vitamin h2o

my favorite vitamin water is grape formula 50 but it's rarely found so i've adopted an alternate go to flavor, sync berry-cherry. i was unable to find grape at safeway tonight so i got a flavor i'd never seen called defense which is raspberry apple. within 10 mins of purchase i arrived at my friends house and managed to drop 2 of the 3 bottles of water on the kitchen floor. when i say dropped what i really mean is i dumped 2 bottles almost in their entirety across the hardwood floor and onto the carpet. the only good thing to come of this is that magically there were a few sips of defense saved at the bottom so that i could taste, the flavor was delightful and for 5 seconds i was able to enjoy what was left of my drink sent from heaven. seriously a must try!!

a KISS of cherry

ATTENTION ALL DR PEPPER FANS...

in case you haven't heard there is a new flavor of DP. it's limited edition so go swoop it up now while you still can. i need to try the real one instead of the fake diet but the diet was surprisingly delicious. if you have the chance please do not pass it up. if possible i advise you to drink it during a blackout while planning a bridal shower with a few friends.

dr pepper + a kiss of cherry & chocolate + 2hr blackout =
sore abs from giggling and a bridal shower planned

cooking with Naomi

waking up early on a saturday is not typically how i roll but this morning was one of those saturdays that it needed to happen. today we were attending a cooking lesson/class and needed to be in sf by 9am. we hopped on bart and headed to sf for the farmers market at the ferry building. we were meeting our cooking instructor Naomi who took us on a tour of the market to purchase ingredients for our lesson. she was such a gem and she taught me several things that i didn’t know prior to this meeting. for starters she introduced me to the world of beets, NOT pickled beets but a real beet. who knew i’d become a fan, certainly not me! after shopping for ingredients and of course dessert we headed to berkely to cook up our lunch menu. we started by making kale broth for our potato & kale soup. at this point i must add that in between every step we took a bread break, Naomi had purchased this amazing green onion bread loaf that we ate with goat cheese to appease our appetite while we cooked. then washed and scrubbed the beets before baking and set aside the greens we cut off to be used in the salad topped with pine nuts goat cheese and blood oranges. bread break, then i cut up my very first blood orange into segments… lol it took me forever and i’m so confused as to why people eat those things when so much work that goes into preparing them. yep another bread break before cutting into the fennel. has anyone ever eaten or cut into fennel? it smells like black licorice and kind of tastes like it too, we cut it into long strips and made another salad and tossed it with olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper. oh i don't remember when but sometime between eating bread and the other dishes we made swiss chard, which i'd never heard of before. the meal came together rather nice and each dish was a new experience for me. thanks to Naomi for taking time to teach us a few new recipes. after cooking we came back to my place and relaxed until our appetite got the best of us and we headed down the hill for crepes and japanese food.

city and colour

$4 bridge toll and a short drive over the bay bridge as we head to san francisco to see city and colour.

$22 to eat a pizza topped with flank steak, red onions, tomatoes, cilantro and sour cream from bruno's, yummy.

listening to dallas green for 90 minutes live at the filmore and getting my poster signed after the show... PRICELESS!!




ok, maybe not priceless but $29 to hear dallas live was worth every penny!

slider station

for christmas a friend got me the slider station and i finally found time to use it. i decided to try and recreate a turkey burger i had last year from a restaurant called the counter. i ate there when a friend and i wnet to visit my brother and his girlfriend in LA. i seasoned the ground turkey with soy sauce and pineapple juice, added green onions, grilled some pineapple, made a red pepper mayo and served it on a Hawaiian sweet roll sided with sweet potato fries with marshmallow fluff.

tko

yesterday was new years and boy did i start 2010 off right. two of my friends and i stayed at a resort in napa called the meritage resort and spa. we ended up all being sick or just getting over being sick so we stayed in and keep things low key. to make up for taking the night off on new years we started the day with shopping and then hit up the bouchon bakery before heading home. if you don't know (which i didn't until recently) bouchon bakery is part of the thomas keller restaurant group, so we stopped in for the famous TKO. the TKO is thomas keller's version of an oreo, bravo thomas keller bravo!! it is quite an improvement from what the world knows as the oreo and i'd advise anyone to visit yountville for one of these tasty treats.

“A respect for food is a respect for life”

– Thomas Keller

the birth of a food baby

my food journey begins as a young girl exploring the world in a kitchen. i soon realized that it wasn’t cooking i loved as much it was eating what i cooked. i’d say my love of cooking started because of my LOVE for EATING. i used to make cookies for my family and sometimes sent them with my dad for his office girls. i remember them telling me that i made the best snicker-doodle cookies they’d ever had (not true i’m sure but they wanted to boost my confidence). soon i branched out and started to bake/cook for my two brothers and their friends (ok ok i’ll admit it, most the time it was because i thought one of their friends was cute), i was no dummy and knew early on that food was a good way into the heart of a boy.

for no good reason after a few years of experimenting in the kitchen it all came to a crashing halt. it wasn’t until i was in high school that i started cooking again and only then because my dad and step mom made me cook dinner once a week. with a combined family of 7-9 kids (depending on the year) living at home they enlisted me to help since i was the only girl over the age of three. did i mention that i hate being forced to cook or being forced to do anything against my will? it’s true, i don’t like it being expected of me, i do it because i want to do it and not because someone tells me to. where’s the fun in that? so i cooked meals consisting of grilled cheese sandwiches, mac & cheese from a box, hamburger helper, white rice, waffles or any pre-cooked meal from the freezer.

since those four years of being forced to make family dinners it took me 7-8 years to come back to the thought of wanting to cook. in fact for holiday dinners i would always volunteer to wash the dishes rather than to help cook or prepare anything in the kitchen. so here is where my true food/cooking story begins… fueled by my love for food i open my mouth to a journey filled with many new and tasty experiences.