Cards Blog Challenge: Accordian Wreath

Today I made an accordian flower out of some Cosmo Cricket patterned paper. The accordian flower is pretty simple and I know some tutorials out there tell you to cut two strips of paper and then stick the two togethre to create a flower however if you shorten the width of the paper, you only need one strip. I needed a smaller accordian flower for this card so that's exactly what I did. All you need to do is score a 12" x 3/4 (up to an 1") strip of paper every 1/4". Then fold it along the score lines and adhere two ends together. When you press down into the circle you can manipulate how big the hole is in the middle. The first time I tried making the wreath, it didn't look right with a tiny hole so I stretched the circle out. I tied a tiny red bow on top so the recipient would know that it's supposed to be a wreath and not a flower. I used one of Kristina Werner's Finally Friday cards as a layout.

Justyn Cooking: Tomato Sauce from Scratch

Last night my mom gave us some tomatoes that she had so tonight Justyn made his delicious and simple tomato sauce from scratch. He had read an article in Bon Appetit magazine which featured this recipe.. if you even want to call it that. All you do is saute some diced onion and garlic in some olive oil then add halved cherry or Campari tomatoes and give them a good smash. Add some salt and pepper to taste and basil during the last minute of cooking and there you go.

He served it over some angel hair pasta (by request from me). This is seriously another favorite of mine that Justyn makes. Yummmm...

Izakaya Mai

For Justyn's mom's birthday we went to Izakaya Mai in San Mateo for dinner.

We started off with some Gomae-Ae which almost had a miso-y sweet flavor to it. Then we had some natto with maguro which was bland compared to when we make it at home. It lacked the saltiness from soy sauce & that slight bite from the mustard. Next we had Agedashi tofu which was lovely and silky. After that the tako yaki and okinomiyaki came out. The tako yaki was divine but the okinomiyaki turned out a little too soggy for my taste. We also got some fish cake which was grilled and topped with some spicy mayo. I really liked this dish despite its simplicity. The yakitori chicken came out next. With a squeeze of lemon juice, the green onions were a really nice combo with the chicken. Yaki onigiri came out next. I thought it was just going to be a rice ball but it had some fish roe in it which made it even better. We also had grilled eggplant topped with miso paste which was surprisingly nice. The skin on the outside was charred so it had a crispy texture to it. After that we had some grilled squid which was a nice change of pace. Of course I couldn't go without ordering the Hamachi Kama which is the collarbone of yellowtail.

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival & Jon's BBQ

I was originally going to do just one update for the weekend but I'm bored while Justyn's watching the 49er vs Seahawks game so I'll just do a rundown of what we did on Saturday.

We went to the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival to walk around and grab some bites to eat. It was such a beautiful day.. almost too hot and if I hadn't been wearing painful wedges, I would've enjoyed it a lot more. I was a little disappointed that it was more of an art festival than art AND wine. Not to mention the high prices for everything. We still had a good time and not to mention some pretty decent food too.

After the festival, we went to Jon & Vera's house for a BBQ.

NAC: Thank You Card + Video!

Cards Blog recently came out with a challenge to create a card making tutorial and since I hadn't broken out my Flip HD in a long time, I decided to participate.

I had actually made this card a while ago but didn't really like the way I stamped the sentiments so I redid it. In fact, I made this card twice last night so that the finished product would look a lot neater than how I was stamping in the video.

Hope you guys like it and vote for me! I'll post a link to Cards Blog once voting is available.

Wine Tasting @ Clos LaChance

Today Justyn and I went to Longhouse Restaurant for a late brunch followed by wine tasting at Clos LaChance. I posted about a lovely Merlot that we picked up at Trader Joe's a while back that my friend, Erica helped make. Unfortunately she wasn't working at the winery today but we went there anyway to taste some of their other wines and pick up a shipment.

We were originally wanted to go to OD's Kitchen in Downtown Gilroy but they were closed due to Labor Day so we went to Longhouse Restaurant instead. I ordered the Gilroy Garlic Omelette which had ground beef, mushrooms and of course garlic. It had SO much garlic and definitely lived up to its name. Justyn ordered the chicken fried steak which came out not quite the way we expected. Look at that gray piece of meat... yuck.

After that we went to Clos LaChance winery. These are the wines we picked up.

It was such a nice and lovely day out for a relaxing brunch and wines. :)

Beer Tasting @ Kris'

It seems like we've been on a beer tasting kick lately. First we hit up The Trappist, then yesterday we went to Beer Revolution and today we went to a beer tasting at Kris' house.

I looked up some good food pairings that would go with IPAs and the most common one happened to be pork so I decided to make some pulled pork pizza rolls. The recipe from foodwishes.blogspot.com came out so well last time I had to do it again. You start by liberally seasoning a pork butt with a dry rub, sticking that in an oven with two bowls filled with water and a splash of liquid smoke at 210 degrees for 12 hours. Since we happened to get home at 11:45pm last night, it worked out perfectly the day after.

The pork was so tender, I didn't even have to work to get the bone out. I shot a short video to show how tender and falling-off-the-bone goodness it was. I then gave it a rough chop and mixed it with some Sweet Baby Ray's Original BBQ sauce and a little salt and pepper to taste.

I put the mixture in the fridge to cool until we were ready to wrap them in pizza dough. Once they were wrapped, I topped them with sliced jalapeno and some shredded sharp cheese. I wanted them to be fresh out of the oven, so I ended up baking them at Kris' house.

There were so many beers that we tried but my absolute favorite was a stout called The Abyss. Kris brought out the #1 top rated beer in the world which I didn't catch the name of but it was gooood too. The food was awesome too :)