Sick?!

Speaking of being sick...I hate being sick - who doesn't?  I'm pretty sure I caught whatever it was Lawrence had a couple weeks ago.  Yesterday, however, was a fortuitous day to get sick.  Josh is in town, the LA Street Food festival is this Saturday, and that means there's a lot to do for the business!

I slept till pretty late in the morning and Lawrence was late to his dental appointment.  After he got back, his brother asked if we wanted to go check out a certain food truck that just finished getting wrapped (i.e. covered in a vinyl wrap so as to change the visual of the appearance of the truck in a non-permanent, easily switchable way).  This truck is being used by a certain celebrity chef on Saturday's street food fest.  I just recently started following LA Weekly and a few over local L.A. oriented restaurant-food blogs and so I've heard about this chef.  Screw my cold - I wasn't going to give up this opportunity to meet the guy!

The truck looked totally badass, with his totally badass logo of an angry coq (French for rooster, harhar) wielding a knife.  There was a small film crew there taping the chef for a reality tv show based on the chef.  They tested out the deep fryers on the truck and we got to try out the inaugural food truck-fried chicken.  It was juicy, flavorful, and totally delicious!  The chef and his wife were very friendly, personable, nice.  We got to chat with them and it was soooo cool & fun.

That night we went to have dinner with them at the Lazy Ox Canteen.  It was funny...when Josh asked if we wanted to go have dinner with them Lawrence was a little hesitant (I didn't want to seem overly eager by screaming out "OH GAWD, YES!!!").  Then Josh mentioned they were going to the Lazy Ox Canteen, and both of us lit up and were like "OKAY!"  Haha.  I had heard it mentioned all over the LA food blogosphere and really wanted to give it a try.  Dinner ended up being not so much about the food as Josh, in his enthusiasm, ended up dominating the conversation with his "company pitch".  :P  All in all, it was a great time.  I felt bad for our servers as they kept on coming by to see if they could bring us our second course, but everyone was either too busy talking or just plain not hungry from all the fried chicken we had earlier in the afternoon.  I tried to eat a lot of the salad and veggies (luckily we ordered plenty), but yes - my bootcamp diet went out the window.  I didn't order a beer and mentioned I was kind of on a diet.  The chef was like - oh yes, I'm always on a diet - bread, butter, etc....LOL.  There's nothing better than a fresh, warm baguette for this French chef and I totally agree.

Man, I SO wish I had done my food research before going to Paris with my mom that one year.  I totally missed out on the opportunity to experience some of the best food in the world.  Lawrence and I will have to go there some day.  He's so cute too, he said I should ask about the famous Parisian artisan bread baker I had been reading about in Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  I did mention that I had just gotten into artisan bread baking.  :D

So yeah, to sum it all up - I had an awesome day meeting some awesome people who cook deeeelicious food.  I felt like the odd duck out cause I'm just a lowly code monkey who works on a computer all day.  Speaking of which...it feels good to get back into some REAL coding, no matter how much I complain about the frustration.  It's only frustrating until you figure it out, then it's like the biggest satisfaction ever.  :D  Even so, it's nice to occasionally take a break from the code to do stuff like refactoring or UI design.