Hospitals

Los Angeles Police Department officials agreed that the hospitals have few other options. But they said the practice worsens the already grim conditions on Skid Row. They also disputed the hospitals' contention that the patients taken to Skid Row are always ready for release.

Hospitals Are Discharging Patients to Skid Row - Los Angeles Times

Recently I went hiking on Mt Wilson.

First Test of Flock

I am testing a new browser that is coming out in Beta soon but is currently only a developer version, which I guess means it's not reliable or something. So far it looks pretty good. I am putting the pictures here from my Flickr account. I didn't even have to login. My only complaint about that is that it only finds my public photos. What if I want to blog my family or friends photos? Maybe that makes no sense, since why would I have them private on Flickr if I am going to just go ahead and put them on a public blog? I don't know, but it would be nice to be able to enter my password, like I can with the del.icio.us manager and be able to access all the photos I have on Flickr.

Here's a picture of a tree with my parents' garage behind it. I guess you could say that I am trying too hard to take arty looking pictures, but I guess that's one of the fun things to do with a camera. Let's see now if this works.

Oh, one last thing: Brian, my blog kicks your blogs ass!

Democracy is a remarkable thing. I am always shocked at how few people actually take the time to vote and show that they can appreciate how fortunate we are to live in a stable democratic country. You can say what you want about our federal government's foreign and domestic policy. You can deride the joke we have for a governor. You can even kvetch about the current state of local politics in Los Angeles. Yes, you say, we have a progressive mayor, city council, and state and federal legislative caucus, but they are kept in power by a frustrating network of back scratching and grooming. Who will push for the real progressive agenda? Where are the leaders who aren't tainted by the perfidious influence of money in politics? I won't argue with you. The struggle to rein in corporate power, end poverty and racism, bring health care to all, and restructure our nation to somewhere more just and human is far from successful as of now. But this does not mean that we should not appreciate what we have. A quick glance at the paper makes this point palpable. Look at this weekend's elections in Azerbaijan. The president of that country is so obviously abusing the democratic process to legitimize his power. It's disgusting. Yes, the same thing happens here. But yet, but yet.

Think about El Salvador. Clearly this is a country that will benefit from a stable, democratic government. U.S. intervention did the people no favors in the 1980s, but neither did totalitarian communist and right-wing leaders. Los Angeles has the second biggest concentration of Salvadoreans in the world. The first is San Salvador, the capitol. We all know the primary reason so many of them came in the 1980s. Through U.S. complicity, the country was embroiled in a brutal civil war for many years, where thousands of innocent people were massacred without mercy. Speaking of El Salvador...

I noticed the other day that a new pupusa joint had opened up under the Sunset Blvd overpass on Glendale Blvd, next to the Burger King. I was intrigued. The only other Salvadorean place I had seen in Echo Park was La Fe, which is a good restaurant. They have yummy food and nice trpical fruit smoothies that they make fresh and are reasonably priced. This new place, Pupuseria La Fogata, is closer to my pad, so even though I am satisfied with the eating experiences I have had at La Fe, I was hopeful that there would be a new place closer to me for me to get my Salvadorean food fix.

We stopped in on the way to the polling station, ready to get a little energy to vote. The restaurant is small and clean, with blue walls, new linoleum tables and dark wood chairs. There were no other customers at the time, but the waitress informed us that they have been opened two weeks and are doing well so far. The menues are simple - just one page with about eight choices. Prices range from $1.50 for pupusas to about $6.00 for a carne asada plate. We ordered pupusas, platanos, and atol de elote. To drink we ordered a horchata and a drink called ensalata, which was a mixture of several fruits in a sweet, clear liquid.

I liked the fruit drink. It was pretty sweet, but refreshing. The horchata was a little chocolatey, which would be fine, but it was too powdery for me. I've had much better. I liked that they served all the food on ceramic plates. An improvement over plastic, to be sure. Other pluses were the simple menu and presentation of the food. No frills. The atol was a nice dish. It was a little sweet for me to eat a lot of, but it was a fresh, almost custardy mix of corn in a sweet, milky broth. The slivers of vanilla bean were a nice flavor touch. I think I would have liked it more if there was a little more elote in my atol, but who am I to say?

The platanos were very pretty in a simple way. Just plantains, beans, and cream. I liked them. My friend didn't as much. He said the cream had a funny aftertaste, and I will admit that the sour salvadorean cream tastes a bit odd at first when paired with the sweet plantains, but I like the combo. They were well cooked, although I might have prefered a few more crispy bits. I like when some of the caramelized parts of the plantain get crunchy during the frying. There wasn't much of that going on with these ones.


We also each got a pupusas de chicharron, revueltas, y queso. These pupusas were neat looking, but a little too neat perhaps. I'm more used to a little more filling, especially cheese, that wants to burst out of the center and makes somewhat of a mess of the final product, where melted cheese has blown through the fragile wall of masa and then browned and hardened on the griddle. Again, the play of the crispy outer cheese with the luscious molten interior is part of what makes pupusas so compelling. Despite that, the curtido was fine as was the salsa, each served in cute matching ceramic dishes. All in all, the pupusas were passable.

The waitress was friendly although she seemed perplexed that I was taking pictures of the food, and asked if we were visiting from somewhere. I do plan on returning to try some of the other dishes, like the fried yucca and the pastelitos de carne. Considering that our meal came to just over $15, it was a very good deal. So if you think I am crass for reducing an oppressed immigrant group to providers of cultural touristic eating experiences, oh well. We may live in a democracy but I'm not running for anything.

Pupusa La Fogata
1311 N Glendal Blvd Suite A
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 483-3129
http://www.pupuserialafogata.com

I don't know the hours, but you can call for takeout too. They might start doing delivery eventually, but not yet.

Being vegan is really hard when you keep getting offered meat everywhere you go. It's hard when you pass a place that sells meat. See, at home I can control it by not having any meat on hand to cook with. I'm very good at home.



For example, today I made a sandwich for lunch out of the new tofurkey smoked fake turkey coldcuts that they sell over at Trader Joes.

That shit's actually pretty tasty, especially with a little avocado, mustard, cheddar cheese. Although that's not vegan either. So I'm finishing up what I have at home. It's actually better, the tofurkey, than the Good Deli shit they've been selling over at TJs. I swear, I've been eating that nasty crap for years, but for some reason I actually like it. I even cook freakin' omlettes with that rubbery pseudo flesh.

Back in the old days fake meat was more important to me. I guess I used to eat healthier too. Shit like beans all the time, kale, collard greens, brown rice, barley. Fuckin' hippie shit. No more! Actually that's exactly how I want to eat again. But no! All I see now is pizza with five kinds of meat, meatball sandwiches, pastrami, fried chicken, al pastor tacos, beef pho, etc, etc.

I used to even seek out stores that sold fake meat. Now I barely even know where to find it. There was Rainbow foods in SF for the dehydrated little rabbit turd TVP pieces. Some Buddhist vegetarian grocery store in Oakland had all kinds of that stuff. And there was a place in Alhambra that was pretty impressive too. It was somewhere between Fremont and Atlantic on Valley. I think it's gone now, but I guess I haven't even gone back to check. So where do you go to buy fake meat nowadays?

Ok, I just checked. There's some place in El Monte called Mighty Star Foods. They have a website at vegeonline.com. Ok, so I will go there and get back to you. Looks pretty good. Here's a picture of the vegetarian spirulina ham. I used to always buy these fake ham loaves and cut off slices for everything! Sandwiches, split pea soup, eggs, quiche, french frisee aux lardons (yeah, the lardons...) Ok, so this will be a return to form for me.



In our society, when you want to do the right thing it can be really tough. I might want to not drive, but it's pretty hard to get around without a car. I might not want to eat meat, but it's pretty hard when everywhere I go there is delicious meat being practically shoved down my throat! Same with vegetables, but the reverse. It's so much trouble to keep going out and buying them when you can just not eat them and not even think about it. But then you go somewhere like Israel, and it's like vegetables importuning you - eat, eat! Ok, so did I impress you with that word? Probably not.

Rather than go fully vegan, I think the best goal is to cook more at home and refuse some of the nastier-looking meat that people keep getting me to eat. The only other issue is how to not get all bloated with gas when I eat all that fibrous vegetable shit. Maybe it's time to go back to that old standby - Beano!

So yesterday I met up with Albert in East LA to do some teacher work. We stayed at the Coffee Bean for a whole four hours, and all I had was a couple small pastries from the bakery next door, one of which was called a libro because of the sheets of pastry. It would have been ok, but each time I took a bite, more of the pastry fell down than got into my mouth, which was especially embarrassing because I had said no to Coffee Bean pastries and snuck over to the bakery next door, so I was trying to eat all low-pro at the Bean. Especially because the woman working the counter was a former Roosevelt student. The point is, by two o'clock, both Albert and I were hungry.

We were driving around East Los trying to decide where to eat. Albert suggest La Parrilla, but I'm not the biggest fan. I threw out the idea of going to the Birrieria Jalisco on First and he said he was down, so off we went. Right now there is a lot of construction going on in that neighborhood. RIght next to Birrieria Jalisco is Mariachi Plaza, where the new Gold Line station in going in. One block behind is the White Memorial expansion construction. It's a bit of a mess there, but don't let that stop you from going to this place or Homegirl Cafe or La Serenata de Garibaldi. Homegirl is about healthy and delicious Mexican food and a social mission. It's a favorite spot for vegetarians and other progressive folks who work in the area. La Serenata is about gourmet Mexican food that seems to do well with the professional Downtown crowd, especially at lunchtime. But we're talking about goat here.



We happened to be in Albert's car, and luckily for us there is a nice, big gravel lot in the back. Otherwise, take the 30/31 bus or bike or something. In four years you'll be able to take the train there, but that's four years. So we walked in the back, and this was my second time coming here, so I kind of knew what to expect. It's a fairly big dining room, with red tile floors and wood tables. Nice room. The menus are on the tables and there's also a bigger one on the wall. They keep it pretty simple. You can get different cuts of goat, either in a consomme or dry. You can also get a full plate or a half. We both got the full plate of number two. Sorry but I can't really tell you what cut of meat it was because I couldn't be bothered to try to figure out the Spanish. I think there was some shoulder in there. There were definitely bones. And sinew.

The last time I went to Birrieria Jalisco, I think I enjoyed my meal more. I don't know why. I might have ordered a different cut this time. Anyway, last time I remember it being such a tender, flavorful meat. And the consomme was really good too. This time I think the meat was a little funkier. There was more fat on it, more bones, more connective tissue. It still tasted excellent, but by halfway through the plate I was pretty full. I was thinking, "Ok, I'll ask for a box and eat this later," but then I looked over at Albert's plate and that fool had finished his whole plate already. And all the fat and cartilage too. So I was like, "Shit, I can't lose face like this." So I ate a few more bites. By this point, having finished my jamaica, I was needing another drink, so I ordered a coke, which comes in nice, glass bottles here, Mexican style. So that helped a little, but honestly I was pretty much forcing myself to finish, and I wasn't really enjoying it.



So that's about it. I recommend that you do go eat birria there, but you may want to think more about which cuts you're ordering and decide how funky you want to be. You also may want to consider ordering the half order. Because I needed to lie down for two hours after that meal and I didn't need to eat anything at all until this morning, so I missed a chance to get tacos at taco zone. Not that I needed to eat more than one meal of fatty meat in one day, especially since I am supposedly being vegan this month. Yeah, right!


Ok, so this isn't exactly what the food looked like, but it's pretty close. I even had my camera with me, but I didn't bring it in. Probably a good thing because I wouldn't want to spill birria on a brand new camera. Next time, however, you will see some pictures that will really give you a physical reaction.