Tonight’s Dinner

We had spinach salad, salmon fillet, cauliflower and rice.

Over the dinner,

John: There’s bone in the salmon.

Me: No, there’s not.

John: Yes… see … see (pulling out the teeny tiny bone and waving it in front of my face)

Me:  (pretending I didn’t see it and continue eating)

10 min later, I was done with my dinner and I see John still picking at his salmon.

Me: What are you doing? There’s no bone in the salmon.

John: Yes, there is. See… see… (trying to show me the other tiny bone he found)

Me: Come on… just eat your dinner already (shaking my head).

All these thoughts were running through my head while he carefully picked at his fish |Clearly, at this moment, I realized that my husband is not capable of eating fish with bones. It was a fillet for god sake. With little teeny tiny bones here and there. He seem to have hard time eating his dinner. What is he going to do when he is served with a whole steamed fish like this??

And then, I realized that I was trained since young to be able to put food in my mouth, chew, and pull bones out from my mouth. Ha ha (laughing in my head). I am darn proud of my talent. |

Then he said:

John: You know. You should have de boned it.

The nerve! >:|

 

 

 

 

steamed fish source: here

Cauliflower recipe here   Salmon recipe here

I love love love Ellen!

I just adore her… so so so much! I love her so much that I want to squeeze her… sick I know! I watch her show without fail everyday! When the show stops taping in the summer, I miss watching her. Miss her jokes, her laugh, her dance…etc. She is such an amazing woman. I seriously believe that the world is so much more beautiful because of her. I cannot imagine living in this world without her. Yes, I love her THAT much!

Today on her show, The Lady Antebellum wrote her the most amazing Birthday song. The song is so joyous and catchy. It is so Ellen! You can tell, Ellen truly enjoys it. She loves the song and I love it too!

Stuff that I have made…

I love trying out new recipes. I am not a good cook by any means, I just love preparing food when I feel like it. The feeling comes and goes. :) When I am in the chef mode (usually when I am craving for something), I google for new recipes to try. However, they always turn out just blah… by blah, I don’t mean that they don’t taste good. They just don’t turn out perfect. For some reason, there is always something wrong with it. Not sure why, something always turns out not so right. Thankfully I have a very loyal cheerleader. ;) This personal cheerleader always supports and cheers me on each time they don't turn out as good as I want. By support, I don’t mean just moral support. This wonderful cheerleader also helps in the kitchen a lot (often got dragged). =)

Here are some of the recipes that I have tried (these are the ones that I remembered):

1. Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake – This one didn’t turn out as “cheesecakey” as I would like it to be. Nonetheless, the personal cheerleader said it’s good. I would probably not try this recipe again since I don’t like the taste too much.
2. Red Velvet Cupcakes – I had 2 problems with this one. First, I didn’t have enough red food coloring. So cupcake turned out a brownish color. Secondly, the cupcake liners that I used were too thin. I used 2 kinds of liners. One I got from the regular grocery store, with foil liner (thicker), the other was from Michaels, colorful and pretty (paper thin). So the batch that I used the foil liner, turned out good. The other batch that I used the paperliners from Michaels got burned! I guess I need to double line the paperliner with foil in the future. Oooops…! I even made cream cheese frosting to go with these cupcakes.
3. Pumpkin Cheesecake – Pulled it out from the oven too soon. Probably need another 5-10 min in the oven. Cheesecake was too soft and creamy but edible. The hubs and I are still working on finishing it. :) We made the crust for the first time. I usually use store bought crust. The crust turned out pretty good. John did a good job pressing down the crumbs on the springfoam pan (under my close supervision).
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies -  Craving for some choc chip cookies. I burned 2 of the 6 batches I made. The unburned ones are very good. I love it! And of course, the something “wrong” with this one is the burned batches that I made.
5. Chocolate Chip Banana Bread- Left it in the oven a tad too long. The side was burned but the center was good. 
6. Lemon Yogurt Cupcakes – Poured too much lemon extract. I blamed it on the hubs. He over poured it. Cupcakes also tasted too sweet for my taste.
7. Teriyaki Chicken – No recipe. I cheated. Bought a store bought teriyaki sauce jar. Marinated chicken meat overnight. This was a easy peasy no fuss dinner. Came home from work, pop the marinated chicken in the oven. With hubs basting the chicken every 15 min or so… about 45 min later- voila! Dinner’s ready! This is a simple dinner menu if you are too tired to prepare dinner after a long and stressful day at work. Even John can do it!
8. Roast Chicken -  Roasted a whole chicken for the first time! Don’t know what I was thinking. John cleaned the chicken, pulling out chicken parts and rinsing it in and out because I was too “irked” to do it. Then John stuffed the chicken with celery leaves, onions and lemon because, again, I was too “irked” by it. We didn’t tie the chicken legs together because we did not have the twine. The chicken roasted for about 1 hour and 45 min. The chicken tasted very good. Very juicy and moist. However, I don’t think I (we) will try roasting a whole chicken again. First, I don’t like dealing with chicken cleaning part. Second, you can get a whole roasted chicken from Costco for $5 bucks. Not worth the work and wait.

As you can see, the bread is burned on the side. Poor bread.   too soft

 

Got the sauce from Trader Joes. The success behind these wonderful and easy preparation teriyaki chicken.

I don’t have all the pictures because sometimes I forgot to take pictures of them. Since these are the most recent that I have made, I managed to get pictures for my blog. Next time, I’ll be sure to remember to take pictures of them. It’s a shame I don’t have picture of the roast chicken. Because it did look very pretty. The skin was browned just perfect. Oh well… next time. Next time.

This weekend, I am going to attempt to make Pineapple Roll using Lily’s recipe. The only thing I’m worried about is rolling the dough since I have not rolled out dough before. John said he would help roll out the dough. How can I refuse such a generous offer right? I decided to give it a try. So we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and got ourselves a new rolling pin! We’ll see how this turns out!

New Year’s Eve at Tahoe

We spent our New Year’s this year at Lake Tahoe. After a long day of skiing/ snowboarding, the 6 of us hit the casinos for some fun and games. None of us are willing to give up drinking that night, so we called a cab to pick us up at our cabin. Since it was a New Year’s night, the cab service was receiving a high volume of calls. So after an hour of waiting, we decided to just walk there. None of us wanted to waste our night away by sitting at home waiting for the cab to arrive, for god knows how much longer. Everyone was up for the walk, and so we bundled up and hit the road. It was about a 45 min walk in the cold weather, which wasn’t a problem since we were all so excited and hadn’t start drinking yet. ;) So all is good for now.

The night started with some small gambling and heavy drinking. lol… it was a pretty crazy night. Never would have expected Lake Tahoe to be this crowded.

We stayed outside for the countdown with the crowd, all waiting anxiously. Everyone was still pretty sane here.

Coke with some added extra punch, WHISKY! Crazy dangerous.. haha

 

 

 

 

 

After a crazy countdown, and some boobies flashing show (no, not us! some drunk chick on the street, which was a great show by the way ;), we headed back inside for some warmth and more… what else? More drinking of course!

     

John and I cheated by getting away from the killer tequila shots, which was the culprit for the hangover the next day. We are glad we stuck to our redbull & vodka the entire night. Ours were minor compared to what they felt the next day. ^.^

The night went on with more dancing, drinking and drunk laughing.

The next day, no one felt like hitting the slope except for Anett and Daniel, who went on the second half of the day. After all, they had already bought the 3 day pass lift tickets. So no point wasting it. I on the other hand was so sore from learning snowboarding the day before,  I could barely move. So the rest of the day for me was just taking it slow… very slow. ;*)

It was all good times. We knew this could be our last new year celebration like this and had thoroughly enjoyed the fun and craziness of it. This will stop someday. It’s about time we act like a married couple of our age. :>

With that being said, we look forward to more mellow new year celebrations ahead. Like counting down sitting at home, which eventually will turn to sleeping through new years! Because you cannot stay up that late anymore. Ackkk!!!! Horror thoughts… look at what age can do to ya!!!

Can't Help Falling in Love

My heart melts every time I listen to his songs... this one in particular.

I absolutely adore him. This was also our First Dance song. :) I think of our special day when I listen to this song and how John and I had come such a long way to be together.



pictures credit Sir Harrison photography.
Posting pictures of our First Dance reminded me that I still haven’t finished my wedding re-cap. Oh well, that’s me. Never get anything finished. Maybe someday I will get to it. :P
John surprised me on Christmas with tickets to his concert in April. Tickets to his LA concert was all sold out, so John got his Phoenix, AZ tickets instead. Yes, so we will be taking a 6 hour road trip to see his performance, which I am sure is going to be so worth it!  I can’t wait!

A new beginning

I decided to give my blog a face lift for a fresh start of 2010. There may still be some minor adjustments as I spend more time playing with it. :D

Here’s to a great year ahead! (let’s just be optimistic a little, although we know the economy is not going to recover anytime soon)

Snowboarding at Heavenly, Lake Tahoe

I attempted snowboarding last week at Lake Tahoe. I knew I wanted to snowboard rather than ski, because I've had bad experiences skiing. So with a private instructor, and gear in tow, I braved the challenges and pain of snowboarding. I took a snowboarding lesson about 2 years ago, but never really snowboarded on a "real" run before. In fact, I've never even been on a ski lift before. I was much more brave this time because I had John with me and I was pretty determined to learn snowboarding.

Although I was in so much pain from all the falling and picking myself up, I have to admit that I was enjoying myself out there. I still suck at it, and it was a pretty fun experience. I am a left foot forward person, they call it regular because most people are left foot forward. John is a left foot forward boarder too. I can't switch myself back and forth (heel and toe), therefore I got exhausted very quick since I am only relying on one leg. And it's funny because I only know how to turn right. I kept moving towards the right and John had to pull me back to the far left so I can start moving towards the far right. Each time I felt myself going too fast, I slowed myself down by making myself fall on my knees. By the end of the day, my knees were so sore and swollen from all the falling. I wish I brought knee pads with me. It would have been a great help! Hopefully my next snowboarding trip, I will be able to distribute the weight evenly between my left and right leg.

I was so done with snowboarding after lunch. My legs gave up on me and I called it a day.

As I braved the challenges and pain of snowboarding, John braved my yelling and frustration ;) I must say, he is a very brave guy. amazing viewour very very expensive lunch at the lodge view cafePosing for the cameraJohn taking a break by enjoying the pleasure of watching his wife fell helplessly on the snow... and then some.John managed to get a picture of me actually snowboarding for a split secondand then the moment was gone. It went from that to this from then on...and then it was all this. tsk.... tsk....

My poor knees.... they were so red at the end of the day! I was starting to feel sore that night, and the next day, I could barely walk. I was not able to sit, get up, walk down hills, climb stairs, move my body.... etc. I was in so much pain. Every inch of my body, I mean EVERY inch, was in pain. That just shows how out of shape I am! :(

Till my next snowboarding trip....

I learned the best way to prepare lobster tail

Last week when lobster tails were on sale for $5.99/ ea, I went out and got ourselves 4 lobster tails. Last Sunday, after we just got back from our Lake Tahoe trip, I decided to cook ourselves a simple and delicious meal. In the past, we would usually boil the lobster, which is a quick and easy way to prepare the meal. This time, I wanted to try something different. I wasn’t sure whether to grill it or to steam it. I googled for recipes and decided to use this one. It seems simple and looks yummy. I mean, you can never really go wrong with lobster tails. :D

I found the recipe so John executed it. :) He ran a wooden skewer through the tail to avoid the lobster from curling up. We learned that from past experience. The lobsters came up perfect, better than last time. We served our lobster tails with melted butter and mashed potatoes. I do not have a picture of it unfortunately.

I love steamed lobster tails rather than boiled lobster tails.