Driving Miss Crazy

People drive like lunatics in LA. Some of them probably are genuine lunatics. The rest have just been here so long they think it’s normal to drive like a lunatic.

Since we moved to the beach I have to navigate Pacific Coast Highway in order to go anywhere. PCH is a 45mph road through a residential area (in Malibu at least), which people drive along like it’s a freeway. I try to avoid driving on it, by being TLOML’s shadow and only going out with him. If I need to go and grab groceries or post a letter I take my pushbike. I think the adrenalin rush of feeling Hummers motor past me at 70mph makes the workout more effective.

But every once in a while I have to get behind the wheel of Ellen, our trusty Subaru (named for Ellen Degeneres, natch), and go it alone. Today was one of those days. Within half a mile of my home, I saw this guy walking slowly across the road. Only the crazy (or tourists) walk slowly across PCH. It is not a road to be strolling across. I failed to analyse this quickly enough, didn’t realise he was crazy, and assumed he would stop in the median and wait for me to pass. He did not. He just kept on walking, stepping out right in front of me as if I was not there. Fortunately I had slowed, but despite my beeping (Elle’s horn is a little gentle, a sort of Noddy ‘parp’ rather than a big honk) he continued to walk out. I swerved, slowed, and missed him by about a foot. If this guy stays in Malibu, he’ll be dead within a week.

I was still pretty riled when, another half a mile later a guy in an Escalade (because obviously a 4x4 is essential in the difficult terrain and treacherous weather of LA) cut me up. Was I invisible today? He literally pulled into my lane, with no signal, right into me, as if I wasn’t there. The old brake, swerve, beep manoeuvre is becoming too familiar.

Finally, at a light in Santa Monica, I saw another classic example of LA driving. A permatanned blonde woman in a Porsche Boxster, making an illegal left turn across traffic, with her cell phone in one hand, and a yappy little dog on her lap. Nice. It should probably have riled me, but it actually just made me chuckle.

'The' Industry

One of the interesting truths of socialising in LA is the way the movie industry dominates. So much so it’s shorthanded to The Industry. As in, there can be no other industry here.

I notice it every time I meet someone for the first time. In New York or London people ask ‘What do you do?’ so they can immediately pigeonhole you as a banker, a lawyer, the creative type, or something else. I don’t blame them, I do it too. But in LA people always ask ‘Are you in the industry?’ And you know they don’t mean mining.

This must be the biggest city in the world so thoroughly dominated by a single industry that it can be referred to as The Industry without entertainment being specified. Weird.

And the LA glance is a phenomenon I notice everytime I walk into a restaurant, bar or hotel lobby. Everyone turns to check out who has just entered. They want to see if it is someone of note. They give me a quick once over, realise I am probably just a management consultant, clinging to the fringes of a non-Industry social scene, and return their attention to their table. Or, in many cases, to scoping out the other tables. Most – or at least, many – people here are running a constant survey on their surroundings, checking for celebrities, hot producers, power agents, and has beens. I bring disappointment wherever I go, as I lift my Raybans up and take my baseball cap off and reveal that – no, it’s not Charlize Theron going incognito, but a pastyfaced Brit after all.

I am rather proud of my refusal to take part in the LA glance. I’ve lived in London – where most British celebs have been rounded up – for long enough to prize nonchalance over looking like an overexcited tourist or fringe gawper.

That said, when TLMOL and I saw Jodie Foster, with her kids, in Bristol Farms we were pretty excited and I have to admit to indulging in a quick stare. That’s because Jodie Foster is a truly private celeb, so it was like spotting a rare, timid, wild deer. I hope she knew that, and didn’t think I was just gawking like the rest of them.

Pizza D'Amore

I’m heading out of town for a couple of days, so I decided to demonstrate what a lovely wife I’d make by baking The Love Of My Life (TLOML) a delicious pie.

It’s the first time I’ve cooked something new in a while, and I needed a recipe to go by.  Damn, I wish I had brought my Nigella Lawson with me! She is languishing, along with my winter coat, a printer that will probably feel like a relic by the time we move to London, and other treasures, in a storage unit in Kentish Town. So I went online and found a recipe for something called Pizza Rustica, happily, by Nigella herself. It’s basically a pie filled with cheese and meat. Perfect for redblooded TLOML.

Except for a couple of minor problems. The first being that it’s really not easy to find Nigella’s recommended luganega sausage in our local Ralph’s. There’s a ropey-looking range called Boar’s Head which appears in every supermarket (and some so called ‘delis’ which really should know better), which produces this big balls of cured meat covered in strange dextrose syrups. Probably not quite what Nigella had in mind. But I found some decent prosciutto and figure after 45 mins in the oven a Boar’s Head mortadella probably tastes much like Bologna’s finest.

Then the pie crust. Nigella specified ‘cold unsalted butter’, so I reached for the Land of Lakes. In doing so, I learnt two important facts:

1. TLOML and I do not own weighing scales. American recipes all use cups. Cue some hasty conversion of Nigella’s weights into American cups. Squishing cold butter into a cup, then scooping it out, in order to measure it is a skill I will have to master.

Any explanations for the absence of weighing in American recipes welcome...

2. American butter is weird. When you bake with it, it flakes and crumbles and not in a good way. Apparently European butter is made with fresh, cultured cream, not the pasteurized sweetcream used in the States. Bring on the microbes and live dangerously, I say.

So my pie crust is a little crumbly but undeterred I fill it with the nasty Boar’s Head mortadella, a ton of prosciutto, some cheddar, mozzarella, and sausage. And stick it in the oven at 200, as Nigella instructs. A good hot oven. Or so I thought. But here’s the next thing I learnt – American ovens are in Fahrenheit; Nigella writes in Celsius. This is a schoolgirl error I know. But it took me a while to figure it out. To be precise, about an hour and a half. When the pie crust resolutely refused to go golden brown, I decided it was the fault of the American butter and took it out anyway.

‘Grub’s up darling!’ I yelled. All excited for the meat and cheese fest I had promised, TLOML hurries in and sets the table. I cut into the pie. It is lukewarm and anaemic.

‘How odd, it’s been in the oven twice as long as she says.’

TLOML is smart about temperatures and physics and engineering stuff. So he had the light bulb moment. We put the unappealing pie back in at 400F, for another thirty minutes.

The pie crust was a nice golden brown and the filling oozed with meat and cheese. A little too much so. Maybe we’d lost our appetites with the long wait (supplemented with chips and salsa and a couple of beers). Maybe it’s because we prize our cardiovascular health. But neither of us fancied more than a thin slice. And I strongly suspect the rest of it went in the bin the next day. Big sigh.

Instead of proving my excellent domestic goddess qualities, I spent all day preparing a late, stodgy, heart attack on a plate. Must do better next time.

PS I have since learned that good European butter is hidden in among the European cheeses, several aisles away from the American butter, in most supermarkets. Good to know.