Sometimes I just need a nice evening out

Tonight it was with my girl friend (whose husband was out of town),not my husband, but still it was a great evening.

I picked up my friend at 6pm and we started rolling. WE weren't sure where to go but decided to head towards the city. We ended up at Asia de Cuba. I had been there once, years before, and my friend never had.

The view was beautiful. I would love to come back in the summer, during sunset, when I can fully appreciate the view, and sit outside during dinner.

The food was one of the most memorable meals I have had in a long time.

We started with two appetizers:
Tunapica - good and different, might have been great if we hadn't been served the calamari first
tuna tartare picadillo style with spanish olives, black currants, almonds, coconut, soy-lime vinaigrette and wonton crisps

Calamari salad 'asia de cuba' - I can see why this is a signature dish. We just COULD NOT stop eating it! The portion was huge and we still had some left over to take home
crispy calamari with chayote, hearts of palm, banana, cashews, chicory and radicchio, sesame orange dressing

We shared an entree:
Miso cured alaskan black cod - One of the best cooked pieces of fish I have had. I would have this over and over again!!!
cuban black bean and edamame salad, tempura shisito peppers

We also shared a side dish:
Plantain fried rice with avocado salad - This is another signature dish of theirs. Somehow this dish transcends regular fried rice and elevates it to this amazing symphony of flavors! YUMMY!!!

We each had Mojitos served with sugar cane sticks. The drinks were fantastic.

This was not a cheap dinner but VERY worth it. Truthfully though, the two of us could have easily done without the tuna tartare and not felt like we were missing a thing.

After dinner we took Pico Blvd. down to Santa Monica. Driving along Pico was fun (we passed by Don Antonio's for anyone who has watched The Hills since season 2). We stopped in at Casa del Mar and had a drink in the lounge. The hotel is BEAUTIFUL.

The evening complete we drove back home.

This was a nice, relaxing evening. We had no concrete plans but knew we wanted to have a nice dinner somewhere we didn't usually go. We didn't feel rushed or stressed.

Once in a while, you definitely need an evening JUST LIKE THIS!!

Beautiful Friendship Award

Quirkyloon, whose blog I never miss, gave me this AWESOME friendship award. It's so pretty :) She even called me beautiful - and I didn't have to pay her!

The "rules" for this award are quite painless.

Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who can choose eight more and include this text into the body of their award.

I love all the blogs I follow, but I guess I should play nice and choose 8 (since Quirky already choose Lee, and since Lee is aways so swamped she doesn't post these, I won't include her):

Caffeine Court - She's a new find of mine but I think she's great. And she recaps my guilty pleasure shows, like The Real Housewives of OC and NY!

Secret Life of Tova Darling - She is the creator of Totally Awkward Tuesday, which I LOVE!

Bern This - She has absolutely amazing stories that are written so well. I am jealous!

I Need A Martini Mom - She is my BLOGGING IDOL!

The Norwidians - Her kids are TOTALLY cute and are great dancers ;)

Under The Influence - Jo has great posts and GREAT HAIR!

The Kids Did What - Her NOT ME MONDAYS drawings are so vivid, she must spend hours on them ;)

LA MOM - I look forward to her stories about Paris on a regular basis!

Great award. Thanks again Quirky! I really do consider everyone I follow, and who follow me, good friends :)

Grocery Shopping Again

Thanks in big part to this blog, I have re-discovered The Grocery Game. IT really is an AMAZING way to save money. It only takes a couple of minutes to check the lists and choose what you want to buy. Cutting out the coupons takes me 30 minutes (I keep each Sunday coupon insert whole). Printing coupons from places such as coupons.com takes another 10 minutes. Grocery shopping with the list takes about 30 minutes.

Seeing the total go down, down, down = PRICELESS

This week I save $83.61, and that includes the $26.99 extended edition of the High School Musical 3 movie (which has a peelie on it for free bread and cold cuts, I had a $10 coupon for the movie and I had manufacturers coupons for both the bread and cold cuts).





Lee, from MWOB, asked me about arranging my groceries. That's like the big win at the end of it for me. I can step back and see EVERYTHING I have bought. I'm a dork - I get a big kick out of it.



I've also linked up to The New Frugal Mom, who has a list of all the good deals at Kroger.

Bad Sport

Today my older monkey tells me that her teacher wants to call me. That is NEVER a good thing.

It's because my monkey was a bad sport today :( She was playing kickball and a boy grabbed her by her shirt and got her out. So she went in the corner and started crying :( She HATES to LOSE! And then the kids told the teacher.

I relayed this story to the husband and told him to talk to her about being a good sport. His response...

"Why?"

Other gems included "It's NEVER a good game if you lose", which was in response to my telling him that she needs to be taught to say good game when she loses.

UGH!!!

At least he said he'd talk to her about not crying when she loses.

I guess it's because he is so competitive and always played to WIN (he was on the Varsity football team as a Freshman in high school).

Men (at least my man) can be IDIOTS!!

Weight

All of us (ok, most of us) struggle with attaining some kind of "ideal" that is known only to us. Usually this ideal coincides with numbers on a scale.

However, I do have some question.

• Why is it that the scale keeps going up but people tell me how great I look?
• Does muscle really weight THAT much more than fat? REALLY??
• If all I eat is soup, even if it's Asian MSG filled soup, why is it that the scale goes up in the morning?
• Why is it that some clothes fit exactly the same, some are a bit looser and some are tighter?
• How is it that I can increase the number of times a week I work out and STILL gain weight?

And the BIG ONES:

• Why do I care so much about those little numbers on the scale???
• Why am I so OBSESSED with one particular number???

Things aren't always smooth when I bake

aka Why I don't like to bake as much as I like to cook.

For Valentines Day, the husband gave me a couple of items from one of my FAVORITE stores, Williams Sonoma. One of the items, I already had. So, I went to exchange it for something I didn't have but wanted.

Is it a sign of a mental illness when I realized that I had pretty much every cooking gadget that I wanted or needed?!?!?!?!?!

However, I didn't have this (http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/cw425/index.cfm?pkey=xsrd0m1%7C16%7C%7C%7C0%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7Cbouchon&cm%5Fsrc=SCH):

It was expensive, but I had to replace my Valentine's gift, right?? And the mold is re-usable.

On Saturday, I took the kids to see a play and afterwords to lunch with their friends and then everyone came back to my place.

Since no one was hungry, I decided to make these "corks".

First off - inside the huge canister was three bags. One was labeled sugar, one chocolate chips and one Bouchon mix. They're charging $18 for 2/3 sugar and chocolate chips??? WTF?!?!?! And I had to add my own butter and eggs!!

So I started following the directions on the back of the mix canister.

Melt one stick of butter in a sauce pan - CHECK.
Put the other stick of butter in a bowl - CHECK (in to the electric mixes bowl it went).

This is apparently where it gets tricky!

Pour the melted butter over the un-melted stick - CHECK.
Begin to stir the butters together - CH....Oh no, FLYING BUTTER comes at me.
And this didn't just happen once - it happened AT LEAST 3 times!!! It was funny as all hell but still! Our friends were over and just staring at this sight of butter catapulting towards me.

I told them, "See! Not everything I make is easy for me :)"

After I got the butter to stay in the bowl, I finished the corks. They were amazingly delicious. They didn't rise as high as I thought they should (I think I under filled the mold since I got 24 not 18) and I seem to have misplaced my powdered sugar, but non-the-less these were mighty tasty! Very similar to bite sized molton lava cakes.

Next time I'll just use the recipe that come with the mold and watch out for the flying butter :)

Recession

Tonight I went to sushi with a girl friend. It was a great place that we used to go to quite often (about once every two weeks or so). Due to scheduling conflicts, and the economy, we haven't been in a couple of months.

I remember that WHENEVER we went, be it lunch or dinner, the sushi bar was always packed. I got there at 5:35pm and the place was EMPTY! I was the first person to sit at the sushi bar.

By 6:30, the place was more than 1/2 full, but many tables and sushi bar places were taken by families with kids (kids definitely don't eat as much, and as high priced, sushi as adults do).

According to the sushi chef their business is 30% down since September. And they're one of the lucky ones. A number of their competitors have closed their doors.

Even between my friend and I, we ate less than we have in the past. Personally, I was very happy with the lower bill. At the same time, I felt kind of guilty so gave a little bigger of a tip.

Best Invention Ever

This looks so cool! Of course, WAY TOO EMBARRASSED to get this or use this!

http://www.go-girl.com/what-is-gogirl.asp





What do you guys think?

Enough with the melancholy, on to the funny

S O M E T I M E S

Sometimes...

when you cry...

no one sees your tears.

Sometimes...

when you are in pain...

no one sees your hurt.

Sometimes...

when you are worried...

no one sees your stress.

Sometimes...

when you are happy..

no one sees your smile .

- - - - - - - - - - But FART!! just ONE time...

And everybody knows!!

Gotcha!! You thought it was going to be one of those heart-touching stories!

Feel free to pass it on :)

Not Today

Just feeling blah today - letting all those little and big things get me down and unhappy :(

I can't fake it today. Tomorrow I will be better.

There is a cute cartoon I want to post. It is on my work computer.

Sorry for the lame post.

Fake it 'til you make it

Tonight was cold! Really Cold! Once again, "cold" is in context. 48 degrees cold! I was tired and COLD! But Zumba was waiting.

Once the class started I forgot all about being cold, but I was still dragging. The teacher decided to wake all of us up - he SPED up the musicto almost double time! It was like Zumba on Speed. Some of the nice girls in the class and I would make eye contact and just start to crack up! We increased our energy, even though we didn't want to, and really put our all in to it! We made faces in the mirror and had a great time with the class. It was an amazing workout, as always, but tonight there was that extra something that made us go the extra mile.

In my case, I DEFINITELY FAKED IT 'TIL I MADE IT!!

I find myself doing that more often these days, in other parts of my life. At work, no matter how many time I answer the same question, I keep a smile in my voice and treat every person who calls like I have all the time in the world for them. During the days, I REALLY want to cry, I put on a smile and go about my day like nothing is wrong.

There are still days where nothing can get me out of my funk, but I'm learning to be a happier person, even though I frequently FAKE IT 'TIL I MAKE IT :)

Blogger Questions

A couple of questions that have been plaguing me recently:

• How do I respond to an individual comment in an email to the person with their comment quoted?
• What are those links at the bottom of the posts, and why do them?
• Should I change my blog layout (it is my original one and quite plain)?
• Does labeling my posts really help?

OK - I guess it is just 3 questions, but they have been plaguing me and I need answers. Pretty please with a cherry on top!

Grocery Shopping

Today my in-laws had the kids, and after my husband went to work, I had a couple of hours to myself. So, after relaxing for about an hour, I decided to go grocery shopping.

Armed with my "grocery game" list, I went to Pavilions (owned by Safeway). The "list" was really good this week cleaning products especially! Also, paper towels and toilet paper. Also, mushrooms were like $.88 a package (they have been over $2 a package in the past year).

With only 30 minutes of work, consisting of cutting out coupons, I saved $58.53, of which almost $20 was just coupons.

Not bad!

My first post

Deb, from Dirty Socks and Pizza, wanted us to re-print our first blog entries. Even though mine was just a few months ago, it feels like I am opening a time capsule by re-posting.

Here goes:

I was talking to a friend today and I made a coherent, well thought-out comment.... Sometimes I do have moments of lucidity!

We were discussing body images. It's a subject near and dear to most every woman I know. Thin, Fat, Short, Tall, conventionally beautiful, and those whose beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I grew up thinking I was heavy and unattractive. Looking back at my pictures, I was not "skinny", but I was nowhere near fat. I developed early so in turn looked big in regular clothes, especially being 5'2". It took a long time to be comfortable with my body.

It took having kids, working out regularly and knowing I am strong. My kids know I am healthy, and know that part of being healthy is exercising (running around outside, dance, Taekwondo, etc...) and that part is eating well (fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and yes, even candy). I try to limit the sweets, but we talk about how to be healthy you have to eat good things, and candy isn't that good for you. IT'S NEVER ABOUT SIZE. It's about health. Hopefully, thanks to the lessons I learned growing up, I can save my kids some heart ache. Or maybe not, but I continue to try - especially in LA (the land of "LA 10's").

So, in honor of my moments of lucidity, I posted the above picture. It's not the best picture of me, but this picture is not about how I look (probably the only time I'll say that). I complained most of the way up the mountain, and I huffed and puffed and had to take breaks, but once up at the top I noticed it's beauty. And was happy I was able to reach the top. And felt strong, and knew that I would not feel sore the next day. This was my moment of lucidity, my AHA! moment.

Sure - I still obsess about the way my clothes fit and what the numbers on the scale mean and what my hair is doing and the adult pimples and if I'm a good mom and a good employee. I keep telling myself that these insecurities help push me to do better, and be a better person.

I hope to blog regularly, as I spend a lot of time at night just watching shows I've TIVO'd and surfing the net.

I'll blog about kids, food, crappy TV and random stuff that only I find interesting.

Hopefully, it will be interesting to more than just me.

The 8 Phases of Dating

In the (tongue in cheek) spirit of Valentines Day, I bring you the following:

http://mingle2.com/dating/phases

It's pretty darn cynical but quite accurate.

Enjoy!