i heart LA

We went to LA for the weekend for the purpose of attending the 2009 Spring Oaxacan Family Festival, which would've been really fun if it weren't cancelled for some unknown reason.

So. . . it's us and a bunch of parking lots. What to do instead?

1. Seek out Oaxaca anyway. We went to a popular Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown called Guelaguetza (named after an annual celebration known for dancing in costumes). We can attest to its authenticity—there they serve gigantic tlayudas slathered with asiento (essentially liquid pork rinds, very healthy) and dishes covered with a variety of moles. The front of the restaurant has a little shop where you can buy mole paste, chocolate, meats, and cheese. We picked up some of the mole negro paste to cook up at home—very excited about that.
   
   
2. Seek out the motherland. I haven't had Filipino food as often as I'd like since moving away from home, and it's not everyday that I'm surrounded by opportunities for someone else to make it for me. So we dropped by Glendale and had dinner at Max's of Manila (which is actually famous for its fried chicken—eaten with banana ketchup, naturally). I ordered one of my favorite dishes, pinakbet, which usually consists of meat and mixed veggies like eggplant, string beans, squash, okra, and the hard-to-love ampalaya, or bitter melon. I think Max's version of pinakbet is really similar to the kind my mom makes, which is pretty awesome.
   
   We also had a dessert called buko pandan—it's a coconut salad flavored with pandan leaves, which are commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking. This one had a scoop of creamy coconut ice cream on the top. You know that a coconut dessert is good when even TJ eats it and likes it.
   
   Then we went to a Goldilocks bakery to stock up on Filipino bread rolls called pandesal, sweet rolls filled with ube (purple yam) and coconut, and boat tarts.
   
   
3. Do several of the 10-minute yoga/aerobics/ab-strengthening workouts provided for free on the hotel TV.
   
   
4. Attend church in Spanish. I like finding different ways to improve my listening comprehension, so this has become one of my favorite activities.
   
   
5. Stroll the farmer's market at 3rd and Fairfax. Picked up some fresh-churned peanut butter here.
   
   
6. Stop by an Apple Store and drool over the MacPro and cinema display of your dreams. Unfortunately, those items are slightly out of our price range, but we did finally get our AirPort Express so we could wirelessly stream songs from our MacBook to a set of external speakers that previously have been sitting around collecting dust in the closet. Seriously, listening to music just got 100x better. This has also made connecting the laptop to the printer via USB cable everytime we need to print a document a thing of the past. Hooray for wireless!
   

More obligatory food pics: