Hoop dreams, ramen reality

Aaaah, the glamorous life of being an international sports star ... full of European travel and dining at the finest restaurants. Well, in theory anyway. One of the highlights of ESPN's TrueHoop basketball blog is the occasional report from former Virginia Tech basketball player Coleman Collins, who is now playing for Ulm in Germany's Bundesliga.

A 6-foot-9 (2.06-meter) center for the team, Collins is also a wonderfully gifted writer. But not so much of a cook. Think he's dining on schnitzel and sauerbrauten? Then you probably don't know any twentysomething basketball players. In his latest post, Collins turns to food writing, extolling the pleasures of Maruchan instant ramen (apparently hard to find in Germany!) and, when all else fails, lunch at IKEA.

Something tells me this isn't exactly the way Kobe Bryant eats.

-- Russ Parsons

Photo courtesy of Ulm Basketball

Sampler Platter: Fat is the new normal, Eating Valley Blvd, XIV's vegan tasting menu, protecting Kentucky bourbon

Food art, bourbon, red onions and fat acceptance lead today's food news roundup.

-- Alton Brown says he doesn't see "Good Eats" lasting much beyond next year. Show Tracker
-- Chef Michael Mina’s vegan tasting menu at XIV. To Live and Eat in L.A.
-- Fat as the new normal: Saying no to diets, fat acceptance and questions about whether extra pounds really equal extra risk. Los Angeles Times
-- If you like art with your food, don't miss Wayne Thiebaud's iconic cupcakes on display in a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art until Jan. 31. Eating L.A.
--New food blog, Eating Valley Blvd, devoted solely to 8 miles of Asian eateries on Valley Boulevard between the 710 and 605 freeways, goes live.
-- Congressman Ben Chandler urges his fellow Kentuckians to protect the state's signature bourbon and horse industries. Lexington Herald-Leader
-- Gourmet Pigs declares Spago one of dineLA's best deals.
-- What to eat at Tanzore's Diwali party in Beverly Hills this week. Grub Street LA
-- Ma'Kai (Santa Monica) may close and be replaced by a Red Onion. Eater LA

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Wayne Thiebaud's "Four Sandwiches" (1965) puts its own spin on the theme of uniformity. Credit: Hackett-Freedman Gallery

The Art of Overeating: a light-hearted look at Americans' obsession with food

Public health officials say obesity costs billions and billions in health care spending. Not funny. But meeting a problem head-on with humor can sometimes help solve it, says Leslie Landis, a psychologist who lives in Malibu and has written "The Art of Overeating."

Her book is a collection of trivia, facts, musings and art on the state of our relationship to food. For example, she writes that the ancient Greeks were the first to chew gum. And if two heads are better than one, surely, "two breads are better than one," she says. She includes appealing photos of fried chicken, and disturbing ones of bare bellies. And how about this: "You will eat the weight of about six full grown elephants during your lifetime."

Landis says she came to realize how obsessed Americans have become about their diets and collected items for the book over time, she said this afternoon by phone.

She means for everyone to have a good laugh, but she adds: "I did not want in any way to make people who are overweight feel uncomfortable."

Landis will be signing books and talking at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove shopping mall near 3rd Street and Fairfax at 7 p.m. on Nov. 4.

-- Mary MacVean

(Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com)

A canned food drive for the artsy type

You've probably donated canned food at football games or churches or schools and seen the haphazard piles of cans. There's nothing haphazard about Canstruction.

Architects, designers, builders and engineers will create structures using cans for Canstruction LA, a contest to be held across Wilshire Boulevard from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The structures will be on display form Oct. 30 to Nov. 15, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; people are encouraged to bring a can of food for admission. The cans eventually will go to the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank.

A jury of design and culinary experts will name winners in the following categories: Juror’s Favorite, Best Use of Labels, Best Meal and Structural Ingenuity.

The "Little Engine That CAN," shown at the top, won last year for Best Use of Labels; it used mostly one size of can and used the labels to convey detail and shape. And at left is “Tuna’s Turn to Tame Hunger,” a flat-head screw made solely out of gold-labeled tuna cans.

The jury members are Sam Lubell, editor of Architect’s Newspaper; John Rivera Sedlar, chef and co-owner of the restaurant Rivera; Wim de Wit, head of the architecture and contemporary art department at the Getty Research Institute; and Randall Wilson, environmental design instructor at Art Center College of Design.

Canstruction L.A. is organized by the Society for Design Administration.

-- Mary MacVean

Photos by Tom Bonner

Small Bites: Chaya Brasserie turns 25; Forty Deuce burlesque at Cafe Was; raclette on Balboa Island

Chaya celebrates: Chaya Brasserie in Beverly Hills launches a new menu for its 25th anniversary, still focusing on its mix of French and Japanese cuisine (heavy on the French): fruits de mer, rillettes served en cocotte, daily specials such as cote de boeuf and entrees such as boudin blanc. A new bar menu, titled "La Petite Chaya," in honor of the first restaurant that the Tsunoda family opened in California in1982, features small plates, sushi and dessert. Executive chef Shigefumi Tachibe also is offering a $25 prix-fixe dinner special for the month of October served with anniversary-edition wines by the glass from Au Bon Climat Winery. Proceeds from $25 tickets for an Oct. 25 celebration will benefit the Careers through Culinary Arts Program. 8741 Alden Drive, Los Angeles, (310) 859-8833, www.thechaya.com.

Forty Deuce Fridays: Starting this week Ivan Kane brings back his Forty Deuce burlesque show. Kane's Cafe Was will host Forty Deuce Fridays with shows at 10 p.m. and midnight. 1521 N. Vine St., Hollywood, (323) 466-5400, www.cafewas.com.  

Balboa Island raclette: Raclette night returns to Swiss-French restaurant Basilic on Tuesday. For $21.50, all-you-can-eat raclette is served with fingerling potatoes, cornichons and pickled onions; for an additional $7, a selection of Bundnerfleisch (Swiss air-dried beef), prosciutto and saucisson sec. 217 Marine Ave., Balboa Island, (949) 673-0570, www.basilicrestaurant.com.

-- Betty Hallock

Photo credit: Chaya Brasserie.

Put up or ... : Saving the Season, a new blog about preserves

 
A new Los Angeles-based blog, Saving the Season, celebrates the art of home canning (or "putting up") and all things deliciously jammy -- preserved huckleberries, blueberry butter, white peaches in lavender syrup, apricot jam with maple and vanilla, mulberry-plum preserves and more. 

The blog is about "jams and other fruit preserves, pickles and briny things, canned vegetables (above all tomatoes)," according to its author, Kevin West, who is also West Coast editor of W magazine. Though it's just a couple of months old, there already are several recipes for jams and fruit butters, as well as one for cocktail onions -- for Gibsons, of course.     

It's also rife with good reading, punctuated by canners' secrets (such as the judicious use of gin), literary references (Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Tomatoes"), and even personal advice from Alice Waters ("do everything neatly always").

On Saturday, West and Bettina Birch of BeeGreenFarm will give a free canning demonstration at Surfas in Culver City from noon to 1:30 p.m. They will show how to make peach jam and how to can tomatoes, with a tasting to follow. (Surfas is at 8777 Washington Blvd., Culver City; (310) 559-4770.)

-- Betty Hallock

Photo credit: Kevin West

Sampler Platter: Corpse bread, balloon eggs & vegetable mermaids

It's the "play with your food" edition of Sampler Platter, dishing out amazing food art links.

• Fourth of July fireworks done with food. PESFilms
• 28-year-old Thai art student Kittiwat Unarrom makes eerily realistic mutilated body parts out of dough and other ingredients. Bangkok Day Tours
• Adorable balloons shaped like hot dogs, fried eggs and other food. David Sykes
• A whole bunch of bento box goodies, including a woman wearing an avocado face mask. Toxel
• A Tim Burton-esque mermaid made out of bok choy, an eggplant narwahl, a green onion praying mantis and other vegetable-based food art. Edith Zimmerman

--Elina Shatkin

Retro dessert roundup

Blame it on the red velvet cupcake. Blame it on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But it looks like the ebb and flow of the retro dessert trend is at high tide. Inspired by last week's whoopie pie post, here's a list of some other retro desserts.

101 Coffee Shop (Hollywood): chocolate cake in a jar
Baby Blues BBQ (Venice, West Hollywood): buttermilk pie
Beacon an Asian Cafe (Culver City): Rice Krispie sundae, Ring Dings
BOA Steakhouse (West Hollywood, Santa Monica): raspberry cotton candy, s’mores
The Cabbage Patch (Beverly Hills): whoopie pies
Kate Mantilini (Beverly Hills, Woodland Hills): lemon icebox pie
Louisiana Best Seafood (Long Beach): 7-Up cake and sock-it-to-me cake
Milk (Mid-City West): moon pies, blue velvet cake, bonbons, ice cream sundae bars and more
The Nickel Diner (downtown): Pop Tarts, Ho Hos
Nola Ice (Sherman Oaks): New Orleans sno-balls
Simon L.A. (Mid-City West): junk food sampler platter featuring cotton candy
SusieCakes (various locations): whoopie pies, animal cookies, snickerdoodles and more WestCoastWhoopies.com: whoopie pies

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Desserts at the Nickel Diner made by pastry chef Sharlena Fong. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

The banana, unpeeled

In a story that ran in Calendar today, George Ducker writes about two new art exhibits that deal with the cultivation, consumption and nature of bananas. The first, "Fallen Fruit," is at LACE gallery and was staged by the L.A.-based collective Fallen Fruit. It features images and video from a banana plantation in Colombia and shows how laborious the task of bringing bananas to American grocery stores really is. Too bad bananas don't fall off trees in L.A.

The other exhibit, "Fresh 'n Easy," opens Saturday at a gallery in Highland Park called Another Year in L.A. Together. It, too, is staged by Fallen Fruit, but it focuses more on the collective's public outreach efforts over the years, most notably including its map of L.A. fruit trees that hang over walls and are thus considered public property and free to be picked. 

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: A jam-making session at an art gallery in Echo Park hosted by Fallen Fruit. Credit: Ringo H.W. Chiu.

Counterculture foodies

In today's Food section we ran a piece about a group of DIY caterers who work largely off the grid at art openings, rock shows and warehouse parties. They also all happen to be vegan, vegetarian or raw. To read the story and see a cool photo gallery, click here. Also, if you know of any other caterers who fill the bill, please drop us a line.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: The catering team Crops and Rawbers. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times