My journey to Little Tokyo...

Today, my roommate and I journeyed out to Little Tokyo to procure the ingredients and accessories necessary for bento box making - I have decided that making lunches for my roommate and myself would be a healthy, fun, and comparatively inexpensive experiment. She is willing to be my guinea pig in this. :) I love it when people are excited to eat my cooking, even before I've tried making it... Talk about boosting an amateur cook's confidence.

So we wandered off to pick up some basics. Bento boxes, first and foremost. As well as: a sushi rolling kit, brown mochi rice (or brown sticky rice), mirin, dashi stock, miso paste, gomashio, kombu, nori, shumai skins, inauruzashi no moto (bean curd skins), and sushi vinegar. This whole list was remarkably inexpensive at Nijiya Market in Little Tokyo, compared to the price these ingredients would have cost at Whole Foods. Support your local specialty markets!

And while we were down there, we had a most delicious (and enormous) meal at Daikokuya.

We both got combo platters; I had their specialty ramen and a small bowl of teriyaki eel (gosh, but I love unagi) and she had pork cutlets with her ramen. We were both very full by the end of it and had to take half our food home in doggy bags (hello, Sunday lunch).

Yet, we were not so full (I thought) to avoid a trip to Mikawaya for delicious gelato-filled mochi balls. Nom nom nom.

And yes, before you ask, I will be documenting my forays into bento-making. I'm not sure I can promise they will look pretty, but I will make sure to get feedback from my guinea pig as to their edibility. :)

Ja mata!

Trouble in Paradise

All right. So here's a fun little game for ya'll. I'll call it a foodie-scavenger-hunt. I have hit a little snag - some of the ingredients I want to cook with are just wicked hard to find!

I'm looking for a place in Los Angeles (preferably somewhere around Sherman Oaks/Glendale) where I can locate the following items:
sorghum flour
brown rice flour
xantham gum
millet
tapioca flour

Anyone who tells me where to find one of these items will get something cooked with it. How's that for a deal?