thanks long overdue

I have to send out a very belated thank you to my June colorswap partner Amanda of GigiBear. She sent me a wonderful blue package. I absolutely adore the bracelet she made with the sunflower clasp! Isn't it darling?! She also included lots of yummy candy (I ate the mini m&m's already as they happen to be a personal favorite, how'd you know?).

Thanks Amanda!

Butterick 4790 and a tshirt dress

I finished my dress for the sew retro sew-a-long! I love it! I brought it to a family reunion over the 4th and my family liked it quite a bit too! For me the pattern was a bit big at the bust, so I ended up shortening the top at the shoulders after sewing it all to make it fit better.

I want one in every color and pattern now!!



I absolutely adore the full skirt!


I also brought the texas tshirt dress I made, but I didn't get a chance to wear it. The family reunion was in Reno/Tahoe, and we only had a few days. The first day I wore a kimono top I had just completed, but I don't have photos of that yet...

Here's the Texas tshirt dress. It's actually made out of 2 red texas themed shirts (goode company bbq from houston-- yum! and a texas tech shirt I found at st. vincent) and 1 black bay area shirt (the bay area print was hideous, so I put it on the inside of the dress).






random note...
Hey Minger! Sorry ev and I missed your phone calls this weekend. All the family reunion stuff in tahoe made it pretty impossible to do phone calls :( Happy belated 4th of July!

Charles Krug, Peter Jr. Mondavi Wine Dinner

Last week, my parents invited erv and I to the Lafayette Park Hotel's Duck Club where Charles Krug Winery was having a winemakers dinner with Peter Mondavi Jr. to host the festivities. Erv and I were under the impression that this would be a large group, but when we got there, we found out there were just 20 of us there to meet and hob nob with Peter Jr. and each other.



As soon as we arrived, we were given glasses of Charles Krug Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, 2005. The wine was actually quite yummy. They made it after the New Zealand style, and it really was nice as the heat of the afternoon was burning off. We spoke with Peter Jr. about our nuptials next year in Geyserville, and the heat in the Valley while the Duck Club staff passed appetizers of foie gras, smoked salmon and caviar, and ceviche around.

Our first course was a Lobster Martini. No actual alcohol (thankfully... as we were going to have waaay too much wine throughout the dinner as it was). It was lobster and seaweed in a tomato consomme.



The consomme really was like essence of tomato. It was interesting, but definitely not something I'd seek out again...

We moved on to an Asparagus and Morel Mushroom Salad, with a Vin Blanc Vinaigrette to go with our Chardonnay, grown in Carneros, 2004.



This dish was actually quite good. The wrapped prociutto and salty parmesean strip really lifted the dish up to yummy standards! Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the Chardonnay. This isn't that unusual... I'm not a huge white wine fan.

We moved on to a dish of Ginger Soy Glazed Black Cod, Braised Baby Bok Choy, with a Miso Consomme. This was paired with the 2004 Pinot Noir from the Carneros region. Despite the lore that only white wine goes with seafood, this was an outstanding pairing on the part of the chef. Actually, the fish was phenomenol overall, but I thought the pinot wasn't one of the better ones I've tried. It did complement the dish though.



We cleansed our palate with a Rhubarb Mint Sorbet, which was way too minty/rhubarby... the texture was this weird thick kind of grainy substance. ick.

The next course was a Tamarind Braised Angus Beef Short Ribs, with Potato and Turnip Puree and whole grain mustard sauce paired with the 2002 Generations, "Red Blend" grown in the Napa Valley. I didn't actually eat this course, as I don't eat beef. I happily ate a second serving of the tasty cod though! The Generations wine is modeled after a Bordeaux blend, and this was my second favorite wine of the night. I have had better Bordeaux blends, but this was still good. I think, had I eaten the beef, it would indeed have gone well.



We started out our desserts with a humboldt fog cheesecake (cheese by the Cow Girl Creamery), with Pineapple Tartine, and Candied Walnuts. My dad took one bite of this and yelped in disgust. It was sort of a misnomer. You think cheesecake and you take a really big first bite. The cheese is not sweet and a bit pungent. It was okay with the pineapple and candied walnuts, but still it was difficult to finish.



The saving grace of dessert was the last course. The Duck Club Pastry chef must be praised. This was absolutely amazing... a Treasure of Basil and Strawberries with White Chocolate Basil Mousse and Strawberry Gelee on a Red Peppercorn Sable Disc. It was so tasty. What an interesting combination of flavors! It was delightful! So delightful, that we all were halfway through scarfing it down before we remembered to take a photo!



They served it with their Zinfandel Port from the Napa Valley. Peter Mondavi Jr. didn't know too much about ports, unfortunately, and couldn't answer my questions as to how it was processed differently from the ports of Portugal. I didn't like it that much. They mixed different vintages together to get young sweet flavors with a more complex older vintage. Unfortunately, I just didn't feel like it came together well, and it was a little cloyingly sweet.

One of my favorite parts of the dinner was when ervan asked Peter Jr. about the labor union strikes going on in the Mondavi winery. Peter Jr. absolutely clammed up. It would have been interesting to hear his side of the story, but apparently, he just wasn't interested in speaking on it.



My parents, Peter Mondavi Jr., and erv and me

PretTea Package

Tara from Alaska sent me a wonderful tea swap package TWICE! The first one got lost in handling, so being the excellent swapper that she is, she happily put together a new one!

I loved opening up the package and smelling delicious flavors of cinnamon! In fact, the wonderful smell was emanating from some Samovar Tea from The Kobuk in Alaska. Talk about surprising. I've never had tea like this before. It's black tea infused with cinnamon oil, clove, lemon, and orange peel! It's a sweet delicacy that I can tell will be absolutely wonderful in the Seattle winter on a wet day! (I do admit I tried the tea as soon as I popped open the package. It's really quite neat, but it definitely seems like something to savor in cold weather).



Seriously though, the most wonderful thing about the package was that Tara included lots of neat stuff from Alaska! Besides the neat Kobuk tea, I also received a package of Alaska Wild Teas "Tea for two" blueberry herbal tea, Black Bear Bar (a yummy dark chocolate made by the Chocolate Moose Candy Company), a lovely set of dish towels, two wonderful squishy balls of Bazic Wool in a beautiful sage color to make wrist warmers, and some yummy ginger biscuits!

Thank you Tara!! I absolutely love everything!!

cauliflower rocks!

Yum! I forget if I mentioned that cauliflower has become my new brussel sprout (as in, I've rediscovered it and fallen in love--don't worry ervy it may be just a crush).

I love to cut it into smaller sections and cook it with butter and onion and a bit of white wine til it's cooked, but still firm. Awww, it's DELISH!

Recently, I've loved playing with colorful cauliflower. I've seen purple and orange, and it makes me just want a bouquet of it all on my plate!

for the "sew I knit" along

The sewing project for "sew i knit" this month was to sew a top.

I finally finished my pattern. I chose Simplicity 5057, pattern D.



A tank top really doesn't take too much fabric, so I used an old vintage pillowcase I'd found thrifting.



It's been a while since I'd worked from a pattern, mostly I deconstruct and reconstruct clothes to my liking, or I just wing it. But I dutifully cut out the pattern.



I ended up getting fed up trying to turn the ribbon ties inside out after sewing them up, so I left them out. I also think that despite cutting the pattern to specifications, the lower back panel should have been longer, so I ended up sewing on a ruffle to compensate. I'm not sure how I like it or if I'll take it off. Right now, I think it adds a little bit of girly girl to it.





Overall I think I'd try the pattern again with a few modifications.

chemo caps

I just found out today that one of my aunties has lung cancer. She has never smoked, but apparently lung cancer is also known as Asian women's cancer? At least that is what the doctor told her. She will be going through chemo treatment, so I am planning to knit her a couple chemo caps out of baby soft cotton and perhaps chenille? Is chenille a good yarn for these caps?

I'm looking at these patterns currently:

very cute, I'm thinking of doing this one in chenille

and then one of these three in cotton for summer wearing:

one
two
three

In happier news, Evan and I are closer to finding the location of our wedding/reception. We've narrowed it down to two choices. One is a beautiful private estate in Sonoma that nestled in the middle of lush grape vines! The other is a local historical mansion located at a country club near my parents' house surrounded by the Berkeley hills. Both are gorgeous locations, and we have a hold on the July 7th date (7/7/07) at each. So we should decide after this weekend with more budget analyses. Pictures to come!

Thank you's

I've been meaning to post thank you's. I finally figured out where my digital camera was! It was in the trunk of my car. Sheesh, what a silly place for it.

Anyhoosit, I was able to take photos of the wonderful packages my SP Angel, Maureen, and my colorwap partner, Dana sent me.

Maureen sent me a lovely package with some beautiful speckled green wool, an awesome pattern booklet to make a wallaby sweater, some great notecards and stitchmarker, and a nice set of bamboo circulars (yay!).


Dana sent me an amazing green package for May colorswap! Look at all these goodies! There's yarn, green striped candy canes, green ribbon, a very much needed pin cushion, a CUTE CUTE CUTE pouch with a knitted sweater on it, some new green flops, a cute froggy thermometer, a yankee candle scent for my car, some stitch markers, a cute butterfly measuring tape, some wind chimes (that my cats find fascinating), and some wonderful mint chocolates with a cute sugar turtle and frog on top (those were quite tasty!). Phew! Wow Dana. Believe me, I was blown away! I think you definitely should win an award for the best colorswap pal ever!



My kitties LOVE the wind chime. They stare at it with their kitty laser eyes trying to decipher what the tinkling of the tubes means...

Yay! Still happy and glowing!

As requested, here's a shot of the ring! It's so sparkly! It's hard not to walk around in the warm Californian sun and not be distracted by the sparkles. Ervy likes it too. Too bad this picture doesn't capture all the sparklyness well.

Thank you all for your congratulations! And seriously Janis, we must have some weird psychicly linked lives.

This was going to be a post where I talked about how ervy and I met and how we got to where we are... then I told the erv man I was going to post that and he said, "yup--the sappy post." How very correct indeed erv man :) It's funny, because neither of us is normally sappy, but engagement bliss seriously tramples over all those normal habits.

*happy sigh*

Did I mention both evan and I are most looking forward to cake tasting? Mmmm...

I have some photos and thank you's I need to post about the wonderful packages I've received from my colorswap partner and Secret Pal Angel. But of course I need to take the photos first. All I can say is, WOW! I've really been spoiled by these wonderful people.

Tantalizing Tea Note!

I got a card from my Tea Swap partner! I love it! I love how it's so cryptic.

I got to my mail box, and thought, "What's this letter for me from Alaska?"

I opened it up to find this:



and inside the card:


Not only am I mad jealous of my tea swapper's artistic skills, but I'm now extra super excited about this swap. This has to be the best TEAse EVER!

Plus the card smelled like cinnamon! Yum!

Thanks Tea Pal! This totally rocked!

cinco de mayo celebration

My Cinco de Mayo turned into a wonderful unexpected celebration. Friday at lunch, ervy and I met at our favorite little family run Italian restaurant in Menlo Park - Buon Gusto. We chatted about some of the studies I've been working on, and some other random conversation I don't recall too well. Then, before the dessert course, my ervy quicly pulled out a ring and slid it across the table saying, "So... do you want to get married to me?

I'm happy to say, I remembered to say 'yes,' after a lot of giggling. I also remembered to take a picture of our dessert for the blog. My favorite dessert at the restaurant - they call it chocolate salami, it's like a marbled chocolate cookie/cake wrapped in chocolate and served with chocolate sauce! It's wonderful. And it was perfectly celebratory!



I do admit though, that I was completely retarded and took a picture of the dessert, but not US at the restaurant. Silly lori. I should mention that ervy forgoto this too. So, silly us.



Sunday, our friends Hilary and Steven took us out to dinner at Cascal in Mountain View for some celebratory tapas and wine! They also gave us a fabulous wedding planning guide book which is helping us figure out all the ettiquette and wedding details we've never known about.

Yay! I love my ervy!

InsaniTea

lol. To borrow the naming scheme Adagio uses... :)

This post is for the flash your tea stash for the knitter's tea swap, but I figured it could grace my blog too!

Okay. I'll be the first to admit I'm a tea fanatic. I mostly prefer loose leaf teas, but I do have some herbal tea bags, and chai in bags (because I can't seem to find a decent loose leaf chai anyway). I suppose I may adore tea too much, and I'm very conscientious about my brewing time and water temperature so that each cup of tea can be its very best :) I guess I'm a tea activist.

Anyhoo, here's my stash (it's missing some tea that my bf and I keep at work)


closeups:




Here are my favorite teapots that are most often in use. The three in the middle are cast iron. The biggest can serve 8-10 people, the middle 2-3, the smallest pretty much me or 2 small cups. I generally use my IngenuiTea from Adagio at work, as it makes it easier to brew loose leaf. I think I have an affinity for blue tea pots, don't ya think?



Tea for me! A hot cup of Pu-erh and some mini blueberry muffins!



cross-posted to Knitter's Tea Swap

One Singular Confection

I'm SO excited! I've been wanting this personal cupcake holder ever since I saw it on 52 Cupcakes! Now the container store is selling them! *happy dance*

One Singular Confection

With silver bells and cockle-shells, and pretty maids all in a row

Nikko and I go out to check on my little deck garden everyday. I'm so amazed how much plants can grow in a 24 hr period. Every time I go out there, my lemon tree has put out new leaves and buds overnight! My radishes and carrot sprouts grow another inch while new sprouts pop up all the time. I woke up yesterday and my Old German Tomato plant and grown a couple inches over the wall-o-water!











Nikko always gets tuckered out after our balcony visits as it's pretty warm out there. Today he walked back in the house and decided to plop right down on the kitchen floor until he cooled off:


My mint plants, planted only about a month ago have vigorously put forth new growths. Today, I decided I needed to cut them back ALOT. I was quite aggressive with my pruning, but both plants still look full and healthy. I washed and destemmed the cuttings, and placed all the mint leaves in a pint jar. I've covered it all with Absolut vodka to create a mint extract to use in either cooking or cool summer cocktails. Apparently, over the next 10 days I'm just supposed to shake the jar a couple times a day. Then I strain out the leaves from the liquid, and voila! A strong mint extract!


Just in case y'all forgot, the title of this post is from a nursery rhyme... apparently full of religious symbolism

In the pursuit of happiness, craftiness, and great buys...

Seriously, this weekend was beautiful. It was so gorgeous, I had to take Nikko out for a walk on his leash around our block. He had the most fun when a couple of doves crossed our path on the sidewalk!

Okay, so my weekend really started Friday. I didn't intend for that to happen. I had a bunch of work I was planning to do from home after I went to dim sum at Koi Palace with Minger, Adam, Adam's Mom, and the Fu. But you know, since none of us had hard set schedules for the day, we ended up going to Target to buy Trivial Pursuit 90's edition and headed out to Dolore's Park in SF to play games and watch the many many ADORABLE doggies! This toy poodle named Emma came bounding up to us. I didn't know what breed it was (the owner let its fur grow out naturally), I just kept yelling, "OMG, IT'S A TOY. IT'S A STUFFED ANIMAL!" It was THAT adorable. We hit a couple of neat stores including Dog Eared Books and Retro Fit Vintage. I bought these two books at Dog Eared:

Left: Vogue Baby Knits Two $5 (it has some cute patterns, and I'd like to start prepping for when family members have more babies so that I can have some handknitted items to send right away!) Right: The WASP Cookbook $6 by comedienne Alexandra Wentworth. She collected a bunch of recipes from distinctively white upperclass Americans and compiled them into an amazingly humorous book. I was tickled pink when I got home and found out that since it's not in print anymore, it's actually worth more than $6. Plus, it's been quite fun to read.

Also, look at this cute/handy magnet I found at Target in the dollar section:

How useful! I always am googling the conversions, now, I'll just look on my fridge!

Saturday, I worked a bit and took some walks with Nikko. I also got some spinning done. I finished a second bobbin of two ply confetti yarn (a blend I concocted of merino and some unknown wool type).


I also carded and spun up some of the merino X locks that I had separated out and washed last week. To my great delight, separating the locks DOES make a difference! I found that in carding, I would get fewer neps and it was easier to pick out the shorter cut bits, and much easier to get any remnant VM out too! For spinning, it spins like a dream, and the fibers are much better aligned! I love this merino X. It's fluffy, and I added some drops of lavender essential oil to the washing machine when the wool was soaking so it's smells heavenly to work with it. This is my spinning set up currently. You can see the TiVo remote has easy access from my chair so I can skip through the commercials on the X-Files!

Strawnanachoc Tart

That's right. Say that three times fast...

strawnanachoc tart...
strawnanachoc tart...
strawnanachoc tart...

mmm... STRAWNANACHOC TART!

By now, you're probably thinking, "okay. wtf is a strawblahblah tart?"

It's this:


Sure. It doesn't look like much. But let me tell you, it's the perfect ending to a wonderfully warm happy weekend. It's been a bit toasty here in Bay Area! Wildflowers are a blooming, and my allergies have blown off the charts. Days start feeling just a mite bit more lethargic, and I'm drawn to the outdoors like bugs to yellow. That's when I start craving fruit tarts. Nice...cold...fruit tarts. This recipe was thrown together with the help of Nick Stellino's inspiration and Cook's Illustrated's guidance.

Strawnanachoc Tart
For the pastry I altered the Cook's Illustrated recipe for a chocolate tart to be a regular tart.

Pastry ingredients:
1 large egg yolk
2 Tb heavy cream (I didn't have this on hand, so I used a tablespoon of melted butter and maybe 2 Tb of nonfat milk, and it still came out fine)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 Cups flour
3/4 Cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 tsp salt
10 Tb cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

Filling:
your favorite banana pudding recipe or instant banana pudding mix
1/3 C Nestle swirl (milk chocolate and white chocolate) chips chopped into small bits
1/4 C Bailey's Irish Cream
2 bananas
Strawberry Jam

To make the pastry, whisk together yok, cream (or substitute) and vanilla. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a food processor with 4 one-second pulses. Scatter butter pieces over flour and process with short pulses in food processor until mixture resembles coarse meal (20 one-sec pulses or so). With machine running, add egg mixture and process until dough comes together.

Turn dough onto a floured board. Kneed a few times and form it into a ball. Wrap dough and refigerate for 1 hour. After refigeration, remove the dough, unwrap it, and place it on your lightly floured surface. Give it a nice whack with your french rolling pin just for the heck of it--err, I mean it start softening it if it's too cold to be malleable.

Roll out the dough between two sheets of lightly floured wax paper pieces until it's about 15 in around, or big enough to fit in your tart pan with a little excess. Transfer dough to your tart pan and push it into the edges and cut off the excess.

Place the tart pan in the freezer for 30 minutes. After this cooling, preheat ovem the 375F. Set tart pan on baking sheet and cover with lightly greased foil. Place pie weights in the tart to prevent bubbles in the tart. Bake for 30 min. Take pie weights and foil off of tart and cook for another 5 minutes. Take tart out of the oven to cool on a wire rack.

Prepare your banana pudding. After the pudding has cooled, stir in the chopped chocolate and irish cream. Pour the pudding mixture into the tart and let set in the fridge for a bit. Slice bananas and decorate top of the tart. Heat a couple spoonfuls of strawberry jam in a sauce pan on the stove and brush the top of the tart with liquified jam.

Refrigerate and serve cold on a hot day!


Question
Do you think a tart could/should be classified as a type of pie? My friends and I had this very discussion, and I'm curious to hear what others think.