TV: To be continued...

Now that the writers' strike is over, there is a glimmer of hope that we will finally have something new to watch on TV. Here is an updated but not-yet confirmed list of the TV shows I'm waiting for:

24
Season 7 postponed until January '09.

Big Shots
No new episodes expected. Ever.

Bones
Four pre-strike episodes remain. Expected to shoot 2 additional episodes. All 6 episodes will air on consecutive Mondays beginning April 14.

CSI
Expected to shoot 6 new episodes to begin airing on April 3.

CSI: NY
Expected to shoot 7 new episodes to begin airing on April 2.

Desperate Housewives
Expected to shoot 6 new episodes (including a two-hour finale) to air beginning April 13.

Gossip Girl
Expected to shoot 5 new episodes to begin airing on April 21.

Grey's Anatomy
Expected to shoot 5 new episodes to air beginning April 24.

Heroes
No new episodes expected until fall.

How I Met Your Mother
Expected to shoot 9 new episodes to begin airing on March 17.

Law & Order: SVU
Expected to shoot 5 new episodes to begin airing on April 15.

Lost
Four pre-strike episodes remain. Expected to shoot 5 additional episodes to air beginning April 24.

Nip/Tuck
Production on the show's eight-episode sixth season expected to start up this summer. Airdate TBD.

Numb3rs
Expected to shoot 6 new episodes to begin airing on April 4.

The Office
Expected to shoot 6 new episodes to begin airing on April 10.

Women's Murder Club
Expected to shoot three new episodes to air in April/May. Future beyond that TBD.

For now, I have downloaded Season 2 & 3 of Numb3rs and have loaded it up on my appleTV. If they cancel Big Shots, I'm going to shoot someone.

Click here for updated on-air information.

Do you ever miss school?

I am staring at Vina's Psych book on the table titled "Emotion" and I'm itching to pick it up and start reading. Do you ever miss going through a brand new textbook and highlighting vocabulary words and testable material? Do you ever miss taking out a crisp sheet of college rules paper and writing your heading of name, date and period # at the top right corner? Do you ever miss shaking your lead pencil as you furiously click, waiting for the lead to peek out just the right amount?

More About Food... (Beef in particular)

The ironic prequel to this story is a conversation I had with Elaine last weekend while we were shopping. She had mentioned to me that she completely cut red meat out of her diet and I thought to myself... that's not too hard and has so many benefits, I should try it. I thought, I don't eat a whole lot of steak or beef anyway!~

Well, without realizing it, I ate beef 2 out of my 4 meals this weekend. I had a Sourdough Jack for lunch on Saturday, Menchi Katsu Curry @ Curry House for dinner. It's a good thing I caught myself today -- so at dimsum I ordered the Shrimp Rice Noodle instead of the beef, and at Fatburger I had a turkey burger for dinner instead of the regular beef burger.

Which brings me to my next point... I went to the ghetto-est Fatburger ever today. Well, to be fair it was NOT the most ghetto, that would be the one in the Valley that is so old, they still serve chicken wings. THIS Fatburger was probably the only one I've been to where I feared for my life while waiting for my food. First of all, the cashier and the cooks were so slow, I thought for sure someone was going to bust out a gun and start a brawl out of hunger. Secondly, I noticed that Steve and I were probably the skinniest people in the entire restaurant. I mean, the restaurant was packed with maybe 30 patrons, and except for a table of skinny teenagers, everyone else was 200+ pounds. I'm guessing they were all regulars.

By the way, I thought I was being so healthy by following up my afternoon run with a turkey burger instead of a beef burger... turns out my turkey burger (with fried egg and cheese) weighed in at a little over 700 calories. I don't even want to know what my meal came out to with the order of skinny fries, loads of ketchup and non-diet root beer. Waahhhhh. :(

And my last beefy story is to comment on the largest beef recall in the history of the cow. 135 million pounds of beef recalled from one Chino meatpacking plant. Good lord! Based on a quick Google search, the average steer is 1,500 pounds and actually only yields 568 pounds of retail meat. 135 million pounds of beef = 237,676 cows. That is almost 240,000 immobile cows that were not able to stand up on their own. What the!?

Valentine's Dinner -- Jer-Ne @ the Ritz

On our first Valentine's, Steve took me to Jer-Ne Restaurant inside the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey. We had spent two days before poring over Valentine's Day's Fixed Menu's and settled on some Californian food. It was also one of the few restaurants still taking Valentine's reservations on such late notice. :P

The restaurant itself had a hotel bar/lounge feel until you look over to the large bay windows overlooking the Marina. The food was slightly Asian-influenced and surprisingly "gourmet" for a hotel lobby restaurant.

Our Meal:

Started with a mini Baked Potato Soup and Kobe Beef Tartare Burgers. The soup really tasted like a blended baked potato and the beef sliders were interesting because they were cold. Then we were served a Chilled Asparagus Soup with Lobster and Truffles. It took me a while to figure out the taste to this... the chilled soup really plays a number on your senses. The lobster was tasty and a great balance to the chilled crispness of the asparagus. Our 3rd course was a Roasted Beet Salad. Maybe they were grilled. In any case, they were whole mini-beets with long ends, so the salad itself looked very Dr. Seuss-y. They were really yummy though. For the main course, Steve had the Beef Tenderloins (very tender I must add) and I had a pan-fried Turbot (whitefish) served over Sweet Corn Ravioli. Yum. For dessert we had a triple chocolate sampler: White Chocolate Sorbet, Caramel & Chocolate Panna Cotta and a crunchy Passion-fruit/Chocolate Cake.

The ambience was very "hotel" and not at all Valentine's-y (except for the single rose that came with our check) but the food was very impressive. Not at all something you would expect in a hotel lobby. It was a lot of food but a lot of it was refreshing and not heavy at all.

Canadian Fare: Terroni

Last weekend, my "Uncle" John stopped over in LA to visit on his way to Sydney from Toronto. I say "Uncle" in quotes because although he is my mom's cousin, he is much closer to my age. 

Anyhow, a bunch of us went out to eat at Terroni on Beverly Blvd to see him off. Terroni is a Southern Italian eatery that originated in Toronto but now has a feisty location by The Grove. It has only been there for 2 months but it is already spilling over with West Hollywood types, boasting a 1.5-2 hour wait for a table. We went with a fairly large party (Me, Steve, Vina, John, Rosanna and Graham) so we were able to sample a lot of different dishes.

The salads there were great... they are extra tasty. We had the Ricchia which was probably my favorite dish of the night. It was a bed of arugola in a zesty lemon and olive oil dressing with mushrooms and parmigiano shavings. We also had the Giuggiolosa salad which ended up being just a mixed green salad. We also had the Calamari alla Griglia which was grilled whole calamari on a bed of mixed greens with a sweet tomato salsa -- very good.

I wasn't too impressed with the pizzas, although with the number of choices on the menu the pizza seemed to be their specialty. We had a Smendozzata which was fresh italian sausage, onions and gorgonzola which I liked. We also had the Natalina which had hot calabrese salami and garlic... I was surprised at how much kick this salami had. It was good, but the thin pizza crust was left in the oven a little too long so the burnt taste of the crust overpowered the pizza.

On to the pastas... can you imagine how full we were at this point? Vina had a variation of Spaghetti Bolognese... the sauce was too sweet for my taste. I like my tomato sauces meaty and cheesy. I had the wild boar lasagna which was interesting because it had a very light creamy sauce and was fairly dry. We also tried some Bucatini All'Amatriciana which was Bucatini pasta with pancetta in a light and cheesy tomato sauce.

I think what finally won us over though was the dessert. We had the flourless chocolate cake which had warm chocolate filling that spilled out into the bed of white chocolate ganache. Yum. On a lighter note, their Panna Cotta was heavenly -- perfect blend of light milk and sweet cheese in a chilled gelatin form.

I'm getting hungry again.