Don't Panic!

I just finished assembling these letters onto Justyn's netbook. Points if you get the reference :)

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 51

I didn't have any rose or mustard colored cardstock so this made things a little difficult. However, I started looking at all the supplies that I had accumulated over time and discovered I had some mustard ribbon from Papertrey Ink & there was a similar rose color in one of my Colorbox chalk ink queues. I looked at my supplies trying to come up with some kind of idea of what I wanted to do. While testing the colors in the Colorbox queue I found that the shape looked like a flower petal. Neat! Now I just had to incorporate some kind of mustard color into the flowers. I tried dabbing the mustard ink straight from the "cats eye" but that didn't work. I didn't have any sponge daubers either so I had to get creative again. I ended up using a q-tip which worked perfect. I also used my new Heidi Swapp alphabet stamp set to make the Happy Birthday part. I kinda don't like how the bottom of the card turned out but whatever..

Cooking: Spicy Peanut Chicken Noodles

About a week ago I came across this lovely recipe from The Noshery (Recipe: http://thenoshery.com/2009/04/27/spicy-peanut-chicken-noodles/) on tastespotting.com. It looked so refreshing and perfect for a warm day.

I haven't had time until today to cook anything that required a little more effort than normal. This seemed like the perfect recipe due to the muggy weather we were having. It was cloudy but warm.

I did alter the recipe to include red bell pepper instead of carrot and I grabbed a cucumber. You'll see what I did with that later.

When I got home from the store I immediately washed and prepped my veggies first. I'm starting to get into a rhythm where I prep my veggies first and then deal with the protein. That way you only have to wash the cutting board and knife once. That may seem like common sense but I didn't think about it until I started cooking a lot.

The cucumber threw me for a loop. I didn't want to throw it in with the rest of the veggies because they'd get soggy. So instead, I made a quick marinated cucumber relish. It has a little rice wine vinegar, garlic chili sauce, salt and some water. Just julienne the cucumber, add your "pickling mixture" and throw it in the fridge until you're to serve. Very refreshing and the acid in the relish cuts through the richness of the noodles.

I cut up my boneless skinless chicken thighs into strips.

And drained my bean noodles (I believe you would call these clear or silver noodles). Unfortunately, I couldn't find the rice noodles at the store so I substituted with these instead.

I took out some aggression by pounding the shit out of the peanuts and felt much better afterward.

And then... it happened. I was happily cooking away when I looked at the handle of my wooden spoon. WTF? Are the bell peppers staining the spoon somehow? Can't be... they don't bleed like that. Then I looked at my hands to see if I cut myself while processing everything. Nothing... then I found a small gash on my right thumb. Oh.. It's amazing I didn't feel anything because it was literally gushing blood everywhere. I got it on my camera, my spoons, the counter, the cutting board... yeah.. not pretty. Still hungry? Hehe..

Back to the dish. You start by sauteeing the chicken until almost cooked through. (I decided to do a quick soy sauce & rice wine marinade first). Then you add the garlic, chili sauce & ginger until fragrant. After that you add the rice wine vinegar, rice wine & peanut butter. Give that a stir until the peanut butter has incorporated into the sauce. Then add your veggies and saute for about 5 more minutes.

Throw it all together and give it a mix. I had some black sesame seeds in my freezer so I garnished with that, the peanuts & chopped green onion.

That's it, tada!

Super yummy and easy for a weeknight meal.

Cooking: Spaghetti Squid

or Spaghetti Octopus or (whatever you wanna call it)

I found this article on seriouseats.com and Justyn saw it somewhere else. I guess you could call it a mini internet mimi. Justyn said he wanted to try it and so we finally did tonight.

This is a really good Merlot BTW. I'm mainly posting this for my future reference. It has a nice almost tangerine after taste to it.

My only gripe with it is that the pasta in the hotdog wasn't cooked enough. You either sacrifice soggy spaghetti "tentacles" or a little crunch from the pasta stuck in the hot dog. Taste wise... well I think you can kinda figure that out for yourself. It's nothin special but I think it's a fun dish for kids. I was not amused after all was said and done.

Cooking: Boredom Donut Muffins

Today was pretty uneventful and I was really bored. Justyn was sick of my whining so he told me to bake some no-knead bread. I looked on Chef John's blog for a recipe but found out that it would take 20 hours so the dough could rest. I was bored now! So, I started browsing tastespotting.com and found a really cute picture of these donut muffins. The recipe didn't look daunting at all so I decided to give it a try.

As the egg and the sugar were combining in my Kitchenaid mixer I discovered that I did not have any vanilla extract. Dammit, that means I had to go back to the store to get some.

For some reason my Kitchenaid was being stubborn. The dry ingrediants didn't mix well with the wet so I ended up having to mix it by hand. It was really lumpy but after some patience, the mixture smoothed out somewhat.

I ladeled the mixture into my muffin tin lined cupcake paper thingies and sent them off to the oven to bake.

I'm really happy with how they turned out. Light, fluffy and yumy :)

Recipe: http://ldylvbgr.blogspot.com/2009/04/sugar-doughnut-muffins.html

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 50

Happy 50th to Kristina & all those awesome card makers out there! I absolutely had to participate in this one since I skipped the last challenge. I couldn't figure out what to do with all those colors. For this challenge, Kristina is giving away some really awesome prizes so I had to try extra hard to come up with something pretty. I recently came across a tutorial that involves paper, stitching & messy crumbling on Life as Lou's blog (http://lifeaslou.blogsome.com/2009/03/24/together-we-a-layout-and-a-ruffle-tutorial/). I didn't have a sewing machine so I had to hand sew. Going through two layers of paper with a needle is a pain! I like the look of it though..

Let me tell you... I also struggled with the tag part too... I kept on punching the pointed part on the wrong side. I must've done this part at least 5-6 times before I finally got it right. Of course, I couldn't stray far from poking holes so I added them to the tag.

I didn't have any yellow buttons on hand so I made a faux button out of paper :)

Overall I like how it turned out, but I can't help but feel like there's something missing. I tried embossing something on the brown base but I hated it. So here we go!

PS - Do you like my ghetto set up? I basically took some turquoise paper and placed it over my laptop monitor. And yep, that's white cardstock on my keyboard hah! You can even see a tiny part of my laptop in the top right corner. :P

I added some real stitching to the bottom and right bottom corner :) I cannot leave this card alone! Thanks for all your comments ladies!!

Kate Spade Contents

A while back I posted about how Justyn bought me the purse that I've been dying to have by Kate Spade. I mean.. how could you not love it? It's just my kinda purse. So imagine my suprise when I see The Scoop (Orange Beautiful: http://www.orangebeautiful.com/blog/post.php?post_id=1029) posting the contents of her Kate Spade bag. Yay! I get to make another gratuitous post about mine now :) The innards of my purse aren't as pretty as hers but whatever.. I have a matching wallet heh..

Dammit.. what a crappy picture. Oh well, you get the point.






As an update, I really haven't been creating or cooking anything! Something about the weather just makes me wanna be totally lazy. Can you really blame me? This week we had a heatwave which was a nice change of pace from the cold. Anyway... I'm gonna continue being lazy until some kind of inspiration hits me. Actually... I might be making something pork related thanks to Eat Drink n Be Merry's blog (http://eatdrinknbmerry.blogspot.com/2009/04/porchestra-symphony-of-swine.html). Doesn't that look good?? I'm especially interested in the pork belly topped with a CUTE (yeah I said it EDBM :)) quail's egg.