Going back to New Years Eve 2006 ... Welcoming in 2007!

* Per request, I have moved this post back so they would all flow chronologically. Be on the lookout for new posts to pop up in chron order.

My mom and sister came to visit after Christmas and before the New Year. They spent a couple of nights at our place. We took a second trip to Scharffen Berger and did the whole tour around the factory one more time. N wasn't feeling so great but we had a good time taking in some sights before heading back to our place for a homecooked meal. After talking about how I've been trying to cook, they came up to visit so I could actually make them something. J and I decided on making some smoked salmon (with the stovetop smoker), risotto and Caesar salad. My mom claims its the best meal she's had in a while. She also said a week later that she was still thinking about it and her mouth was watering. I think mom was happy and also relieved that her non-cooking daughter wouldn't be starving anytime soon.

After dinner, we sat back and relaxed by the TV watching the countdown. We got their sleeping space ready as they enjoy our sleeping on our couch and our Aerobed. Funny to know that night, KittyBee jumped on the couch with my sister and lay by her legs Aww. So after a good rest, J got our peach juice and Prosecco ready for BELLINIs!

As you can see, Mom was also enjoying the bellinis!

Christmas, Christmas -- 2006

There is so much for this particular holiday. We got our very first tree this year. It was a funny time checking out the tree yards for the perfect one. We finally settled on this one I called Snoopy a la Peanuts. I kept looking for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree but alas no dice. I did find a happy fluffy tree early on and that was who we took home. We packed it IN my backseat and drove him home. I have bazillion photos from that whole experience. It goes from taking it out of the car, picking it up all the stairs, Johnny slicing the bottom of the trunk, taking out lights, putting on ornaments and so forth. I should mention that while we brought in Snoopy, we weren't sure what Kitty would do. It turned out, she loved Snoopy and kept coming by to check him out.

The best part was that I wanted to make the tree topper. Yes, I was going to craft this thing, too. I made a Beepers/KittyBee out of felt and two toilet paper rolls. It was an interesting time with the glue gun, scissors, whiskers and whatever else I could find. It'll be our tree topper as long as it lasts. Of course, it's best seen from the front. :) I didn't quite make Beepers to be a 360-degree topper. I need a few more craft lessons before I do that.

So... the holidays... there were tons of things during those days. We had a pre-Christmas dinner and gifts for ourselves. We got Beepers a few things, too. Though we have since learned, she just doesn't get how to use a pet bed and is a bit too lazy for toys. We still get her things, because she has been a good girl. The trick is finding the best things for her. C'est la vie.

Anyhow our dinner... Johnny made the most fantastic smothered pork chops and herb-flavored potatoes. We immediately put one of Johnny's gifts to use -- decanter and red wines glasses. Dinner was SooOooOo fantastic. My mouth is watering now thinking about it. It had buttermilk, which was very helpful days later for buttermilk pancakes. Double yum. We had a nice, quiet evening opening up gifts after we finished stuffing our faces.

After a few changes of plans, we had the Ng family over again for the holidays. We hosted a casual get together of nibbly bits in the afternoon before any major meals that were already planned. One of our more popular nibbles for the kids were pigs in a blanket, who knew, sausages and kids. One thing I found in a recipe magazine I bought was mini Christmas tree rice crispie treats. It was pretty fun making the treat; I wasn't so sure about making the ornaments. I chopped down Mike and Ikes for a few trees before deciding, I'd have them go natural and be green. :) My niece Jessica loved them and took quite a few home with her to Davis.

Some pics:












Ok, I don't think I can get all caught up to the mushrooms. I'm skipping ahead and filling in the details about our adventures during New Years, at FOFAS/animal shelter cat office visit, and lastly, visiting Big Sur later. Oh, I recently took some video of a couple of cute kitties at FOFAS, got to link to those videos. So much stuff to blog about. Stay tuned!

Johnny's Birthday - 2006

So there's a tiny bit of back and forth, but I'm going through photos and posting as I go.

For Johnny's actual birthday, I cooked him dinner. I made curry puffs for an appetizer. The main entree was a nice steak with chimichurri sauce and some herb-flavored fries. Dessert was purchased by a local shop. I got a slice of red velvet cake and sweet potato pie.

Per my recipe, it told me to pair my steak with a Argentinian Malbec. Shopping for the Malbec was rather funny. While I arrived at BevMo with an idea of which bottle I wanted, I really didn't have a clue. I didn't recognize any of the labels and ended up selecting a bottle based on the label design -- Budini -- had a kitty on it.

Getting ready that evening was a rather chaotic whirlwind. While I knew what to make, had a sense of preparation times and knew the recipes weren't that difficult. Nothing ever works the way you plan. The sauce was a bit messier than I thought in the food processor. It was this green, fragrant parsley sauce that oozed everywhere. I got it under control in a nice bowl. Though if I recall correctly, the recipe said something about basting or... see, this is the thing, it wasn't too clear how I was supposed to cook the steak with the chimichurri sauce. Stress level rising.

I'd say that despite my panic, the steak was quite a success.

Flash back to the panic, stressful prepping for dinner. The curry was relatively easy. It however wasn't thickening at a decent rate so I kept adding more curry cubes. And the decision between using all the ground beef or saving a handful of ended up being, oh what the heck. Then it became oh my, now that's what a whole pound of curry beef looks like when it's in a pot. :D Might I remind everyone that I used to think the stove was too hot, so I never really cooked until 20+. Much later did it occur to me that I didn't think up a pretty way to plate the curry puff, oh well. I had a good time with the puff pastry and that matters a lot to the process. I think up an idea and chopped up some carrot sticks for this funky plate design with the extra curry beef. See this puppy and ask yourself -- would you order it on the menu if you knew it looked like this? Sigh. Somehow I was inspired by deer, it makes no sense but that is something I thought about when I was plating. In the end, it never hurts Johnny loves curry, puff pastry and was starving!

Designing the table was probably the thing I had the easiest time with. I had picked up some baby roses for the table, made a quick table card, dressed up the plates, recycled our Thanksgiving leafy napkin rings, sprinkled rose petals from ages ago across the table, found some candles earlier that week at Michaels for the candelabra and even set up our laptop to do a slide show of all our photos. Whew. Really that so way easy compared to cooking. Oh my. :)

Kitty not one that would want to be left out. While she wasn't savvy in the kitchen, she did want to be part of the decoration. Too bad, she didn't realize it had to stay around her neck. This didn't last long, but she made her wishes known.
By the time dessert came around, we got out of "nice" dinner clothes and relaxed in our favorite t-shirts... Kaiser ones, of course. Johnny blew out his candles and finished off the evening. Ahh.

I forgot to mention the best part. As stress levels were up and down getting ready for dinner, I made sure to tell Johnny not to come into the house until exactly 5:30 p.m. I think that was the time. He couldn't come in early. He couldn't even come in late without an escort (needed to get Kitty's sign on). Dinner was a strict seating, which only added to my hectic dashing. I ended up being late and he had to wait in the garage. Once I finished all the elements of dinner, Kitty was the last hurdle. She refused to put on her sign. Grrr. I tested it on her earlier but somehow, she didn't really get she had to wear it. Silly girl. Once she got her sign on, I scooped her up and we both said Happy Birthday! While it was frenetic and stressful to make it all perfect, we were so stuffed. I never had so much fun getting things ready.

Seeing the Ng Kids - November 2006

These days, we don't see our nieces and nephews too frequently outside of the holidays or birthdays. Once in a while, we make it a fun gathering by inviting Johnny's dad and the kids over. It's especially a good time when my niece Michelle can make it, because she's got young kids -- Jon and Mikayla. It's not that we don't like teenagers or adults, but you've got to say it -- anyone under 5 is far cuter. Also, it's a good time for Johnny and I to try our hand at more recipes and entertaining.

Here are a few shots.
















And my favorite family photo these days is this one of Samantha...

San Francisco Shopping Center - Our First Visit

Once the SF Shopping Center expanded, I took a trip on my own to check out a few things. Oh wait. I got some odd invitation from Bloomingdale's about coming to their opening. The funny thing is that I've only shopped in Bloomie's once in my life -- because I had a gift card. It's a bit rich for me. I'm too cheap for my own good and haven't embraced Bloomie's the way most people do. So when they invited me, who was I to refuse. It was a quick trip into the city, stood in line (it moved quickly) and got a nice, shiny $20 gift card. My previous gift card was a holiday gift from work. This card was from Bloomie's itself had no strings attached or real history at all. I'm still thinking I ended up on the invite list, because I had been part of Wedding Channel. Anyhow, I got a Laura Mercier lipstick with my gift card. Love the lipstick and now a bit more fondness for Bloomie's.

Anyhow, when Johnny and I went to the SF Shopping Center. We wandered around. We found Stonehouse Oils, enjoyed the flavors. Then we also found Lupicia. It should not be confused with Propecia, the wonder hair growth drug. Super heavenly Japanese tea store. We never noticed it at Stonestown (or haven't gone to it since it opened). We had such a good time in the store. We bought a couple of pouches. Since then, we still have the tea (drinking slowly), bought more and continue to enjoy the tea. I ended up putting all our tea into our pralines box from New Orleans. We are building up a variety and have enjoyed each and every cup. We've had strawberry and vanilla (great with a bit of cream/milk), apple and berry, muscat, champagne rose (there are fizzy balls in there, fun!), and a holiday blend called Jingle Bells. I got other packs for my coworkers and sister; they've all been fans. If you enjoy tea, this is a good shop to hang out in. You can smell containers; sometimes you can sample teas, too. There's a lot in each pack. Oh and if you buy any, see if they give you any samples. They usually have 'em. They've given me one each time I bought stuff. When I asked for a few extra for friends, I got more packets of the flavor you couldn't buy in the store. Fun, fun!

We also found the old Emporium dome that was too lovely for words. We snapped a few shots from the couches on the top floor. We also took a few funny shots of ourselves.



Still catching up on blog posts. I got to get caught up to this past weekend. Must get to the mushrooms!

Catching up... catching up...

Embarrassingly, I/Tracy did forget about this blog for a while. I hadn't forgotten our trusty friend, the Canon Powershot so we have plenty of photographic evidence of where we've been and a decent memory to explain what happened when we got there. So, as the last post showed... still doing a culinary thing when possible. Mmm. Those souffles were so easy, so good.

Sigh.. what have I not blogged about.

Johnny had a birthday in December. We did a tour at Oakland's yummy Scharffen Berger. That was faboo, highly recommended. We ended up taking my mom and sister during the Christmas/New Years timeframe too. Double yum.

In addition to the Scharffen Berger tour for Johnny's birthday (it was a bit rainy that day), we headed to Bay Wolf in Oakland. Do you sense an East Bay theme? The company was fantastic. We had a ball. Some of the food was also fantastic, while others were not as good as we expected a la duck fat fries. Though, we had two bottles of good wine, and then headed off to Emeryville to watch Casino Royale. We didn't end up seeing it with everyone as it was getting late. The movie was one of the best we've seen in quite a while. It had action, bit of romance and leveraged the joy of poker. It also was partially shot in Venice, which is a soft spot for us. After all, we did visit in October 2006. Oh my, I double-checked the blog. We NEVER posted about Europe. Oh gracious me. I am so behind!

I have much more to post about than I thought. Don't be surprised to find far more posts. Ha! I haven't told anyone about this blog, but one day I will and there'll be a lot of reading to do.

Chocolate Souffle - quickie

One day, I (Tracy) was bored and thought I'd bake something. I do believe I was looking around for a recipe that required me to use our ramekins. I always wanted to make a souffle so what the heck. I found a recipe online, of course, from FoodNetwork.com. The easiest and best one was the Chocolate Chocolate Souffle. Little need I realize why there was such an emphasis on the chocolate part. ;)

It was quite easy to prepare. It was an Emeril receipe, which sometimes has been good and other times, it's not been quite what I wanted.

This was heaven! Heavenly richness. So rich, we're never making it for ourselves again. :) It was just too much especially with the Ghirardelli chocolate. Though if anyone has a sweet tooth, I am more than happy to make you one or two.