ooops, sorry

ok, i feel a bit remorseful for what i said after reading this.

good for coleman overcoming so much. and i am happy he is at ucla. i'd be happier though if he can hang on to the ball....

don't drop the damned ball!

i think derrick coleman needs to run 5 miles (or even 10!) with the ball tomorrow so he gets used to NOT DROPPING THE BALL!!!

so much promise and energy at the beginning of the game coming out of the tunnel:


all wasted by coleman dropping the ball in the 4th with ucla only down 5 points. ugh.

let the bad times roll

just like the roller coaster that was wall street this past week, so was ucla's football season. but at least wall street got bailed out. don't think ucla will get bailed out anytime soon.

i'm cheesey, yes i know

andrew's cheese shop in santa monica opened fairly recently and they offer a basic cheese class. i like cheese. so, i went.

as much as i like cheese, i know some things about it but not so much. andrew talked while two employees passed around cheeses to try with bread and wine. for $25, it was well worth it.

so what did i glean from cheese 101?
1. i have a new favorite cheese. it is called zamorano. this is a hard cheese from the castile-leon region of spain. think manchengo. but better.
2. a good brie-like cheese is called fougerus. it's nice and creamy but it is not made in the brie region of france so it can't be called brie. but, it is still yummy.
3. gouda is pronounced "how-duh" not "goo-duh."
4. for the most part, soft cheeses are probably less fatty than hard cheeses. apparently, fat is measure in dry mass. a pound of soft cheese has lots of water and could be 50% butterfat. a pound of hard cheese doesn't have a lot of water and could be 30% butterfat. once one squeezes out all the water in the soft cheese, however, that cheese becomes say 1/10 of a pound. can't really squeeze any more water from hard cheese so it stays a pound in weight. thus, that 1/10 of a pound of cheese with 50% buterfat ends up being less fatty than a pound of cheese with 30% butterfat.
5. triple cream is not cheese. it is a cheese product. there is cheese in it but it is mostly buttermilk.
6. that white stuff on the rind of brie and brie like products is called "bloomy rind" because the mold is blooming. eiw!
7. blue cheese uses mold formed from rye bread. (at least the roquefort kind.)
8. the us imports and produces unpasteurized (raw) milk. the difference is that the cheese is aged. that way, the bad bacteria is killed.
9. the best way to store cheese is to tightly wrap the cut part of the cheese in plastic but leave part of the rind unwrapped so it can breath. put it in the cheese shelf of the fridge, or towards the bottom of the fridge assuming that the cool air comes from the top and not the bottom. also, one can store the cheese inside tupperware with a wet sponge near (but not touching) the cheese to keep it humid. then put the tupperware in the fridge.
10. andrew likes montgomery cheddar from england. he buys it from neal's yard. i thought it was just ok.

so that's what i remember from the class. i really want me some zamorano. mmmmmm.

lala land cuisine

so i just got back from listening to a panel moderated by jonathan gold of la weekly and where the panel included michael cimarusti (co-owner and executive chef of providence restaurant), octavio becerra (chef and owner of palate food & wine), and evan kleiman (executive chef of angeli caffe and host of the good food show on KCRW). the topic was: "is there such a thing as la cuisine?"

interestingly, none of them really answered the question directly. all agreed that la cuisine is varied with all the ethnic restaurants dotting the city. all also agreed that la is fortunate to have fresh ingredients nearby. but none could really say, such and such is quintessentially la food.

i can't say that there is such a thing as la cuisine. la's cuisine is varied, is international, is transcendental of the region. no one can really pin point a type of cuisine and say, "yeah, that's la cuisine." and i am fine with that so long as the food i eat in la restaurants are fresh, flavorful and great.

ucla v. tennesee (27-24)

it has been a long 5 months since college basketball ended. and finally, college football is here. i am still a bit tired from yesterday's activities and my throat is still a bit sore. but, can i just say that THAT was an amazing game.

i had very very low expectations coming in to the season. yes, rick neuheisel, norm chow and dewayne walker sounded like a very good solid coaching staff. but, ucla's starting quarterback, kevin craft, was a third stringer junior college transfer.

the first half was unbelievably depressing. craft threw 4 interceptions. and it wasn't like any bruin was in the vicinity of the ball. oh hell no... no bruin was even in the same zip code. yep, craft pretty much threw the ball to tennessee. the bright side was that defense was amazing. and, defense scored a touchdown for ucla.

if the first half drove me to prozac, i almost had a heart attack in the second half. i thought ucla was losing, then ucla started moving the ball. then ucla scored a touchdown with less than 2 minutes left in the game to be up by 3. it was pandemonium... until tennessee tied the game to put it into overtime. i was on pins and needles. it was, however, pure joy to see tennessee's kicker miss a field goal.

bottom line is, ucla suffered a whole bunch of injuries during the game (not counting the ones to cowan and olson). ucla had no business winning against then no. 18 tennessee. even if ucla loses most of its game this season, the future looks bright.

GO BRUINS!!!



bruins coming out of the tunnel


neuheisel's post-game speech