Today was load in day.

AOLAB has a set food budget every month, but instead of restrictive it has simply given me carte blanc to be as decadent & as healthy as I feel like being in whatever neighborhood, enclave or region I’m posting up in.

It’s fun. With parameters I am grateful to be able to work within, knowing I can scale at will. Keeps me sharp. Military maneuvers to me. It’s also always different, even in returning to territory well known.

Battle lines were being drawn as I sat crosslegged on Bunker Hill sifting the merits of heading due south or southwest to tackle the cravings that danced nakedly across my shopping list, scouring reports &whatnots, comically channeling Patton.

Suddenly it seeped into me that , straight shot to whole foods or target tho it was, everything making my mind water could be had at a higher quality and at literally half the pricepoint if I turned due east &tumbled down that hill instead.

Little known fact, east of Bunker Hill & just west of the arts district lies IMO the best Asian grocery shopping experiences in LA proper. If you’re up for hoofing it to Pasadena? Whole nother glorious shebang.

But in downtown LA’s seeming food desert Lil Tokyo brings the heat and will rock your world if you have even the slightest laidback Japanophile quirks deep within you.

The triumvirate of contenders in the area are what in actuality made my basecamp in the Arts district at the top of 2020 feel like home. It wasn’t the galleries, it was the motherfucking groceries, maaan!

ESPECIALLY if you live for seafood. I’ve Now explored / been to those storied fish markets in San Pedro et al & I gotta tell ya, I would pick the Ironically named “lil Tokyo marketplace” over all the other fish markets experienced out here.

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My innerchile was hyped, even more so because they’re finally finished with the subway that goes straight there.

There’s something about a new station. The promise, the sensing it feels appreciated .

I got off in Lil Tokyo & ambled down past botanical gardens hidden in plain sight, Buddhist temples I’d had multiple “Jesus, come get your kid sis cause I can’t answer this~” moments with Buddha…

& the walk-through really got me thinking about how God loved me. He dug me so much that he had warned me through food & qigong to gird my loins & placed me walking distance from all the things he knew I loved. I already had 2 months of feeling truly loved on due to food choices & availability before the drums of pestilence began to beat faintly on the periphery at the top of March.

God knows, a fooded Up with love Angel is always operating on & in grace with herself & others.

And Then…I was there & all the sentimentality evaporated & it was just game on.

I ended up at ” lil” 2x today. Twice at Marukai marketplace too(doubling back in the name of living for crispy salmon skin in ways that make me sing)… getting everything I could possibly desire for this sojourn, which was all Japanese & macrobiotic adjacent anyway.

And yes, but of course I grabbed natto. In fact, getting more natto after the heady heaven of popping my first crate of it is what led to round 2 on the heels of one, geterdone style.

I’m in full nourishing upleveling mode.

It’s different from a Globalboho nourishing detox. It’s a storing up reserves instead of cleaning out .

I still have my blasphemous tweaks. Like I can imagine dudes grunting over my grabbing arborio rice over sushi rice, but the Angel, when she eats rice 🍚 is always going to lean towards more congee & chahan possibilities/ whathaveyous, or risotto esque whathaveyous.

The entire diaspora is my palette’s oyster, but japanese food beyond sushi is still one of my core love languages.

That was a sweet reveal in both the aisles and hovering happily over the stove.

…& Yes, that is a raw oyster.

Locked & loaded for the week’s geterdone.