The wise man built his house upon the rock

The foolish man built his house on the sands of Malibu, at the bottom of the Santa Monica mountains. And the rain came tumbling down... and then the mud... and then the rocks.

The rain this weekend was crazy. And it sent people a little crazy too. The jackass, who jacknifed in his jackwagon next to us - a result of aggressively changing lanes at 70mph in 4" of water - on the 101 was a message: life is short, and precious.

The torrential rain and ensuing mud slides and rock falls did not damage our humble surf shack. But it was evidence that Malibu is a natural disaster waiting to happen. Poor Cosentino's flower store was hit by a river of mud from Las Flores canyon. Three days after the storm ended there are still firecrews and maintenance guys scraping the mud slick up from Duke's carpark. Madness.

During the storm the waves crashing against the stilts our building rests on made the whole building shake. Either that, or it was the earthquake that shuddered a way a mile or so offshore from Malibu. Yup, like I said, Malibu is a natural disaster waiting to happen. It's basically a string of multimillion dollar homes, battered by waves daily, clinging to the bottom of cliffs which turn into mud slides in winter and fire routes in summer... It's pretty, but I feel like it might not be here in 10 years time.

When we say goodbye to the 'Bu, it just might be forever. But if Malibu does not get swept away by earth, wind or fire, we're coming back on vacation every year.

A rather precarious house.

Sunset from our deck. Which I suspect could be in fragments on those rocks in 20 years time.

Devilment

On Sunday we dined at the wonderful Pace's Supper Club. Everything was, of course, delicious. And seasonal and local and cooked with love. And accompanied by the lovely strummin' and a-singin' of him out of Truth and Salvage, my new favourite band. That's just what you come to expect from Pace's Supper Club.

I especially liked the toasted hazelnuts in the cavallo nero. I jolly well love hazelnuts, especially with anything dark green and leafy. It's a rare chef that puts them in with the dark green leaves (I suspect because it takes quite a lot of hazelnuts to be noticed, but hey, understatement has its own charm, no?). Whenever someone does it, I think 'I really must buy hazelnuts and start putting them in salads... or with spinach... or even with cabbage'. But then I forget*.


And I bloody loved the deviled eggs. Pace's were all fancy and came from happy hens and topped with Oregn's finest Transmontanus caviar. Posh, eh?

I love not only eating deviled eggs but also deviling them up myself. TLOML and I had them as starters at a couple of R+D and then at Bar Marmont in the past couple of months, so I suspect they are having a moment. They're the new roast sprouts.

So much did TLOML and I enjoy our fashionable eggs that I decided to make them for the first time on a date night (for which read: 'let's pretend we're being thrifty by staying home and cooking an elaborate $100 bouillabaise accompanied by enough Schramsberg to sink a weaker drinker). I had never made them before and although the basic premise seemed simple enough, I thought it was worth checking a recipe online. I landed on www.deviledeggs.com. Where else?

This is truly the most comprehensive deviled eggs website out there. (I assume there are others.)  It contains many many many recipes for deviled eggs. Which is sort of crazy as they are all exactly the same except for the bit after 'scoop the yolk out', and before 'put it back inside the white' where she tells you what to mash into the egg yolk. Yeah, steps 1 through 4, and 5 are pretty much a cut and paste job I guess.

Kind of sweet though, as it is clearly this lady's calling to evangelize, educate and just generally spread devilled egg love across the interweb. She has a section on the history of the deviled egg! She also claims to have 'regular visitors'. Which made me snicker the first time but actually, I've been back to the site twice since, so perhaps I am one.

FYI after I read the first 3 recipes I decided not to worry too much about Mrs Devilled Eggs.com and just wing it. Garam masala was a good addition, horseradish not so much, and the anchovy and paprika ones were the most popular of all. None came close to Pace's though!

*Now I've held the hazelnut thought in my head for two whole days, I almost think this time I could act on it before I forget.
Sadly however we are not buying store cupboard items so much as trying to dispatch them to the Euro. It's very convenient of her to move to LA within a week of our planned departure. 'Rusty bike, need it...? 7 mismatched wine glasses...? How about this dying hydrangea...?'
I suspect she will arrive with only the mongrel Louis Vuitton bag full of Louboutins and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot to her name, so she'll be glad of our stuff. Until her first jaunt down Abbot Kinney, when she replaces the lot with something far more fabulous. Her loss will be Goodwill's gain.

Unseasonable rainy season style rain

When is rainy-season style rain not rainy season rain?

When it occurs outside of the rainy season, silly.

Before I moved Stateside to be with TLOML he debated relocating back to his former stamping ground, San Francisco. I was tempted, as San Francisco is, unlike LA, an actual city with a beating heart and public transport. I did some hard thinking. In the end, LA won, because it has beaches and famously good weather. And if one's going to abandon dear dear London for a year. one needs a beach and plenty of sunshine to ward off homesickness.

It wasn't until the decision had been made that I discovered LA has as much rain in a year as London. Horrors! But TLOML clarified that it is quite unlike the rain in London, which spitter spatters down willynilly throughout the year, the clouds not pausing to consider whether it might be considered summer down on the ground.

No, in LA, I was told, the rain all occurs within the 'rainy season' in January and February. Ah, the rainy season! What a good idea. Herd all the rain clouds up and release them over a short window of time. So much more predictable and manageable.

When we had torrential rain for 3 days in late December I commented 'I guess the rainy season came early this year.'
'No,' insisted TLOML. 'This is not the rainy season yet.'

Hmmm. And when the sky chucked newsworthy buckets of rain down on us on Sunday, I said 'Wow, this is some rainy season rain.' Only to be told 'It's March. The rainy season's over.'

So I ask you, when it rains in a rainy-season style, outside of the rainy season, is it just regular old rain? 'Cos it sure as eggs is eggs did not feel like regular old London style rain to me.

PS One might ask the same question about the legendary June Gloom (a marine layer of misty cloud that sits over LA). When it's gloomy in May, or July, what is that called? Which reminds me of an observation a Fog City friend of ours made, when we were debating marine layers, smog, and the haze that sits over the Valley.

 'Like Eskimos for snow', he mused, 'Los Angelenos have more words for poor air quality than anyone else on earth'.

Pizza wars: 'sports' fights gourmet

The art of the perfect pizza is a subject that consumes millions of inches of recipe book print, and gazillions of, um, bytes, or whatever the interweb is made up of.

I know because I've googled it. Ever since I first amazed TLOML when we decided to have home made pizza and I reached for the bag of flour, and not the Boboli crust, I have been straining to perfect it. I mean, if he was that delighted with a stodgy dough that didn't rise baked in a lame metal tray, imagine how much more he'd love me if I produced a really cracking pizza.

So for over a year now we have been working on the perfect pizza. I have been in charge of dough, trialling every recipe from the over-researched, underwhelming Peter Reinhart's 'Napoletana' recipe to the one on the back of Fleischman's quick rise pizza yeast. TLOML was in charge of stretching, pressing, or rolling the dough. I was convinced the proper Italian way was to toss it, only to be confounded by evidence to the contrary in a dirty but fantastic pizza place near the station in Rapallo. The rolling pin works. Early on we invested a whopping $20 in a pizza stone and peel for easy assembling. We worked out the best way to get the oven superhot: switch it on an hour early and put the skillet lid over the stove-top ring that leaks oven heat. And I have to say, after a few false turns (I'm talking about you Wolfgang Puck) I think we've pretty much arrived at the best home made dough. The one on the back of the packet, funnily enough. You absolutely have to make 2 thin crusts with it though, just one is way too thick.

So much for the dough, what of the toppings? Here's where the hot debate comes in. TLOML favours what we (I) call American style. Thick with sauce, cheese, onions and peppers, garlic, jalapeno, an extra layer of cheese, and as much meat as will stick. I like what I call a European gourmet style. You know the kind, thin on sauce and cheese, and just one or two choice toppings.

We usually go for American style, as I fear incurring TLOML's wrath / really like ingratiating myself with him in the kitchen. Last night, crowing over our dough success, we decided to make 2 pizzas. One American, made by TLOML and rebranded 'The Sports Pizza'. He objected to mine being called European Gourmet since Gjelica and Madeo and many other LA restaurants make it this way. One, no longer known as European, simply 'Le Gourmet'.

The Sports Pizza

Le Gourmet

You know what...?! Both were damn good. The debate would rumble on - except that we are about to move to NYC, home of the perfect pizza, leaving the pizza peel and stone in the capable hands of The Euro.

The conference call of a thousand cuts

I should probably qualify that headline. The call itself was not about, or subject to, any cuts. The call was simply rumbling along in the background - ah the joys of a speakerphone on mute - while I did some wardrobe analysis.

Hence the thousand cuts.


In New York we will be living in an apartment that is, in its entirety, roughly the size of our total Malibu closet space. TLOML is saying things like 'I'm just going to Goodwill all my clothes except two pairs of jeans and two tshirts'.

I am making weak promises like 'I'll pack everything really neatly! I'll rent a storage space nearby!'. I hate getting rid of clothes. I rarely do it, and the odd time that I do, I inevitably rue that day when, two years later, the unlikeliest trend revives and I find myself hunting for that pair of M&S 'gardening trousers' in bright turquoise. God I miss those trousers.

But despite my dread of disposing of something dreadful I later realise is amazing - I have to admit it was probably time for a few wardrobe cuts to be made. So during the course of another long boring teleconference I set about it. As usual in these forays into the closet depths I rediscovered some long-forgotten gems. Hello red leather obi-style belt! Hello gold sparkly vest I have owned since I was 16!

And goodbye, jeans I fitted into for one brief summer after a bout of food poisoning.

Here are the results. Do you think TLOML will be pleased?

Coming to NYC

Well, I'm hardly not going to take my hi-tops, am I?

Yes, all 175 tops. And yes, I'll need all 3 grey cardies. And the magician's jacket.

Also coming for spring in NY

Some vital colour blocking t-shirts in this section

All the belts are coming

And the scarves

Also coming to NY for our 6 mths sojourn: the furry hat, in case of a cold snap, and several bikinis in case of a heat wave.

Dresses. Coming to NYC.

Capsule outerwear. Coming to NYC.

Going to LA Goodwill.

Harumph. Probably not. Heigh ho. We're off to Nobu for the first of what will undoubtedly be many 'farewell' dinners. In fact we're going with 2 of our fave LA friends on Friday, so we thought we'd go tonight to 'save the phone call' to book that table. Yup, we're in trouble, in the middle of an official thrift kick and going to Nobu to save on phone bills....