Crime doesn’t pay for slick criminals. August 27, 2010
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The Santa Monica Daily Press has let me know that there is a new deviant running wild on the streets of Santa Monica. It is no longer safe for me to take my industrial sized used oil receptacle for casual walks on the promenade or to the pier. Why you ask? Because people are: STEALING USED COOKING OIL, FILTERING IT AND RE-SELLING IT FOR A PROFIT!
According to Sgt. Jay Trisler, a spokesman for the SMPD “Once it’s filtered, the used oil can retail for a couple of dollars per gallon, making large restaurant receptacles potentially lucrative targets.”
Now embark with me on a math journey. Let’s say there is 100 gallons of used oil behind a Carl’s Jr. Some dudes show up, transfer the oil into another container,load it into a car, drive it back to Whittier, remove it from the vehicle, filter it, then sell it as Bio-fuel. And for all that, they are clearing $150 each max?
I’m looking at this two ways…
1) These dudes are savvy businessmen. They love the environment and have found a great “green” business model doing the fast food chain, area residents and the world a huge favor by re-purposing used cooking oil. (Don’t people get grants for doing things like this?)
2) These same guys are idiots. a) This sounds messy as fuck. Have you ever emptied used oil into a receptacle behind a restaurant? It’s a slippery, meat stink, hotel pan balancing nightmare where no on hears about success but failure haunts you for life as you re-emerge in the kitchen covered in sick smelling cooking grease holding an empty hotel pan cursing “give me a mop, screw you, I hate my life.” Now consider these guys trying to empty used cooking oil receptacles quickly and without getting caught. b) It’s not like this stuff is black gold. I mean…a couple bucks a gallon? These guys roll back to Whittier with massive jugs of used cooking oil sloshing around in the back of their 1998 Nissan Maxima. They pull up to the “safe house” where people are cutting cocaine and these guys are on the other side of the warehouse slumming it for $3.02 a gallon.
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-”I made a few hundred bucks today”
- “but you made it in a sleazy way. Sellin used cooking oil as bio-fuel to the (progressive) kids (driving a prius)”
- “I gotta get paid”
- Well hey that’s just the way it is”
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Original article here: http://www.smdp.com/Articles-c-2010-08-25-70193.113116_Alleged_cooking_oil_thieves_nabbed.html
“Don’t tease me bro! Don’t tease me” Teaser Post August 26, 2010
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Some potentially awesome stuff is coming down the Sussman Brothers pipeline. But first, to bring everyone up to speed on the east coast news, Max is now cooking at the wildly popular Roberta’s in Brooklyn (http://www.robertaspizza.com/) He’s excited, I’m excited, Brooklyn’s excited. And we’re having a big party in Brooklyn to celebrate. Everyone’s got mustaches now! We’re all getting sick calf tattoos! I’m typing this on my iPhone4 while swimming in a dumpster pool while episodes of Xena Warrior princess are projected onto an abandoned building and bartenders wearing suspenders are taking 15 min to make cocktails using 1920’s techniques and talking extensively about the process!
Ok, snooze button on the jesting. We’ve got 2 other big announcements but we aren’t really prepared to make them yet. Note the name of this post: Teaser Post.
For now, I want to let you know that I’ll be MC’ing the VIP stage at the LA Times Celebration of Food and Wine. One of the major beneficiaries is Share our Strength which is a charity we continuously support.It does incredible things across L.A. to help end childhood hunger.
Please buy tickets here: http://events.latimes.com/foodandwine/
AND if you come to the VIP area, please say whatup.
Check back soon for our 2 BIGGGG updates on things for 2011. Hopefully be able to announce both in the next two weeks.
Microwaved toaster baked potato chip fries August 10, 2010
Posted by Eli in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farI’m the exact opposite of Justin Bieber lately. I am so not on the global grind. I just read in New York Mag that the little Canadian plays like 3 shows a day, has a 20 person entourage (including his pillow-fight starting lead guitarist who describes himself as JB’s camp counselor…um what?) and is too busy sometimes to eat or even go bowling. Being 16, looking 14 and sounding 12 sounds like super hard work! Whatever the opposite of LOL and 
are, I’m sending them him way.
Well, it took me longer to type that JB intro and the title of this post than to actually make the super healthy side dish described above. After finding out I’m allergic to eggs and egg yolks (shit), I’ve had to phase American style potato salad out of my repertoire which is wiggity wack, because P-salad is ma’fuckin Da-lishious (even more than Flava Flav’s ex-boo).
So here is a awesome baked fry/potato chip to fill that void on my lunch plate.
When making fries at home I usually slice them super thin, toss them in olive oil, salt em and than broil till they crisp up (appx 5min). But at my office, all we have is a microwave and a super old toaster where you have to hold down the button to make it work. So I had to improvise.
I sliced the potato straight down into round potato chip like slices. Then I microwaved them for 1.30 sec. As any normal human being knows, microwaving uses radiation to heat water and excite the polarized molecules in food which allows uniform heating.
After that, I popped the cooked slices in the toaster, held down the button and bang-a-rang : crispy delicious, totally fresh baked potato chip fries made using no oil, no fry spray,no salt and only good ol fashioned safe microwave rays and a 20 year old toaster.
Try making these while tweeting at your fans on your private jet to Japan JB. Yeah…that’s what I thought.
Top Ramen, Eat Your Heart Out August 8, 2010
Posted by Eli in : Uncategorized , add a commentSometimes, great recipes just come together. Any chef will tell you “it’s all in the ingredients.” This dish is a true celebration of that statement.Here are a few rules for executing this dish. It’s quite emotionally laborious (you will need to face a lot of demons to make it) so that’s why there are a few pre-requisites.
1) You must be in an insanely lazy mood. I mean, so lazy you do not even want to google a restaurant to deliver food to you. Driving is simply out of the question. You are in a “Barely able to change the channel off the Sat night TNT movie” mood.
2) You must be kinda to very broke. The idea of spending $10+ on delivery is literally sickening.
3) You have to have basically ZERO groceries in your house. I mean, you have to be able to see every single inch of the back wall of your fridge. The weird circle ring stain from the soy sauce bottle is about the only think separating your fridge from it’s original factory specs.
4) You don’t even have time to make real rice. Correct. You only have instant rice. (who even owns instant rice? Ahh yes -the super delegates of the lazy party).
5) You don’t even have any meat to add to the dish. You only have 5 baby carrots from a basically empty veggie platter that may be like 2 weeks old.
RECIPE:
1) cook instant rice in tupperware. Cook 3 min or until fluffy.
2) cut up old baby carrots and add to the instant rice.
3) cover in soy sauce/Hoisin sauce.
4) serve with cup of tap water.
Congrats you are either the poorest SOB alive, the laziest SOB alive, or just trying to push the boundaries of really using everything up before going grocery shopping. Either way, you are a true food connoisseur.
In Defense of Food (Trucks) August 5, 2010
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Walking back to work from 26th and Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon, soaking up the beautiful Santa Monica sunshine, my iPod blasting Chromeo, twirling my @nomnomtruck bahn mi in my hand; I thought to myself how genuinely wonderful it it to work in a city that has food trucks. Today, I saw on twitter that the @manillamachine truck would be at that exact same location and for the second day in a row I made the quick walk over to 26th/Penn.
I walked up and saw Nastassia, the writer of http://theletmeeatcake.blogspot.com/ and proud co-owner of The Manilla Machine. While scoring some chicken adobo and beef sliders, she told me that the cops were really cracking down and that food trucks at 26th and Penn were being threatened with VERY large tickets.
Now, if you walk down 26th/Penn from 11.30-2.30 when food trucks park there, something slightly magical happens. Cars don’t really drive down the street and people – yes real alive human beings – WALK THERE and congregate, consuming food that is not mass produced but instead cooked with great love by the indies – you know – the SMALL guys. Mom and pop ethnic stands in truck form. Chefs who got bored of being in a kitchen who struck out on their own. And inexperienced young entrepreneurs with a good idea and a lot of balls. But then here come the cops with their zoning ordinances, and their ‘park X amount of feet away from here’ rules and their blue uniforms and overpriced SUV’s. And this is when I go all Cool Hand Luke on them without having to even consume 50 eggs.
Food Trucks are part of the cultural fabric of Los Angeles and to not embrace this culture,to actively seek out to destroy it and limit its ability to flourish is a disastrous mistake. Like going to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, walking Runyon Canyon and being weirded out by Hollywood Blvd. , things that are uniquely LA deserve to be embraced and fostered by the community. Because the food truck culture is really just that – a community. It’s a community of food lovers, restaurant outcasts, big dreamers and adventurous (and deal seeking) consumers.
LA is a brilliant restaurant city presenting unparalleled diversity and Food trucks play a vital role in how LA differentiates itself from other major cities.
I understand there are several reasons the police came (the breaking of innocuous parking laws for example) and that local businesses often feel threatened (see the response on the Miracle Mile of parking spot occupying tactics).But what I say to threatened restaurants is this: if your food was better or more efficiently priced or more interesting than the food truck around the corner and outside your door, customers would blaze past that truck and plop down into your spot.
You can blame the influx of food trucks on the hype, but realize the influx only helps everyone elevate their game. Not all the trucks will survive, but the good ones could become great and the trucks that cant afford it will sadly shut down (just like… a normal restaurant). Food trucks are about feeding people, expanding horizons through flavor experimentation and making ethnic food accessible.
LA should wear food trucks like a badge of honor instead of trying to brush them away in shame.
