Mom's Cooking: Joong

Yumm... this is hands down one of my favorite home cooked dishes. My mom brought some of these bad boys for me this morning. For the n00bs out there.. it's sticky rice, chinese sausage, fatty five spiced pork wrapped with some sort of leaf. Thanks mom!

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 53

Oh Em Gee... this challenge was really hard.. probably the hardest one to date. Who knew primary colors could be so difficult to work with? I even started out with one card and ditched it. Then when I started the second card, I hated it so I went back to the first one. I'm quite happy with how they both turned out but we'll let Kristina be the judge of that.

Note to Kristina: Clear doesn't count as a color does it? ;)

I think I lost a couple patches of hair because of them heh.

Cousin Get Together

Today my cousin and I planned a cousin get together to catch up with family which we hadn't seen in a while. It was a bit stressful only because we had a meeting locale at Lake Almaden but somehow ended up at Lake Cunningham (Raging Waters). I'm not going to say how that happened, but let's just say that it took some effort to relocate everyone. Argh, just talking about it stresses me out heh.

We set up anyway...

We started BBQing up everything. I made this marinated chicken which turned out really good. The sugar and garlic made it awesome. Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Unbelievable-Chicken/Detail.aspx. It honestly is a really good recipe. I let the chicken marinade overnight and more which made the chicken really tender from the acid in the marinade.

I also brought some burgers and some pasta salad which was meh. Althought I have to say I didn't quite follow the recipe. I won't post it out of respect for the person I got it from.

Justyn grilled up all the food and we just had a buncha fun. It was really cool connecting with some relatives that I didn't know I had and also ones I hadn't seen in a while. Good times!

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 52

I think it's funny how sometimes you make a card that turns out completely different than the sketch. I'm not going to bother showing the sketch because it's horrible but trust me, it's so different than how this card turned out. I had originally thought of making a masculine birthday card since I need one but by the time I was done with the card, it turned out to be a wedding anniversary card hah. My anniversary isn't until November! Weird huh?

Since I have the week off from work and because I needed supplies for this week's challenge, I went to Scrapbook Island to get the colors I needed. I spotted this really pretty lace ribbon in the color sand. Perfect! So I guess that's how my card ended up turning into something else. The lace wasn't very masculine at all hehe. I really love these colors for this week and I may even make another card. We'll see!

I actually decided to make one more card. You can't really make out the sand color but it's in the butterfly. Incidentally, one of the patterened papers from Making Memories Girl Friday collection has all the colors for this particular challenge. I wish I had discovered that before I started! Well.. I suppose I could actually do another card. Excuse the lighting.. I did this one at night.

Cooking: Faux Chicken Pesto Pasta

You heard right... faux chicken.. meaning, meatless. This week Justyn and I are going to try eating all vegetarian. It's going to be a huge challenge for me especially because I need meat in my meals. It just doesn't feel like a meal without meat ya know?

For dinner tonight, we had decided on pesto pasta but I was already feeling the gnawing need for some kind of meat. We got some faux chicken which is most likely soy based. You know what? It's actually not that bad. You definitely know that it's not chicken but it's a nice substitute.

I used Wandering Chopstick's pesto recipe and added some basil to make a blended pesto. Recipe: http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/09/pesto-with-arugula-and-walnuts.html

Justyn started out by making some cheesy bread with provolone, gorgonzola & parmesan.

I put some basil leaves, baby arugula, parmesan, garlic, toasted walnuts, salt & pepper into the food processor and blended it with olive oil until I was happy with the consistency.

Meanwhile some linguine pasta was boiling away.

I pan fried some of that faux chicken.

Look at the pretty pesto (I typed in presto there hah... it's such an easy recipe it is pretty much magic)

Then I mixed the pasta in with the pesto and chicken while Justyn's bread was broiling in the oven.

Here it is all together. Not bad for a vegetarian dinner and I'm definitely not missing the meat. However, this is probably not recommended for a low fat dinner heh.

Santa Cruz Wine Trip

Every year we try to go visit a bunch of wineries but this time we decided to go to Santa Cruz instead of Napa. It's a lot closer and I figure since we had never been to the Santa Cruz wineries, now would be a good time.

I arranged a guided tour with Santa Cruz Experience and I have to say that our driver was awesome. He went above and beyond paying for our wine tastings at all the wineries and making our experience relaxed and fun. I really appreciated what he did for us!

Our first stop was Soquel Vineyards. We were the first group in so we got the owner who walked us through the tastings himself. He then took us to the back area for a special barrel tasting.

One of our favorite stops was next which was Hunter Hill. It just had a nice homely feel to it and the wine taster guy was super friendly.

For lunch we met up with Timmys at Harbor Cafe. By the time we got there, it was super hot out which was kinda perfect because we all ate outside on picnic tables.

After lunch we went to Bonny Doon Vineyards and stayed there for the rest of the tour. Some of the group went across the parking lot to a brewery.

The tour ended there and we all made it back to the Continental Inn where we were staying for the night. No point in ending the debauchery at the wine tour. We went to dinner at Cypress Lounge and then made the walk to 99 Bottles for a night cap. I don't think I brought my camera so I don't have any pics.. but trust me.. it was a good time :) Thanks to all that came out! We'll definitely do this again next year.