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The Weekly Newspaper of Manhattan Beach Herald Publications - El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 Vol. 9, No. 7 July 2 2015 Inside This Issue Certified and Licensed Professionals...................6 Classifieds............................2 Film Review..........................4 Food.......................................5 Looking Up...........................2 Pets........................................7 Weekend Forecast Friday, July 3 Partly Cloudy 72˚/63˚ Saturday, July 4 Partly Cloudy 72˚/62˚ Sunday, July 5 Partly Cloudy 73˚/63˚ Summertime Fun in Manhattan Beach Beach volleyball practice on the Strand. Photo by Peter Thornton, jp.thornton58@gmail.com. A Kitchen Blog with No Complications By Nancy Peters When the Internet and social media invaded everyday lives, individuals began to use online access as a way to express themselves. Before Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., blogging was one of the first ways to use virtual paper and share personal thoughts and ideas. Many have found ways to actually make a modest living using their blog. For Angela Morales, a lifetime Inglewood resident, her blog, The Full Tummy.com, is a brand new adventure. Raised by her single mom, Patricia, and her grandmother, the kitchen is a very important room in the household. Angela learned to cook sitting at each woman’s knee. “As soon as I could reach the counter, I was right there in the thick of all the cooking in our household,” shared Angela. “I loved watching the sauces come to life, the vegetables begin to soften and make a hissing sound as they sautéed in the olive oil, and the smell of garlic, lots of garlic. Yum! That is the best odor.” Her heritage is based in Mexican cuisine, but Angela finds that cooking anything Mexican or Italian are the best in which to cook; each cuisine allows for much experimentation, especially because she believes following a strict recipe is not always necessary. She admits her joy in cooking is just being in the kitchen with ingredients spread around the counter before being chopped or mixed in, and then, experiencing the smells as the dish begins to take shape, adding a little of this spice or herb, trying to see what makes the flavors bolder or stronger. “Finding the complex flavor in the simplest of foods, discovering what new flavor can bring out another with an extra pinch of this or that, I just love ‘playing’ with my food,” she chuckled. “My Mom and grandmother encouraged me as I was growing up and so it seemed a natural thing for me to make our meals as I got older. Of course, I began with non-complicated dishes, but then I started to see that cooking is always a science experiment. The chemical reaction between ingredients is interesting. “In baking it is essential that you use the precise measurements of dry ingredients to wet ingredients, but in all other cooking, it is a matter of what tastes good and what works,” she mused. It was a dream that Angela began to have at the age of eight years to open a restaurant someday. Finances are not the only element that put that dream away. “My Mom reminded me that a restaurant is a 24 hours a day, seven days a week responsibility, regardless of how many hours the place would be open. So, I changed my mind about that,” Angela said, laughing heartily. Not running a restaurant in her adulthood is replaced by her blog. Angela’s friends during high school in El Segundo and while at Long Beach State had continual queries of what kitchen tool to use for this and what spice/herb to use in that recipe, and a myriad of other questions, to which she knew the answers 99 percent of the time. For a few years friends made suggestions to write it all down. Angela was always the go-to among her friends about all things related to food, cooking, and baking. Baking is actually Angela’s first love and her infamous chocolate chip cookies are craved by those close to her. “I played with that recipe for quite a few years and by trial and error I have perfected what many have described as the perfect chocolate chip cookie,” she said, with some amount of pride. “Baking that recipe during study groups, parties, or sports events at my school apartment became a tradition. Sometimes I couldn’t bake those cookies fast enough. I have no intention of sharing that recipe with anyone, ever,” she laughingly said. Although not confident in her writing skills, this former athlete, originally recruited for her shot put and discus throwing skills, began to do research on blogging. “I had hoped to go into sports-related physical therapy, particularly after the ankle injury from basketball sidelined me and I looked for another sport. I chose track and field but the strict NCAA regulations did not give me much leeway to continue in that. I decided to go a different path for a career. I majored in Behavioral Sciences with a Communications minor. I was able to channel my love of science, chemistry, cooking, and communication when I began The Full Tummy.com and the blog was ‘live’ on March 19. I work in web testing for a sports company headquarters in El Segundo, so I have knowledge of the Internet. “Putting all that background together, I am able to incorporate what I am passionate about (cooking) with my Internet skills (blogging) and please my friends, and now my readers, with tips, recommendations for kitchen tools, apps for cooking, other bloggers and websites about cooking and food, food pairings, recipes, and my general thoughts about what I love to do—COOK!” Angela’s passionate perspective about food and cooking is rather simple. It is super easy to cook. Try a recipe and add something one time. Doesn’t work? Take that away and add something new the next time you cook that food. Get comfortable in the kitchen. Buy the essential tools only. How do you know what those are? Read The Full Tummy. com on Sundays and Thursdays. The blog is free and at this time Angela has no plans to monetize it. As long as one has the right tools and a few basic ingredients, one can experiment with just about any food. Puzzled about cooking terminology? Looking for a new recipe? Chances are The Full Tummy.com can help in any cooking department. Keep in mind, though. One thing not on The Full Tummy.com is Angela’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. •


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