KWerner's Color Inspiration # 28

This is my second attempt at Kristina's Color Inspiration Challenge. This card was actually quite easy to put together. I learned a tip from another youtuber (jenntravis) to sketch out what you want to do before you do the real thing. It helps a lot because you waste less cardstock and the card has been thought out before execution. Anyway.. enjoy :)!

Cooking: Chicken a la King

I'm goin oldschool on this one. My mom recently made some chicken a la king that looked so comforting that I had to make some for myself. I also wanted to cook something for Justyn's lunch the next day since he was having a bad week. In fact, we've hardly seen each other this whole week due to him being in training from 8am-5pm with two hours of homework.

Earlier during the day I had forgotten to print out the recipe so I went grocery shopping pretty much blind. I prepped all the veggies (I added more to the recipe to make it more "healthy"), looked up the recipe and found out that I was missing eggs, dry sherry, parsley & flour. Ugh.. I had to stop what I was doing, go to the store and come back to finish cooking. I hate being interrupted but luckily that was the only disasterous part. I didn't have time to take pictures of each step but I'll post the recipe at the bottom of the page and let you know what I added.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/CHICKEN-A-LA-KING-233531

Ingrediants Added to Recipe:

Asparagus

Carrots

Celery

Substituted White Button Mushrooms with Baby Portabellos

Jar Inspired

I was so inspired by this KWerner card (http://kwernerdesign.com/blog/2008/07/macm-star-trio.html) that I decided to use it as my muse for a tip jar. Ken needs a tip jar for his garage bar, so I thought this would be good for that.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Here's another stew Justyn made with lamb necks.. super uncious.



And a few cards I made before Vegas.

Viva Las Vegas! Again..

Justyn and I went to Vegas over the weekend. We took Thursday to Tuesday off but were only in Vegas for Friday to today (Monday). We took a late morning flight there and didn't have any real time to catch breakfast so I had some potstickers at the same "Chinese" place in the airport as the one I went to last time.

We arrived late afternoon and the weather was perfect. A lovely mid 80 degrees all weekend!

Here are some pictures of our room at Caesar's Palace.

We were pretty hungry so we grabbed buffet for lunch. It was an absolute dissapointment regardless of how it looks. The stuff in the shot glasses are marinated mushrooms and goat cheese in olive oi. Blech. The best thing on the first plate is the little swirly puff which is basically baked mashed potatoes. The sushi was dry and nasty. I took one bite and left it on the plate. On the second plate the best thing was the bread and fish stick. The turkey was dry, ribs were overly sweet. For the price it was far from worth it. The only dessert that I enjoyed was the raisin bread.

Afterwards, we were going to go to Cigar Lounge but we didn't have the address so we drove down East Sahara Ave (?) and found Pheasant Cigars. Justyn met a couple guys there that are from clubstogie.com. It's a small world.

This is just a picture of fail. Uhm... why would you put a no exit sign where exits are?

In the evening we shopped and walked around. Eventually we decided on Social House for dinner. I'm a total retard for ordering sliders at a Japanese restaurant but I really didn't feel like anything else and didn't want to be disappointed. Justyn had a salmon hand roll, saba and tamago which were decent. My kobe beef sliders were also decent. Nothing to write home about though.. Sorry the pictures didn't come out well... you'll see a lot of my pictures weren't good because of the lighting in the restaurants.

The next day I got up late and met Justyn at Casa Fuente (another cigar shop). One noteable thing is that they have the BEST mojitos I've ever had. That's saying a lot since I recently had really good ones at Coconuts and La Bodeguita Del Medio in Palo Alto. We shopped and walked around a lot but nothing really picture worthy.

For lunch we shared a light lunch of pizza and salad. Jeez, the hotel really rapes you with food and drinks. The salad itself costed us almost $8!

For dinner on Saturday, we went to Mario Batali's B&B restaurant. Unfortunately the restaurant was dark so I didn't get any good pictures of it. Instead, let me tell you what we had to eat.

Complimentary Chick Pea Bruschetta - I liked it. It had a lemony background and deep olive oil flavor going on. Justyn wasn't impressed with it though.

Aglianico Wine - Yum. I took a picture of it (the only decent one) to remember the name so I get it in the future.

Grilled Octopus - Waay too salty but perfectly cooked. It wasn't chewy at all.

Warm Lamb's Tongue - Mmmm.. Justyn and I were supposed to split our antipastis but I didn't want to let this one go.

Beef Cheek Ravioli - This was me being a total n00b. Justyn ordered this dish but we thought it was the actual cheek of a cow inside raviolis. Instead, it tasted very livery and gamey. Not good at all.

Gnocchi - Another hit. The oxtail was expertly seasoned and tender. The gnocchi itself were fluffly pillows of goodness.

Rabbit - Justyn said it was too salty and the bite I had was OK. Eh...

Fennel Dusted Sweetbreads - This was my first time having sweetbreads and I would've enjoyed it more was it not for the over powering sweet and sour sauce. It only needed a drizzle but it tasted like someone poured a bunch of it on the sweetbreads.

The next morning we went to The Pinball Museum. It was totally not what I expected just because I thought we would be walking through an actual museum. It's quite the opposite of that. It's like walking into a pinball arcade. All the pinball machines are playable. My favorite one was called Orbital 1. I had the most fun playing the Pong game. I couldn't stop laughing each time I missed the ball.

After that we walked through the Wynn because I was curious how extravagent it was compared to other casinos we had been to. It wasn't anything special as you can see by the look on my face. Actually, this picture was taken right when someone asked if we wanted a picture taken.

For dinner we went to The Steakhouse in Circus Circus which was recommended by one of Justyn's friends. I don't know what happened to Circus Circus but it has become a hot spot for ghetto. Even The Steakhouse was a little run down. However, you don't go to restaurants for ambience. You go there for the food right? Well, I have to say that they do know how to grill meat. Everything else was just blah. My petite filet mignon was juicy and almost melt in my mouth good. Justyn had the prime rib which was matched with a horseradish cream sauce. That was also well done, a perfect medium rare.

Let's play find the balls.

I took a few more pictures on the way from dinner. The unfortunate thing about Sunday night was that we had to stay up until 3am to catch our flight back home. I ended up playing blackjack at O'Shea's and met a bunch of cool people. I had a total blast hanging out and gambling. Justyn ended up taking a nap back at the hotel while I played. He came and got me when it was time to go and we were on our way home. The flights were miserable but we finally made it back. It feels good to come home to a clean place and my own bed! The only crappy part is the hiccups that seem to have followed me from the flight home until now! Ughhh...