My living room is big for a one-bedroom apartment, but somewhat narrow and dominated by Rob's two favorite possessions: a giant flat screen TV and a giant brown leather sofa. Moving or losing either one of those items is out of the question, so when the time came to look for more seating for the living room, I was kind of at a loss. The giant sofa's giant arms left no room for a regular love seat and I hoped for more than a couple of narrow chairs. Luckily a midweek trip to St. Vincent's thrift store yielded two comfy armless chairs that I was able to bargain down to just $20 each.

They were perfect. And looked great. And were each big enough to fit two (skinny or okay-with-being-cozy) people. The only problem? They were really dusty and smelled like thrift store, ugh. So I did a little research, whipped up a little detergent foam and watched a little reality TV one afternoon and a couple hours later had two sparkling clean chairs.

Whipping laundry detergent is oddly satisfying.

Before I tell you what I did -- a note about upholstery. The fabric on these chairs is anything but luxurious, which is why I went ahead with the cleaning process without spot-checking to make sure it wouldn't do anything weird. If you are cleaning upholstery you are fond of, test a small patch before proceeding with the whole furniture piece.

My assistant, whether I like it or not.

Once you're ready to go, mix 1/4 cup laundry detergent with about 2 cups of water in a large non-plastic bowl. Using an electric hand mixer, beat the mixture on low until the bowl is full of dry, fluffy foam. Lift the foam from the bowl with a metal spoon (plastic or wood will absorb the detergent scent) and apply to the upholstery. Rub the foam in gently with a clean rag. Repeat over the entire furniture piece, rewhipping the detergent mixture to get more foam as needed. Empty the bowl and fill it with clean water. Dip a clean rag in the water, squeeze it out and rub it gently over the upholstery to remove the remaining dirt and detergent. Repeat, refilling the bowl with fresh water as needed. Let the upholstery dry.

And...done! Two clean, good-smelling $20 chairs so we can have even more people over to watch our giant TV.*

Not really an After, since I never took a Before picture. But you get the idea.

*Which is exactly what we did a couple weeks ago when Still Waiting** came out on DVD because Rob has a pretty big part in it. The movie is kind of misogynistic and awful, but Rob is funny, so if you're interested in seeing him on the small screen, rent it. Rob plays Mason, the lisping fry cook with a heart of gold.

**This is not the movie I mentioned previously, the one with Catherine Zeta Jones. That movie is called The Rebound and will be in theaters hopefully very soon.

Exhibit A: Months and months ago I was contacted by someone at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture about using some of my wagashi photos in a book about Vancouver. They finally finished the book, Vancouver Matters, and and it's really lovely. Each chapter is about a different material and my pictures (teeny tiny) appear in the "Sugar" chapter, alongside an essay about the connection between Japanese Canadians and beet sugar farming. Very interesting stuff. And I have a tiny credit in the back. Yay!

Exhibit B: A short film I made called Oven Lovin' will be screening at a multi-event art show called My Bloody Valentine this Friday at 8pm at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. The film is a food porn starring Rob, me, Barry White and some brownies. If you're in the LA area, you should come!

Exhibit C: If you don't read my food blog, you might not know that I recently became the food editor for an LA-based online magazine called Evil Monito. I'm posting over there about twice a week, writing about everything from found fruit to spicy Korean hotpot. If you like what you read, you can subscribe to my feed here.

It's been a busy month -- but exciting!

So this is the cross-stitched Christmas gift for Rob I mentioned in the last post. Sadly, I cannot take credit for the brilliant design; the conception was all thanks to the Internet. The Domestic Scientist provided the inspiration and a link to the pattern, which I doubled in size. It took forever to finish, but pretty soon after starting it I got really into it and started to realize why the ladies of yore used to cross-stitch all the time. There's something satisfying about all those tiny squares coming together to form words and pictures, especially for a compulsive neat freak like me.

Rob loves it, needless to say, and it has taken its place above our controller shelf, a repurposed IKEA CD shelf which has been dubbed "The Hutch." I set the shelf up in an attempt to organize Rob's gaming clutter (told you -- compulsive neat freak), and it has become the most commented-on piece of furniture in our apartment. Even better, Rob totally uses it! I think he likes admiring his myriad of gaming accessories, slumbering away in their little cubbies.

If home is where the controller is, where is home for the controller?

...I just made that up. It's a Zen koan for nerds. Meditate on it.

The new year has arrived and so has my new planner. Being a productivity nerd, I'm sort of really picky about the planner I use. Japan was a magical land of small, functional and incredibly cute planners, but here in the U.S. it's been hard to find candidates matching all three criteria. Last year I modified "incredibly cute" to "classically attractive" and went with a trusty Moleskine. But today I was super excited to open up my mailbox and find the Little Otsu planner I ordered for 2009.

It's even better-looking in person, the hand-drawing and lettering making every page unique. And there are pages for writing down movies you want to see, books you want to read, music you want to listen to and websites you want to visit. So handy! Usually I'm resistant to dateless calendars, but this planner is so great in every other way, I don't mind filling in all the info. Anything for my slim, functional and incredibly cute Little Otsu planner.

In other holiday wrap-up news, I just barely made it into Seattle for Christmas after two canceled flights and a night in Denver. Ugh. Once I arrived, though, I had a relaxing five days of snow, family and cross-stitching (project to be revealed later).

Back in LA, I attended a brilliantly conceived party crawl for New Year's Eve, with hour-long stops at four houses, each serving different food and drinks, on a walkable route starting in Los Feliz and ending in Silver Lake. While walking we all jammed to the tunes coming from a giant boom box one of the organizers had bought at a Goodwill. I made desserts for the last stop: Guinness gingerbread cupcakes with lemon-cream cheese frosting and a caramel, cranberry and almond tart. One drunker reveler told me she kind of hated me because they were so good and another told me she kind of loved me because they were so good. I'd call that a success.

(It was nice to be around trees again.)

(Car-free night at the LADWP Light Festival.)

(Last night we had a holiday cookie party. I made my favorite gingerbread cookies.)

I love this time of year.

I'm kind of notorious in my family for not necessarily giving people the Christmas gifts they asked for, but instead deciding for myself what I think they would like. It's true. For me half the fun is figuring out what would make life better for the person receiving the gift. This year I started planning and buying in October, ridiculously early for me, and I thought I'd share some of the ideas I've come up with.

WARNING: If you are related to me or related to someone in my household (i.e., a member of Rob's family), stop reading now! Seriously!

Give the opportunity to give: Through Kiva you lend as little as $25 to people in developing countries who are requesting small amounts of money (often less than $1,000) for specific purposes: buying seed for a farm, upgrading to new auto mechanic tools, buying a new cart and horse. With the investment of Kiva users, the people receiving the loans are able to improve their businesses and become more self-sufficient, while paying back their loan. Not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing your money is helping the lives of others in a significant way, you even get your money back in the end -- which you can of course then give to another Kiva project.

I'll be giving a Kiva gift certificate to my step-dad, someone who is fiercely liberal and fairly anti-consumerist. I think he'll like knowing his gift has nothing to do with shopping malls and everything to do with helping those who could really use it.

Give a signature spice blend: Turkey chili is one of my kitchen standbys -- it's really easy, very comforting and loved by all. I recently learned how simple it is to make your own chili powder by just toasting dried chili pepper pods and pulverizing them in a coffee grinder. And the depth of flavor makes store-bought powder taste like sawdust. With the huge array of chili peppers available in L.A., I've been experimenting to find my ideal chili powder, using Alton Brown's recipe as a starting point. I'll be mixing up a big batch before Christmas and giving them out, along with a recipe for my chili.

If you don't make chili, you can also try making a custom curry blend, rub for roasted meats or mulling spices blend. Penzeys Spices has tons of inspiration and also sells empty jars for packaging your creations.

Give original artwork: Okay, so this isn't the most revelatory tip, but I've been really into buying art prints on Etsy this year and will be giving some out as gifts as well. I just think it's amazingly cool that you can buy prints directly from the artist, often for less than $50, and decorate your house with fun, unique artwork. There is no excuse for bare walls or generic IKEA prints! You can check out my Etsy favorites to see if anything inspires you. In the past I have bought prints from Berkley Illustration, Oh My Cavalier, Lauren Nassef and Dkim Art. Just remember to order early -- there's no last-minute Christmas Eve shopping on Etsy.

What are you giving this year? Any interesting gift ideas?

What's better than an unexpected gift in the mail? An unexpected paper doll made by the one and only Chisako, my friend and former paper doll teacher. She sent it as a thank you gift for the article I wrote about her on Etsy.

Seeing a Chisako-made doll up close, I finally understand that all the dolls I made were nothing compared to what she can do.

She transforms paper into fabric. Look at the draping!

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is something I will treasure forever. Thank you, Chisako! ありがとうございました!

So there has been some grumbling about my lack of posts lately -- I do apologize. For the last month, I've spent most of my free time working on assignments for the online food writing class I'm taking. It's called Food Writing Boot Camp, and they really mean it -- I feel like I'm in the midst of a journalistic marathon. But it's great, I'm learning a lot, the other people in the class are talented and I love the teacher. So you see, I'm neglecting my blog for a very good reason!

In other news, Milhouse likes his leash -- or at least doesn't hate his leash -- and has a new found love of chewing on dead grass in the backyard. It didn't take long for him to get used to wearing a leash, but every time I put it on, it does take him several minutes to get used to being in the big bad world once we are outside.

I have several craft and apartment decorating projects on hold right now, awaiting the end of my class. I'll be back with those soon!

So whatever happened to the upside down tomato plants I planted on my balcony? Well, they grew huge on twice-daily waterings and once-weekly feedings, survived a couple neglectful trips out of town and have been supplying me with a steady stream of heirloom yumminess all summer, particularly the prolific Sunsugar.

The Sunsugar had a nasty leaf spot problem early on, which I treated with a bacterial spray. The woman at the nursery store showed me the organic fungicide options and said, "No one really chooses this one because it has bacteria in it. But I know it works." I felt sad for the misunderstood bacteria -- there are a lot of good bacteria in the world, you know -- so I bought it. It worked great. Yay for bacteria!

The Hollywood Farmers' Market had a tomato festival last Sunday, with free samples of maybe twenty types of tomatoes. After trying all of them, I have concluded that I like my own Black Krim tomatoes the best of all. Is it because I grew them myself? Perhaps. But they are also beautiful, with a rich, almost salty flavor. Too bad I'm lucky to harvest one every couple of weeks.

Not like the Sunsugar, which has been producing pints and pints of cherry tomatoes. Last week I used some in a simple pasta dish, which was such a big hit I made it again this week. I use the egg pappardelle noodles from Trader Joe's and basil and chives from my own plants. There's something uniquely satisfying about eating food you've grown yourself, don't you think?

I used to be a book pack-rat (a bookrat?), but after five moves in five years, I got tired of packing and unpacking boxes of books I would probably never read again and donated a bunch before I moved to Japan. My LA Public Library addiction has helped curb my book hoarding habit, but there are still a lot of books -- especially thrift store paperbacks, once my kryptonite -- taking up space that could be occupied by books I really love and want to read over and over again.

So I was excited to find out about Powell's Books online book-selling system. You go to their site, enter the ISBNs of all the books you want to get rid of and get a credit offer for the books they are interested in. If you accept the offer, you can print out a postage-paid shipping label, box up the books and send them to Powell's for free. After they receive the books and make sure they're in decent condition, the credit is applied to your account and you can buy a book or two that you really want.

Not surprisingly, I got kind of a nerdy thrill from entering all the ISBNs and finding out which books they actually wanted. It was sometimes a surprise. In general all the paperbacks purchased for college lit or film classes were a yes. The novels I was obsessed with when I was 15 (the non-Weetzie Bat books by Francesca Lia Block, anything by Douglas Coupland) were an unfortunate no. But I managed to rack up a $17 credit with thirteen books I didn't mind never seeing again and bought myself a book I could curl up with every night: Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours.

It's a beautiful book with incredible full-color photos. I left it open on the couch the day I got it and returned to find Rob flipping through the pictures. He turned to me and said, "My god. THIS BOOK." A rave review if ever I've heard one. I wanted to make something right away, but because I didn't feel like going to the grocery store, the inaugural recipe had to use only the ingredients I had on hand and had to have the potential to knock my socks off -- the Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake was perfect. With two sticks of butter and eat-from-the-spoon-good chocolate sour cream frosting, how could it not be?

Now...how to turn my boxes of old clothes in the garage into some sort of fruit pie....

The other project taking up most of my blogging time lately is the relaunch of my food blog, Delicious Coma. I'm posting there weekly about restaurants and markets in the L.A. area -- Korean pizza, anyone?

And here's a new video by Summer of Tears, Rob's comedy troupe. If you like it, please Digg it and make Rob happy!

...What's that? You want another post about a ridiculously cute creature doing everyday things adorably? Okay then.

On Sunday I went over to my friend Jenn's house for some crafting and catching up. First I met Fufkin, her chinchilla, who is the softest ball of fluff EVER. He also once devoured one of Jenn's purses overnight. No joke.

After some knitting (me) and jewelry-making (Jenn), it was time for Fufkin's dust bath. Chinchillas roll around in volcanic ash to absorb the natural oils in their fur, and Fufkin turned into a blur of fuzz and poofy dust once the box of dust was in his cage. He'd run around for a minute, sit in the dust for a minute, then madly spin for what seemed like .003 seconds before beginning the whole process again. It was insanely cute. And really hard to photograph -- but I finally got a Fufkin in Action shot.

Now if Jenn could just train Fuf to walk on a leash, the Circle of Cute would be complete.

And hey, I just realized Jenn already added the super-cute necklace she made on Sunday to her Etsy shop. You should get it -- proceeds go toward chinchilla dust baths!

Milhouse may not know it yet, but I have big plans for him. When I took him to the vet to be fixed -- just the first of many surprises for the little guy -- I found out he is a bengal, which explains his spots and super-feisty nature. Bengals, the product of the cross between a domestic cat and the Asian leopard cat, are a smart, friendly breed with tons of energy. They're known for their interest in water (some of them even take baths with their owners), and their willingness to be trained. It's apparently not difficult to leash- or toilet-train them.

!!!

If I had to name my Top Two Most Funny and Amazing Things a Cat Could Do, they would be:

1. Walk on a leash.
2. Use a toilet.

Milhouse, say hello to your next two surprises.

I'm going to wait until he's full grown to try the leash training, but there may be some very incredible photos of my cat using the toilet in the near future. Until then, he will express his bengal-ness by poking his head in the running shower, unearthing socks and carrying them around the house in his mouth and being a freaky-cute ball of energy.

The Belly Dancers Guide to Better Belly's has no publication date, introduction, or known connection to belly dancers -- or their "belly's." The recipes may well have inspired Sandra Lee, with their multiple cans of stuff mixed with a tub of other stuff, then topped with bread crumbs and baked. But for all of that, I really love this cookbook.

It could be the book's low production values. The only illustration appears to be a wooden spoon with a Farrah Fawcett '70s hairdo wearing a belly dancer's outfit next to an apple oddly superimposed over a bunch of grapes. This graces the title page of each section, with the title written in a creepy off-kilter handwriting which portends nothing good.

It could also be the unabashed trashiness of the recipes, like the Mini Pizza made by slathering catsup on an English muffin and sprinkling it with oregano and American cheese. Or the Easy Casserole, made with two cans of cream of mushroom soup, one can of chicken rice soup and one can of vegetable soup. Not surprisingly, the recipe cautions "DO NOT SEASON WITH SALT," probably because doing so will immediately cause the dish to seize up and turn into a bowl of pure sodium.

Of note are two recipes -- submitted by one Jean Stuckman of Marion, OH -- dubbed the No Name Recipes, most likely because one dare not utter the name of a concoction so foul. Upon closer inspection, both recipes turn out to be identical: No Name Eggs is a mixture of cottage cheese, bread crumbs, eggs, grated onion and cooking oil, just like No Name Salad. Both are mixed in a loaf pan and baked for 30 minutes. Neither is even vaguely edible.

Even the cocktails are scary. Cherry Coctail Slush sounds like the sort of thing you might put together using other people's leftover drinks: whiskey or bourbon or "etc." mixed with Real Lemon juice (note: a capitalized Real is never real), some "bar sugar" (I'm assuming that's the sugar the bartender has spilled on the bar throughout the night) and eight maraschino cherries. I was under the impression that consuming more than five maraschino cherries in one sitting led to immediate death, but apparently whiskey or bourbon or "etc." cancels out this effect.

Also, the Frozen Dacquari is made with frozen lemonade concentrate and something called Red Pop. The excess capital letters disturb me greatly.

Also, there are spelling errors in the names of all the cocktails. Drunk typing!

Mostly I just really like imagining the group of suburban women from Ohio who assembled this cookbook. Clearly they were friends and all had good senses of humor. Did they do any belly dancing in actuality? Were they all completely annoyed by Beverlyn Cain -- who had obviously taken a trip to Africa at some point -- and and her long, didactic recipes from various African countries? I like to think about them all coming up with their belly dancing names together, the way my friends and I came up with our 1950s girl gang names when I was in high school. I wouldn't be surprised to learn these belly dancers from suburban Ohio are still friends, that they still get together and mix up a big batch of two boxes of stuff mixed with a can of other stuff -- topped with bread crumbs and baked for 30 minutes.

This week's recipe kind of chose itself -- it was the only one that didn't make me gag while reading it. The Harvey Wallbanger cocktail, invented in the 1950s, is a mixture of orange juice, vodka and Galliano, an herbal liqueur. It reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s and even spawned a Harvey Wallbanger Cake, which is what I decided to make this week. The cake, being a product of the '70s, is always made with boxed cake mix and boxed pudding mix, the ingredients I originally intended to use in the name of authenticity. But standing in the fluorescent glow of the supermarket aisle, looking at the boxes of mix selling for 3 for $5, I got too depressed by the prospect of eating a cake made with artificial flavors and weird preservatives and decided to make the whole thing from scratch. Call me old-fashioned. Or new-fashioned, I don't know.

I decided to skip the whole pudding concept and just base the recipe on my favorite citrus cake, Dorie Greenspan's Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Yogurt Loaf Cake. Usually I make it with Meyer lemon, but this time I used an orange, and covered the whole thing in an orange-Galliano-vodka glaze. YUM. The olive oil might sound weird, but it works well with the citrus and herbal Harvey Wallbanger-ness of the glaze. If I were going to make it again, I'd add some Galliano to the batter (maybe 1/4-1/2 cup) to make it even more Wallbangin'.

New-Fashioned Harvey Wallbanger Cake

Makes 8 servings

For the cake:
1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt
3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons Galliano
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon vodka

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan and set aside. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Put the sugar in a medium bowl and rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers until the sugar is light orange and fragrant. Whisk in the yogurt, eggs and vanilla and mix until well-blended. Add the dry ingredients and whisk until just blended. Using a wooden spoon or spatula, fold in the oil until the batter is thick and shiny, with no visible pools of oil. Pour into the pan.

Bake the cake for 45-50 minutes, or until golden and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes.

While cake is cooling, prepare the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the glaze ingredients until smooth. Run a knife around the sides of the cake pan and turn cake right-side up onto cooling rack. Spoon the glaze over the cake, including the sides, and cool.

Last Sunday was the annual Crab Fest at The Hungry Cat, which I was lucky enough to be invited to by the lovely Meg (in the photo above, depicting the general feeling at the end: sleepy, swollen-footed satiation). There is something magical about eating two courses of crab followed by all-you-can-eat boiled blue crab dumped directly onto newspaper-covered tables, which you smash apart with a mallet while trying not to get crab gunk all over your cucumber martini. Magical, I say. And very messy. You can see all my pictures from the day here.

And this Sunday was my birthday. My sister Sonya is in town, so I got to wake up to the sound of two of my favorite people making me breakfast in the kitchen. And wondering how to make coffee. (Rob: "But this is in OUNCES!" Rest assured, the coffee tasted fine.) Earlier in the weekend, Sonya had the honor of being my first scooter passenger ever and we had a couple thankfully-uneventful rides around town, stopping by Intelligentsia for coffee, Taqueria El Charrito for tacos and Scoops for ice cream. There was also a crawfish boil party in there somewhere. I know how to feed my guests at least.

Rob and I rounded out my birthday with an afternoon screening of WALL-E (we both teared up) and a Sunday dinner at Lucques, where the pork stew over polenta was good enough to make up for any unfulfilled birthday wishes of years past.

(There's a Cookery Book Monday coming later today!)