Catching up

 I am on a roll or actually motivated to do my editing. Life events can be overwhelming but I am learning to try to go with it. I was focused on my health which was an added situation and like I said, I am learning to balance things more. This blog needs to be fun for me or something was more fun so I neglected It's The Cheese. Now you'll have more to read and catch up on.

This video was a series of photos and clips from my phone and compiled on the GoPro app. It's a simple and easy tool to do all the hard work. I like it gives me a little recap of that day. Tell me what you think. I have been using different apps/programs to see what I prefer. 

Three day weekend

Had a nice anniversay weekend considering we have been dealing with H's mother's health declining rapidly etc. H & I went to our favorite steak place Morton's to check it out since they were bought out by Landrys.

Overall, the steak & food was very good with some slight tweaks to their restaurant/menu that we noticed since we've been going their for over 10+years. I think we will try some other steak places next time to see how they compare but the reason why we loved Morton's is for their high quality/consistency. I don't even think we've been unhappy or dissatisfied with their food/service in our experiences.

I took the kids to see Wreck It Ralph and it was great! Great storyline for both kids and adults alike and definitely an instant classic. The kids loved spotting video/arcade game characters and references. I know several viewings will reveal more that we missed. Tyler and I got the Beard Papa reference which was kind of funny.

I also dove into the realm of baking cupcakes which I blame on my cousins when they shared this cupcake site. I really never got into the whole cupcake trend where I know I'm several years late but I know they're overpriced etc. I don't have a super sweet tooth but the concept of cupcakes is appealing. A small sized cake with some frosting and it works for me. It must have been the fantastic photos on the website along with 33 recipes for those speciality type cupcakes that are sold in bakeries. I can bake a dozen cupcakes, keep/try a few then give the rest away to moms/kids I know. :)

I baked the pumpkin and the apple cupcakes which were a big hit with everyone that tried them. Tyler especially liked the pumpkin ones while my friend Laura chose the apple as her fave. And the best part is that the recipes are quite simple and I have most of the ingredients already. :)

 

 

Sorry for the lousy iPhone pics but I didn't plan it too well. Hmm, I have some cupcakes in the fridge so maybe I can take some decent pics. :)

Better pic

Busyness

Keeping busy and like usual, getting pulled in every direction but I managed to complete some stuff.



Like some stencilling on Tshirts for the kids using freezer paper. It's so much fun!
Note: I got the Jake stencil from the Cartoon Network Facebook page. Just do a google search for it. Gunther's stencil I made myself. I found an image of Gunther and drew him out then when I went to make the stencil I didn't connect all the lines completely thus making a stencil. If people are really interested...I can try uploading the Gunther stencil if I get enough comments...





I also sewed my Fionna hat and backpack so I'm going to do a test run at a streetpass meetup/costume party on Saturday so hopefully I'll have more photos then.

Meanwhile,  I'm becoming more comfortable sewing and finished earlier than I thought. So I had time to bake some pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing. Oh wow, I like these a lot. The icing was a bit too thin so it doesn't really show up that well but they still taste mighty fine!! :)



The cookies taste pretty good without the icing too. Have a great weekend!!

Scientific Approach

The following is not a recipe for Chile Rojo. It is a scientific experiment in making the perfect chile rojo. I've been married for 15 years and during this time I've learned to make some awesome chile rojo. I've even gotten the approval of my husband's family which is high accolades.

Recently, my SIL Lupe and I were discussing chile verde and how she has found the right ratio of certain # of chilis to x # of tomatoes. With red chile it becomes harder since chiles come in all sizes and for the purpose of this experiment I used pujos (sp?) only and tomatillos.

Again this is not a recipe although it is very simple to make. Chiles, tomatillos, salt & garlic. That's it. You can use it for tacos, buritos whatever you want or my hubby's favorite with pork.

First, I roast the chiles...low to medium since I don't want to smoke myself out into a coughing fit with burning chiles/seeds. My Chinese nature comes out and I use chopsticks to turn the chiles over which comes in very handy.


After all the chiles are roasted, I break them in half and take out the seeds (as much as I can) since they cause the heat & I can't take that much. There. If you want to keep the heat, by all means grind them up with your chile.

For science, I weighed the chiles + paper plate after they are seeded on my digital scale. 23 grams (plate) +  72 grams chiles (de-stemmed/ seeded) = 95 grams total. For the intuituve part, I eyeballed it to a full plate of chiles.


Grind up the tomatillos...I use canned (28 oz)  because 1) it's easier and 2) consistent flavor. Throw the whole contents of the can in the blender. I start adding the red chiles into the blender. At first, I throw in 5 or so in the blender and keep adding thru the little hatch while it's still blending. Lots of blending...



You're aiming for the right color and consistency. Lupe had the right color but wrong consistency. You want the chile to stick to the spoon. It turns out that my eyeball guess was dead on. I added all those chiles to get this color and consistency. Now to add it to the fried pork with some water and let it simmer for 2 hours to get back to the almost the original consistency.

And that's it, I hope that takes the mystery of making the perfect chile a bit easier. I can't totally vouch for this scientifc method since this is the first time I tried it this way but I had a lot of fun adding in the scientific element to cooking. It'll be interesting to see what Hector will rate this later tonight. :)

Food Food Food

This Thanksgiving weekend was the time for cooking and eating. Lots of it. We spent Thanksgiving Day at my cousin's new home where we had a potluck. Nothing like turkey and Chinese food. The day after, I made our own turkey in the rotisserie which was awesome and I'm not lying either.

On Saturday, I made a rib roast...again awesome! Saturday night I used turkey leftovers to make a pot pie/shepherds pis of sorts. I used cornbread stuffing as the crust and filled it with turkey, gravy, peas, carrots, corn topped with cheesy mashed potatoes & french fried onions. Freakin awesome.

Sunday I didn't make anything but I went to brunch at Marie Callendars by LACMA with Kat and her family which was delicious. Oh my, every day was filled with great food and I still have leftovers.

And of course, I don't have pictures because I was eating...

Brief food break

We had a busy weekend so I'm behind on our Sierra adventure but I had to show something else that I've been up to. A while back, my one of Hector's coworkers gave some homemade kim-chi which was pretty awesome. Fast forward to present where I remembered the kim-chi and googled it. I found this kim chi recipe. Luckily we have a Korean market (good sized) that I found the right ingredients.

The recipe is not difficult and one Nappa cabbage (about 2 lbs) yielded about 3 good sized pasta sauce jars full. By Sunday, I was ready to taste my kim chi. We actually tried it ever since I made it the last 2 days but Hector was waiting for the right amount of sourness so I sent Hector off to buy some kalbi ribs to go with our kim chi and rice. Ahhh, it was delightful. :)

The kids love kalbi and rice and we adults thoroughly enjoyed my kim chi and cucumbers. Yum.
Now that I know how to make kim chi, I can impress my friend and family with my prowess. Ha!

Zucchini and Cream Puffs

As we are preparing for Tyler's birthday BBQ party on Saturday and our upcoming backyard renovation, I noticed a pair of massive zucchinis that have grown on our side of the fence from the neighbors yard. Hmmm. Yesterday I picked them and they really are quite large. Now, to figure out what to do with them...

Aaah,  Josh is holding a vegetable!

Also from our Saturdays outing to Marukai and finding Beard Papa's location we decided to actually get some after our Kiraku dinner. I picked up a couple of chocolate fondant cake which is like a chocolate lava cake at Mortons and a vanilla custard cream puff & chocolate eclair. Technically, it's not really a cream puff since no whipped cream is used. Instead, the puffs are injected with vanilla custard after you order and other flavor custards are available depending on the day.



I didn't take pictures of Kat's fondant but Josh still has his so maybe later today. I did take photos of my vanilla puff (I ate the eclair last night) that I ate for breakfast and drizzled some chocolate sauce on it. Kat declared the fondant yummy & I agree too. The eclair was good but the chocolate was thick and I didn't care for that. I really did like the plain puff with my own addition of chocolate. :)

yummy

Now for Tyler..

I can't neglect my oldest son so here is what he was into today.

Yes, posole. That yummy Mexican soup with hominy, pork with some lime, cabbage and tostadas. Yum.






I split the large portion with him but he probably could have eaten most of it by himself. He adds lime and cabbage and goes to town.



Here is my bowl...Joshua had a red tamale and he ate practically the whole thing so his eating spurt continues. My mom also brought some yogurt/fruit from Kings Hawaiian so Tyler and I enjoyed those.



There is one more left so it'll be a toss up to see who gets that. :)

Thanks to Hector for bringing the soup home last night. I know I said I would wait till tonight to eat it but Tyler wanted it for lunch and well, I was hungry. :)

Chocolate cake

My mom stopped by and dropped some goodies for the kids. By the time I got downstairs, Tyler already devoured his fruit tart and Josh was busy working on his chocolate dubash cake.

Massive bite.

Enjoying the frosting.

He had a great time eating it but it was a pretty big piece.

All for me! :)

He then graciously left me the rest but he ate about 2/3rds of it. I think he is going through a serious growth spurt. He asks for something every 1-2 hours so hopefully he will put a few pounds on his slender frame.

Labor Day weekend

What a nice long weekend!! We had a great time visiting with family and friends. Add some terrific food and Soak City to top it off.

We finally were able to make it to Morton's and spend our gift cards. The timing was perfect because Ken and Lupe joined us too. As usual, the food there totally rocks although I was pretty miffed at the discontinuation of their mac n cheese. Never fear, Hector found the recipe for me online so I will be attempting it one day soon.

I finished these Skew socks last week but didn't have a proper model so I was happy that Lupe filled that need for me. Even she had to work hard to get these socks on and I would give them to her but they're too long. As much as I hate to admit it, they will most likely head to the frog pond unless I find a person with some skinny, anorexic size 8 feet.

I'm sending them to my niece Summer so keep fingers crossed.

This weekend was filled with awesome food. For example, Hector made barbequed kalbi while I made the rice and broccoli last night . So good. Today I tried to make these little lasagna cupcakes. I got an A for effort although I ran out of my homemade tomato sauce which amkes it taste yummy. Mine didn't really remind me of lasagna since H and I don't like ricotta cheese too much but they were good. I just trying to get the proportions right so next time should have better results.

Bite sized (not really).

Here are what they looked like. I think the sauce is the key here to give enough moisture to the wonton skins and cook them properly. Then I can freeze and reheat when needed... yum.

Hope your weekend was great. The boys start school on Wednesday so back to the routine...:)

Food Fest

Kind of behind with some events like the Food Fest held in Long Beach on Saturday. A couple dozen specialized food trucks gathered in one spot to offer a plethora of choices.

The kids chose pizza, of course at the Slice truck.

Hector tried Peruvian/Japanese food at lomo arigato.

My poki roll and some cream cheese deep fried thing.

Can't remember the name of this truck where I got my rolls.

Beautiful setting at Rainbow Lagoon park.

Another food truck with its own eating area and the kids wanted to go on top.

Hector was trying to get Tyler to lift Josh up so we could get a photo and this man helped out.

So many trucks ...so little room in our tummies.

Tiny little truck which served tiny ice cream sandwiches. Okay but overpriced. I didn't have the nerve to try the butter/bacon ice cream.

Just frozen lemonade and slushies.

So that was our day at the food fest.

Now I can say I tried it... the grilled cheese truck was there too but the line was super crazy long. There must have been almost 75-100 people in line. I'm glad I tried it before.

Experiments

It's officially summer! The boys are very excited. Hector and I are in the midst of discussing plans; nothing set in stone yet.




Photos from last week. I was playing (experimenting) around with lights and filters. I don't have Photoshop on this computer yet so you will see how dirty my ring is if you click on the picture to enlarge. I am also claiming the excuse that diamonds are extremely difficult to photograph.

Here goes nothing:

My engagement ring. Reset in a Verragio setting on our 5th anniversary because my gold setting was bent and scratched from recklessness. Platinum is awesome but still gets scratched. Time for a cleaning and polishing.
Used manual settings, macro lens and crosshatch filter.

Next up is my 10 year anniversary band. Much better photos IMO and I really like the reflections. All were taken on the kitchen counter.

Some apple strudel muffins that Tyler and I love. It's a recipe Tyler gave me for Mother's day when he was in the 2nd grade.
The gift that keeps on giving.

Arigato, Mr. Roboto.

Swedish Pancakes and Legos

I had the last of the Swedish pancakes I bought from IKEA. So easy to make, just nuke and fill. Yum. Time to buy some more.

Here are some of the boys' Lego mini-figures. They come packaged individually and it's a mystery which figure is inside. We did very well; the ten I bought, we have 9 different mini-figures but we could use the extra robot.

Ugh, me caveman. See my big stick!

Mexican wrestler (I call him the Chupacabra), the Ninja and Robot.

Lego guys reflecting.

The Chupacabra.

The 3 amigos. Wouldn't this make a great action/buddy flick.

Robin Hood type, gunslinger and space adventurer.

I might have to make some short films with these guys.

These totally rock!