol to reconnect with an old friend from middle school. Spent four days improving on an already proven formula.
-Ate way better than I should have at both Zengo and Oya, two excellent DC restaurants.
-Visited my first winery in Central Virginia and watched a lazy summer storm roll in over a picnic in the grass.
-Spent a few more days running around Atlanta gathering up “Hey while you’re up there…” items for everyone in Costa Rica.
-Piled onto a Liberia-bound plane back to “real” life.
In the past three to four weeks that I’ve been absent from the computer, there have been a ton of things going on probably better told in the timeless and efficient list form. I guess we’ll just start out right where we left off.
And away we go:
-Spent an exceptionally relaxing long weekend in San Jose including a day in the Mercado Central buying up the weirdest fruits we could find, finding tiny Costa Rican clothes for the now infamous collection, and eating bizarre cajeta candies.
-Cooked a dinner party for new and old Tica friends before being “dragged” out for an evening on the town. I had my first “Miami velvet rope” club experience which was only magnified by the fact we were nowhere near Miami.
-Caught a bleary-eyed flight back to Guanacaste for two more private dinners before packing up for my trip back to the US.
-In true Costa Rican networking form met a wonderful new client while waiting for our flight to the states to arrive. Apparently I’m now catering her 60th birthday party in Playa.Negra.
-Bought a ton of Louis L’Amour books. I’ve found that he’s actually really hard to find in book stores only confirming what I already know: He’s now obscure and therefore really cool.
-Catered a private dinner party for 14 eighteen year old girls. Needless to say it was more than a little disappointing to hear them express surprise that I had graduated from their school ten years prior. “What was Mr. Yeomans like WAY back then?” It was one of those moments.
-Watched my mom try beef cheek tacos. Smiled when she said “Hay, that’s pretty good.”
-Got addicted in an instant to the original “Legend of Zelda”
-Traveled to our nation’s capitol to reconnect with an old friend from middle school. Spent four days improving on an already proven formula.
-Ate way better than I should have at both Zengo and Oya, two excellent DC restaurants.
-Visited my first winery in Central Virginia and watched a lazy summer storm roll in over a picnic in the grass.
-Spent a few more days running around Atlanta gathering up “Hey while you’re up there…” items for everyone in Costa Rica.
-Piled onto a Liberia-bound plane back to “real” life.
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