A super Super Bowl

V has hosted a Super Bowl party for at least six years in a row now. I consider most of our parties joint parties but I think of the Superbowl as his party. He looks forward to it all year, it’s pretty much his favorite day of the year.

The menu has stayed consistent over the years: chicken wings and veggie tempura. Veggies go into the deep fryer first so vegetarians can have their food cooked in untainted oil. Then at halftime, the chicken wings start to come out. I don’t like buffalo wings (or sauce in general) so V always serves the chicken with and without the sauce.

Notice how the two kinds are completely segregated? V accommodates my prejudice against sauce. He is awesome like that.

But I also reciprocate the awesomeness. Each year, I create a football-themed dessert to cap off the food fest. The first year, I made Nutella macarons dyed Indy blue. Last year, I made Oreo cookie truffles shaped like footballs. This year, I made chocolate-dipped strawberries made to look like footballs. It’s my favorite Super Bowl dessert so far. It took some time to make and I had a little bit of a claw-hand after I finished piping the “laces” on but I enjoyed making it.

My inspiration was Shari’s Berries. Theirs look much better than mine but mine also cost much less. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to make these considering chocolate-dipped strawberries are always so expensive. But perhaps it was easy for me because I have several years of fruit-dipping experience. My sister and I worked at Novakovich Orchards dipping dried apricots in chocolate during Christmas time while we were in college.

Nevertheless, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• thoroughly washed strawberries with leaves attached. The leaves will serve as your handle when you dip into the chocolate
• melted semi-sweet chocolate. You can melt it on a double boiler or in the microwave. I put it in for 30 seconds, mix it, put in for another 30 seconds, mix, repeat until thoroughly melted.
• melted white chocolate. Use same melting process above. Don’t melt the white chocolate until you’re ready to pipe the lacing on

Equipment Needed

• tray
• parchment paper or wax paper
• fine piping tip
• piping bag or sandwich bag with a corner cut off to fit the piping tip

Directions

1. Line the tray with parchment or wax paper.

2. Pick a up a strawberry from the top and dip into the melted chocolate. Rotate the surface of the strawberry on the chocolate to coat as much of the surface as possible without getting chocolate on the leaves.

3. Gently shake off excess chocolate, carefully flip the strawberry 45 degrees up so the chocolate doesn’t drip down en route to the tray.

4. Place strawberry on tray.

5. Repeat until all your strawberries have been dipped.

6. Refrigerate the chocolate-dipped strawberries for an hour or two until chocolate is completely hardened.

7. Melt white chocolate and begin piping any design you want. You can even skip the piping and just use a fork to drizzle white stripes. If you were so inclined, you could pipe a skull and crossbones design. Your friends won’t know whether to beware or devour the strawberries.

Blog reboot!

Let’s give blogging another try, shall we?

I’ve been blogging since 2001. I keep falling off the bandwagon but as they say, pick yourself up and get right back on!

Since May 2010, there have been some major-ish changes in the life of V and K:

- Moved to a new apartment. Our new apartment is three blocks away from our old apartment. Our apartment complex has a sauna (I’ve used maybe five times), a steam room (haven’t used it, smells funny) and a gym (used twice). It also has an awesome rooftop which we’ve used a lot for hanging out and parties.

I hosted a bridal shower in our "sunroom." It's really the area in front of the elevators leading to the rooftop.

- V started a full-time job. No more house spouse .

- I lost 10 lbs!! I started eating less and got hooked on barre at The Dailey Method. I was using EA Sports Active for a few months but had to quit due to knee pain.

- I started a side business. Head on over to The Shoe Tote and buy a protective bag for your shoes!

I was also able to keep up with my goal of traveling internationally at least once a year. 

NYC!!

I get to go to NYC for work, wooo! The work thing is only for one day (just one night, actually) but the timing works out so I can fly out early and spend the weekend there. The trip isn’t until mid-May but I’m super excited to make plans for my trip.

NYC to me means one thing: AWESOME FOOD

It is home to my most favorite dessert ever: frozen, whipped goat cheese with lemon custard and raspberry sorbet.

I can’t wait to try new restaurants, visit the Met, munch on street food and maybe watch a show. I’ll have to plan my itinerary carefully. I will have room for about 8 sit-down meals (that’s how fatties count time – by meals, not by days or hours) and 5 more casual meals (breakfast).

This will be my 4th trip to New York and I don’t see myself ever getting tired of the city. If I lived in New York, I think I’d be seriously overweight and broke.

Birthday month

There are a lot of March babies in my circle. Multiple friends, V and sis 1.

This past Sunday was my sister’s big X-0th birthday. We threw a party for her at her house where 70 to 100 friends and relatives came to celebrate. The sun was shining and the food was good.

I took some photos from my perspective, which was the ground since I laid down on the grass for a nap.

I call this tangle

I call this high fructose corn syrup and plastic

Busy birthday

I celebrated my birthday this past week, too busy shopping to blog.

I bought:
- 4 dresses
- 1 pair of shoes
- 1 coat
- the breakfast mug I already posted about

We ate at Chez Panisse the week before but for my actual birthday, I wanted to stay in. V spent hours preparing a multi-course meal. I’m only posting one picture though because my photography skills are poor.

ceviche with grilled corn and grilled sweet potatoes

V’s birthday

It was V’s birthday this week so we celebrated with a special meal. We kept it low-key since he doesn’t want a big celebration until after he submits his dissertation.

I’m a bit embarrassed to say that V cooked his own birthday dinner. But that’s only because he wanted steak and he’s very particular about his steak.

For dessert, instead of cake, we had macarons.

The main course was steak with leek-mushroom sauce and a side of pureed purple cauliflower. I would post a pic but the pic didn’t turn out well so I’ll jsut leave that to your imagination. The food was awesomely good!

Super Bowl XLIV

The Colts lost

But our party still kicked butt. After weeks of writing about our party, I finally have pics to share even though I forgot to take pics of the food.

I promised V a manly tablescape and I think I delivered. My sister recently bought a Cricut which made the whole thing really easy. As with all my other tablescapes, I didn’t want to spend any money so I pulled it together using materials I had around the house. I spent $5 to buy a pack of paper though since I didn’t have blue paper.

Time flies when you’re having fun

It’s only the first week of February and it feels like the month is just flying by! I already have the next three weekends blocked out (a rare thing for a stay-at-home type like me). It’s been so busy, I haven’t had much time to write.

So until next week, here’s a pic to keep you amused. It’s from the 4th of July last year when I got to watch the fireworks from a yacht.

Stay tuned for my Super Bowl party recap next week!

Killing Me Softly

Over the weekend, I finished wrapping and freezing my garlicky veggie eggrolls for our Super Bowl party. I cooked a couple for V and myself for a taste test and I want more! There are 40 yummy eggrolls in the freezer and it’s killing me knowing that I can’t eat any until Feb. 7. There will be around 12 people at the party and I want to make sure we have enough for everyone. I don’t know whether to hope the guests like it and clamor for more or that they don’t like it, leaving more for me.

I use a very basic recipe and I was worried that it would taste too plain for V. But he liked it so score one point for me in my quest to learn Filipino cooking.

K’s recipe for garlicky veggie eggrolls
2 lbs frozen mixed vegetables (I use the mix with peas, carrots, corn, lima beans, green beans)
1 pack Menlo egg wrappers (you have to buy reliable wrappers, some are too fragile and rip too easily during the wrapping process)
1.5 heads garlic
1 tsp salt

1) Pick out the green beans from the frozen vegetables and throw them away. I dislike green beans. (optional)

2) Chop the garlic finely and toss with the veggies.

3) Add the salt and mix.

4) Mix the veggies occasionally while wrapping to ensure even distribution of the veggies.

5) Wrap the eggrolls. I like fat eggrolls so I put two spoonfuls in each eggroll.

6) If you’re pan frying the eggrolls, fry over medium heat. The wrappers brown easily and you don’t want it to brown before the veggies inside are fully cooked.

Planning for the Super Bowl

This weekend, I tested out a recipe for our annual Super Bowl party.

I made French macarons!