I used to think making yogurt was reserved for those who doused themselves in patchouli, wore Birkenstocks year-round and ate a lot of tempeh. That is, until I began the search for the American equivalent of the yogurt I used to eat in Japan — creamy, not too thick and only mildly tangy — and felt like Goldilocks in the grocery store: this one too runny, this one too sour, none of them just right. After several fruitless months I realized I should just break through the beaded curtain and try making my own.

People have been making yogurt for thousands of years, eating it plain, diluting it into drinks and mixing it into soups and sweets. The process for making it is basically unchanged: milk is heated and partly cooled, bacteria is added and the mixture is left somewhere warm to ferment. Long ago this process took place in clay jars; today I use a Salton YM-9 yogurt maker, not an essential gadget, but one that ensures consistent results and costs about $25. The only other special tool required is a thermometer to monitor the heating and cooling process.

There are some guidelines to follow. Start with milk (skim, lowfat or whole) which is as fresh as possible and preferably organic. Milk with a higher fat content will make for a creamier yogurt, as will adding a bit of nonfat dry milk during the heating stage. Make sure your utensils and pots are very clean, or your yogurt may not set properly. When mixing your starter with the heated and cooled milk, make sure it is evenly dispersed, but don’t stir like crazy. The bacteria should be treated gently, like a perfectly poached egg or a newborn baby…a magical, yogurt-creating newborn baby. Likewise, during the 4-8 hours when the milk is quietly fermenting, it shouldn’t be disturbed, or you risk ending up with uncongealed milk.

The amount of fermentation time needed depends on your starter and how you would like the final yogurt to taste. Longer fermentation means tangier yogurt and since I like a milder flavor, I usually ferment the milk for the minimum 4 hours. Sometimes, such as when I use Fage yogurt as a starter, the milk takes 6-8 hours to set; I just keep checking on it until the surface is no longer liquid and jiggles like very soft tofu. Then it goes into the fridge to chill and thicken. The finished yogurt is so mild I eat it without any sort of sweetener, just plain in a little bowl alongside my toast in the mornings. It tastes faintly of green apples and smells nothing like patchouli and makes me very, very happy.

Photo by Sifu Renka, licensed under Creative Commons.

Homemade Yogurt
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks and the Salton YM-9 manual

4 cups fresh, organic milk (whole, 2%, 1% or skim)
1/3 cup instant non-fat dry milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt (store-bought or reserved from a previous batch)

In a clean pot, combine milk and dry milk. Slowly bring to 170° F over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove pot from heat and allow to cool until milk reaches 110-100°. This tedious process can be speeded up by placing pot in a sink full of cool water or in the refrigerator.

While milk is cooling, plug in yogurt maker so it can prewarm. When milk is the correct temperature, put the starter in a small bowl and add about 1/2 cup of the warm milk. Gently stir until the starter is thin and relatively smooth, adding a bit more milk if needed. You are trying to get a starter mixture that will disperse evenly in the milk. Pour the milk into the clean yogurt maker container and add the starter mixture, stirring gently to combine. Place the covered container in the yogurt maker and let process undisturbed for 4-8 hours, or until yogurt has partially set and the surface is no longer liquid. For tarter yogurt, leave mixture in the yogurt maker to process for 1-2 hours longer. Remove from yogurt maker and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to chill and thicken completely.

The finished yogurt can be used as a starter for the next batch, but after a couple cycles the bacteria will weaken and you’ll need to start again with fresh, store-bought yogurt.

I know it’s impolite, but eating and reading go hand and hand for me. No matter how many times my mom squawked “No reading at the dinner table!” when I was a kid, I just couldn’t kick the habit, which I’m pretty sure is lifelong. That’s why I was so glad to hear that Stories, the new bookstore in Echo Park, has a cafe serving sandwiches, pastries and coffee right next to their shelves of new and used books.

The menu is simple: pastries, bagels (from Brooklyn Bagels) with a choice of spreads, a small selection of sandwiches, freshly-made soups and a few sides like hummus and couscous salad. There are coffee and espresso drinks made with Raven’s Brew coffee and a few sodas. The cheerful blackboard menu promises that all produce comes from the Echo Park and Atwater Village farmers markets and that the coffee is freshly roasted in Los Angeles.

The cafe is at the back of the store and offers a long narrow table alongside the cookbooks where patrons can sit and eat, but you can also settle at one of the tables near the front window or in the back patio, an alleyside space spruced up by a large mural and a smattering of plants.

I stopped by on a gray, chilly day and was craving some soup, but unfortunately the vegetable soup wasn’t yet ready, so I opted for a cup of veggie chili and the dill tuna sandwich. Both were simple and totally satisfying. The chili was chunky and only mildly spiced, with a pure, clean flavor and interesting mix of textures. All the bread at Stories comes from Breadbar, so it’s no surprise the star of the tuna sandwich was the rye bread, served lightly toasted, a perfect blend of crisp and chewy with a very mild rye flavor. The presentation of the food — cup of soup, sliced sandwich, pickle spear and spoon on a square white plate — was straightforward and pleasing, like the meal itself.

The only downside to the meal was the service, which was slightly awkward and not entirely welcoming, but that will hopefully improve with time. Despite that, Stories is a welcome addition to the neighborhood, a place where no one will look at you twice for oh-so-rudely reading while you eat.

Stories, 1716 Sunset Blvd. (213) 413-3733.

A couple weeks ago my dad and stepmom came into town, craving seafood and a little adventurous eating. I knew exactly where to take them — Ondal 2, a Korean restaurant specializing in seafood hotpots, bubbling soups cooked right at the table.

One thing is certain: you will not leave Ondal 2 hungry. Small aprons set at each place point toward the messy face-stuffing to come, and as we put them on the table is swiftly paved with handmade panchan. The egg souffle is particularly good, soft and slightly sweet, like an ethereal tofu. A whole salt-grilled mackerel pike is so succulent I find myself picking meat from the bones even after the meal is over and I am stuffed.

We order a large spicy crab soup, a medium short rib soup and the seafood pancake. The pancake arrives on individual plates, a golden square of dough studded with chunks of squid and green onion. But it is the spicy crab soup that steals the show, four whole crabs arranged in a brothy red bath. Our waiter, the owners’ son, comes over to explain the dish and his family’s restaurant as he attacks the crabs with a pair of shears. Smaller female crabs, prized for their tasty roe, peek out from beneath the soup’s surface. Snip. His mother does all the cooking and everything is made from scratch. Crunch. Each of the four large crabs is stuffed with a crab cake, one of his mother’s specialties. Snap. Business was crazy for them during the six months immediately following a good write-up in the LA Times, but things have calmed down now. Crack.

Then he puts down his shears and it is time to eat.

After slurping down half the soup and sucking clean a formidable pile of crab shells, we are ready for the second act. A waitress comes over with a handful of dough and begins stretching thick noodles, dropping them into the still-bubbling broth, while the short rib soup is whisked away, to be replaced by the seaweed-flecked fried rice the waiter is mixing up nearby. We groan. We are so full. But we keep eating.

Dessert is a sweet nutty tea poured over a small cup of shaved ice, thankfully light. Drinking it seems to revive me and I suddenly notice an elderly Korean woman watching Nanny 911 on a large TV at the back of the room. The mood is warm and comfortable, like I’ve been invited into the home of someone generous with a mom who cooks rockin’ Korean food, and I vow to get myself invited back.

Ondal 2, 4566 W Washington Blvd.  (323) 933-3228.

It happens to the best of us. Stomach grumbling, tired, rushed, you ignore everything you know about processed snack foods and duck into the nearest convenience store in search of something, anything, to fill you up. But what if you didn’t have to trade your food morals for a bag of chips? Thanks to Locali, a new “conscious convenience” market in Franklin Village, you don’t have to.

Looking to create a cross between a Japanese quick-mart and a European corner store, owners Melissa Rosen and Greg Horos have stocked the shelves with everything from vegan cheese to organic tampons, with an emphasis on products from local food artisans. Among the tempting options are La Guera Tamalera’s tamales in flavor combinations both classic (chicken in green sauce) and innovative (Sasquash, a sweet yam and squash tamale filled with red beans), as well as brown sugar vanilla bean ice cream from Carmela Ice Cream and an agave-sweetened ginger-grape slush made by a nearby vegan restaurant. At the counter you can order a bowl of fresh soup or a sandwich made to order on Oliver’s bread. And if you weren’t already convinced of Locali’s superiority to the corner 7-11, their large selection of organic and biodynamic wines and locally brewed beers will change your mind.

Should you decide to stay and eat at one of the inviting counter seats, you don’t even have to feel bad about tossing your trash. Clearly marked bins separate paper and other compostable waste — which includes the store’s disposable spoons, made from a potato-based material. Locali also sells reusable bags and metal water bottles, and dispenses reverse-osmosis water at no charge.

Rosen’s excitement about the future of Locali is infectious, whether she’s talking about their soon-to-be-introduced snow cones or tentative plans to host eco-focused classes in the store. Locali is fast becoming a neighborhood hub for local food products and information about sustainable living — and it’s also a really great place to quiet your rumbling belly.

Locali is located at 5825 Franklin Avenue. (323) 466-1360. Open 7 days a week, 7am – 11pm.

I ride a scooter to work. I replace burned-out light bulbs with CFLs. I shop for local produce at the farmers’ market. In short, I try to do everything a responsible urban dweller should do to reduce her greenhouse gas emissions. Except that I eat meat. And according to a recent article in Audubon Magazine, eating meat could be as damaging to the climate as racing all over town in a Hummer throwing empty plastic water bottles out the window.

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, says worldwide livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of total greenhouse gases, more than the emissions of all the cars, buses, trains and airplanes in the world combined. Even local, organic meat is not exempt. Whether or not it burns huge amounts of fossil fuels in transport, meat production of any kind cannot avoid the actual emissions of the animals (methane and nitrous oxide in the case of sheep and cows), which are powerful greenhouse gases. In fact, organic, free-range chickens actually have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised birds because they eat more feed and take longer to raise, an ironic twist which has left me staring sadly at the expensive sustainably-raised meat in the supermarket.

Tidwell’s solution has been to give up meat entirely and cut down his consumption of eggs and dairy, joining the 3 percent of Americans who are true vegetarians. (For the record, untrue vegetarians are those that eat chicken or indulge in bacon. Sorry, doesn’t count.) Not an easy lifestyle change to be sure, but not an impossibility, especially in vegetarian-friendly California. A more realistic solution for most people is to simply cut back on meat consumption, from the per capita American average of 12 ounces per day to 3.1 ounces, a change which experts have calculated would protect the climate.

Should you find it difficult to turn down that half-pound burger on the menu, there is also the matter of global warming and the immediate suffering of the world’s poorest people. Changes in weather, floods and drought, have devastating effects for subsistence farmers, those who already live on so little — and eat so little meat. So while we’re happily chowing down on our 84 ounces of greenhouse-gas-spewing meat a week, families in Bangladesh stare out at their barren fields and wonder why the rains haven’t come and if they’ll have enough food to make through the year.

Still want that burger?

…Yeah, me neither.

Photo by jamesjordan, licensed under Creative Commons.

Rosia uses her bare hands to flip the blue corn tortillas toasting on the grill in front of her. She looks up when a passing man shouts out a friendly tease and says to him in Spanish, “I know where you live!” then smiles at us sweetly. She plates three quesadillas: papas y chorizo, hongos (mushroom) and flor de calabaza (squash blossom). My friend holds out some cash and she puts on a plastic glove before touching the bills. It’s endearing, this nod to cleanliness, standing in front of a grill-topped cart next to a grimy alley in Echo Park. Rosia smiles sweetly again when we thank her for the food. I think I want her to adopt me, especially after I taste the quesadillas.

Her cart, parked just south of Sunset on Echo Park Avenue, serves only quesadillas. But save your chicken quesadilla craving for another day and instead order the flor de calabaza, delicately chewy and tasting faintly of squash, or if you’re feeling brave, huitlacoche (corn fungus). The blue corn tortillas are made to order, the handful of dark masa flattened and grilled before you know it, and the condiments include cotija cheese and nopales, strips of cactus tossed with cilantro and onion.

There’s a fruit man just a few steps away, should you want to make it a nutritionally complete meal, and the Salina’s Churros truck often stops at the end of the block. You’ll have to seat yourself on a curb in the nearby parking lot to eat your food, but it may be one of the finest three-course meals for under $10 in the city.

After weeks of relentlessly warm and sunny days, it’s easy to forget we’re supposed to be in the midst of winter here in LA. But take a look around your street — maybe even your backyard — for undeniable proof: citrus fruit, heavy on the trees, the ultimate winter treat.

Did you ever read the Little House on the Prairie books when you were a kid? Remember when Laura and Mary were so excited to reach into their Christmas stockings and pull out an orange? Just one orange. And maybe as a kid you were like, I know I said I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder and play with a pig’s bladder on slaughtering day, but I changed my mind. Life was too tough back then, because the thought of being so worked up over a plain old orange was just really depressing.

But times have changed and now I find myself intrigued by all the citrus I see growing on the trees in my neighborhood at this time of year — plain old oranges, lemons and grapefruits. Maybe it’s because, like any good Little House on the Prairie fan, I love the idea of foraging for my own food. And thanks to Fallen Fruit, an organization dedicated to mapping public fruit trees, I know that in the City of LA, fruit hanging over public property is fair game for anyone who wants to pick it. According to their map of my neighborhood, the hills around my house are dotted with lemon trees on public land. I think it’s time for a lemon-hunting expedition.

And what will I do with my foraged lemons? Make them into lemon vinaigrette, of course, my new favorite kitchen staple which takes approximately five seconds to whip up, yet somehow makes everything it touches taste a million times better. It’s humble, yet oddly exciting. Like getting an orange in your stocking on Christmas morning.

Lemon Vinaigrette

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Makes about 3/4 cup

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon minced shallot
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

Whisk all ingredients in bowl to blend. Season with salt and pepper. Use immediately or store in the refrigerator, where it will keep indefinitely. Bring to room temperature before using (the olive oil will solidify slightly when cold). Toss with salad greens, pasta, roasted potatoes, cooked grains — basically anything you can put in your mouth.

Some things just go well together: Chocolate & Peanut butter. Pastrami & Rye. And then there’s Wine & Hot dogs.  Now if it seems incredulous that the latter is worthy of occupying the same category, I recommend you come out for one of Silverlake Wine’s Thursday Night Flights.  Once you sidle up to the bar for a flight of wine and finish it off with a gourmet dog from Let’s Be Frank truck parked in front of the wine store, you will see for yourself.  Made with 100% grass-fed beef, Let’s Be Frank dogs are hormone-, nitrate- and filler-free, so you need not worry about blindly chowing down on snouts or tails. According to their website:

“Let’s be Frank uses grass-fed beef from local producers — REAL PEOPLE WHO RAISE THEIR BEEF IN A WAY THAT DEMONSTRATES THEIR CARE FOR THE HEALTH OF THEIR CATTLE, THEIR LAND AND THEIR CUSTOMERS. Our local ranchers are stewards of the land first and foremost, because natural, high-quality pasture results in the best beef. Raising grass-fed beef is not the easiest or cheapest way to raise cattle, but farmers choose this path because of their commitment to quality and sustainable agriculture practices.”

I’d heard a lot about the quality of the franks, but until recently, the truck painted with the happy wiener dog logo was a Westside-only staple, parked at the Helms Bakery Complex in Culver City and on Abbot Kinney in Venice.

Now that Silverlake Wine and Let’s Be Frank have joined forces, Eastsiders can head over to the wine shop on Thursday nights to enjoy hot dogs from 5-11pm and flights of wine from 5-9pm. Last night’s dog choices included a regular beef frank, spicy beef frank and pork brat ($5 each), with or without grilled onions. I went for the onions, a little sauerkraut and some ketchup on my regular beef frank and bit into guilt-free hot dog goodness. Peppery, with a pure meaty flavor and a nice snap, the dog disappeared in a flash and readied me for the crowds inside the wine shop.

Last night, I squeezed my way to the front of the bar to order their red flight — Pinot Noir was the featured red and Chardonnay the white — and for $12 enjoyed a healthy pour of three pinots from different regions. The staff was efficient and informative, the crowd convivial and unpretentious. After the third wine, a 2007 Kingston Family Vineyards “Tobiano,” (which happened to be my favorite of the night), I was ready for another dog.  So I joined the dwindling line outside and ordered a brat dog with onions. With more sausage than a traditional hot dog, the brat was juicy and perfectly seasoned, a tasty end to a relaxing Thursday evening.

Silverlake Wine is located at 2395 Glendale Blvd. (323) 662-9024. Their Thursday Night Flights tasting is on Thursdays from 5-9pm.  Let’s Be Frank truck is parked just in front of the shop on Thursdays from 5-11pm.

Lunch boxes: they’re cute, portable and full of food. What’s not to like? For over five years I used a metal Sanrio lunch box for all my food-toting needs and when I lived in Japan I used small bento boxes with a bottom section for rice and a top section for everything else. I had been vaguely thinking about getting a new post-bento lunch box when I spotted the Aladdin Lunch & Go at at — where else? — Target, the place where sort-of-needed items become necessities. I liked the slim design, the no-leak seal and the built-in cooling pack. It was $12. I bought it.

I’m a believer in the benefits of bringing your own lunch, both for health reasons and because I’m a cheapskate. I also like to snack throughout the day, but can’t stomach the chips, cookies and other partially hydrogenated wonders on display at work (except for the occasional Oreo and what-have-I-just-done stack of sour cream and onion Pringles, shh…), so I’m often toting a bunch of little things along with my lunch. The hard-sided Lunch & Go is a big improvement over the series of small, mangled shopping bags I had previously been using to carry my lunch, and nearly as roomy. The freezer pack slips into place on either side of the interior and makes it easy to keep your most perishable items cool. Most importantly, the lunch box itself is slim — a Capri cigarette to other, more Marlboro lunch carriers — and fits nicely inside my tote bag without making the whole thing too big and unwieldy to carry over my shoulder, a huge plus when commuting on public transit. The leakproof seal is equally appreciated, as I constantly fear my container lids have given up and released their contents to the world.

Now all I need are more containers that will fit inside. Aladdin sells a salad set designed to fit perfectly within the Lunch & Go, but, um, who eats just a salad for lunch? Not me! I’m thinking a couple small, flat, rectangular containers will complete my lunch box lifestyle. Also a reusable spoon and fork set. And maybe a water bottle….