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Friday, September 28, 2012

Fun Fact Friday

I don't have an outfit post for you today, so I figured since this blog is new and what makes for a good blog? Getting to know the person behind the blog, so I'm going to give you 5 fun facts about me, in bullet form, because I like lists (I won't even consider that part of my 5, see how generous I am?):

  • I'm a Virgo through and through, if you look it up 90% of that is me.
  • I was born in Seoul, Korea, was adopted and came to the States when I was 5 months old. My brother (9 months younger - yep you did that math right, my parents went from 1 kid to 3 kids in less than 6 months) and sister (5 years older, don't tell her I told you) are also adopted.                              This is who I call family:
 Starting from the left: Brother, Sister, Mom, Dad, Me, Mr., Baby Fox

  • I majored in Electrical Engineering, how did I came to that major? It was a process of elimination, I didn't like anything else and I was good at math.
  • I make lists on a daily basis, sometimes I write stuff down I already did for the day just so I can cross them off, or I'll write down, eat breakfast (duh) or/and make dinner just so I can feel accomplished for the day when I see things crossed off.
  • Last but not least -  Just after graduation I bought myself a red Toyota Tacoma,  I named it Fred, and drove him up until I was 7.5 months pregnant when we bought a sedan, more practical to get baby in and out then a truck. I miss Fred dearly and sometimes wish we didn't have to sell him, I may or may not have cried a little when we sold him.
So there you have it, 6 fun facts about me. Until next time.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Bubble Bubble

Yes, that's right I jumped on the band wagon and bought a bubble necklace. I bought this necklace in my favorite color...when I was younger my parents thought I was color blind because whenever they would ask me what color something was, I would reply with blue-green...I digress.  My only problem, ALL of my shirts are v-necks (I have clastrophobic issues...I feel like I'm choking just thinking about it), everything I tried it with didn't look good. I started searching my favorite fashion blogs and saw that a lot of people paired their bubble necklaces with button up shirts. I can do that. This is what I came up with, I think it's very business casual and perfect for the office.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Trying Outside the Norm

I'm wearing 3 different colors, well 5 counting the dots on the shirt and my shoe color. I *think* this works, but not completely sure. I didn't get any weird comments at work, or strange looks so it must be okay. I think it needs a belt or something, but have yet to find that perfect belt. Maybe in the near future.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Old and New


 I was in my brother's wedding recently and our gift and jewelery for the bridal party was this coral necklace. This dress I bought a long time ago, and I have no idea where I got it actually. Then the tank top under it is from Ann Taylor Loft. Whenever I used to wear this dress, I never wore any necklace with it, but since aquiring this necklace I thought it was the perfect compliment.


This is how I feel trying to come up with a pose...I never know what to do...Do you ever have that problem?

Monday, September 24, 2012

The Difference a Sweater Can Make


So I never wear this dress because *I* think it's too low cut for work, but adding this sweater makes it work appropriate. Love what a sweater can do.


Since I never got a close up of the beautiful necklace the Mr. bought me for my birthday. Inside the locked are Baby Fox and Mr.'s names engraved on a gold heart. If you want one of your own, go here.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Mexican Pulled Pork (Carnitas)

Happy Friday everyone! TGIF! Here's the last recipe for the week, so enjoy!

This recipe is really easy too, okay it has a lot of steps, but it really isn't that hard, and it's SOOO good! Definitely a crowd pleaser. Without further ado:

Ingredients:

  • 1 3.5-4 pound boneless pork butt, fat cap trimmed to 1/8 inch thick, cut into 2 inch chunks
  • Table salt and ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 small onion, peeled and halved
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 teaspon dried oregano
  • 2 tablespoons juice from 1 lime
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 medium orange

Garnishes (suggestions)
  • Tortillas
  • Lime Wedges
  • Mince white or red onion
  • Fresh cilantro leaves
  • Thinly sliced radishes
  • Sour cream
  • Salsa
  • Guacamole

Cooking Supplies You'll Need
  • Large Dutch Oven
  • Cookie Sheet with a cookie cooling rack that fits in it
  • Slotted Spoon
  • Spatula
  • Knife
  • Cutting Board
Advice: I will typically make a double batch, since you're going through all this trouble might as well make extra and freeze some. So I'll use about 7-8 pounds of meat. Then just double all of the other ingredients.

 Instructions:

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. 
  1. Combine pork, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, cumin, onion, bay leaves, oregano, lime juice, and water in large Dutch oven (liquid should just barely cover meat). 

     2.  Juice orange into medium bowl and remove any seeds (you should have about 1/3 cup juice).
          Add juice and spent orange halves to pot. 

     3.  Bring mixture to simmer over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. 


     4.  Once simmering cover pot and transfer to oven;  


     5. Cook until meat is soft and falls apart when prodded with fork, about 2 hours (the recipe calls
         for 2 hours, I typically will do 3 hours, we find that it turns out a little bit better, but if you're
         pressed for time, 2 hours is good too), flipping pieces of meat once during cooking.

     6. Remove pot from oven and turn oven to broil. 

     7. Using slotted spoon, transfer pork to bowl; remove orange halves, onion, and bay leaves from
           cooking liquid and discard (do not skim fat from liquid).

     8. If you are making a double batch, I pour half the liquid into another pot and do this in two
          pots, makes for more sauce. Place pot over high heat (use caution, as handles will be very hot)
         and simmer liquid, stirring frequently, until thick and syrupy (heatsafe spatula should leave
         wide trail when dragged through glaze), 15 minutes or so. You should have about 1 cup reduced
         liquid. 

 
  10.  Using 2 forks, pull each piece of pork in half. Fold in reduced liquid; season with salt and
         pepper to taste. I don't pull each piece apart into 1 inch chunks, I personally don't like making
         tacos with such large pieces of meat, as you can see from the picture, some are in chunks and
        others are shredded, do what works for you.

   11.  Spread pork in even layer on wire rack set inside rimmed baking sheet or on broiler pan 
       (meat should cover almost entire surface of rack or broiler pan).
  
       See how the meat is sort of "shredded/chunks"?


   12.  Place baking sheet on lower-middle rack and broil  until top of meat is well browned and
          edges are slightly crisp, 5 to 8 minutes It looks burned but it tastes WAY better with a few
          extra crispy pieces. Using  wide spatula, flip pieces of meat and continue

 
      
       to broil until top is well browned and edges are slightly crisp, 5 to 8 minutes longer. 

See how easy that was?

13.  Serve immediately with warm tortillas and garnishes. We used flour tortillas because I'm allergic
       to corn, but this would be delicious with some corn tortillas.



Happy Weekend!  We're hanging out with friends, celebrating babies and eating lots of yummy food. Doing anything fun and exciting? Whatever it is, eat well and be happy, it's the weekend!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Chicken Salad Sandwich

I can't say that I've ever had a chicken salad sandwich, so quite frankly I have no idea what they taste like, but when I think shower food, I equate it to chicken salad sandwiches. I don't know, something about women sitting around eating salads and sandwiches comes to my mind first. I got this recipe from America's Test Kitchen. If you don't know what it is, google it, it will change your life. Okay maybe not really, but EVERY recipe I've made in this cookbook has come out fantastic. So without further ado:

Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients:
  • 1 3/4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • Salt and Pepper
  • 2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
  • 2 Ribs of Celery, chopped fine
  • 3/4 Cup Mayonnaise
  • 2 Scallions, minced
  • 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (people kept noting the slight lemon flavor and how much they liked it, I wouldn't skip this part)
  • 2 Tablespoons minced fresh parsley
Side Note: The recipe does say that you can also add 2 tablespoons minced fresh tarragon or basil

Directions:
  1. Season t:e chicken with salt and pepper
  2. Heat the oil in 12-inch non-stick skillet over medium heat until shimmering
  3. Carefully add the chicken and cook until lightly golden brown on the first side, about 5 minutes
  4. Flip the chicken over, cover and continue to cook until it is no longer pink in the center, about 5 minutes longer.
  5. Transfer chicken to a plate and refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.
  6. Cut the chilled chicken into 1/4-inch pieces and toss with the remaining ingredients. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Another side note: I baked the chicken, at 350 for about 15 minutes instead.

I doubled the recipe and then bought a package of croissants, cut them open, and then filled with chicken salad, then cut those in half, so that people didn't have to eat a whole sandwich. I just about used all of the chicken, minus maybe 1 or 2 sandwiches worth of salad.

And the result is:
 

Chinese Chicken Salad

This recipe we've been making in my family for as long as I can remember, I have no idea where it came from, but I hear that it's a somewhat popular salad. It's super simple, I know I keep saying that, but really, it is. Trust me, this is the recipe for you if you want to wow people with your culinary skills...okay not really, but it's super good.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup oil
4 Tablespoons Seasame Seed Oil
10 Tablespoons Rice Vinager
3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
Fresh Pepper (to taste)
Fresh Ginger (to taste, I like a lot of ginger flavor so I micro grate about a 2 inch chunk)
Top Roman (chicken flavor) - break apart the top roman into smaller chunks, I will typically break apart before opening package, you want chucks, don't break them up too small, bite size)
2 Small Heads Cabbage - shredded
Green Onions (To taste, I know I hate this term too, but if you like green onions, use a lot, if you    don't use a little, I typically will use 1 bundle ~ about 6-7)
Chicken (cooked and cubed, or shredded, however you want it in your salad)

For the dressing:
Mix the oil, seasame seed oil, rice vinagar, soy sauce, fresh pepper, fresh ginger, chicken flavor packets from top roman

For the Salad:

In a sealable contantainer mix cabbage, green onions, top roman noodles, chicken. Pour salad dressing over mixture, mix well. Let sit over night. Stir a few times. If you can turn the container over and let sit upside down. If not, then just stir every once in a while (once or twice will do)

Let sit for at least a day. I know the recipe is sort of fly by the seat of your pants, but once you do it once, you're going to realize how easy it is and you'll find yourself making this again and again. Holy run on sentence.

Enjoy!


P.S. Apparently I forgot to take a picture of the chinese chicken salad, it's the salad on the bottom right.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Fruit Salad

For me the perfect fruit salad doesn't have those fillers like watermelon and caneloupe. So whenever I make mine, I always put in fruit that I really enjoy, that way if there is a lot left over, I have my fruit for lunches made, win win for all involved.

The fruit that I included are:

Strawberries
Blueberries
Green Grapes
Raspberries

Makes for a really colorful display and everyone enjoys berries. I don't add any sugar or dressing to it, I let the fruit do the talking.


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Strawberry Spinach Salad

I know that I wanted a light salad, and one that didn't include meat for those vegetarians that were going to be joining us at the shower. I figured strawberries are in season, and what goes best with strawberries in a salad, spinach of course! So I found this recipe courtesy of Paula Dean, and I hear that it turned out pretty good. You don't know this, but will in one second, I have a lot of food allergies. I didn't bring my own oil with me, so I had to use what the bride had on hand, which was one that I cannot eat, but there wasn't any left over, so I'm thinking it was a hit.

This is super simple and easy to make. I didn't add the almonds, since I'm allergic to those too, but I'm sure it would be equally delicious with those added in.

Ingredients

  • 1 (10 to 12-ounce) package baby spinach, washed and dried
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted
  • 1 pint strawberries, hulled and quartered
  • 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely diced

Dressing:

  • 1/2 lemon, juiced
  • 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon poppy seeds

Directions

In a large salad bowl, add the spinach, almonds, strawberries, and cucumber and toss together.
For the dressing:
In a small glass bowl or jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine the lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, oil, and poppy seeds. Whisk together in the glass bowl or shake if using a jar.
Dress the salad right before serving.

And the finished product:




Monday, September 17, 2012

Quinoa Salad

I figured that the food at the shower was such a hit that I would post the recipes here. So this week, we're going to do a recipe week. I only have 4 recipes, so the rest of the week, I'll fill in with recipes that I really like (but those won't have pictures, boo) I don't have pictures of step by step, but everything I made was really easy, so I'll just post the after picture of what it should look like.

Before I post this, I would like to say that I got this from a close friend, and don't know what website she found it on.
ACTIVE: 30 MINTOTAL TIME: 2 HRS 45 MINSERVINGS: 8HEALTHYMAKE-AHEADVEGETARIANINGREDIENTS

12 ounces dried black beans, picked over and rinsed (I just used a can of black beans, and it worked great, you can even do a can and a half if you really like black beans)

Salt

1 cup quinoa, rinsed

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 chipotle in adobo, minced

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

6 scallions, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced

1 small red onion, finely diced

1 yellow bell pepper, finely diced

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

 DIRECTIONS

In a large saucepan, cover the beans with cold water and bring to a boil. Cover and let stand off the heat for 1 hour (unless you're doing the canned and then you can skip this step)

(and this step, see how much easier it is if you just used canned? You get to skip two steps) Drain the beans. Return them to the pot and cover with 3 inches of water. Bring to a boil and simmer over low heat until tender, about 1 hour and 30 minutes; season generously with salt during the last 10 minutes. Drain and let cool

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, combine the quinoa with 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Cover the saucepan and simmer the quinoa over low heat until the water has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Spread the quinoa on a plate and let cool.

In a large bowl, whisk the vinegar, soy sauce, lime juice and chipotle. Add the olive oil in a thin stream, whisking until blended. Add the black beans, quinoa, scallions, red onion, yellow pepper and cilantro. Season with salt, toss to combine and serve.
See, totally easy right? And this is your finished product, always a crowd pleaser and lasts in the fridge for a while, easy lunches too!


Sunday, September 16, 2012

That Time I Ran a Half Marathon

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that long ago, 2 weeks...but now I'm left with, now what? I spent the last 3 months running over 200 miles trying to train for this sucker...I knew what I was going to be doing every other day, running, and running, just keep running. But now that I'm done, I'm not sure what to do. This week I went to my beloved cardio kickboxing class, this used to be my favorite form of exercise, after class I felt great, but I feel like it's not enough any more. I have a love/hate relationship with running, I like the way I feel after I'm done, but hate almost every moment while I'm doing it. This could be the heat talking...where is Fall? Weather.com says it's supposed to be 97° tomorrow, huh? I want cooler weather please, thanks! I digress, I signed up for personal training sessions (okay I didn't sign up as they told me I had unused sessions left from 2005! Yep 2005, heck ya I'll take them!) I had my first session on Thursday, still don't know how I feel, got a good workout, but it's not something we can afford to keep up. What is your exercise regime?

What's a post without pictures? Here's me at mile 12.5 or so...only 0.6 miles left, I can do it!

Me and Baby Fox, yep we got him up at 4am to come with me to the run, he stayed awake the whole time and then took a 5 hour nap when we got home (does that even count as a nap?) 


If you ever do run a 1/2 marathon try out the Disney Half, it's Labor Day weekend every year and it's a fantastic first one to do. You run through Disneyland, California Adventure and actually run through Angel Stadium (with people cheering for you), it was an awesome first 1/2 marathon.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Tuck it In, Tuck it In

Another outfit with my shirt tucked in. I feel so grown up. Seriously, for whatever reason, the only people I associated with tucked in shirts are old women, with their pants up over their waistline, or those really skinny models who don't have an ounce of fat and can pull it off. But I went out of my comfort zone and pulled these two things together. I haven't worn this skirt in forever becasue I didn't know what went with it. I think this works...I'm far from being a fashionista, but you've got to start somewhere right? Happy weekend! We finally have a weekend with NOTHING planned, it's going to be glorious, what are you doing?


p.s. the reason I am sans bracelets or anything on my wrists is that I sit at a desk all day and it was driving all the guys nuts with the clanging of bracelets...they just don't understand fashion...

Thursday, September 13, 2012

My camera broke


My.Camera.Broke.

Bad pass off between The Mr. and me...*insert sad face here*

I'm sad, I still have my DSLR, but it's not the same, I miss being able to grab my camera and go. There have been NO pictures taken of Baby Fox this week, double sad. He got a haircut, I have not documented it.

The Mr. and I decided to wait till the Christmas sales on cameras come around Thanksgiving, it cannot come soon enough! Don't get my wrong I love me "fancy" camera, but I miss taking my little point and shoot with me everywhere I go...

Please a moment of silence...

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Bridal Shower - Tiffany Style

I threw my best friend a bridal shower. She lives up in the mountains, so we had to bring everything up with us, but I think it turned out pretty good (I am jealous of the grass, how does he get his grass so green and fluffy, yep this is totally real, not that fake stuff, and it's so soft to walk on). So the first table on the left is where the gifts went, the next table is the drinks, and the far table is where the food went.


I got pictures of the bride and groom as kids and then made frames using my cricut, and put the pictures in them, used some ribbon and there you have frames in trees.

Drinks, you can see the pictures a bit better from this view.

I hung some of paper lanterns from the trees above where the food was going to go. These were bought at Micheal's, they are reusable, so a good investment in my opinion.

Here's the table when we got the food on it (top left - quinoa salad, top middle - fruit salad, top right - chicken sandwiches on criosants, bottom left - strawberry spinach salad, bottom right - chinese chicken salad). We had about 20 people and this was the PERFECT amount of food. I couldn't believe how pefect it was, there was about 1/2 a serving left on each plate.
We knew that it was going to be outside and sunny/hot in early August, so we found some EZ tents, so people had shade to eat lunch under.


The table just had mason jars filled with Daisy's, and then we put a fork and knife in the napkin tied with ribbon.


Here's those tissue pom poms  I know you were dying to see! Don't they look great? 

If you look close there are little chocolate favors, they have Hershey kisses with a tag that says the bride and grooms name along with their wedding date.

There you have it, a bridal shower fit for a queen. Considering we had to bring everything up the mountain with us, I think we did pretty good. Everything turned out perfect and I couldn't have asked for a better bridal shower. Up next week, another bridal shower, I threw with my mom and sister for my brother and his wife.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

DIY Tissue Pom Poms

Okay, so I didn't get great pictures towards the end. I had 20 of them to make, and had people helping me make them, sooooo, here are the pictures I did get. It's super easy. When looking up how to make these online, like on this site, it calls for 20 x 30 tissue sheets, but those aren't really readily available at the stores. Well they might be, but at the cheaper stores, like the Dollar Store or Big Lots they come in 20 x 20, and trust me, you can make them with this size too. So I started off with tissue paper, some good sharp scissors and some wire, mine was white but you can use anything.


First unfold the tissue, the best pom poms have more tissue (the tutorial calls for 10 sheets), but I did one with just 10 sheets and that worked too, but since I only had 20 x 20 sheets, it was a little on the light side, and "airy", with 15 sheets, it had the more full affect, I think some of mine had 16 or 17 (yep I can't count, those suckers are thin and hard to separate)

Then you need to accordion fold it

Continue the accordion or "fan folding"


When you're done, you'll have something that looks like this. The folds don't have to be totally perfect.

Then you need to wrap the wire around the middle. Like so:

I added a little loop in there, so that I had a good place to add the string so I can hang them easily. You'll thank me later for this part. Make sure you make the loop is on the flat part, if you put the loop anywhere else, like on the the side where the folds are, it won't work, I tried that, and the pom pom didn't "fluff" right when hung.

Next, if you want to make the edges rounded, or pointy, this is when you cut. I wanted rounded for mine, but the same application can be used for the pointy, etc. The tutorial shows them cutting it all at once, I found this REALLY hard, so I did it phases. As you can see below I took about half the stack and cut my rounded edge.

Then took the second half and matched it, I found this much easier, and nicer on my fingers and my scissors.

In the tutorial it's this nice pile, this is what my pile looked like, don't worry, it's slightly messy, I think they stage stuff in those pictures to make it look easier then it really is, just to make people feel bad when ours doesn't come out the same. Join me in a messy pile!

When you're done, it should look something like this:

I added a string at this point, I tried doing it after, but it didn't work out as well, and the string really doesn't get in the way.


Now here comes the long part. Spread out your "fan" and then one by one start separating the tissues from each other. When you're separating the tissues, if you try to separate as close to the middle as possible. If that makes sense.

See how my model (aka, best friend who's shower I'm throwing and I'm making her work), starts her separation from the center? The more separation you can get from each sheet, the fluffier your pom pom is going to be. So you're going to "fluff" half of the stack up, then flip over the stack and fluff the other half in the other direction.

Looking at the picture below, she's fluffing alternating sides. She's fluffed the right side, and is now fluffing the left side. You can either separate from the left, then the right and switch back and forth (I found that this worked better), but you can also separate the sheets from one side, then the other side, then flip the whole thing around...

This is just part of the stack being fluffed, maybe 3 or 4 more sheets and we're going to flip the stack the other way and do the same thing to the other side.

After you fluffed both sides, you just need to move the tissue around so it looks seemless. Sorry I don't have a picture of this part. But you'll get it, and if you tear some of the layers, don't worry, you won't be able to see it. These are all the pom poms we made that night. You can tell they don't look "perfect" but just wait till you see them hung (post coming tomorrow). Until then...happy Pom, Pom'ing'!