The Real Kung Pao Wives of Beverly Hills

I do not consider myself a bandwagon girl. On the contrary, I am much more of an irritating contrarian. My favorite Katherine Hepburn movies are the ones you haven’t seen. I hate chocolate cake. I take surface streets from the Valley to Santa Monica.

Just to piss you off.

I think part of this can be traced to two moments in my life. The first was when I chose to abstain from all organized sports as a child, instead preserving the sanctity of the after-school snack hour. To this day I have a deathly fear of falling down, which I rarely witness in people who have played competitive sports at some point.

Falling down was never a part of my life (soccer, skiing, risky physical hijinks), and so to this day it remains worst case scenario. Even if technically I am only somewhere between 1 and 4 inches off the ground, the panic over the possibility of a graceless and painful tumble sends me into a quiet meltdown, and when it’s over I flee the scene in a daze to find chocolate-coated comfort.

Temple Grandin had her Hug Machine. I have the Choco Taco, a frozen delight now made harder to find by the complete evaporation of almost every physical Blockbuster store.

The second moment that I believe forged me into an oppositionist, started so innocently. I remember that blustery fall day in the late 90’s. I heard the crunch of tires in the driveway, and looked up from my after-school snack. (See: Second Paragraph) Footsteps landed with eerie determination on the gravel, then the steps, then the porch. Faster than usual. My sister crept to the top of the stairs above me, her eyes wide with (terror? hours of continuous television programming?)

My eyes never leaving the front door, I took what could have been my last ever bite of cinnamon toast. The door flew open, or slowly creaked open, or opened at a normal speed…Our eyes struggled to focus in this new natural light that had shattered the retina sizzling blue light emissions of the My Two Dads re-run I had been enjoying.

 There stood my dad, a scarlet feveresque spark in his eye-the result of an impeccable and inescapable marketing campaign that had now made its way into my home. He didn’t have to think about it, and it was the most certain of anything that I have ever heard him sound. He just said it.

 “Everybody get in the car. We’re all going to Old Navy to get those vests.”

And so I spent much of high school in a square fleece vest the color of a taxi cab, and while I have certainly made much more egregious fashion errors (and continue to do so to this day), that was really the moment I decided not to do the thing everyone else is doing.

I live in Los Angeles, and once in a while I have a disgustingly California day. The kind of day that everyone who doesn’t live here thinks you have every day, except that of course you don’t. Unless it’s one of those days that you accidentally do. Savvy?

Now that you know that I am contrarian and why I am as well, I can tell you that sometimes I accidentally have a completely typical Los Angeles day, despite my best counter-offensive. This one was a Thursday.

For reasons I will not go into, unless you ply me with red wine and curly fries, at which point I start giving away missile codes anyway, I had to have a bit of a “proceeeeeedure” done the other day in Beverly Hills.

It’s not what you’re thinking.

It’s not that either.

Not even that.

It’s so boring and un-scandalous, it’s kind of disappointing actually. Nothing about me is bigger or smaller, or better or worse, less or greater, or younger and “more radiant.” It was something so lame, but that had to be done, and it was by pure circumstance that the office was in Beverly Hills, thus making the whole scenario completely damned typical.

But I decided to milk it anyway. I found my big dark sunglasses. The ones that make me look like a glamorous drug mule. I got a Venti something. And I went in for my “proceeeeedure”.

 *This part is censored*

Ok, “proceeeeedure” complete. Stop trying to figure it out! I’m having too much fun tormenting you with it!

I left the immaculate office, hit Rodeo Drive unnecessarily limping for dramatic purposes, walked past a reality show filming, stood in line behind a certain British television personality to get my car, and headed out of my completely typical Los Angeles day on $4.50 a gallon unleaded.

The further east I got on Santa Monica Blvd, the more I yearned for the complete opposite of lovely cream colored, crystalline, serene, highbrow Beverly Hills. My inner contrarian was starving. For something messy and atypical and informal and delicious. Something spillable and surprising, and eaten standing up.

And there she sat. On a busy corner of Highland Blvd, a twin assault. The Don Chow taco truck. Chinese-Mexican fusion tacos. In front of a cupcake bakery. I wanted atypical. And atypical happened.

 Atypical came from this guy.

Atypical came in the form of sweet sticky Kung Pao chicken with cilantro and salsa on a tortilla. Chinese BBQ pork is lovely and traditional and delicious. But Chinese BBQ pork in soft taco form with diced onions, salsa, and limes is fusion at its best. Carne Asada is the beef that makes fajitas sizzle and hearts melt, and is a touchstone of familiarity on the menu. In the pantheon of comfort foods, Chinese food and tacos reign equally. And so it should not be a “Soilent Green is people” type revelation that Chinese food in a taco with an avocado on top is completely magnificently delicious.

If you were hungover, and you had Chinese leftovers in the fridge, and a pack of tortillas…

You get the picture. These guys got there first.

So I had my Kung Pao chicken taco, in all its messy fusion anti-Beverly Hills glory. Then I killed a strawberry cupcake from cupcakery it sat in front of. Frosted is all that a cupcake bakery should be. Lovely and light, sweetly retro, and fully stocked. The lady in me appreciates very much a row of creamsicle umbrellas and neat rows of baked goods.

And thank God I don’t have those webbed feet anymore. Just in time for beach season.

Your Weekly Misfire:



The Famous Sandwich Revolution of 2012

I am no stranger to controversy. As a student during the universally watershed year of 5^th grade, we were assigned extra homework as punishment for not wearing a hat on (no suspense here) “Wear A Hat Day.”  

And I reluctantly took on the difficult role of Whistleblower.

My first step was to enrage my parents on my behalf. And so I wove the tale of the abuse of power that “Wear A Hat Day” had come to represent. This so-called voluntary activity had fallen into the wrong hands, and now was being used as a scapegoat for assigning extra homework. Every authoritarian regime starts with a scapegoat. And I would NOT be theirs. And they would be fools, to let it happen on their watch.

Elementary schools on theme days can be a real powderkeg.

Me, Marilyn, and a Fish Sandwich

The past few weeks I have found myself in the unusual situation of not having to work until late in the evenings on Fridays. And so I have perfected an approach to that day which I refer to as “Marilyn Monroe-ing.”

I sleep in until my neighbor begins his Jefferson Airplane tribute with an open door and MAX volume setting. I’m quite sure he believes himself to be filling a void in the apartment complex, but once in a while it might be nice to leave that void unfilled.

I find my glasses, which is always tricky without glasses on, an irony that consistently amuses me, and get up and make coffee. While I continue to prefer coffee made by others to my own, when the goal is to not leave the house until absolutely necessary, self-made coffee becomes unavoidable. I like to spice up the process by purchasing one of several varieties of “exotic” creamers. Green cap means Irish Cream, and the one with the cinnamon roll on the bottle tastes like a liquid cinnamon roll. So, despite our numerous problems, at least as a nation we know that we have nailed the drinkable cinnamon roll. Hard to imagine that quality inexpensive health care is far behind.

Thank. God. It's. FryDay.

The first thing I want most in the world is a set of visible abdominal muscles. I ask for them for Christmas every year, and they never come. The second thing I want most in the world is something fried to eat.

You can see my dilemma-these two things rarely happen to the same person. It’s a one or the other type deal. Those Carl’s Jr. commercials are a lie.

I have a crème brulee torch, a Japanese mandoline, and a cherry pitter. These things make my kitchen an arsenal of deadly culinary toolery, and I consider the cabinet next to my sink to be my first line of defense in the event of a break-in. I will dash PAST the mace by the door, push the block full of sharpened knives OUT of the way, seize the contents of that cabinet, and brulee the intruder to a crunchy-brown sugar crust. Or slice them into thin uniform rounds with my mandoline. I’ll just have to see how I feel.

But my food preparation brinkmanship does have a limit. I draw the line (for myself, not others) at a deep fryer. Here’s why:

First of all, I know that once I get started I won’t be able to stop. Fried chicken is a gateway drug, make no mistake. The road to hell is paved with good fried chicken. It starts there, and it ends with you staying up for four days straight frying peanut m&m’s and mini marshmallows individually with a crazed look in your eye smelling like a chicken nugget, and all the while justifying it to yourself by muttering: “Can’t waste all this oil, can’t just throw it away…such a waste…such a waste...” Trust me, if you're Breaking Bad in your midnight kitchen with a jug of canola oil, don't do it for the sake of being "green."

Secondly it’s a lot of work, and I’d rather just let someone else do it for me. It takes a lot of prep time, and then it’s gone. The people you fry things for will love you forever and stain their shirt with your finished product, but it still remains the ultimate thankless task. Like untangling Christmas lights, or putting tights on a baby.