Thanks!

Just another card on a lazy Sunday. I can't wait to see starofmay's new card tomorrow :D

Last Beach Bash for the Summer!

Today's Leslie's birthday so we decided to throw a beach bash for her yesterday. I combined her birthday with us wanting to go to the beach one last time before summer was over. I'll just walk you through pictures since I'm uber tired today.

Here's us just goofing around. Leslie, Janice and I were the first ones to arrive at the beach. Everything was soooo heavy. We had to make multiple trips back and forth just to get everything to the pit.

Finally Alex and his cousin arrived so I had them set up the fire so I could start cooking. I had marinated some chicken in lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, oregano and rosemary. I also made some pasta salad.

While the food was cooking we just talked and goofed around some more. The beach rangers came by and started looking through coolers to see if there was any glass. I didn't know you couldn't have glass so we ended up hiding Alex's Coke behind the pit hehe.

Here's the chicken and pasta salad.. it turned out really good. Apparently people went into a food coma..

I always make it a habit to build a sand castle whenever I go to the beach so Selena, Tori, Janice, Leslie, Dave and Austin helped build one. Selena and I discovered a jellyfish. Unfortunately it died so we made it part of our sand castle.

It started getting dark so everyone put on their sweaters to keep warm. The fog rolled in pretty heavy..

Smore time!

Selena and Hoho dragged my sister around and dumped her into the sand castle which was hilarious as hell. Then she passed out...

Eventually the beach patrol came back around to kick us out of the beach.

I ended up staying in Santa Cruz overnight with Dave, Austin, Janice and Leslie. The next morning we went to breffus at Cafe Pergolesi which was nice.

The worst part of this weekend was getting home and finding out that my sister's car got towed! So we dealt with that and I just relaxed the rest of today. Argh... it's already 7:34. Almost time to go to bed! :(

Anyway, here's a video update for my youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtRDsDaiW9M

Cooking: Steak w/ Sweet & Sour Onion and Tomato Sauce

Chef Jaded is back in the mfz house! Finally right? I think the combination of work, play, working out and other things kept me out of the kitchen long enough. I had a couple days to recover from strength training (I was sooo sore!) so I decided to get my ass back in the kitchen and do what I love doing the most. Cooking!

I perused my favorite foodie blogs, WanderChopsticks, FoodWishes, Tigerfish & SteamyKitchen and found a recipe that I had been wanting to try for a while. SteamyKitchen won Justyn and I over with her delectable recipe for Steak w/ Sweet & Sour Onion and Tomato Sauce.

I started by prepping my ingrediants as usual and I have to say that I was suprised by how rusty I was with the knife. It took me a while to get back into the groove of chopping like a pro (haha yah right). I cut the tomatoes in wedges, onions in slices, fine chopped the garlic. Justyn helped me grate the ginger since my weaksauce. Then I mixed the ketchup, soy sauce, water, sugar and vinegar in a ramekin. Oh by the way, I tried to substitute the water with beef broth but ewwwww... when I went to pour the broth from the fridge to my measuring cup.. some nasty ass brown goopy stuff came out instead! It was soooo nasty. I almost gagged! Anyways...

Justyn had made this AWESOME steak a couple weeks ago. I mean this stuff literally melted in my mouth and was super tender and juicy. I was amazed since it was his first time cooking something like this in a while. So, since he was the pro at making steak, I had him prep mine. I think the key is to not put any oil in the pan. Instead, he rubbed the steak with olive oil and put it in a very very hot and dry pan. Look at the smoke it produced!

After the steaks were seared, I wrapped them up in foil to rest while I made the sauce. I sauteed the onions until they browned a bit and then added the ginger and garlic. Tomatoes went in after everything was fragrant and then the sauce mixture. I swear... SteamyKitchen's recipes are on the money. She even gives tips on what and how much to add of something if it doesn't taste right. I only had to add a bit more soy sauce and sugar to balance the sauce out.

Oh boy... and here's the end result. Justyn giving the thumbs up as he took big bites of steak, rice and broccoli (oh did I forget to mention I made some broccoli... yeah I did). It's so pretty too, don't you think?