The pears were ripening so fast that I didn't know what to do with them. Though a recipe for pear Waldorf salad was included in the box, I was craving a warm dish in this rather nippy SoCal winter. So last night I baked the pears in honey.
Moist and spongey, the pears reminded me of a cross between angel food cake and marzipan.
Not quite nerdy enough to bake pears two nights in a row, I called my friend Emmie tonight to ask her out for dinner. An illustrator who owns her own greeting card company, Emmie told me about a reception for a new plushy exhibit at Gallery 1988. I risk being blacklisted by the Plushies for Ethical Treatment of Animals for saying this, but in my opinion, a plushy is a fancy schmancy term for a stuffed animal. You know how some people elevate a comic book by referring to it as a graphic novel? The same goes for a plushy. I have a soft spot for stuffed toys that are shorter than 8 inches. My collection of petite plushies include a baby Buddha, R2D2, a sock piggy made by my sister and Anpanman's nemesis, Baikinman. I liked how Gallery 1988 used food to heighten the whimsical ambience at its exhibition. The powder sugar robots on the brownies were modeled after the plushy machine that hid a girl doll in its gray chest.
The fuzzy navels went fast. After 90 minutes, all the gallery staffer had to offer me was a shot of peach Schnappes.
The gallery was so crowded that there was no room for chairs. How I wanted to take a rest on this plushy plant. The only problem was that I would have had a flower critter poke me in the butt.
The plushies weren't limited to those with a Los Angeles provenance. This bogger traveled all the way from the Netherlands, which is the home of its creators, the design duo known as Sauerkids.
The Food and Music Club can't ignore the plushy food. The plushies resembling sushi were cute but not so original. The bacon toy, however, looked more like a red tapeworm. My favorite stuffed tribute to food was the bagel trio: Miss Sexy Bagel, Lovestruck Mr. Bagel and Gentleman Caller Mr. Bagel, from left to right.
After the show, Emmie, three new friends and I turned ourselves into human plushies at M Cafe de Chaya with a tuna burger, macrobiotic sushi and a seitan BBQ sandwich. Because I had previously written about the seitan BBQ sandwich, I didn't bother to take another picture of it, even if I had chosen the wasabi sweet potato salad instead of french fries as my side dish for tonight's meal. I couldn't help snapping a photo of the mango-topped Pinkberry frozen yogurt that I had for dessert. I don't know why, but the men outnumbered women by 3 to 1 in Pinkberry. They all must be watching their girlish figures!
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