Between a noun and a verb...

Dessert for dinner

2009-03-25T08:55:00.001-04:00

After a work happy hour last month, a couple of us decided to grab some food. Our original plan was to get ramen at Ippudo, but that turned out to be a huge wait, so we headed a couple blocks east and north to go to Milk Bar, one of David Chang's restaurants.

We started out with a couple orders of pork buns - high-end versions of northen Chinese cuisine staples. These were made with pork belly, cucumber, hoisin sauce, and scallions all stuffed into a white mantou.

This little Asian version of a slider was delicious. The pork belly was rich and flavorful and the fat had been rendered all soft and clear so it wasn't overwhelming. The cucumber and scallions added some veggie flavors and also cut down the richness of the pork.

I also had a milk - wild strawberry flavor. Kind of like a milkshake, but not as rich or thick, but just as sweet.

Then for dessert, we split 2 kinds of cake - dulce de leche and banana. These cakes were served cold and were 3 to 4 layer cakes with a filling (or fillings) between each layer. The banana cake was tasty, but anything cooked with banana is not my favorite so I concentrated on the dulce de leche one. This was amazing! The cake was light and fluffy and the cream filling was rich but not overwhelming or oily. It was like a mousse filling. It was so good!

Milk Bar was a fun stop but I wouldn't go there for a full meal. I'd rather try David Chang's other places, Ssam (right next door to Milk Bar) or Ko (with their impossibly hard to get reservations) for dinner. Even though the pork buns were delicious and super high quality, I can probably get something a lot cheaper and maybe half as good in Chinatown. Milk Bar would be a fun place to just grab dessert (like yummy dulce de leche cake) after dinner or after going out for the evening.

Homemade cheesy mac

2009-03-24T09:18:00.001-04:00

Another modified recipe from Martha Stewart - Macaroni and Cheese.

All of the ingredients set out mise en place.

After the pasta was boiled and drained, I started working on the cheese sauce. First we cooked some onions in butter. FI was a little unsure about including onions in a mac and cheese, but they added so much flavor to the dish, that he became a big fan.

Next we added the milk and flour and the spices (salt, pepper, cayenne) to make the bechamel sauce. I also threw in a pinch of nutmeg because I've always read in other recipes to add some to cheese sauces.

Then I stirred in the shredded cheddar cheese. Buying packages of shredded cheese made the recipe a lot easier. After the cheese was melted, we poured in the pasta. Notice we didn't use elbow macaroni, but the penne with the tubes and ridges collected the mac and cheese just fine. Martha's recipe also called for ham to be chopped up and stirred in, but we figured this was going to be rich enough and didn't need extra salt or calories.

Then we poured everything into a baking dish and sprinkled bread crumbs over the top. Again, buying pre-made bread crumbs made this a lot easier. We also didn't bother sprinkling more cheese on top as we already had a lot of cheese in the sauce.

The finished product! It was delicious! Since we had cut out the ham and didn't put so much cheese, it wasn't super salty at all. But the onions, cayenne, and nutmeg all added some nice flavor nuances to the dish.

We ate our mac and cheese with stir-fried broccoli we made as well. There was plenty left and I got to eat it for the next two days' lunches. I also finished off a serving after coming home late from a night out with work friends. Yummy greasy cheesy food is the best after a night of drinking!

Decorating the apartment for spring

2009-03-23T08:46:00.001-04:00

Remember how we're going to have Kusudama flower balls as aisle directions for our wedding? I also wanted to make some to decorate our apartment for spring.

I used a different set of little origami papers this time to make 4 halves of a Kusudama flower ball.

I decided to hang them over the entrance to the kitchen. So I measured and then cut out lengths of ribbon (bought on sale at Michael's) for each ball half to be glued to.

My first attempt at securing the balls was to simply loop the ribbons through the cable wiring at the ceiling edge over the kitchen entrance. My plan was to just glue the halves of the balls to the ends of the ribbons and let them hang.

This idea didn't work so well. While each half fits together pretty snugly, it's not a precise fit. Also the glue didn't dry quickly enough to actually secure the ribbon to the paper or the ball halves to each other.

I had to regroup, so I took the ribbons off the cable wires and glued everything together on our coffee table (e.g. temporary crafting table) and let it sit overnight to properly dry.

The next day, I pulled the loop through the cable wire and then pulled the flower ball through the loop, securing them to the wire.

Sorry for the bad lighting, but here they are! Hanging in front of our kitchen.

It would be cool to make some large ones (maybe a foot in diameter) to hang from the ceilings for parties. It would be like a flowery disco ball.

High-end Mexican food

2009-03-19T08:51:00.001-04:00

For one of our date nights out, FI and I decided to stay around our neighborhood. "Support the local economy!" is one of our rallying cries when one of us wants Pinkberry from up the street (usually me) or have another beer at a local bar (both of us). Another one of these rallying cries is "Keep the property values up!".

Anyways, we decided to head to Zarela's. The owner, Zarela Martinez, I later found out (while researching Paladar), is the mother of Aaron Sanchez, where we had gone to eat last fall.

We started out with chips and salsa and a chili sauce. Delicious and hot as the chips were fresh out of the fryer. But we tried not to eat too much so as not to ruin our appetites. Which is what tends to happen when you go to Mexican restaurants and they provide unlimited chips and salsa.

Our vegetable dish was a sauteed spinach dish that was then rolled up and batter-fried with melted cheese on top. This was delicious and cheesy but kind of heavy and not really the "healthy" vegetable side we were going for.

FI had the fish special of the day. It was some filet cut of fish with a bread coating and fried. The fish was soft but kind of bland.

I had grilled salmon with a smoky chipotle, onion, oregano, cilantro and lime juice sauce (according to their menu). This sauce was the tastier of the two and we both kept (since we always switch our dishes midway through the meal) spooning it over the fish.

Overall the meal was okay. It's a little disconcerting to pay more for a Mexican meal (similar to paying for higher-end Chinese and Vietnamese food; it feels wrong to be paying more), but I'd like to go back and try some of their non-seafood dishes.

Plus - "Support the local economy!"

Our version of stone soup

2009-03-18T08:55:00.001-04:00

One weekend, while wandering through Chinatown, FI and I were chatting about what we wanted to do for dinner. We bought some bok choy and decided to make a meatball-tofu-bok choy soup. We had ground turkey, tofu, and vermecelli all in our kitchen, so we cobbled ingredients together for a stone soup.

First we made the meatballs. We chopped up garlic, ginger, and scallions (the Chinese version of the holy trinity, more on that here and here). As I've mentioned before, these 3 (especially garlic) are staples in all of our Asian-influenced cooking.

Then I mashed up about a fourth of a block of tofu, which would be our binding agent.

The rest of the tofu was cut into small cubes.

The ground turkey was mixed in, along with soy sauce and rice wine.

We sauteed the bok choy with dried mini shrimp and garlic.

Then we added water to make the soup.

While we waited for the water to come to a boil, we made all the little turkey meatballs.

Then we threw the meatballs and tofu into the pot and let it cook away.

We let everything cook for about 30 minutes to an hour to really get the flavors going. Then about 10 minutes before we ate, we threw in the vermecelli. The dried noodles had been soaking in a bowl of warm water the whole time.

Ready to eat!

We made a TON of soup. I think I had that soup for three lunches the next week. The broth was very light and not salty at all. The meatballs were also very light. I think a lot of the flavor leeched out during the cooking process. Both FI and I don't like super salty stuff, so this turned out okay. The bok choy was super soft and almost mushy and the tofu and vermecelli also soaked up some of the meatball flavor. Overall, it was a light and filling dish without a super strong flavor. Which worked, since we didn't have any rice to eat it with.

Trying my hand at flower arrangements

2009-03-17T08:37:00.000-04:00

One of the vendors we have to book for the wedding is a florist. I've met with several and will make a decision soon. One florist, after talking with me about what we need for the wedding, the colors and flowers I liked, my budget, etc. gifted me with a bunch of flowers to take home.

I ended up traveling on the subway and walking home with this giant paper package in my arms.

He gave me a huge variety - gerber daisies, orchids, hyacinths, roses, carnations, lilies - and I went to work putting together an arrangement.

FI had bought a vase from IKEA so I could put any flowers I get from him in it. I grabbed the vase and set up shop in our front hallway (easy access to kitchen and bathroom for water and paper towels). First I tied the raffia ribbon from the bouquet around the vase.

Then I spread out all of the flowers and started trimming the stems and placing them on the vase. I don't have any gardening shears, so I used a pair of desk scissors. It worked okay, although my cuts weren't very clean.

Then I started arranging them in the vase. I would put in all the stems of one type of flower, then slowly add others mixed throughout the flowers so there would be nice color contrasts and textural differences.

Here was my first completed arrangement.

But wait! We didn't want to see the ugly stems in the glass vase! So taking a page from lots of wedding photos I've seen, I took all the flowers out and lined the vase with the broad leaves (banana?) that were also given to me.

It's not completely smooth, but still a pretty nice effect. Especially since I had already put water (with plant food) in the vase and had to do it underwater.

Then I rearranged all of the flowers back into the vase. It looked pretty cool on our side table for the next few days.

Another overhead shot!

Given how much I like trashbowl shots, I can't finish this post without one of the mess I ended up with in the hallway.
Don't worry, I cleaned it all up!

Creating our own spaghetti sauce

2009-03-16T08:32:00.000-04:00

We had a lot of vegetables left over from a few cooking adventures and were trying to figure out what we should make for dinner. FI was in the mood for Italian, so we set out to create a spaghetti sauce.

I had a ton of carrots left over from making carrot cupcakes, so those got peeled, cut up, and put on the stove to cook.

We also cleaned up some broccoli and chopped them up to add to the pot.

Then we sauteed some chopped up onions.

And added ground turkey to brown.

Then the carrots and broccoli (drained) were added to the turkey and onion and a can of tomatoes was tossed in as well. As the sauce simmered, we added some salt and pepper to taste and some oregano.

Our own homemade spaghetti sauce, ready to eat!

This was a super easy dish to throw together. Since we put it all together ourselves, we could control how much salt and oil were added to make the sauce. Plus have fresh veggies cooked as part of the sauce made it really healthy too.

Bulgogi at home

2009-03-12T08:54:00.001-04:00

Another recipe from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart. We went Asian this time and made a Beef Bulgogi. I couldn't find this recipe on the Martha Stewart site, but there is a similar one with pork and no green peppers.

First we made the marinade. This involved a lot of chopping and stirring. FI noticed the recipe is a lot like my basic Chinese stir-fry marinade - garlic, soy sauce, ginger, sugar - with some added ingredients. We didn't have "red pepper oil" so we substituted with olive oil and pepper flakes in a packet left over from a pizza delivery from a while back.

Then I chopped up the onions and green peppers and very thinly sliced the frozen strip steak. I was pretty neat and the meat came out pretty evenly.

Both the meat and veggies were marinated. It smelled really good.

First the veggies were stir-fried.

Then the meat was cooked.

Finally the veggies were added back to the pan to finish cooking.

We also washed a bunch of lettuce leaves so we could do bulgogi lettuce wraps.

The final product before we dug in.

The bulgogi was delicious! The meat was pretty lean and you only use a little oil for the marinade so it wasn't that bad for you. The combination of cold lettuce and hot, salty steak was a great pairing. Complete opposites in taste, texture, and lingering flavors all made each mouthful delightful to eat and enjoy.

Trying out a new cuisine

2009-03-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

After seeing a movie at the AMC Times Square in early February, FI and I wandered around midtown west looking for someplace to eat. We checked out Yelp and Citysearch and tried to pick a genre of food, but weren't really getting anywhere. Finally we ended up around 50th and 51st by 9th avenue and surrounded by Mexican, Thai, Italian, and we decided to go Greek!

We ened up at Uncle Nick's Ouzaria for Greek tapas. FI and I had not enjoyed Greek food together before so this was a fun new adventure.

First we had the Stuffed Vine Leaves, which were a cold appetizer. They had a bit of acidity to them and the rice was filling, but not a lot of flavor besides the lemon.

Then we had Lamb with Seasonal Vegetables wrapped in Phyllo. This was hot and flaky and delicous. With all the food we had, we ended up taking half of this home for lunch the next day.

For our veggie, we had Fried Zucchini with Scordalia Dip. This was delicious. The zucchini was hot and crispy on the outside, but soft and mushy on the inside. The Scordalia dip was a yogurt with some seasonings and it was cool and cool-tasting. It helped reduced the hot temperature of the fried zucchini nicely. We also took a few of these home to eat the next day.

Finally we had Baked Clams. These were also super hot and straight out of the oven. The toppings were nice and crispy and it added a layer to the squishy clams underneath.

This was a delicious meal with plenty of leftovers to enjoy. Uncle Nick's menu is pretty extensive, so I definitely want to go back there (whenever I'm back in Midtown West) to try some of the other dishes.

"Healthy" Cupcakes

2009-03-10T08:52:00.001-04:00

This is the first dessert I made from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart. FI asked for carrot cupcakes. They were easy to make but a little more time-intensive because you have to grate the carrots, which I did by hand (I guess it would have been easier if I had used a food processor).

I also doubled this recipe since we were taking this as a dish to FI's family's Chinese New Year dinner and we wanted to make sure there was enough for everyone.

Here is the batter with everything mixed in. I actually didn't include walnuts because several of FI's nieces and nephews are allergic. I love the bright orangey color of the batter - it's so happy looking!

The batter poured into cups. We made a ton of cupcakes with the recipe doubled. Something like 20 regular cupcakes and 30 mini cupcakes.

Cupcakes baking in the oven. I only needed to fill the cups halfway and the rising of the batter did the rest.

Finished cupcakes cooling in our apartment!

I don't have a photo of the icing and the cupcakes iced, but the cream cheese recipe that came along with the carrot cupcake recipe was really easy. You didn't need a mixer, you could do everything by hand. You just have to let the cream cheese soften at room temperature for a little while and then pour confectioner's sugar over it and stir to blend. I didn't even use as much sugar as the recipe called for, I just poured in a little at a time and mixed until it was a creamy consistency. Then I iced the cakes.

The cupcakes were delicious! The carrots were a great texturizer, the allspice and orange juice added a real kick to the flavors, and the icing balanced the sweetness really well.

From the book: Pork Chops with Apples & Shallots

2009-03-09T08:47:00.003-04:00

We made another recipe for dinner from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast again. This time we did a pork dish - Pork chops with apples and shallots.

We first seasoned the pork chops with salt and pepper and broiled them so they were nice and tender and crispy on the outside.

For the sauce I cut up shallots and apples and cooked them with butter and white wine. It's funny, usually I have no problems cutting up onions but shallots and scallions always make me cry and then I have to leave the kitchen for a while to get the smell and sting out before I can finish. FI laughs at me for pronouncing "shallots" like "shall-LOTs". I realized I did that because of Anne of Green Gables. In the wonderful movie adaption, there is a whole scene where Anne recreates the poem "The Lady of Shalott" and I just remember the way she says "shalott" and so that's what I call them now.

We also made spinach with butter and nutmeg.

The dinner plated. The sauce was delicious! The sweetness and tartiness of the apples contrasted nicely with the sweetness and crunchiness of the shallots. They add such great flavor to the white meat of the pork chops. Broiling the chops made the bone meat (right next to the bone) even tastier.

From the book: Turkey Burgers

2009-03-06T08:45:00.001-05:00

One of the first recipes we tried from the Everyday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook by Martha Stewart was Favorite Turkey Burgers. FI loves, loves burgers and requested this dish.

Here are all the ingredients for turkey patties in a bowl before we mixed it up. We actually didn't use guyere cheese (FI couldn't find it in the store) and instead used blue cheese (which FI did find).

The finished patties, ready for grilling. They were really big! Based on our experiences with making hamburgers, we smooshed these out really flat and large so when they grilled up, they wouldn't be so thick.

We cooked them on FI's George Foreman Grill. While turkey meat is pretty lean, a good amount of fat still was cooked off.

The finished patties with beautiful grill marks.

We also swapped out the burger buns for English muffins. The burgers were really good. The blue cheese was pretty strong so we didn't add as much. All in all a tasty and lean dinner!

My new favorite cookbook!

2009-03-05T08:40:00.001-05:00

Earlier this year, FI, FSIL, and I headed out to Seattle to visit FI's brother's family (more on that trip later). While there we got to eat my FSIL's delicious cooking. One of the cookbooks she referred to for several dishes is "Everyday Living: Great Food Fast" by Martha Stewart.

This book is great! There are tons of recipes organized by season, so you can buy fresh ingredients. The recipes are easy to understand and simple to make. None are super complicated or take a long time to complete.

After we came home from Seattle, we kept raving about the book. FSIL then saw it on sale and bought the last 2 copies, one for her and one for me.

FI and I have already made a bunch of dishes from the book and all of them have been delicious. We even fudge some of the ingredients and cooking times and they still come out great!

I highly recommend this book as a great starter cookbook. The beautiful food pictures are also a great touch as it's much easier to leaf through and decide what new recipes you'd want to try.

Cans of Art

2009-03-04T08:46:00.002-05:00

Last fall, there was a really cool exhibit at the World Financial Center. It's a competition, Canstruction, where students build sculptures out of food cans. There were some really cool sculptures ENTIRELY made out of cans. It was some pretty cool work. Not only did the competitors have to figure out what types of cans (size, height) to use, they also had to figure out how to incorporate the colors of the cans into their work.

This is of the China Central Television Headquarters.

Here's a description of the sculpture. The "3000" is how many cans it took to make it.

Here's another one of a giant swan.

This one took 14,568 cans.

Here's a funny one about the "Bridge to Nowhere" (as a pun). There's a little Sarah Palin doll next to the bridge and an igloo on the other side.

This one took 3,888 cans.

This was my absolute favorite sculpture. What was cool was that it was so easily identifiable compared to some of the other structures. And it was so cute! I loved walking by it everyday to get coffee.

This one took 5,527 cans.

I was really impressed with those sculptures that used the colors of the can labels to really create an identifiable subject. It was so cool to see the thing from far away and then as you walked closer, see all the cans that made up the work.

Winter dinner at Sentosa

2009-03-03T08:08:00.002-05:00

After FI picked me up from JFK after a trip home this winter, we stopped off at dinner at Sentosa in Flushing.

First we had Roti Canai (crispy style pancake w/ curry chicken & potato dipping sauce). This pancake was not only crispy but puffy as well and really light to eat.

Then we had Hainanese Chicken (steamed chicken w/ chef's special soy sauce). We had seen this dish on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on an episode where he went to Singapore and had wanted to try ever since. This chicken was delicious. It was super tender and light and the sauces were super tasty.

For our veggies we had snow pea shoots (dou miao) stirfried with garlic. FI loved these. Now when we go to Chinatown for groceries, we always try to pick some up.

For our other meat dish we had Spare Ribs Volcano (deep fried spare ribs served in chef's special, sesame seed & wrapped in silver foil). It looked really cool when they brought it to the table and it was all on fire.

The spare ribs themselves were okay. We both thought they were a little too sweet and sticky and the sauce was too much.

Overall Sentosa is a great value and the dishes were all pretty tasty. When we go back, we'll definitely have the roti and the steamed chicken again.

Using other parts of the cow

2009-03-02T08:15:00.002-05:00

In January, FI and I were down in Chinatown for lunch and then went shopping for groceries. We wandered into one of the crazy grocery stores with a huge meat section and were intrigued by the frozen ox-tails. We bought a pack and debated on whether we should make a Chinese or American version of an oxtail soup.

We decided on American and picked up a bunch of veggies as well. Then we spent a leisurely evening stewing the oxtail.

Here are the unfrozen ox-tails, ready for cooking.

We chopped up celery, carrots, and red potatoes. I purposely chopped everything up really small so they would cook faster.

We first browned some onions for flavor.

Then threw in the oxtail so it would sear and have a nice crust.

Then we threw in a couple of cans of tomatoes.

Then added all of the vegetables and let it stew.

For bread, I sliced up wheat "man to" (Chinese buns).

Then fried them so they would be hot and crispy. My mom used to deep fry them when we were little, but the panfry would be a little healthier. This batch was a little burnt.

Crispy wheat manto toast!

We tried the stew at the 1:30 mark and while the veggies were deliciously soft and cooked, the oxtail was still tough. So we first had a bowl of just veggie stew and let the oxtail continue cooking. Around the 3:30 mark, everything was finally done, so we sat down to eat.

My version of bruschetta - oxtail soup veggies on top of a fried wheat manto toast.

The soup came out so well. We didn't use any salt or spices and all the flavors just came from the vegetables we stewed with the stew. There was plenty of leftovers so we were able to have it for dinner the next day and I had enough for 2 lunches the next week.

Stews are really easy. It just takes a long time to make. And you really just need lots and lots of good veggies.

Two Ways to Meatballs

2009-02-27T08:53:00.002-05:00

For a potluck dinner last fall, FI decided he wanted to bring meatballs. He wanted Italian style and I wanted Chinese, so we ended up using 5 or so pounds of ground turkey to make 2 kinds of meatballs.

Here are the ingredients, mise en place.

FI chopping up some scallions for the Chinese meatballs.

Ready to mix! We threw in garlic-flavored breadcrumbs, an egg, grated parmesan cheese, scallions, oregano, and I'm not sure what else.

FI mixing up the meat.

The binder (egg and breadcrumbs) made it super easy to make super nice round meatballs. Here they are all ready for baking.

FI spooned a little olive oil over each of them so they wouldn't burn.

I'm chopping up garlic for my Chinese meatballs.

Cutting up tofu, which would be my binding agent.

Mixing up the meat. This had tofu, garlic, scallions and ginger (the holy trinity of Chinese cooking), soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar, and maybe some sugar?

Tofu is not as strong as a binding agent, so these weren't quite as round and sturdy. Especially when we baked them. There was a lot more water in these, so they were more mushy and not so round.

Finished meatballs ready to go!

Our friends liked both kinds and we were able to bring some home as leftovers. The Italian ones we ate with spaghetti and sauce. The Chinese ones we ate with rice and veggies.

More practice of my icing skills...

2009-02-26T08:10:00.001-05:00

I continue practicing my icing skills. This time I made cupcakes. And this time I didn't use any random organic or wheat or baking mix flour. I used basic all-purpose white flour and the cupcakes came out beautifully. Don't they look like little flowers all lined up?

This time I whipped up a batch of orange colored royal icing and went to town. I didn't bother using my patterned tip. I think the patterns only really show up if you use a stiffer icing, like buttercream or whipped. Royal icing (until dried) was too liquidy to hold any shape besides lines drawn.

I tried to think of as many fun shapes and designs as I could for each cupcake. I can say for all 28 cupcakes I came up with a different design.

Check out my homage to Charlie Brown in the middle cupcake.

Here's a bunch where I did crazy repetitive patterns. The polka dotted one in the upper right is for my friend who has a fear of dots. (It's apparently a true fear!)

The one on the left is supposed to be a soccer ball. The one on the right is supposed to coral.

The one on top is a rip-off of a Hostess cupcake. The one on the left is a baseball.

All the cupcakes decorated!

I kind of like not having so much icing on my cupcakes. I like them for the cake, not the huge dollop of icing on top, where there's so much you can't get to the cake.

Plus royal icing dries nice and hard and shiny so they looked just as cool the next day.

Slurping up noodles...

2009-02-25T08:52:00.001-05:00

At the end of last year, FI and I headed out for date night at Ippudo, a delicious ramen restaurant in the East Village. This was one of the five that Chef Morimoto had rated and we wanted to try out all five of them. This was our 3rd one (after Momofuku and Rai Rai Ken).

There was a pretty long wait for a table, so we hung out at the bar. We got there right at 8pm at the end of happy hour. The bartender was nice and still gave us the happy hour priced beers. "You're my last two!" he told us.

The bar is decorated with packs of dried ramen!

The backdrop of the bar are decorative ramen bowls!

We decided on a fried chicken appetizer. There were 2 sauces, one sweet & sour and the other kind of spicy. I alternated the sauces and that was a good way to mix the flavors. The chicken was nice and crispy but super moist inside and not greasy at all. The lemon juice was a nice acidic touch to the chicken as well.

Then we split 2 kinds of ramen soup. One was the original flavor with a white broth. This noodle soup was delicious. It wasn't super salty but still really flavorful. The noodles were chewy yet soft. The weather was super cold so it was nice to eat a hot bowl of noodles. I tried to get a bite of pork, noodle, and soup in every spoonful.

The other kind of ramen we had was a more salty broth with the pork with a crispy skin. This was delicious as well.

Halfway through our bowls of soup, we switched so we could taste both ramens. We both ended up liking the original better. And as we've learned from other eating establishments (Beard Papa and Pinkberry), the original is always the best.

How good were my guesses?

2009-02-23T08:25:00.001-05:00

Last night was Oscar Night. Below pictures from our dinner are the results and how right/wrong I was.

We made Chicken with Cranberry Sauce and broccoli rabe for dinner. The chicken recipe is from Martha Stewart.

First I made a flavored butter with salt, thyme, and pepper and smeared it on the chicken breasts before they baked.

Then I made a sauce with grilled onions in butter, cranberries (we used sweetened dried ones), chicken broth, thyme, and salt and pepper.

Then we plated it with broccoli rabe and red peppers.

This was super yummy. The sauce was sweet and savory at the same time because of the onions and cranberries. The chicken was baked well. It might not have been as moist as it should because it was skinless, but it was still very good. Normally I don't like broccoli rabe but with the red peppers, it wasn't so bitter.

Then I made some chocolate chip (well, chunk) cookies for dessert. I'm getting pretty good at these. I finished them in about 40 minutes.

Onto Oscar viewing... We DVRed it so it only took about 2 hours to watch instead of 3.5 hours. I loved the kids from Slumdog Millionaire. How cute were they?

As for my Oscar predictions... out of 12 awards I guessed on, I got 50% right.

My results...

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon”
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”

(wrong - Sean Penn)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Josh Brolin in “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road”

(right - Heath Ledger)

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie in “Changeling”
Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”

(right - Kate Winslet)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Amy Adams in “Doubt”
Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”

(wrong - Penelope Cruz)

Best animated feature film of the year

“Bolt”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“WALL-E”

(right - Wall-E)

Achievement in directing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, David Fincher
“Frost/Nixon”, Ron Howard
“Milk”, Gus Van Sant
“The Reader”, Stephen Daldry
“Slumdog Millionaire”, Danny Boyle

(right - Danny Boyle)

Best foreign language film of the year

“The Baader Meinhof Complex”, Germany
“The Class”, France
“Departures”, Japan
“Revanche”, Austria
“Waltz with Bashir”, Israel

(wrong - Departures)

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Alexandre Desplat
“Defiance”, James Newton Howard
“Milk”, Danny Elfman
“Slumdog Millionaire”, A.R. Rahman
“WALL-E”, Thomas Newman

(right - A.R. Rahman)

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E”, Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”, Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire”, Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam

(wrong - "Jai Ho")

Best motion picture of the year

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

(right - Slumdog Millionaire)

Adapted screenplay

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Screenplay by Eric Roth, Screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
“Doubt”, Written by John Patrick Shanley
“Frost/Nixon”, Screenplay by Peter Morgan
“The Reader”, Screenplay by David Hare
“Slumdog Millionaire”, Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy

(wrong - Slumdog Millionaire)

Original screenplay

“Frozen River”, Written by Courtney Hunt
“Happy-Go-Lucky”, Written by Mike Leigh
“In Bruges”, Written by Martin McDonagh
“Milk”, Written by Dustin Lance Black
“WALL-E”, Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter

(wrong - Dustin Lance Black)

My Oscar Predictions...

2009-02-22T10:23:00.002-05:00

The Oscars are tonight! FI and I will be doing some cooking and baking for the event, but otherwise it's a quiet evening in.

As part of the festivities, here are my Oscar predictions. Mind you, I haven't seen most of these movies. It's been a poor movie watching year. But based on what I've read in the entertainment blogs, articles in the Washington Post, Television Without Pity, and an article by Nate Silver, here are my picks in bold.

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon”
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Josh Brolin in “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road”

(I think this one is a given, but I really hope RDJ got the win cause he was hysterical in TT.)

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie in “Changeling”
Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Amy Adams in “Doubt”
Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”

Best animated feature film of the year

“Bolt”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“WALL-E”

(Loved, loved Wall-E. I wish it had been nominated for Best Picture. This is such a cop-out award.)

Achievement in directing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, David Fincher
“Frost/Nixon”, Ron Howard
“Milk”, Gus Van Sant
“The Reader”, Stephen Daldry
“Slumdog Millionaire”, Danny Boyle

Best foreign language film of the year

“The Baader Meinhof Complex”, Germany
“The Class”, France
“Departures”, Japan
“Revanche”, Austria
“Waltz with Bashir”, Israel

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Alexandre Desplat
“Defiance”, James Newton Howard
“Milk”, Danny Elfman
“Slumdog Millionaire”, A.R. Rahman
“WALL-E”, Thomas Newman

(The music in Slumdog was off the wall. So pulse-pounding and totally captured the craziness of Mumbai.)

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E”, Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”, Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire”, Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam

(Since I voted for Slumdog for best score, I'm going split my vote and give it to Wall-E for best song.)

Best motion picture of the year

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Adapted screenplay

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Screenplay by Eric Roth, Screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
“Doubt”, Written by John Patrick Shanley
“Frost/Nixon”, Screenplay by Peter Morgan
“The Reader”, Screenplay by David Hare
“Slumdog Millionaire”, Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy

Original screenplay

“Frozen River”, Written by Courtney Hunt
“Happy-Go-Lucky”, Written by Mike Leigh
“In Bruges”, Written by Martin McDonagh
“Milk”, Written by Dustin Lance Black
“WALL-E”, Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter

(The thing about Wall-E was that half the movie was in silence. It's not writing dialogue that's hard, it's the description of the scene and then being able to recreate that.)

I'll post again on Monday with food pictures and a results tally of how well I did with my guesses.

Practicing my drawing skills...

2009-02-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

In the new year, I've added another baked good to my portfolio - sugar cookies. I use a recipe from Martha Stewart (recommended by FI's sister). I bought a gigantic set of cookie cutters from Bed, Bath & Beyond and some icing tips from Michael's.

The sugar cookies came out pretty well and I wanted to ice them and learn how to make beautiful designs. I used an easy royal icing recipe from the Food Network, courtesy of Alton Brown, and added food coloring to make pink and blue icing.

After making the icing, I split it into 2 batches and then added food coloring.

Then I filled an icing bag, attached the tip, and started drawing.

It was fun to think of fun designs for the cookies. I had made stars, circles, and baseball hats. For the circles, I kept trying to think of different sports balls and how they look. For the hats, I either drew the seams or tried to put logos on them. The stars I just made patterns.

Here's a batch I decorated with pink icing.

After icing cookies in just blue and pink, I started switching between both colors.

By the end of the evening, some of the cookies were pretty colorful and a little psychedelic looking.

It was pretty hard to draw straight lines and circles. Whenever I started and stopped, it made an extra blob on the cookie. The lines were pretty thick too. I bought a pretty narrow tip but still the icing was pretty bold and thick.

While I was able to do a lot of fun designs, now I know why beautifully iced cookies cost $3 or $4 each. At least the icing dried nicely and the patterns were pretty cool to look at. The cookies were good to eat too.

Dinner at Paladar

2009-02-20T08:26:00.002-05:00

Last fall, FI and I went to Paladar for dinner. I had wanted to go since I heard LeeAnn Wong speak at an "Asian chefs in the media" event at the Asia Society and named Paladar as her favorite restaurant in New York City.

We decided to do an all-appetizer dinner since after looking over the menu, we couldn't decide which ones we didn't want to get.

We started out with sangrias. This were pretty strong and had a great variety of fruit, such as citrus, pineapple, berries, etc.

We enjoyed the chips and salsa and black bean sauce. The chips were super fresh, still hot and crispy from the fryer. Another reason why we ordered only appetizers - chips are yummy and you eat a lot of them waiting for your food.
First we had Arepas (Venezuelan corn cakes topped with tomato, chorizo & crema fresca). These were really rich and filling. We actually just split one and took the 2nd one home. (It was still very tasty the next day.)

I picked this appetizer because I love pumpkin and will pretty much order anything that has pumpkin listed as an ingredient. This is Ensalada de Calabaza (roasted pumpkin, walnuts and Cabrales cheese over bitter greens with pomegranate vinaigrette). The greens and cheese were savory and contrasted nicely with the sweet pumpkin and walnuts.

Then we had Costillas 'LES' (pork spare ribs with guava BBQ sauce, served with mango, jicama & cabbage slaw). The spare ribs were delicious and tender. The slaw was really sour and crunchy. I'm surprised the mango didn't make it sweeter.

Finally we had Anticuchos de Carnero Panca (glazed lamb skewers with mint mojo, white bean & piquillo pepper salad). The skewers were delicious, again tender and sweet. The white bean salad was really light and tasty. The flavors weren't super spicy or overwhelming.

The meal was great. We ended up full but not overwhelmed and had yummy leftovers for brunch the next day. Looking over the Paladar website, it looks like their menu is seasonal so we should go back and try their new stuff.

Fabulous Color Combinations

2009-02-19T08:43:00.003-05:00

As I've written before, our wedding colors are lavender/purple and yellow. As I peruse wedding websites and looking at pretty pictures, I've kept my eye out for purple and yellow themes.

I also try to enter as many contests as I can in the hopes of getting a gift certificate or some custom designed accessory. And I finally won one! I just had to comment on my wedding colors and I won a copy of a wedding magazine. Not only that, my colors were featured in a blog post and she sent me some more inspiration boards.

inspiration board from Kelly Oshiro Events

From bridalcanvas.com
From She Walks in Beauty (original source unknown)

From She Walks in Beauty (original source unknown)

I love the color combination and her blog post has even more examples of the colors together.

And as I told her in my comment - the color theme came about as a result of an ice cream FI and I shared on a date. We were at Sundaes & Cones and order mango and taro ice cream. The mango was a bright, pale yellow and the taro was a lovely lavender and I was entranced by how pretty those two colors looked next to each other that I tucked the idea into the back of my head and kept it until we were engaged and starting to plan this wedding.

A cookie of any kind...

2009-02-18T09:13:00.003-05:00

Another one of my favorite baked good recipes is a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from the Food Network. This recipe is great because not only is it super easy to make (I'm done with cookies to eat in about an hour), it's super forgiving with the ingredients.

I have substituted the chocolate chips with peanut butter, toffee, and butterscotch chips and they all taste great.

Once I forgot to put in the white sugar and only put in the brown sugar and they still tasted delicious, so now I just use brown sugar and basically halved the sugar in the recipe. (I wonder how much healthier it is now?) I've also used Splenda in place of the sugar as well.

Another time, I didn't have enough flour left in the kitchen, so I combined the rest of the white flour, the last of the organic flour (which usually didn't work too well for me), and some all-purpose baking mix that I found in our cupboard, to make the requisite 2.25 cups, and the cookies still came out light and chewy and yummy!

Here's my crinkled copy of the recipe, with my changes (less sugar, less time in the oven) noted.

Assembling all of my ingredients "mis en place".

The stick of butter...

The dry ingredients sifted together...

The melted butter with eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

Mixing the wet ingredients together.

Adding the dry ingredients to the wet. You don't need a mixer for this at all.

The mixed batter.

Adding the chips in. This time, these were butterscotch.

The batter with chips folded in. This is always my most difficult step since the bowl is pretty much filled with batter and chips and I don't want anything to spill over. But I do want the chips to be pretty well distributed throughout the batter. (Although according to my operations professor in b-school, this won't happen because of the Poisson distribution.)

Then I wet my hands and start rolling little balls of cookie dough. I've tried to keep the balls small because these are pretty rich cookies. And then they go in to bake for 10 minutes. Our oven is pretty hot, so I start checking around 8 minutes. They also keep cooking after you pull them out so you have to account for the extra browning that might occur.

Requisite shot of my trash bowl.

Finished cookies! Don't they look delicious? They're soft and bendable and super chewy. (Which I always prefer over cr

Celebrating Valentine's Day (a day early)

2009-02-17T08:38:00.002-05:00

For Valentine's Day this year, we went to L'Ecole, the restaurant for the French Culinary Institute. It's an actual restaurant that is staffed by the senior students at the institute. I really hoped there would be large windows into the kitchens and we'd be able to watch the students at work. But alas, it was like a real restaurant, with a bar, and tables and seats, and waiters going in and out of a door with plates of food.

The water bottles for each table had the restaurant's logo on the front and a little information on the back on how the water was filtered.

A very simple and pretty table arrangement of orchids and leaves. The neat trick about this was that underneath the flowers and leaves were tied together, so they all stayed put nicely in the wood vase.

We had L'Ecole's 5-course prix fixe meal. Each course (except for the salad) had 3 options to choose from. And as FI and I always do when we go out to eat, we coordinated our choices so we each got something different so we'd have double the dishes to try.

FI's appetizer was the Lobster Consommé with Lobster Tortellini. The consomme was very tasty. It was light and clear and not over salty or fishy either. I could drink it up. The tortellini however was not very good at all. The pasta wrapper was super thick and hard to chew through - almost like it was frozen and thawed out. It did not taste like fresh-made pasta (or even good store-bought pasta) at all.

I had the Escargot with Red Wine and Gruyère Cream for my appetizer. This was really tasty. The escargot were flavorful and soft to eat. They weren't chewy or tough or drenched in butter. FI and I actually used pieces of bread to sop up both the escargot sauce and the lobster consomme while we waited for our next courses.

FI's fish course was Seared Scallops, Pickled Grapes and Smoked Potato Cream. This was his favorite dish. The scallops were grilled really nicely and were tender to eat.

I had the Poached Halibut, Potato Terrine and Spiced Chicken Consommé. The sauce on top of the halibut was a creamy lemon sauce. The combination of the halibut with the lemon sauce and consomme was really good, a great contrast of flavors.

FI's meat course was the Hanger Steak with Pommes Boulangere. The steak was nice and rare and easy to eat. The red wine sauce was very tasty too, especially with the potatoes. I think that was spinach underneath the meat.

I had the Juniper Smoked Rack of Lamb with Pickled Chanterelles and Sunchoke-Cheddar Purée. The lamb was extremely tender and flavorful and I loved eating the bits of lamb of the bone too. The puree was a bit sour and cheesy, which made it work.

Then we both had a Digestive Salad, which was greens with Montegro cheese and a pear sorbet. I kept giggling at the name "digestive salad".

For dessert, FI had Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Tart with Malt Ice Cream. The tart was really rich but not overly sweet. The malt ice cream was delicious. It definitely tasted like a frozen malted shake. The white block at the bottom was a soft marshmallow.

I had the Trio of Pot de Crème. They were lighter than puddings, kind of like mousses, and very delicious. The flavors were, from right to left, butterscotch, coffee, and chocolate. FI and I both liked the coffee one best because it had the lightest texture and was almost like a flan in consistency.

It was a great meal for only $42 for each of us. It was fun to feel like you were participating in the education of perhaps the next great cook. I took care to fill out the comment card with our feedback on each of the dishes (particularly if we didn't like them or really loved them). While it wasn't the most exquisite meal I've ever had, I enjoyed immensely what we did have, because it was a lot for the money we paid.

Happy President's Day! (a day late of course)

To brighten up my days!

2009-02-16T09:47:00.001-05:00

Last Wednesday, I had a day full of meetings. I was running from room to room for the entire afternoon. It was a long day and I finally got back to my desk around 4pm and found a giant box waiting in my chair.

FI had sent me flowers! He even sent them early (as he told me later) so I could enjoy them for a couple of days since Valentine's Day was over the weekend.

He sent me irises from Proflowers, which according to their website, ship their flowers straight from the suppliers so you get them when they're still in bud form and you can see them bloom over the next few days and enjoy them longer.

They came with a vase and flower food, so I spent some time cutting off the ends of the stems and arranging the irises in the vase with water.

Here's a picture of the flowers after I had arranged them. Still mostly in tight buds.

The 2nd day! Most of the buds were now opened and you can see all the lovely iris colors - white, purple, and yellow. FI said that he got those because purple and yellow are our wedding colors.

The 3rd day. Everything's in full bloom. When I went to switch the water, I rearranged all of the irises so the colors were spread out.

Aerial shot!

I left these at work over the long weekend since it would have been hard to carry them home on the subway. I hope they might still be in good shape on Tuesday!

Another year goes by...

2009-02-13T08:31:00.002-05:00

For our anniversary, FI took me to Ushiwakamaru, a fabulously low-key traditional Japanese restaurant in the West Village. It was a surprise, so I all knew was that I had to be at the corner of W. Houston and MacDougall. I actually got there a little early and it was freezing so I ducked into the restaurant on the corner for a glass of wine and to warm up. I hoped it wasn't the place we were having dinner, which it wasn't.

We had 7pm reservations and when we arrived, we saw that FI's name was written along with 7pm on a little placecard at our seats at the counter. This place was recommended by his co-worker who also suggested we sit at the counter so we could see the chefs do their sushi magic.

Our place settings at the counter.

We ordered sake and they brought out a tray of sake cups, all mismatched, for us to choose from. This was fun! I've never done this before, but I'm guessing sake cups are like wine glasses - different shapes for different types of sake.

We decided to go with the chef's menu where they make you plates of sushi based on what they know is fresh and have available and how they want you to enjoy the meal.

What was super cool was that we got to watch him prepare our meal in front of us and watch him do other meals as well.

Here is the sushi board with the different kinds of seafood he picked out and sorting before plating.

We started out with an appetizer - a fried eggplant soup that was very light and warm in our tummies.

First course - sashmi. I ate it from right to left, going darker in color. Each piece of fish was so fresh, there was no fishy taste and it melted in my mouth.

I gasped at the octopus tentacles the chef pulled out and he agreeably posed for a snapshot.

Second course - sushi, plain on rice. We had all of our sushi and sashmi in Japan this way and loved it. The freshness of the fish required no other "weird" ingredients (cream cheese, avocado, veggies, etc.) to mask its taste. We actually didn't go out for sushi for about 3 months after we got back, figuring that any taste would just make us miss the sushi in Japan even more. But these were delicious. I even did the unorthodox method of putting the sushi in my mouth upside-down (as suggested by Barry Nalebuff) so I could taste the fish better.

Third course - different types of sushi. Here we got to try some other kinds of seafood - eel, roe, etc. What was cool about these sushi pieces was the different textures of each piece. The red roe was soft and each bead exploded with salty goodness. The eel tasting a bit tougher than fish so you had something to chew. The yellow roe with lots of little beads that rolled around on your tongue.

Finally we had a red bean dessert with tapioca balls. This was a wonderful way to end the evening. Red bean is one of my favorite dessert ingredients.

It was a great anniversary dinner. I loved the truly authentic sushi they had and it was fun to be surprised by the chef's menu.

Mini-break!

2009-02-12T08:10:00.004-05:00

Last November we took a mini-break to eastern Connecticut. It was nice to take a break, but it was mostly so I could go to MGM Foxwoods to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour!

More about that performance in another post, but I've gone every year since they've started having them after the season's over. Last year was the third tour and FI has gone with me to the last two. He is a very patient FI. :)

After the performance, we did a little gambling (blackjack and slots) at MGM Foxwoods and then headed to our hotel outside of Foxwoods. No way we were staying there, given the price of a room.

The next morning we decided to explore some of the local towns and headed to Stonington, which is about 2 hours east of Stamford, almost near Rhode Island, along the coastline.

We drove into town and looked for a place to eat. There was just one main road and we stopped at the first restaurant we saw, Noah's Restaurant.

The inside was packed, which was a good sign. We got great seats right by the window.

FI orderd the Quiche du Jour, which was some sort of veggie quiche.

I ordered Portuguese Baked Eggs which was Portugueses spicy sausage and tomatoes laid out in a ramekin and then eggs were cracked over it and a salsa was poured on and the whole thing was baked. There was great contrasts of flavors, between the eggs and the spicy salsa and sausage, and textures, with the chewy sausage and soft runny eggs. I tried to make sure I had a bit of everything in each bite.

FSIL has a tomato and spinach omelet, which was hearty and yummy.

We then took a car tour of town. We drove through Main Street to the coast and got out to take some pictures. Stonington is basically a point of land that sticks south into the water. I'm sure there's a proper name for it, and I'm picturing my 5th grade geography lessons, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called.

Along the coastline, facing east, looking north.

FI and I enjoying the balmy November weather.

A picture south onto the water. I'm assuming you might see the edges of Long Island in the distance.

It was a relaxing weekend and Stonington is a beautiful little town. There were some gorgeous homes and condos. We debated whether this would be a good place for retirement. Or at least an artist's retreat. Well if any of us were actually artists...

Homemade cupcakes!

2009-02-11T08:39:00.001-05:00

Ever since the kitchen has been remodeled, we have been getting great use out of our new oven and counter space.

I got to start baking again on a regular basis and one of the first things I made was yummy vanilla cupcakes from Nigella Lawson. For some reason, I can't find it on her site anymore, but here is my handwritten version.

Although this version usually ends up with 20 cupcakes and I don't use the extra tablespoons of butter or sugar.

First things first, assembling the cupcake cups. I use paper liners inside silicon baking cups. Cheaper than a muffin tin and the paper liners make convenient holders.

All lined up and ready for batter!

I always try to do "mise en place" and set out all my ingredients first. It's the secret of all great tv chefs (according to my game theory professor in business school) and it does make things go a lot faster.

First goes the sugar.

Here's the melted butter. I stuck the whole stick in the microwave and zapped it until it melted. The first time I made cupcakes, I didn't let the butter melt and I didn't have an electric mixer and my cupcakes came out flat and dry, so now I always use melted butter and the hand mixer.

Two eggs, sitting out so they warm up to room temperature.

In goes the flour, butter and the eggs.

Now the two ingredients you need if you don't have self-rising flour... baking soda...

and baking powder...

Some vanilla extract, which with the sugar, give all the flavor. (I need to learn to make my own and use real vanilla beans.)

Then a little milk. The original recipe called for 2-3 tablespoons of milk. I find 4 works a lot better.

The hand mixer! I love this little guy. I got it from Target and it works pretty well, except all of its speeds are Fast and Super Fast. I always get flour all over me if I'm trying to work dry ingredients in to a not-so-wet batter.

Filling the cupcakes. I find for an average sized cupcake, a Chinese soup spoon of batter is the perfect amount.

Generally you don't need to fill the cup more than half-way or two-thirds because the cake is going to rise as it bakes.

I also made some mini cupcakes, using little paper liners I had bought at Mitsuwa. For these, a regular spoonful of batter worked well.

Another cooking tip I've picked up is the trash bowl from Rachel Ray. As you cook, you have a bowl set aside for all scraps and trash. It saves the time and trouble of having to walk back and forth to the trash can and then you can dump everything at the end.

This is such a time-saver and efficiency hint, even FI uses one when he's cooking!

The finished products!

Yeah, I know they came out a little weird shaped. I think it's due to the organic pastry flour I have. It just doesn't take to baking well. I tried them out in cookies and it's not so great looking either.

But regardless, they are super yummy!

Pretty, pretty flowers...

2009-02-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

I enjoy arts and crafts. I like scrapbooking, jewelry-making, cross-stitching, and especially origami. I started learning origami from my Nai-nai (my paternal grandmother) and then from lots of books. I've missed crafting since being in NYC. Our little studio apartment doesn't leave much room for lots of crafts.

As we've been planning this wedding, I've been trying to think of ways to personalize the event and incorporate origami. My Nai-nai, who is a ripe old 90, also wanted to help out. Which means finding something cool with origami.

I was surfing the web (as I do) and came across a link to a tutorial on how to make Kusudama Balls - Japanese flower balls. It looked relatively easy (Part I and Part II) so I decided to try it out.

I used some random 3 inch origami paper that I had purchased in Chinatown a couple years ago and sorted out a bunch of colors. You have to make each petal separately and then glue each petal together and then glue 5 petals to make 1 flower. Then you glue 12 flowers together to make one ball. Turns out it was pretty easy, it just takes a while.

I started out by folding 5 petals at a time.

Then I glued each one together. I would put glue on one side, roll it together, and pinch it tight as I counted "one Mississippi, two Mississippi..."

Then I would let the petals dry as I folded the next 5 petals.

Then I would have an assembly line started. Fold 5. Glue 5 petals together. Glue 1 flower together. I got into a pretty good rhythm and it was something to do as I watched through a week's worth of the Daily Show and Colbert Report.

After finishing all 12 flowers, I glued 6 together to make the 2 halves. I tried to figure out a way to organize it so none of the same colored flowers touched each other. I don't think my visualization skills were advanced enough.

Look how pretty it is! To finish it off, I would glue a loop of ribbon to one half and then glue them together.

I showed the kusudama ball to my mom over Thanksgiving and she thought they were beautiful and would be something my Nai-nai could help with. Over Christmas, I showed my Nai-nai the ball and how to fold the petals. (We used napkins to practice.) She was very excited about helping out and talked about how she'd be able to fold all of the flowers. She even thought about asking her senior citizen center friends to help but decided against it because "they wouldn't be neat enough." :P

I found some jumbo value pack wrapping paper that should work pretty well. We'll use the balls as aisle decorations for the ceremony (hang them on the chairs right next to the aisle on every other row) and then for the reception (move them to the cocktail tables, place card table, gift table, etc.).

A Historic Day!

2009-02-09T08:36:00.001-05:00

This is a retro blog post... I started this Election Day, but never had a chance to finish. Given that the Inauguration has already come and gone and the pundits are counting down Obama's first 100 days, I think I should finish it...

I love election day! I've voted every time since I turned 18, be it in person or via absentee ballot. There's something so exciting about making your choices and then pressing the button (or pulling the lever) to VOTE!

I don't remember where I read this, but it's always stuck with me - of all the principles of a democracy, the most basic and simple one is the ability to cast a vote. If you can't even do that, what's the point of a democracy? And given all of the people around the world (I don't have a percentage, but it seems like a significant number) who don't get a chance to ever a cast a vote or cast one without fear of violence - it's a pretty amazing opportunity.

I've never voted in NYC before so I wasn't sure what to expect. I've only ever voted in suburban Virginia at the local middle school. There were never any lines and you just drive up, walk in, check your name off and go vote.

New York City ("New York City!") was definitely overwhelming. I walked up 2 blocks to our voting center (the local high school) , turned the corner toward the entrance, and saw this...

Well, technically not this exact view since I took the picture after I got in line, but basically the line stretched across one city block (east to west) and was turning the corner down the next avenue right after I got in line.

Another shot of everyone waiting in line. No one was stressed out about the wait. People were chatting with each other and I listened to a mom behind me explain voting to her little 3/4 year daughter. At one point we passed the "No campaigning beyond this point" sign and sure enough, in front of the sign were a couple of candidates, talking to people.

Inside the voting booth. It's one of the old school versions where you flick the switch of everyone you want to vote for and then there's a long lever at the bottom that you pull to count your vote. The nice old gentleman who was volunteering outside my booth kept asking me if everything was okay. It was, it just took a bit to get my camera out to take the picture!

After getting to work, my co-workers and I organized a betting pool for the election. Our boss, who is Australian, can't vote, but was following the election closely, and wanted to do something involved with the election.

We decided to do a series of bets based on the swing states. Everyone had to call each swing state for McCain or Obama and the tie breaker would be the percentage (at first, just the whole number, but too many of us put the same number, so everyone had to go back and add a decimal guess) of the popular vote that Obama would win. We set the pool up this way so it wouldn't be about political views, but just how good everyone would be at guessing the stats.

Here's my sheet... Note we took 10 swing states and threw in a couple of extra ones, just to mix things up.

The night was a long one watching results come in. I was at FI's family's home and hanging out with his nephew, but also trying to watch CNN. I love those touchscreens!

Finally, around midnight, I got to hear McCain's concession speech and see Obama speak, which was pretty moving. I wanted to stay up longer to see more results, but I was too tired. Plus they were then onto Obama's potential Cabinet picks and I wasn't going to stay up for that. Besides, I wonder how accurate the list is now?

The next morning we went over the results of the bet, using the numbers from CNN. It got a little complicated trying to figure out the popular vote percentage because CNN wasn't counting 3rd-party results and we needed it to the tenth of a decimal point. But we managed to track down the latest vote counts and did some math to figure it out.

Turns out my friend who set up the pool won. And there was a tie for 2nd. So we split the cash for the 3 of them and then took the extra to buy bagels for everyone. A fun way to end Election Day!

Halloween Part 3: Party On!

2008-11-24T09:04:00.001-05:00

To finish up Halloween (finally!)...

For the rest of the story, go to Part I and Part II.

After dinner, we headed to our first party at the Annex with one of our favorite bands - Paperdoll. They are a super talented group of musicians and play some super fun music, which is great for watching live and dancing.

The band in action! If you want to hear their music, go to Amazon, Myspace, or Itunes.

FI and I in full Amazing Race mode! We kept our headlamps on and pretended to be running down the streets as we were making our way to each party.

Since Paperdoll is 3 guys and 1 girl, they went as the 2008 presidential and VP candidates.

A picture of Teresa doing the Palin wink. I think I'm chanting "drill, baby, drill" or something like that.

I ran into an old friend from business school. Regardless of the occasion or theme, if we had a party that required dress-up, he would wear his cow costume. For our beach themed spring formal, he wore it with leis and was a beach cow. For our pajama themed party, he told everyone that's what he slept in. I saw the cow out of the corner of my eye and my first thought was "That looks familiar..." and it was...

After listening to Paperdoll's set at the Annex and hanging out for a bit, we headed over to another friend's office party in Brooklyn. We really felt like Amazing Race racers since we didn't have a map and were just running around the streets trying to figure out where we were supposed to go.

There were some amazing costumes.

Josh went as Iron Man. This costume is homemade! He made the battery for Iron Man's heart out of a salsa jar lid and LEDs. The Iron Man glove is made from random scraps and wires and he used red electric tape to make the finger joints for the glove. It was amazingly detailed and intricate. Check out how accurate he is. He even grew a goatee to match.

Our friend Calvin has been going as some version of an egg for the last couple of years. The first year, he was a plain egg with a yellow t-shirt under a white t-shirt with a hole in it and white pants. Then he was a Ranchos Heurvos, which was the egg costume with a sombero. This year, he was Eggs Benedict. We spent the subway ride home thinking of other possible costumes for future years. Western Omelet - wear a cowboy hat. Eggs Florentine - wave an Italian flag.

Our friend Sam went as Gloomy Bear. Which I know nothing about, but apparently it's very popular in Japan and is sort of the anti-thesis to Hello Kitty. That costume is all homemade except for the pink paw with claws. He bought a pink sweatsuit and sewed the bear ears and eyes and made the face mask and sewed little blood splatters on his outfit.

Our friends Danny and Judy came as Ravin Rabbids from the Wii game Rayman Ravin Rabbids. It's a super silly video game where the main character Rayman (who kind of looks like a psychedelic Warner Brothers character) has to escape a bunch of crazy rabbits by getting through a series of obstacles. The games are similar to ones in Super Mario Party and also childhood games like Red Light, Green Light. The rabbits are the enemy and they are pretty freaky looking. Judy captured the crazy rabbit eyes pretty well.

It was a long but fun night. I loved seeing all of the costumes and people dressed up. Our friends are super creative!

Halloween Part 2: Putting the Look Together (and extra)

2008-11-21T09:54:00.001-05:00

To continue on our Halloween costumes, the day of Halloween...

I wanted to make fake Amazing Race clue envelopes for us to hold and run around with. My original ambitious plan was to also write real tasks inside the envelopes and have people open them at the parties we were going to and do the tasks.

"A Detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams must decide to 'Shoot it up' or 'Drink it down.' In 'Shoot it up', each team member must do 1 shot of some kind of strong alcohol. In 'Drink it down', each team member must chug 1 glass of beer."

I couldn't think of many party/bar-related tasks, so I didn't end up doing this.

I looked online for images of the race envelopes to print out, but there wasn't much. I finally found some teeny-teeny images, like little internet icon sized ones, that I decided I would blow up and edit.

I used Powerpoint since I did this at the end of the day at work and it was actually pretty easy and the clues turned out really cute.

I first blew up the image so it fit along the page. Then I used basic shapes to redo the images so they came out sharper. The circle with the bar was made by 3 basic shapes - 1 black circle ovaled a bit and rotated slightly, 1 smaller red circle ovaled and rotated, and 1 black shape made with straight-line connectors. I just lined all of the shapes up with the original image and moved them front and back to get the right order. I also looked for a similar font to redo the titles as well.

To color the rest of the envelope, I basically looked for a color that matched the original image and did a filled shape over the rest of the page. I made 4 types of clue envelopes and also printed out a bunch of the Amazing Race flags. Note the slide sorter on the left.

Here are the completed clues! They looked pretty good! And fairly realistic if I do say so myself.

Here is FI all dressed up with his shirt, clues, backpack, and headlamp. Isn't he a cutie?

Here I am all dressed up as well. Note I am wearing the Amazing Race fanny pack. We borrowed a fanny pack from FI's dad and FI taped an Amazing Race flag printout across the front. While FI stored his clues in the back of his backpack, I put mine in the fanny pack.

Now you may be wondering why we have bits of foil on our heads and on FI's wrists, it's because we were going to Chipotle for dinner. We dressed up like burritos (basically wear some tinfoil) to get a free burrito from Chipotle on Halloween! You don't need wrap yourself in tinfoil, pretty much any bit will do and your meal is free!

The Chipotle employees were pretty tickled by our costumes and one even took some pictures on her camera phone.

FI enjoying his burrito and me enjoying my burrito bowl. While we were eating, we got several questions about the tinfoil on our heads. We happily explained about the free burrito and a couple of guys even "borrowed" our foil pieces to go back in line and get more food. :P

Next post, onto the parties and the great costumes we saw...

Halloween Part 1: Making Costumes

2008-11-20T09:46:00.003-05:00

So this is a bit of a late post, but I still wanted to write about Halloween...

FI and I would be spending our 2nd Halloween together and we needed to figure out what we'd want to be. We wanted to do something fairly inexpensive, something as a couple, and something we could put together ourselves. Last year, we went as Hiro (from Heroes) and Betty (from Ugly Betty). FI keep his hair shaggy, wore glasses, wore geeky middle management clothing, and fashioned a Takezo Kensei sword out of a plastic ninja sword and a belt that he wore over his shoulder. He also ran around yelling "Yatta!" For me, my Betty costume consisted of a pair of red sunglasses (with the lenses popped out) and a fake mustache (that I cut in half) for bushy eyebrows and then the most bright clothing I had assembled into one outfit.

This year we decided to take inspiration from television again and go as competitors from The Amazing Race. We weren't going as a specific couple but the typical racer pair.

With that said, we knew we needed a few key items that all Amazing Racers had:
- matching outfits
- backpacks
- headlamps
- fanny pack with the Amazing Race flag on it (also known as the Amazing Purse)
- lots of Route Clues, Detour, Road Block, and Fast Forward instructions

Prior to Halloween, we made our t-shirts and tried out the headlamps.

We bought iron-on letters and t-shirts from Michael's.

The iron-on letters are very easy to use. You just peel them off the sheet and position them on the fabric.

We decided to go with our friend's suggestion for a team name - Amasian Racers! There weren't quite enough As so we had to improvise by using upside Us and Vs and cutting up an I to cross the modified As.

There are directions on how to iron, but basically an iron on a low to med setting works. You just run the dry iron over the letters until you can see and feel that they're really stuck.

Then we set up the headlamps. We tried to find headlamps at the local Modell's and Target, but they didn't have any. So we went online. FI found some relatively inexpensive headlamps on Amazon - the Wenzel Mini LED Head Lamp - . We asked Stephen to order 2 for us so we could save on shipping.

FI trying to open the package.

FI putting in fresh batteries.

FI testing out the headband.

FI testing out the headlamp. It is really bright. And even though the main purpose of the lamps was to flesh out our costume, they will come in handy when we go camping or do some ourdoorsy night activity.

Our final budget:

$ 13.68 - T-shirts (2), iron-on letters (2 packs) - from Michael's Arts & Crafts (FI also found a coupon online for 20% off 1 item per person, so we each bought a t-shirt and iron-on pack and save 20% on the iron-ons.

$19.98 - Headlamps (2) - from Amazon with no shipping costs (since Stephen had Amazon Prime)

Free - backpacks (our own), fanny pack (borrowed), TAR flag (printed), Paper instructions (Powerpoints that were printed)

Total cost of $33.66 - Not bad for 2 costumes!

Dumplings!

2008-11-19T09:26:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, FI and I were in Chinatown, visiting a potential DJ for our wedding, and after the meeting was over, we went to Dumpling House to get some dinner.

We actually were at some other dumpling restaurant, but then were charging $4.95 for 8 fried dumplings. Outrageous! We left and found found our way to Dumpling House, where 4 yummy friend dumplings were only $1. Yeah, that's right, for the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte, you could have eaten 16 dumplings.

The inside of the restaurant. It's actually a lot nicer now. I think they just had a major renovation.

We were pretty hungry so we got 2 orders of guo-tie (the fried dumplings).

We would have gotten more had we not spotted the sesame bread sandwiches. Basically a round flat doughy bread covered with sesame seeds is toasted in the oven and it comes out all puffy, like the bread from Cosi. Then it's cut up into slices, like pizza and the inside is split open for whatever fillings are ordered.

We ended up getting 2 - the Peking Duck with cucumber (in the picture above) and a roasted beef one. The 8 guo-tie and the Peking Duck sandwich actually filled both of us up, so I was able to bring the other sandwich for lunch the next day!

To wash down all of the good cheap food, we each had a bottle of soy milk. This would have been true Chinese style if the soy milk had been served in little plastic bags.

A 2nd mea culpa...

2008-11-12T13:01:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posting.... I was doing so well all through October, but then things got busy and kept me away from the laptop...

- Halloween (of which I do have pictures and am ready to blog about)
- Road trip to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour (which was awesome and I have the blurry pictures to prove it!)
- FI's brother and nephew visiting
- Election Day
- Road trip for my grandma's 90th birthday

While I'm busy writing up posts, I'll leave you with a funny conversation (paraphrased) I had with FI's nephew, who is a super-smart, super-confident, self-assured, arts-enthusiastic, 4-year-old.

Me: Did you like The Little Mermaid? (His grandparents, FI's parents, had taken him to the city to see the matinee.)
Nephew: Yes!
Me: Was it cool to see the fish and the water?
Nephew: Yes!
Me: What did you like best?
Nephew: Ariel!
Me: That's cool!
Nephew: I want to be Ariel for Halloween!

:)

Japanese meat on a stick

2008-10-30T10:07:00.000-04:00

To celebrate our almost-anniversary, FI and I went to Yakitori Torys for dinner. It's a higher-end yakitori place and is a lot quieter than the places on St. Mark's.

A simple and clean table setting. I like this plate and chopstick holder.

We love going to Yakitori Torys and even though we're really all about the meat on a stick, we love their steamed vegetables. I think we mainly like them for the sauces they come with - sesame, wasabi mayonnaise, and flavored salt. Every time we've eaten there, we order the vegetables. And every time we eat it and say "We can make this at home!" But it's really not the same without the sauces. Which we need to figure out where to buy.

Then it was on to meat on a stick! First up, chicken skin. Now chicken skin has a pretty fatty chewy texture, so you need to grill it just right to get it crispy and not gooey and fatty. Torys does a great job with chicken skin; I think they just take their time grilling yakitori so it's actually cooked well.

More meat on a stick! From top to bottom - kalbi beef, chicken oysters (tender part of the thigh), and soft knee bone (of chicken). All were delicious! The kalbi was juicy and tender. The chicken oysters were so soft and easy to eat and were very tasty too. The knee bone did not taste like cartilage at all.

Then one of our entrees showed up - grilled squid. That's a spicy mayonnaise on top. The Asians sure love using mayonnaise as a hot condiment. We saw it on top of all sorts of food - vegetables, fish, meat - when we were in Taiwan and Japan. The squid was pretty tasty, but the mayonnaise made it super rich. This was the only dish we didn't quite finish.

Our other entree was a pork stew with a turnip and a boiled egg. The boiled egg was like a tea egg and the turnip was pretty soft and salty after being cooked in the broth. The pork was so good. The fatty layer on top and the silvers of lean meat on bottom were thoroughly soaked in broth and a nice soy sauce flavor. It was such a great combination of textures to eat and I would alternate bites of the pork with bites of the turnip and the egg.

We also had a lamb chop. The meat was grilled well, but not very flavorful. It was actually pretty bland and putting lemon juice on it just made it taste like sour meat.

Our final yakitori was tsukune (basically a giant chicken meatball) with diced radish. We had forgotten what tsukune was but it was a special on the menu, so we got it thinking it looked pretty good. And it was pretty good. Very tender and the meatball was very well mixed and tasty. The diced radish added a nice crunchy addition.

We couldn't finish our dinner without sharing a dessert. We ended up with a pumpkin creme brulee. This was a cold dessert and the texture was much denser (due to the pumpkin) than your normal creme brulee. But it was really smooth and yummy and I almost wanted to lick the ramekin clean. :)

Yakitori Torys is one of the few restaurants we keep going back to. Not only is it pretty close to our apartment, but it's also delicious and they always have new specials on their menus. Highly recommended!

Tasty Spare Ribs

2008-10-29T10:41:00.000-04:00

This weekend, we decided to go Southern and Eastern with our cuisine. Not south-eastern, mind you, but attempting our own version of BBQ spare ribs.

We had gotten some nice spare ribs that we decided to marinade and bake.

To properly marinade them, I first took them out of the package and stuffed them into a takeout container so there would be little room for the marinade to go and hence go into the ribs.

I didn't have a set recipe in mind for the marinade; I just pulled a bunch of things out of our fridge and cabinet and set about mixing them together until I had the taste I wanted.

I started out with honey and then added soy sauce. I think added vinegar and rice wine. Then I threw in some garlic powder and black pepper. Finally I added cane sugar. Then I mixed everything. That took a while since the sugar granules would not dissolve. Now I started taste-testing the marinade. It was a little too sour and sweet so I added soy sauce until the sweet and salty was just the right balance.

Then I carefully poured the marinade over the spare ribs.

Soak 'em up, spare ribs!

Then, cause marinades work better in the cold (I'm not sure where I heard that, maybe on Nigella Bites?), I covered it and stuck it in the fridge.

After 20 minutes, we pulled the ribs out to bake.

After plating all the ribs on the oven pan, each rib got a wash of the extra marinade. The rest of the marinade can be used for basting.

Into the oven they go! We looked online to see what temperature we should bake them at and we found 1 recipe that said 300 degrees for 1.5 hours for 4 pounds of ribs. Since we only had 2 pounds, we figured we'd just keep an eye on them.

We've been doing the "use only one part of the recipe" thing a lot recently. Mostly it's because we already have a sauce or marinade or something in mind, we just need to know the finer details of the science of cooking. Our theory is, as long as the meat is the same, it should cook the same way.

While the ribs were baking, we started on our veggie dish - snow peas and tofu.

Here are the cleaned and peeled (at least the stemmy things on both ends) snow peas and tofu.

FI prepares to cut up garlic for the dish, while I use a knife to section the tofu into cubes. There's something so satisfying about cutting up tofu, especially in its box. I love to cook, but my knife skills aren't the greatest and my knives are neither super nice nor super sharp, so I'm always having a tough time making quick, clean cuts. But tofu yields so easily and you get the edges of the box as a guide, so it's fun to make quick, clean cuts down and across the block of tofu.

The garlic and snowpeas went into the wok first since they'd take longer to cook.

Then we added the tofu and a little teriyaki sauce.

Our finished veggie stirfry!

After 20 minutes, we checked on the ribs and basted them with the marinade. After 40 minutes, we flipped the ribs over and added another coat of marinade.

We finally took them out at about 1 hour and 10 minutes. This was after testing a small rib first. You'll notice one less rib in the picture below versus the picture above.

I then plated everything for us to eat.

A homey and simple meal, plated on our coffee table, to enjoy!

I like our create-our-own-flavors type of meals. We basically use what's available in our kitchen and then adjust to our own taste. We use the web for guidance on the science part of it, but the sensory part - how it tastes, how it chews, how it looks - that's all up to us.

Rice Triangles Part II: Getting in the Middle of It

2008-10-28T10:09:00.000-04:00

To continue on expanding my rice triangle-making skills, I decided to next make rice balls with fillings.

FI and I had bought some beautiful unagi (grilled eel) to eat over rice. Instead of over rice, I tried to make them in rice.

Here's the eel in the packaging. I love the soy/teriyaki/plum sauce that gets added to the eel when it's grilled.

Here's the leftover rice from my last rice-triangle-making session. I added a little water and heated it up in the microwave so it would have the hot, sticky consistency needed for rice patties.

Since the eel had been in our refrigerator, I grilled it first in our toaster oven to get it hot.

This time, instead of filling the rice mold, I only put in rice to fill up 2/3 of the mold.

Then I gently packed the rice down and topped it with a couple of pieces of eel.

Next I put more rice on top and filled the mold. Finally I put the top on and squeezed it tight so the rice patties would form.

I was able to make 6 more rice patties with the leftovers. FI and I already ate one of them before I had a chance to take a picture.

Here's the inside of one. FI liked the seaweed we used last time so he insisted we have them with these as well.

The rice triangles were super yummy. The eel was tasty and the rice soaked up all of the sauce. We only ate 4 of them and I got to pack the other two in one of my Bento boxes for lunch the next day!

Another Wedding Show!

2008-10-27T10:44:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, I attended a Luxury Bridal Show sponsored by The Wedding Salon. I was able to get a complimentary ticket to the event via Style Me Pretty, a wonderful wedding blog with lots of beautiful pictures and lovely ideas for weddings.

The show was designed for the luxury wedding market and all of the vendors there were such. Pretty much everything was out of my price range, but it was fun to walk around and get pictures of the beautiful table settings and taste cakes.

Here's one of the table settings. The centerpiece is gorgeous and huge, over 3 feet tall. I like the filler they used in the vase - clear rocks that reflect the colors of the table settings. See how blue they look in the photo? They're actually totally clear.

Here's another enormous table centerpiece. The column is covered in the white roses and white orchids decorate the top and base of the doric flower column. The shiny structure spiraling up the flower column are little gold votive candle holders. I think I would prefer a simpler version of this centerpiece, making it more of a ionic column without the orchids, giant leaves, and candle holders.

Here's a simpler version of a spiral candle holder and white rose centerpiece. In this one, you still get the height of the piece, but your guests can actually see each other across the table.

I love centerpieces that are low (so everyone can see each other) and still bursting with flowers. This low centerpiece is nice and girly with all of these pink roses.

The show had models in wedding dresses with bouquets walking around the space showing off the designs. What was really funny was that they had a sign hanging off of them with information on the dress designer, who made the jewelry, which florist did the flowers, etc.

Here's a wedding cake from Mark Joseph Cakes. I love the simplicity of this design (and so do bridal magazines, I've seen this cake in at least 2 issues) and the beautiful sugar bows. They had cake samples as well - chocolate with pistachio icing and vanilla with strawberry icing. Both the cakes were good, but I think the icings both overpowered the cakes and their flavors (pistachio and strawberry) were too strong.

Sylvia Weinstock had cake samples, which were super moist and yummy. No cakes to look at though. :(

Here's the gift bag everyone got, with gifts "worth more than $250". There were some cool beauty samples but that was about it. There were also tons of magazines, which made the bag ridiculously heavy.

Mars Candy had a booth there as well to show off their personalized M&Ms and Dove bars. For the M&Ms, you can even get your picture printed on the candies. Which while sort of cool, also kind of creepy, since you're basically eating yourself....

Here's a bouquet from one of the florists there. I like the bright colors and big bunched-up-ness of the roses.

All in all, it was neat to see pretty things you could have at a wedding, but I'm kind of glad I got to go for free. There were too many different types of vendors and not enough of each kind. When there's only 1 make-up artist, 1 florist, 2 cake people, but 2 dress cleaners, 4/5 vacation spots, and 4/5 jewelers, you're not going to really be able to do any comparison shopping or see a wide range of options.

Hanging in the Hay-Hay

2008-10-26T11:53:00.002-04:00

This weekend I was in New Haven for some alumni meetings. FI came up on Saturday and we went out on the town.

FI's new favorite blog that he's added to his RSS feed is A Hamburger Today, a blog devoted to his favorite food - burgers! So he really wanted to eat at Louis Lunch, where the hamburger was invented! (True story, go to their wiki page).

Here we are outside Louis Lunch.

They are purists in here and don't have any condiments for their burgers. They feel that any sauces ruin the purity of the taste of the burger.

I got a ginger ale. FI says it looks like a lite beer.

Here's the burger! The burger is cooked in a rack oven and it goes on 2 pieces of white toast. The bread is toasted in a revolving toaster and the cheese is a spread so it doesn't fall off while it's revolving.

I know, I know, that picture looks kind of gross, but I couldn't put a flash on because of all the white from the plate and toast.

Here's a better sideview picture of the burger.

The burger was pretty tasty. The meat was grilled well, although it was a little bland. But the toppings of cheese, tomato and onion added a lot of flavor. The toast was really good too! FI and I think we might try this next time we make burgers.

After Louis Lunch, we went across the street to Bar to have some New Haven-style pizza. Bar and the Bru Room are some nice spaces, with large rooms and lots of tables and yummy yummy pizza!

They also have a little micro brewery with their own beers.

New Haven pizza is amazing. It's a thin crust pizza baked in a brick oven. The crust is super crispy and the toppings are always nicely grilled. Some popular toppings include clams, eggplant, and broccoli. We got a white pizza with mashed potato and garlic. I know the mashed potato sounds weird, but it was delicious! Mashed potato is the speciality of Bar.

Every time FI has come up to visit New Haven, we've hit one of the pizza joints known for their New Haven pizza. Last time it was Modern Apizza and we had eggplant pizza. Next time we'll have to go to Sally's or P epe's.

A little Japanese meal

2008-10-25T10:16:00.000-04:00

To continue on with the rice triangles, they were just a part of our pseudo-Japanese meal this past weekend.

I made 6 rice triangles (two of them have already been eaten by FI and I) and decided I wanted to try frying a couple of them.
I put in a little oil and soy sauce (which wasn't a great idea since it has a much lower burning point than oil and started to go black during the frying) in the frying pan and laid 2 of the rice patties in.

It was hard to fry them. They wouldn't stay together as tightly and started falling apart a little bit. Also, the soy sauce burned and charred the patties.

For our veggie, FI stir-fried some Chinese kale or "kai-lan" or "jie-lan" with garlic. I love how green leafy veggies release so much water when they cook that they practically make their own sauce.

The finished kai-lan plated and ready for us to eat. These were super moist and not dry or overcooked. Even the stalks were easy to eat.

From our shopping trip to Mitsuwa, we also bought some tuna sashmi. As I was dumping them out onto a plate, I decided I wanted to plate them properly. So I started lining them up and the lining up became a circling up and I ended up with a ring of tuna on a green plate.

So of course the wasabi and soy sauce had to go in a bowl in the middle of the plate. Here it is all ready for soy sauce.

I added the soy sauce right before we ate.

It was a really simple meal - tuna, rice, and Chinese kale, but it was tasty and fun to prepare. I'm going to be making rice patties all the time now!

Brunch at Calle Ocho

2008-10-24T08:59:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, FI and I went with friends to brunch at Calle Ocho. It's a Latin-inspired restaurant that apparently has all-you-can-drink sangrias for Sunday brunch!

While we were waiting for everyone to show up so we could get seated, I took some pictures of the decor. I like the use of multiple colors in the place mats, plates, and stools. You never have to worry about running out of one color or not having enough of matching colors or having the right order. You just have to have a plate, a place mat, and a stool.

Upon closer examination, we realized the place mats are from IKEA! They are from the same line as our coasters - Panna.

Everyone finally arrived and we got seated. Turns out the front area is just a decoy. It looks super small and crowded and you're worried you can't get seated. Then you follow your hostess back and see this....

A huge cavernous eating area with tons of tables and a sangria bar.

We started out with a bread basket. There were a bunch of different breads - little unsweetened doughnuts, bread with chocolate chips, cheese bread, muffins, sweet rolls, etc. They were all really good and soft.

With the breads, we had 2 types of spreads - strawberry butter and black bean dip. Both were really tasty and both actually worked well on any of the breads since none of the breads were super sweet or super salty. I ended up putting strawberry butter on the half of a piece and then black bean dip on the other half for each bread I tried.

After ordering our food, we decided to try out the all-you-can-drink sangria bar. When we were ordering food, we tried to find some reviews to see what people had recommended. We couldn't find a single food suggestion but everyone RAVED about the sangria. :)

First, a kitschy tongue-in-cheek sign about the "Rules of the Sangria Bar".

Each giant sangria jar was labeled with the name and ingredients. You basically ladled the sangria and fruit into the pitcher and poured it into your glass.

Here's the one I ended up trying. It had strawberries, raspberries, and some other berries soaking in rum.

It was pretty good. It wasn't too sweet so it didn't feel refreshing and the fruit was really tasty too. Although I ended up with sangria splashes all over my shirt from trying to pick the fruit out to eat.

I had the Huevos Divorciados - crab cakes with eggs and salsa and peppers on top. The green salsa was less spicy than the red salsa. The combination of a plain fried egg (and its accompanying smooth texture) and spicy crab cakes (with a crispy coating) was really tasty.

FI had the Cachapa de Salmon which were crepes with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. It was really rich and filling. Since everything in the dish was soft (salmon, eggs, crepe), I didn't think it was as interesting to eat. But it was still yummy.

This was the Latin Benedict with Indian bread, Serrano ham, salsa, poached egg, and a chipotle hollandaise sauce. The Indian bread and ham were delicious. Both were salty with a great chewy (almost crunchy) texture that worked so well with the soft poached egg. The salsa and sauce were also excellent.

This place is a definite recommend! There's free sangria, lots of room, and they take reservations. Those are already 3 pluses for me and the food was delicious too!

No Kissy Faces!

2008-10-23T09:26:00.000-04:00

Earlier this fall, FI and I were down in NoVA for a friend's wedding. While there, we also had an engagement photo shoot with L2 of Girls with Big Cameras. Since L2's other photographer partners were busy, she recruited another friend from college, Corey, to help with the shoot.

FI was a little apprehensive when I first proposed an engagement photo session. But I really wanted to get them done. Not only do you have more time than wedding photos, but you also get to be a lot more comfortable, since you're not in full formal wedding wear.

It was also more comfortable because we were working with L2 and Corey, who are both good friends of mine. FI agreed afterwards that it was a lot easier to be relaxed and natural around friends who were taking photos than a "real" photographer who we weren't familiar with.

L2 and I discussed where we wanted to take pictures. I wanted to do some shots near water and near some cool architecture. But I didn't necessarily want the usual D.C. monument shots. So I asked L2 what she thought of Old Town Alexandria, the historical area of Alexandria, VA that's also on the waterfront. L2 thought that would be perfect since she's shot there before and knows the area. Plus she also recommended shooting at the Old Torpedo Factory, an old weapons factory that's now an art gallery and artist studio space since I wanted to shoot some cool formal shots.

FI and I also discussed what we wanted to do to make these shots our own. We always talk about the things we owned in common, so we included them in our photo shoot.

We started out inside the Old Torpedo Factory and then moved outside onto the waterfront and then back around town. Basically L2 (and sometimes Corey) would tell us where to stand or try a pose. Then she'd let us relax, talk to each other, make each other laugh, etc. as they took pictures.

After a month, we finally got our photo CD in the mail! FI kept laughing at me every day as I checked our mail box for the photos.

So... yay... a sneak peek!

Here we are in our "formal" wear inside the factory. I loved the fun artsy things that L2 did with some of the photos, like brightening the images or changing the color contrast.

Then we went outside and took some shots along the buildings on the waterfront. This one is along the Chart House restaurant. There's actually a corner in the wall, right about where we were holding hands. So we couldn't even see each other, but L2 just told us where to look and pretend we were smiling at each other.

Then we walked along the docks and took some strolling pictures. I like this one because of FI's smile. :)

We then went back to the Old Torpedo Factory to change into our "casual" outfits. Here's where we pulled out the "props" we had. We both have Nintendo DS Lites and we love playing games against each other (Big Brain Academy, Tetris, Mario Kart, Boggle, etc.) so we wanted to get some shots of us playing them.

We're not pretending here either. I think we were in a heated battle of Tetris. This was L2's interpretation of the Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant scene in "Notting Hill".

Notice the matching his-and-her flip-flops from J. Crew. We bought those together last year at an outlet mall in CT. We brought them especially so we could wear them for the shoot.

Then we did some hand-holding in cool architectural spots.

L2 loves jumping shots, so she and Corey got a bunch of us jumping off the steps. We tried to make silly faces at each other. Which wasn't hard when you're jumping in the air.

Then we walked over to the fountains and pulled out our sunglasses, again some of our matching items. Our glasses are both Von Zippers. FI had his first and when I needed new glasses, he recommended the VZs.

Finally we went and got some ice cream. We noticed all these ice cream stores when we were walking to the Torpedo Factory and we decided we should get ice cream at the end and then take some photos with the ice cream.

The end of a long afternoon!

Taking engagement photos was a great experience. L2 and Corey were super easy to work with and they did such a gorgeous job with the pictures. We love them! And we can't wait to use them for our wedding.

Rice Triangles

2008-10-22T08:48:00.001-04:00

In Japan, I had gotten a rice mold to make our own rice and seaweed balls, but had never gotten around to using it. But this past weekend, FI and I went shopping at Mitsuwa and I bought some seaweed. So I finally got to try out the rice mold.

Here's the mold, still in its original packaging.

FI cooked the rice. He did a great job and it was perfect. Just the right amount of stickiness.

Here's the pack of flavored seaweed we bought at Mitsuwa.

Before using the mold, I washed it and tried to make sense of any directions on the label. Unfortunately, all Japanese...

There are 2 pieces. So I tried first to put rice on one of them. This didn't really work since there was no depth to the mold and the rice just fell out.

So I tried putting rice in the other piece of the mold. I finally figured out the right amount of rice - basically loosely fill the mold piece - to put for each rice ball.

Then you slide the other piece over the rice and press! The excess rice squirts out the holes and you can try and pack it back in or scrape it off back into the rice cooker.

Then you give the mold a bit of a shake and wiggle and slide the piece with the holes off and voila! Little rice triangles!

Then I put pieces of seaweed on the rice.

One piece is on.

I stuck another strip around the top so most of the rice is covered.

Finished rice triangles! Yummy!

Next I'm going to try them with fillings!

A German play with rock music

2008-10-21T08:53:00.001-04:00

Last Friday night, FI and I went to see the Broadway musical Spring Awakening. I had a TKTS gift certificate that I needed to use and we finally had a free weekend in the city.

So I headed over to South Street Seaport on my lunch hour to see what was available and buy tickets. I didn't really see anything that was on the top of our list, but we both knew that Spring Awakening had won a bunch of Tonys so we figured that was a good enough recommendation.

All I knew about the show was that it was based on a German play from the turn of the century but there was rock music. Yeah, it sounded a little weird to me too. FI didn't know anything so he went in to the show with no expectations.

And you know what? Old German play and rock songs? Actually worked together really well. The storyline of the play wasn't changed, but they updated some of the dialogue. The songs were right in rock ballad/tempo/mood. The music was definitely a fantasy/internal monologue tool as all of the lyrics were in more modern language and had a lot of curse words.

The songs were really great to listen to and I could even feel FI's feet tapping away as we bobbed along to the music. The actors all had great voices. You can tell they were trained vocalists versus actors who were trying their hands at singing. Their singing just sounds so effortless and they're not gasping for air or trying to hold onto a note.

FI and I both highly recommend the musical! It's not for the conventional Broadway audience, but it was a really cool show.

My first wedding show

2008-10-20T09:29:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer, I went to my first wedding show. It was at Kate's Paperie and was called "Unveiling the Best". Kate's sponsored the event with Martha Stewart Weddings and Darcy Miller, who's the editor of Martha Stewart Weddings, was there as well.

Since I'm looking to be a DIY bride (well, as much as I can be with time constraints and general procrastination), I was mostly at this event to get ideas and see what details were popular at weddings.

They had some cool appetizers including some yummy corn salsa and these amazing deep-fried shrimp cocktails. Totally cool, but probably totally expensive. Not only were they giant shrimp but each were individually set in its own cocktail glass. Which means 1) time-intensive and 2) not eco-friendly (since they would have to clean each of them and use up a lot of water).

The caterer had some gorgeous dessert platters as well. Here are a bunch of truffle lollipops on display. These must have taken forever to make and set up.

Here are close-ups of the truffle lollipops and pastries. I took some samples home for FI. I wrapped them carefully in a bunch of napkins and stuck them in the top of my purse (very carefully).

A beautiful wedding cake! The flowers are super delicate and gorgeous. However the cake samples were okay, not great. They were too dense and a little dry.

Some pretty stationery sets.

A gorgeous purple and green themed table setting. I really liked this since our colors are lavender and yellow.

It was a fun way to spend an evening. I got to try some yummy food and dessert samples, got some free stationery and see some beautiful wedding set-ups.

My birthday dinner...

2008-10-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

Another retro restaurant blog post...

To celebrate my birthday earlier this summer, FI took me to Sandro's for dinner. I wanted to have some good Italian food and Sandro's is known for their homemade pasta.

We wanted to have the signature appetizer - fried crispy artichokes with white wine - but they were out, so we went with the calamari and artichoke appetizer instead. The artichokes and calamari were a good combination.

FI had the fettuccine with bolognese sauce. The fettuccine was so, so good. Fresh homemade pasta just has such a great consistency and it was just the right amount of chewiness.

I had the spaghettini with lemon cream sauce. It may sound kind of gross since lemon cream is a dessert, but since there was no sugar in the sauce, it wasn't sweet or desserty at all. The sauce wasn't too lemony either. And again the noodles were fabulous. There's something really yummy about the combination of acidy lemon and rich cream as a sauce.

Per usual, FI and I each ate some of our own dish and then switched so we could try the other person's dish (which is why we always order different entrees). And here was some left of each entree, so I got to have lunch the next day too!

Just desserts...

2008-10-18T11:41:00.000-04:00

Another retro restaurant post...

Last spring, FI and I spent the evening in Stamford, CT. Since it was late already, we decided to go out for some tea and desserts. We ended up at Market Restaurant in the main square in Stamford.

We first had ricotta doughnuts covered with cinnamon sugar with a lemon curd dipping sauce. The sourness of the lemon and sweetness of the cinnamon played off of each other nicely and gave the doughnut balance. It prevented the dessert from being too overwhelming and heavy.

Then we had a cutesy set-up of gelato tastings in little minature cones with different toppings. I think the flavors were vanilla, coffee, chocolate, amaretto, and lemon (I think). Then were all really yummy, as gelato always is, and FI and I tried to split the toppings (hazel nut, chopped walnuts, chocolate shavings, colored sprinkles) evenly between us.

Having tea with desserts always makes me feel less gluttonness. Like drinking tea during dim sum to counteract the greasy food, it helps cut on the heaviness of the sweets settling in my tummy.

Our Anniversary Dinner

2008-10-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

A blast from the past... for our 1st anniversary, FI took me to Perilla for dinner. He was excited because it had gotten good reviews and I was super excited (when we got there) because it is Harold Dieterle's restaurant. Harold was the Season 1 winner of Top Chef, one of the most awesomest shows ever.

We started out with Spicy Duck Meatballs. This was the dish that Harold made for the Battle of the All-Stars: Season 1 v. 2. His protein was duck and instead of doing a usual roast duck breast, he made meatballs. They were delicious, but I (being the giant TV geek that I am) was more excited that I was eating a dish that I had seen on Top Chef.

Then we split a salad. I don't remember the dressing or what else was in it, but it was yummy.

This was a yummy vension dish. It was gamey but not too much and really tender.

This is a lamb chop entree with greens and parmesan cheese (I think). It was great, but huge. I was able to take the rest home and have it for lunch the next day.

For dessert, we got doughnuts! They were smaller than the regular Dunkin' Donut or Krispy Kreme doughnut but larger than donut holes. They were nice and hot and came with 2 kinds of dipping sauce - lemon and chocolate.

It was a wonderful meal! Even though I was just as excited 'cause it was a Top Chef restaurant. I was disappointed though that Harold didn't make an appearance in the dining room. :)

Wheel...of...Shoe...!

2008-10-16T09:36:00.000-04:00

As part of our continued efforts to organize our apartment, I had to find some extra storage for the rest of my shoes. A few pairs were taken care of with our IKEA shoe rack, but I still had a lot of other shoes to store in a smaller closet.

I had seen the Shoe Wheel in a Daily Candy email and ordered it almost a year and a half ago but had never gotten around to assembling it since I didn't really need the shoe storage. But now I did...

Here's the box before unpacking...

I unpacked and organized all of the pieces according to the instructions. All of the little screws and bolts on the cardboard in the lower left.

First I had to attach the metal frames to the plastic axle center.

Then I attached the rolly wheels to the bottom of the metal frame so the Shoe Wheel can be mobile. Notice the little wheel locks so I could keep it in place too.

Then I screwed in one wheel side to the center axle.

Then (this was the 1st hard part) I had to attach the center elastic sections to the axle. Each section consisted of 2 clear plastic sheets that would separate the pairs of shoes and columns of elastic rope to keep the shoes from falling out. I did this incorrectly the first time and ended up elastics stretched on the wrong side of the wheel. I didn't realize it until I had attached the other wheel and was trying to stretch the plastic sections out. So I had to take everything off and reposition the center sections. This was my 2nd attempt.

Then I attached the other wheel side.

The wheel standing up!

I then looped these plastic strips around the axle so they would prevent friction between the wheels and axle.

Now was the 2nd difficult part, I had to pull each plastic rod over the outside of the wheels and click the rod onto the wheel sides. This got more difficult with each plastic rod because it got tighter and tighter (as the rods fit onto the wheels) and I had to pull harder and harder to secure them to the outside of the wheels.

It looks like I'm only doing it with one hand but that was because I had to use the other to take the picture.

Whew! I got them all on!

Final step... I screwed on the covers on the axle on both sides.

Now to start putting in shoes! I started with my sneaker collection...

Then I moved onto my sandals and dress shoes. Notice the many colors of sneakers - blue, gray, red, neon yellow-green, pink, brown, olive green, purple, orange, black... I love sneakers! Having different colored pairs to wear make me happy and brighten up my outfits.

The Shoe Wheel neatly stored in my closet. I managed to get 17 pairs of shoes in it! There are some limitations to the Shoe Wheel, namely boots. But I just stored mine (snow, rain, hiking) on the right side of the closet.
How awesome is this thing? Everytime we have guests over now I have to show it off and spin the wheel of shoes for them.

Finally made it to Spotted Pig

2008-10-15T10:07:00.001-04:00

We finally made it out to Spotted Pig for dinner. FI and I met right after work so we'd beat the crowds. When I got to Spotted Pig, it was already really crowded but they could seat us right away. So when FI arrived from parking the car, we rushed right in and were able to be seated.

We ended up getting 2 plates (appetizers) and 2 entrees and passed on a veggie side.

I started out with Prosciutto fritters made with cheese and spinach with a ginger and tomato sauce. They were really tasty and the saltiness of the fritters were a great contrast to the sourness of the sauce. I ate my 3.5 fritters and switched with FI's plate...

The other plate were these crispy sweetbreads with red peppers that were super tender and crispy. The sweetbreads weren't too soft so they were squishy but weren't so tough that they were chewy.

For one entree, we had quail with figs and onions. FI and I each had a half o f a quail, but I ate the whole fig. The sweetness and squishiness of the fig worked really well with the crispy saltiness of the quail.

The other entree was grilled beef tongue with sour cream (the white), golden fingerling potatos (the yellow, with duck fat), thin slivered beets (dark red dots), and dill pickles (green oblongs). There were a lot of flavors and textures. I would try to eat each bite with a little bit of each ingredient. The beef tongue was pretty tender, even though it was hard to cut. Although I think that was mostly cause I kept cutting against the muscles not with them.

For dessert we had a flourless dark chocolate and orange cake. It was very sweet and dense. We would take each bite of cake with some cinnamon whipping cream (that's the white blob on the left of the cake). FI was like "We've made this before!" referring to the cream. Which we did in a dessert class we took together last year.

It's nice to cross off a NYC must-eat restaurant off the list. Now off to all of the other ones!

The adult version of an Easy-Bake Oven

2008-10-13T11:45:00.001-04:00

Since the completion of our kitchen, FI and I have gotten back into the habit of cooking our own dinners. This weekend, we ended up using only the oven to create our meal.

For our vegetables, we tossed asparagus with olive oil and salt and pepper and baked them for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees.
For our carbs, FI cut up little red potatoes and covered them in olive oil and seasoned them with salt and pepper. We baked these for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees. They turned out fairly soft with crispy bottoms. You can see the bottoms in this picture as they're a dark copper color. The bottoms would pull away from the rest of the potato piece and was kind of like a flat french fry.

For our entree, we did a homemade version of Shake and Bake chicken. FI cut up some chicken breast and thighs and covered them with olive oil. Then we poured bread crumbs (garlic and herb flavored) into a freezer bag and dropped each piece of chicken in and shook it around until it was all covered. Then we baked them at 375 degrees for 25 minutes.

Our plated meal! The chicken was sssssoooo good! The bread crumbs made it super tasty and we hit the mark with the baking, as the chicken was really moist and tender and not dry at all!

This was a really easy meal to put together. We basically tossed everything in olive oil and then seasoned them with salt and pepper or the bread crumbs. Then we just stuck the food in the oven and waited until it was done. And we have plenty of leftovers. Yay for bringing lunches to work next week!

His favorite IKEA item...

2008-10-12T17:17:00.001-04:00

Out of all the furniture FI and I got at IKEA, his favorite would have to be Trones - shoe organizers. The Trones take up very little space and you can stack them on top of each other. They mount right into the wall and we even use the top Trone as a little hallway table, leaving keys, our phones, and mail on it.

There are no screws or nails that come with the Trones. Which is sort of unusual for an IKEA item, since they usually with exactly everything you'll need. The instructions tell you to get your own wall mountings, since each type of wall is different and would use different types of screws. FI luckily had some screws left over from some other home improvement projects so he was able to install the Trones.

Check out how it doesn't crowd the hallway and we can use the top as a table.

The IKEA website says it can hold up to 6 pairs of shoes, but if you lay the shoes with the soles against each other, you can hold a few more. Also, flip-flops are thinner so we were able to put in a couple more pairs.

We each get one drawer and our sneakers are in the 3rd one.

Dinner at Fatty Crab

2008-10-11T20:28:00.005-04:00

On Friday night FI and I went out to dinner at Fatty Crab. We had originally planned on going to Spotted Pig but there was a 2 hour wait at 10pm.

FI got a beer. I think he got it mostly for the name. :)

We got a prix fixe meal and a couple of other dishes. The 1st course of the prix fixe menu were lamb toast which was shredded lamb meat on cut slices of white bread. They were like little tea sandwiches but with savory and slightly spicy lamb meat and basil leaves in them.

Then we had the Fatty Duck, which was delicious. They steamed and fried the pieces of duck so the meat was super tender and the skin nice and crispy. The flavor combination of sweet and savory and a kick of pepper made it really fun to eat and enjoy. The fried rice under the duck was good too. It was good mixture of crunchy and soft (the parts that had been soaked by the duck sauce).

The 2nd course of the prix fixe meal were "pork bones". They were made of shredded pork and made into little square sticks and then breaded and fried. Kind of like mozzerella cheese sticks but with pork. We ate them with mustard.

This was a strange shot of something that we got from the kitchen. We're not sure what's in it, but it was super spicy. While I do enjoy some spiciness in my food, I'm not too fond of spiciness in my drinks. We didn't finish this.

We had a green mango salad that had green and yellow manago with little crunchy bits of something... , cilantro, limes, and red chilis. The dressing was chili flavored and super spicy and mouth numbing. We actually sent this one back and got one without the dressing. This one was much better.

The 3rd course of the prix fixe was a clam stew. They were little baby ones and very tasty. Accompanying the dish were little potato chips.

This was a tasty meal. Filling but not leaving us stuffed. They were out of their signature dish - the chili crab, so we'll have to try that next time.

Office Space Part II: Sittin' Pretty

2008-10-09T10:26:00.000-04:00

After FI and I put together our work station, I went to work putting together my office chair.

After scooting around the IKEA show floor in several different office chairs, I picked the Stefano - it wasn't too expensive, pretty comfortable, and adjustable, like a real work chair.

Here it is all in the flat packing box.

All of the pieces laid out before assembly.

A close-up of the wheels and adjustable legs.

I attach the wheels to the base and tighten the adjustable leg. I had a little trouble following IKEA's picture-only instructions and couldn't quite figure out how to put both pieces in so the height could adjust, but I figured it out finally.

I had to attach the seat back to the frame. Here it lays in FI's old computer table.

Then I put the seat on the table and attach the other end of the frame to the seat. You can see the back now hanging off the table.
Yay! It's complete. IKEA really does have renowned packaging skills. A chair, one of the most 3-D pieces of furniture, and a work chair (most complicated version of a chair) none the less, was all packed into a pretty flat squre box.

Now I just need to adjust it so it's the right height and angle for me.
Our completed workspace! We've got stuff on the bookshelf, filing cabinets underneath the table, and laptops up and running!

Office Space (not the movie) Part I: Long and Narrow

2008-10-08T08:59:00.001-04:00

To continue on our IKEA adventure...

FI and I decided the best way to maximize the space between the bookshelf and the tv stand was to create a work station for both of us. So we set out at IKEA to find a long table that we could both use as our computer table.

We decided on the Vika Amon table top and 5 Vika Curry table legs.

Here are the table legs all laid out.
The table top on its top. Those are FI's feet.

We first screwed in the leg tops to the table. This was easy but repetitive (5 legs with 5 screws each).

FI and I had a little assembly line going. He would first use the electric drill to mostly tighten the screws. Then I'd come around and hand-tighten them completely. This way, if we ever need to remove the screws using only a regular screwdriver, we'd be able to.

Then we screwed in each leg and added the rubber stop bottom to each.

Then with some teamwork, we managed to flip the long table (6.5 feet!) over and position it against the window. Here's the start of our workstation. Plants, printer, our laptops, and a lot of cords.
Yay, a place to blog!

Things we don't want at our wedding...

2008-10-07T09:23:00.000-04:00

Since we've gotten engaged, I've added a whole new category of RSS feeds to my Google Reader - Weddings. I'm included wedding site blogs, invitation blogs, design blogs, wedding planner blogs, cake blogs, and photographer blogs.

I read them everyday for inspiration, how-tos, ideas, commiseration, do-it-yourself projects. They're great fun to look at. While most of them are all great about wedding planning and ideas, there are a few snarky ones out there that are a great laugh.

One of the ones that I enjoy reading just for the snarky commentary is Stupid Wedding Crap. This woman is planning her wedding and kept finding really weird and unnecessary wedding stuff. So she decided to write about it. The stuff she finds mainly falls into 2 categories - 1) nice things that end up not being used because they are personalized with wedding decorations and the couple's names and 2) weird stuff that no one wants to take home with them (like a bale of hay or a champagne bottle egg timer).

Favors are a big discussion point. We're trying to figure out what to do for ours. We've been going back and forth between doing donations, doing a treat (mints, cookies, chocolates), or doing something practical. We still have time to decide, and once we do, we'll have to figure out how to personalize them, DIY of course!

Too beautiful to eat...

2008-10-06T10:37:00.000-04:00

FI's mom's cousin's friend (was that complicated enough?) makes cookies for FI's mom's cousin's open houses (she's a realtor). She made some beautiful wedding cookie samples for FI and I.

Here's a double-hearted one with the couple's names on them. It's super-cute with the 2 background colors and the edge decorations.

This is the same double-heart shape but with a tux and wedding dress design. This is so intricate! You can't really see it clearly, but there are extra black piping on the tux for the lapels. The dress even has piping that looks like lace and a string of pearls.

Here's a wedding dress cookie. The piping on the skirt gives it a nice ballgowny feel.

This wedding cake has a cute heart caketopper. I love the piping work that makes it look like fondant stripes or icing designs.
The cookies were suprisingly soft and chewy, even though it was a few days before we ate them. They were really tasty!

My attempt at being crafty....

2008-10-05T09:22:00.000-04:00

When we got engaged, I started perusing wedding blogs for ideas and one of the coolest DIY things I discovered was Gocco! Gocco is a self-printing press that was invented in Japan. It's small and self-contained so it's good for small spaces (like our apartment). What's cool about it is that you can create your own designs and then make multiple prints by putting ink on the design and pressing it onto the paper.

Here are some pretty examples...
(Image courtesy of Lizzy Stewart)

(Image courtesy of kelicatalano)

There are some great FAQs and How-tos online. I read about how to make invitations, thank you cards, and even customized napkins!

I decided to splurge and buy a Gocco. This came all the way from Japan!

The seller did a great job packaging everything up.

Here's the box of supplies (Surprise!) all opened up. See the tubes and pots of ink. Those are screens on top.

Here's everything laid out. The yellow boxes on the side contain the lightbulbs that you need to flash your image onto the printing screens.

Thank goodness there are instructions. And they come in English too!

I'm excited to use the Gocco for wedding stuff - like thank you cards, programs, place cards, and even maybe the invitations (if I feel especially ambitious).

Amateur Bartending...

2008-10-04T21:30:00.000-04:00

Last night, I volunteered at Plate by Plate, a food and wine tasting event put on by Project by Project.

PBP (as they call themselves) is a volunteer organization that does fundraising and outreach events for a different non-profit every year (hence the focus of "project by project"). Their main fundraising event is a giant tasting event where they have 30 restaurant chefs prepare tastings of signature dishes.

I volunteered to be on the marketing committee prior to the event. We helped with publicity and PR. We first updated the PBP contact list of food and Asian-American publications and general NYC event websites. Then we were each assigned a list of publications to reach out to and get our event submitted. I got the food publications and managed to get a few postings on blogs. I also used some stealthy email skills by trying to email different food journalists with different variations of their email addresses to see if I could reach them (e.g. FirstInitialLastName@newspaper, com, FirstNameLastName@newspaper.com, etc.).

For the day of, I was a volunteer and we were assigned to first man the VIP section and then I was assigned to "Zone 3", where there were a few chef tables and the drink tables.

Prior to the start of the event, I wandered around and took some photos.

Here are the chefs setting up. The space is Skylight in Tribeca, which is a nice airy open warehouse.
In the aisles between the chef tables, there were tall club tables that were decorated with dark blue tableclothes. The centerpieces were clear vases filled with little paper fans that were taped together so they looked like silver flowers and little blue tealights.

More shots of chefs setting up...

This the back table of Morimoto's station. The dish they presented was a foie gras custard, which was super yummy and decadent (I got to taste some during my break later). They had laid out all of the custards, little garnishes, and little dabs of wasabi all ready to assemble.

There was a VIP area where I had my first shift. A snack company called Lesser Evil donated snacks and Obama/McCain posters as centerpieces for the VIP area.

During the VIP reception, we were in charge of pouring champagne and serving drinks to everyone.

During the regular event, I was stationed in Zone 3, helping clean up used plates and utensils and also covering the drink volunteers when they needed to take a break. I also was moving crates of clean glasses out and dirty glasses back in.

I got pretty good at mixing little vodka shots with juice. We had little teeny plastic clear cups that I'd fill with a couple of ice cubes and put in a third of vodka and fill the rest with juice. People loved the vodka and would come back to get shots for all of their friends.

We were right around the corner from Cake Man Raven, who made the most delicious red velvet cupcakes.

Here we are enjoying the cupcakes!
All in all, a fun and delicious evening, even though it was super tiring being a volunteer. Next year I may come as a paying guest instead. :P

My head is much lighter now!

2008-10-03T08:36:00.000-04:00

Last week I went and got about 6 inches of hair chopped off. I got lots of layers and short chunky pieces all around my face.It's barely past my shoulders now. And see how it's chunky in the back? There was a lot of layering going on. I have really thick hair so the hairdresser had to layer my hair 3 times - once while cutting it wet, 2nd after it had been blown dry and 3rd after the flatiron had straightened my hair.

He also shortened the pieces in front so they frame my face. See the difference in length?

My hair is really light now. When I washed it for the first time after the cut, it almost felt like no hair at all. It's also really easy to wear down and doesn't get in my eyes.

The best part is that FI really likes it and thinks it's cute!

This will probably be my last haircut before the wedding. I'll have to grow my hair out and all to the same length to be able to put it all in an updo.

Giant fortune cookies!

2008-10-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of August, FI and I traveled to NoVA to attend the wedding of Sean and Lai-fan. They held their ceremony and reception at The Tower Club which is at the top of what we NoVAns affectionally call "The Shopping Bag" building. It's also the building that Stephen works in, so we just let him lead us all upstairs.

The ceremony was in the late afternoon and the sunlight made the whole space look so beautiful.
Caroline and Fleix brought Cady along. She was super well-behaved throughout the whole ceremony. And during the rest of the reception as well, as EVERYONE (like everyone, not just the girls, but all the guys too) wanted to hold her.

What a cute couple!

Here is the wedding cake. I think Lai-Fan's colors were red and orange. The bridesmaids wore muted orange dresses and flowers were red and orange. The cake had the red roses.

The centerpieces were thin branches arranged in a glass vase and they hung all these cute little red lanterns. The vase was on a mirrored plate and they had scattered Chinese candies all around the tables. The candies were a big hit as those were the first things everyone grabbed for as we sat down.

Our favors were giant homemade fortune cookies that the wedding party (and a few friends) made the last few nights.
For the table names, they used Chinese characters with good meanings - prosperity (fu), love (ai), family (jia), etc.

It was a really great party. Even though it was small, about 100 people, we kept it going pretty late. We danced until the DJs packed up and then we didn't leave even as the clubhouse people started setting up the original furniture.

Resourcefulness

2008-10-01T09:21:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at work, FI and I were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. We finally decided on a fried rice with all of the leftovers in our fridge.

The fried rice dish consisted of:
- leftover brown rice from a dinner last week
- zucchini from our Saturday night dinner
- scrambled eggs
- the raw veggies (from the veggie platter from our Monday Night TV Party)
- 4 mini crab cakes (the only meat that was left from our Monday Night Costco binge-out)
- soy sauce (to taste)
- oyster sauce (a dash)

FI cooked everything. He scrambled the eggs and removed them from the wok. Then he threw in all of the raw vegetables and then the zucchini. Then he added mini crab cakes and mushed them up a bit so they separated into little crabby meat bits. Then he threw on the days-old brown rice (old rice is always best for making fried rice - the rice is drier so it stir-fries better). Finally he added the eggs back in and added soy sauce and oyster sauce to taste.

Yummy! I love all of the colors in this dish! The greens, reds, and oranges of the veggies just pop with the yellow of the eggs. Simple, easy, not wasteful, and SUPER DELICIOUS!