One Day Like This

There's this song called One Day Like This by Elbow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hooPU2mdsH4) that I love. It's such a cute song and it describes our day yesterday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous in SF.

Erik & Summer took us to do what the locals do instead of the touristy stuff. Our first stop was dim sum at South Sea Seafood Village. Really good.

Our next stop was in Marin. We went for a downhill hike to the beach. Guess what? We had to walk back up! Ouch, yeah... I'm sore today from that, but it was nice to burn off breakfast.

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To ensure our blood sugar didn't dip too low, we went to a gelato shop called Marco Polo. I finally had an opportunity to eat durian in gelato form. UGH!!! Do not ever try it. Trust me, it's as disgusting as everyone hypes it up to me. I almost threw up. I settled on Mocha Chip gelato to settle my stomach after that.

We went to Haight St after gelato and walked up and down the street. Justyn & Erik were hungry for some pizza so we stopped by a New York pizza shop for a slice.

After that we walked to a sultry but divey kinda bar. A couple drinks later, we ended up at Trax. I had no idea it was a gay bar but it was awesome!

For dinner we went to Suppenkuche which I've heard a lot about. Delicious Deutsch fare. We had a great time people watching and having some really good beer and beverage!

Big thanks to Erik & Summer for taking us around. I definitely had an awesome time with you guys!! Hope the hangover doesn't hurt too much hehe. Mine's kicking in right about now.

Cooking: Greek Pastitsio

Around the same time last year I cooked Greek Pastitsio but I was unable to document it because my camera died. Justyn was craving this dish so I decided to make it. Not sure why he picked a warm weekend to crave it but anyway..

I started out by browning some ground chuck (80/20) and then added a diced onion, 4 cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, ground cinnamon, tomato sauce, and petite diced canned tomatoes. It simmered for 35 minutes.

While the meat mixture simmered, I cooked the pasta to barely al dente. About 12 minutes. I wanted the pasta to absorb the liquid in the meat mixture to add more flavor to it.

I combined the two in the pasta pot with some Romano cheese.

Then I preheat the oven to 350 and started on the bechamel sauce. The bechamel started with a roux. I slowly added milk to it to avoid clumps. When it thickened, I added cheese, eggs, salt & pepper and a little nutmeg.

I put the pasta and meat mixture in a greased baking dish and then poured the bechamel sauce over it.

It baked for about 40 minutes and here it is! I served it with some cucumber, roma tomato & red onion salad.

I don't recommend making this on a warm day. I was seriously sweating up a storm in the kitchen. Although if you don't mind the heat, you should make this. Srsly good stuff!

Richard Cheese

Last night, Ken, Justyn and I went to the Richard Cheese show at Bimbo's in SF. WHAT.. A.. SHOW!!! When the opening act came on stage, I thought I was going to be bored out of my pants. However when Richard Cheese came on stage he was hilarious, joking with the audience, drinking and sang some of my favorite covers. He even did a cover of the Three's Company intro and the Subway commerical haha! I was either smiling or laughing the entire time. It's too bad I didn't get a better picture of the action.

Waiting in line

Oh yeah... and before the show, we went to a place called Burgermeisters. Don't go there. The burgers are overpriced and lacked a wow factor. I had the Western burger with garlic fries. If you're going to charge $14 for that, it better be a damn good burger. Nope. The bacon tasted weird but I think it was the BBQ sauce that did it. Anyway, here are a couple pictures of my burger and Justyn's.

After the show, we went to a bar near Bimbo's and met some pretty interesting characters. For one, this guy was carrying around this white boombox which he later destroyed by accidentally kicking it.

Overall, I had an awesome time and I totally want to see one of his upcoming shows :D

Cooking: Blueberry Ricotto Pancakes

I couldn't sleep in yet again so I got up at 8:30 and went to the store. Justyn and I had watched Diners Drive-Ins & Dives on Food Network where Guy went to a restaurant called Amato's. This guy made his own ricotta cheese and put them in some blueberry pancakes. Justyn was drooling like crazy so I thought I'd be a good wife and get ingrediants to make some for him.

I don't normally make breakfast but I love the genius of Batter Blaster. It makes making pancakes easy with minimal mess. Plus there's nothing unnatural about the batter. It's all organic!

Justyn woke up while I was making these pancakes and helped me. The first 5 pancakes turned out either burned or collapsed. Eventually I got the tempurature right and they started turning out this luscious golden brown.

I didn't so much like the blueberries so I made a couple with only ricotta cheese. Those were OK.

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 56

This was kind of an eerie challenge. I swear, the day before the challenge came out, I made a card with almost the same exact colors. Unfortunately before I thought about taking a picture of it, I mailed it off. I thought about recreating it but when I was sketching for this challenge I came up with something entirely different. I was thinking about how my designs seem to have stitching in almost all of them and how I could incorporate that into this card.

So.. here's how it turned out.

Lots and lots of stitching. I had almost all the colors in my embroidery stash except for the celery & ballet blue. Not a big deal though.. embroidery floss is like $0.59 each? I am guilty of wasting 2 sheets of white cardstock on this challenge though. When I did my sketches for the first two attempts, they didn't turn out quite as well when I tried it out with the actual materials.

Anyway, I've babbled on enough hope you guys like it :)