Jennifer & Ronald

I don't think I shared these crafts yet. Fun and easy gifts to make and give.

Lavender scented salt & sugar scrub.

Bath bombs, things that fizz when you drop them in the bath water. Using my cute Hello Kitty cake molds.

I bought all the ingredients from Amazon and the instructions for each item at this great website called Instructables.

I had a craving for crepes after hearing my co-worker Patsy talk about them so after work, Ron took me to Japantown for some Sanrio shopping and crepes. Patsy told me there was a new Sanrio store open in Japantown so of course I had to go see. It's one of the new boutique shops of Sanrio. For a picture of the storefront, check out Patsy's blog here. I got myself a new coffee mug, a sweatshirt, and a cute green frog for my friend.

Afterwards, we stopped at Sophie's Crepes to satisfy my crepe craving. I ordered the strawberry and nutella crepe (for $5.37 total). The crepe seemed a bit overcooked, too crispy but the strawberries were refreshing and the nutella nice and gooey.

We stopped by Sports Basement afterwards just to check it out, we've never been there before. I get a 10% discount from work. It would've been great if we found something but didn't find anything we wanted just then. We do need new bindings and maybe new boots for our snowboards but probably won't get them until the end of winter.

Afterwards we were craving Japanese for dinner and went to check out this local place called Halu. We've passed by it a few times before while looking for parking in the area and I read good reviews about it on Yelp! so thought it a good place to try. They serve mostly yakitori, ramen, and rice dishes. The place is very unique, very small... they have tons of Beatles paraphernalia and great Beatles music!

We had some sake. Light and refreshing.

The deluxe yakitori combination platter. There's no choice but a good selection of 7 skewers. From left to right: chicken wings, shrimp, okra, mushrooms, chicken, chicken meatballs, and beef (the beef was the best).

The agedashi tofu. Was a bit soggy but the sauce very tasty.

Chasu ramen. Soup was a bit bland but with the addition of a bit of spices, much better. The soup is very "creamy" so watch out. The pork was very tender, almost melted in your mouth. The ramen was thinner than I liked but cooked well.

Overall, I probably wouldn't return for the chasu ramen but they do have a special butter garlic ramen that might be yummy and also have okonomiyaki which we'll have to go back and try. The beef yakitori was the best and the people sitting next to us had asparagus wrapped in bacon which looked really good too so we'd have to try other yakitori options if we go there again.

Sophie's Crepes
1581 Webster Street (between Geary Blvd & Post St)
Near Kinokuniya Bookstore

Halu
312 8th Avenue (between Clement St & Geary Blvd)

Link: http://www.maccosmetics.com/

I've been seeing a few hits on my blog searching for the MAC Hello Kitty Collection so just thought I'd share some photos about the actual products.

This is what the lipstick case looks like.

The color of this lipstick is called "Most Popular" and it has this really cute imprint of Hello Kitty on the lipstick itself. Friends keep on asking me will I use this, of course I will (and have)!

This is the eyeshadow case.

The powder case, I love the sparkles on the black.

I'll hate to destroy the imprint of Hello Kitty on the powder itself but I don't believe in buying Hello Kitty items and not using them.

Seems like they've been having lots of events at department stores. I walked through Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom's and all the products were on display and offering free makeovers. I was talking with the cashier at Trader Joe's last night and she said they had a model at Bloomingdale's wearing one of those huge pink cotton candy things like in the advertisements. (The ad is a bit weird...)

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You can also find the makeup bags and keychain at the Sanrio store in downtown San Francisco. You can find lots of events posted on Facebook.

Hello Kitty

Mimmy

Birthday cards for my friends who are twins!

Not made by us... but our friend Dan. He made his own dough and put on lots of yummy toppings. He mentioned he made pizza dough using Mario Batali's recipe, I think this one, and also his own beer dough. It was thin crust and very crispy.

This is unagi pizza, yes, that's eel. As Dan says, highly experimental, but actually not half bad, it was a bit too spicy though.

He also made his own wheat pasta. It was a little dense but had good flavor.

Again, men in the kitchen while the ladies enjoy a glass a wine... a good way to spend an evening.

We're watching you...

The kitties are so funny, when I come home from work and sit at the kitchen table at my computer, they'll come up close to me and plop down right next to my chair, attention hungry maybe? Not sure but very cute.

Link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/almost-famous-soft-pretzels-recipe/index.html

So I'm starting to really like Food Network Magazine, they have fun recipes and it's so easy just to flip open the page and start cooking rather than having to go online, search for the recipe, and print it out. I decided to try out the "Almost Famous Soft Pretzels" recipe. It's my first time making any sort of bread with yeast.

It ended up not being too difficult. I had to let it rise for about an hour and it almost took up the space of the whole bowl.

Then you "punch" it to let out all the air... it actually made a "pheewww" sound as it deflated...

It's pretty hard to shape pretzels though. The dough is very sticky and stretchy. This is when I miss my granite countertop. With tile countertop, I'm afraid the grout will be dirty so don't want to roll out anything directly on top. Plus I don't have a big enough cutting board :( Oh well...

But they still turned out pretty nice... the outside was nice and brown and crisp, the inside soft and chewy. The sauce a bit too sweet and be sure not to use too much cider vinegar or else it'll be watered down. Also I didn't use the butter in the recipe at the end, the pretzels don't need it.

Link: http://www.yelp.com/biz/panchos-salsa-bar-and-grill-san-francisco-2

Ron and I had dinner on Monday night at Pancho's, it's only a few blocks from our apt so we thought we'd give it a try since it'd be nice to have a convenient Mexican place to go to nearby.

We ordered the nachos with chicken, a steak "Borracho Burrito", and horchata.

The horchata was pretty good but could've done with a bit more ice or cooling.

The chips with the nachos were nice and crispy but the cheese wasn't evenly spread around so that was a bit disappointing. But at least the cheese was fresh and not that processed goo.

Ron had the burrito (sorry no pics) and it was filling although we thought the sauce was a bit strange. In the description, it's a Homemade Mexican BBQ sauce and it was just a bit too sweet for our taste.

Unfortunately, I don't think their food sat well with my stomach as I had a stomach ache all night long so I don't think we'll be going back there... but doesn't mean anyone else shouldn't try it since I have a sensitive stomach for Mexican, I can't even eat Taco Bell!

Pancho's
3440 Geary Blvd (at Stanyan)

Link: http://www.masasrestaurant.com/

I had the pleasure of attending another pharmaceutical company dinner (Novartis) at Masa's Restaurant. The speaker presented about Reclast, an intravenous drug for osteoporosis. We use it sometimes at work but not often since most of our patients have cancer, so we're used to seeing Zometa. We had a very intimate dining experience at Masa's in their wine room with about 14 people attending.

I was too self conscious to take photos until the end... the dessert was a baked Alaska with a little bits of fruits (mostly strawberries).

Link: http://www.frenchlaundry.com/

Thanks to Susan & Ken for providing the rest of the pictures from our fabulous Valentine's Day dinner...

The menu again, starting after the lobster tail...

Liberty Farms Pekin Duck Breast
(Note: those truffles were delicious!)

Confit de coeur de veau
(Veal heart... a bit like pastrami)

Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Rib-eye

Idiazabal (the cheese course)

Diane Saint Clair Buttermilk Sorbet

Mousse au chocolat Amedei

Braised golden pineapple

and the dinner keeps on going... more desserts...

Hand-dipped chocolates, our favorite: the passion fruit (the one with red/gold on top)

Plus a little going away snack, a chocolate heart for the ladies and shortbread sugar cookies for the gentlemen.

We were a very happy group of diners

And one more parting gift (and it's still blooming after a week...)

It was a splurge but worth it, a once in a lifetime meal...

The French Laundry
6640 Washington Street
Yountville, CA 94599

A big day of updating...

Feb 11 - Dinner at Kokkari

Feb 13 - Heart "OREO" cookies

Feb 14 - The French Laundry (a preview)

Feb 15 - Samovar Tea Lounge

Link: http://www.happymeal.com/en_US/index.html#GirlToys

It's that time again for Hello Kitty Happy Meal Toys... anyone want to share some fries?

Link: http://www.samovartea.com/

Since Ron was going to work all day, I thought I'd go to have high tea with some girlfriends. Vicki and Kat both came out in the pouring rain to try out Samovar Tea Lounge. I've been with Vicki to Secret Garden Tea House and have been wanting to try other tea houses in the city.

Samovar does not take reservations so we just arranged to meet there at 1:30pm. We were seated right away but it got pretty busy while we were waiting for Kat. We decided to try two of their tea services, the Russian and English tea service. At the bottom of the menu, it stated "please refrain from taking photos" so only took two photos with my phone... I didn't want to pull out the big DSLR and get scolded...

The Russian tea service has a beet salad, seasame crackers, fish with horseradish sauce (nice and spicy), fresh fruits, and a deviled egg with caviar. The tea was prepared on the samovar near the kitchen and you had to get up to refill your tea but you could have as much as you wanted. I didn't really enjoy the black tea, it was a bit too bitter for me and not as fragrant as I thought it would be.

The English tea service had a mushroom (or salmon) quiche with a baby green salad, a scone with jam and cream, and some fresh fruits. The tea was very traditional in flavor, I think a lighter red tea.

We also shared the ginger syrup waffles also served with fresh fruits (sorry no photo).

I don't think any of us will be going back to Samovar though. It was an interesting experience and very different than the traditional English tea. The music in the background were chants, traditional Chinese, and other languages... so a bit strange. It's also a bit touristy in this location but they do have a nice outdoor space so if it wasn't raining, it would be a nice place to enjoy a pot of freshly brewed tea but the food didn't wow me.

We're going to try to make this a monthly excursion to try other tea or brunch places in the city... next is probably Lovejoy's Tea Room in Noe Valley...

Samovar Tea Lounge
730 Howard Street (between 3rd and 4th Street)
Upper Terrace of Yerba Buena Gardens

Link: http://www.frenchlaundry.com/

I had a nice surprise for Valentine's Day. Ron told me that we were going to Napa for dinner but didn't tell me the name of the restaurant. I had thought it may have been The French Laundry and the only reason I thought this was because since Ron and I share our Google calendars with each other, there was a note on Ron's calendar in December to remind himself to call The French Laundry in December for Valentine's Day. I asked him later about it but he said he wasn't able to get a reservation. It didn't matter to me where we went for dinner, just that we spent the day together and had a good meal. We started the day at home with eggs, bacon, and pancakes (made with Macadamia Nut Hershey Kisses!) and headed out to Napa in the late afternoon for some outlet shopping.

We left the outlets around 5:45pm and it was starting to rain. We went to find a place to maybe buy a bottle of wine for dinner but ended up driving around in vain since all the wineries were already closed. Our dinner reservation wasn't until 6:30pm anyways so weren't in a rush. The restaurant was in Yountville so after driving to Rutherford in search of wine, we turned around and headed back.

It was raining pretty hard so it was hard to see where we were going. Eventually we ended up in a parking lot but there was no restaurant name that I could figure out, just a brass plaque with quails on it...

As we entered the restaurant, I saw our friends Virginia & Dan inside then our friends Susan & Ken followed behind us... and I saw The French Laundry cookbook on the table! The girls were all happily surprised. We were led upstairs right away to a table for six in the cozy corner. I could hardly hold in my excitement!

They offered two menus, a chef's tasting menu and a vegetable tasting menu. Both sounded equally good but we all chose from the chef's tasting menu. It's a 9 course meal and 4 courses, you choose between two items. Ron and I ordered opposite so that we could try each item.

I don't think I can begin to describe each dish as all were delicious... so I'll leave it to your imagination and to drool over the photos... unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries (ack!!) so I don't have all courses photographed but the other girls took photos so I'll get the rest from them... so hence a "preview" only... the service was excellent, attentive but not overly so, and there were lots of little "extras" not listed on the menu...

These were tiny puff pastries with Gruyere cheese.

Salmon "ice cream" cones. The cones were made of sesame and filled with a delicious cream. Those cones were so good.

First course of "Oysters and Pearls".

They offered two types of butter for all our bread services. The first an unsalted local butter and the second a lightly salted creamed butter.

The foie gras with brioche. Interestingly they changed the brioche about 3 minutes after serving it because they like to keep it "fresh" for us. I wonder what they do with the "cold" brioche... Also, the dish is unsalted so they offered us three types of salt to our taste. The pink on the left was my favorite, it was strong but delicious.

Salad of baby red beets.

Tartare of Japanese Bluefin Tuna.

Sauteed Atlantic Striped Bass.

A mini baguette.

Sweet Butter Poached Maine Lobster Tail.

This is where my camera ran out of batteries.... so to be continued...

Link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/oreo-cookies-recipe/index.html

Following the recipe in Food Network magazine (also available online) for "OREO" cookies, I made these heart shaped cookies for our work potluck on Friday the 13th. The filling was delicious but the cookies came out a bit harder than I liked.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CqbZNHaf1o

Need someone to help with your math homework? ...

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Cute song!

Link: http://www.kokkari.com/home/

We had dinner at Kokkari sponsored by Merck, the speaker was HOPA's past president, Jim Koeller. He was an entertaining and knowledgeable speaker. We enjoyed an excellent dinner during his talk.

Pikilia - Greek spreads of melitzanosalata, tzatziki, & taramosalata served with dolmathes & pita bread. The spreads were flavorful and very smooth.

Spanakotiropita - traditional filo pies of spinach, feta, leeks, & dill. The crust was oh so flakey...

Horiatiki - "classic Greek salad" of tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, oregano, olives & feta. Very refreshing.

Patates sto Furno - oven roasted potato with oregano & lemon.

Horta - braised wild greens with lemon.

Arnisia Paidakia - lamb chops with lemon & oregano.

Kotopoulo Souvlas - grilled, yogurt-marinated chicken skewer with peppers & onions.

Thalasina - pan roasted fillet of white fish with olive tapenade.

Sokolatina - flourless dark chocolate cake
Baklava - traditional walnut & honey baklava with vanilla ice cream

The items of the menu are a mouthful to say but were a wonderful mouthful to eat.

Kokkari
200 Jackson Street (at Front)

For dinner last night I made coffee panna cotta with raspberries and Mandarin oranges. It's adapted from a recipe in Martha Stewart Living (because I couldn't find all the ingredients at Safeway).

So Ron has been taking pictures for me about our kitties new sleeping arrangements. They usually end up sleeping together only when I'm at work because once I come home, they all start wandering around looking for attention. Seems like so far, so good.

They still barely fit but they seem to like it.

Maxwell isn't so lucky though. Ron scared him somehow from sleeping in his little cave so he's been hiding underneath the couch and taking naps on my lap when I'm home. Last night we let him into our bedroom to sleep on the bed with us so hopefully he got a restful night's sleep for once.

They way it should be, men in the kitchen while the ladies were enjoying a glass of wine...

Dan made us a delicious dinner. Shrimp with wild mountain spinach.

Prosciutto wrapped char with a light salad.

Crab and grapefruit curry salad.

Linguine carbonara.

Good dinner and more Rock Band 2! :)

Link: http://www.sfindie.com/

We went to the Opening Night of the SF Indiefest at the Victoria Theater. The opening night movie was called Somers Town. Here you can see the trailer:

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I had a bit of a hard time understanding parts of the movie because of the accents and the music was a bit loud but there were really some hilarious parts. It follows the friendship of these two boys living in London.

As we were leaving the theater, there were people outside promoting the Fanboys movie. From the trailer, it sounds like a movie about trying to break into George Lucas' ranch.

Afterwards we went to their opening night party at Cellspace but left early since it was a "school night".

Link: http://www.terrafirmafarm.com/

Since they'd be away this week, Patsy offered to let us have their weekly box from Terra Firma Farms. They apparently sign up to receive a box of organic, seasonal fruits and vegetables each week. Sounds like a pretty cool idea but I didn't know what to expect would be in the box.

Ron picked up the box and I opened it up to check out the goodies.

Inside was broccoli, sweet yams, spinach, carrots, oranges and a grapefruit. They look a lot different that items you'd buy in a grocery store as they are more natural, not super cleaned like the stuff in the bins at Safeway.

Can't wait to see how everything tastes!

Link: https://www.maccosmetics.com

Last month my co-worker Monica received an invitation in the mail from MAC Cosmetics on Union St in SF for the release of the Hello Kitty Collection. I had seen pictures of the collection from the Hello Kitty World Blog but was really excited to see it in person!

The event was tonight, starting at 7pm and it was pretty crowded. There was a line outside the door to check in and after entering, you had to squeeze your way through the crowd. There are two collections, one is more "sweet" and the other is more "dark". I only liked bits and pieces of each collection. I like MAC makeup because they're relatively inexpensive and now I like it even more because they teamed up with Sanrio!

Surprisingly there were some items that sold out within the first 30 minutes of the doors opening. We didn't even get to really see those items that were sold out.

Only a few pictures so share (there wasn't really any room to take photos...)

I wanted one of these balloons but they were all anchored down so no luck stealing one as we walked out the door...

They had some good looking guys serving drinks, passing trays of cookies, and all dolled-up.

They didn't have the things I really wanted like the large leather vanity... they said it's only available online (which won't be until Feb 12th!) but the face powder and lipsticks are really cute because they have a Hello Kitty imprinted in the powder and stick. It's almost too cute to use but I'm still going to use it so it won't go to waste. The cases for the eye shadows and powder are really cute too, it'll be nice to be able to buy refills and not have to get rid of the case, I just hope Hello Kitty's image doesn't rub off.

So Yay! :D

So as I've mentioned a few times, Mochi and Misu sort of terrorize Maxwell. We created this sleeping spot for Maxwell that was put on top of the place where we keep our shoes, it's about 3 feet off the ground and Maxwell has to jump on a few boxes to reach his bed. One day, Misu and Mochi discovered this bed and kicked Maxwell out and started sleeping in it instead. So Maxwell was banished again to underneath the couch. So we attempted to create some new sleeping spaces for all of them. Mochi and Misu got cardboard boxes filled with soft bedding and soft blankets. At first they refused to sleep in them but after a few days of sniffing around and exploring, Ron found them like this:

Notice that they are ignoring the bigger box right next to them... silly cats!

We made Maxwell a little cave. It's made from our little foot rest that is part of our papasan chair. It's upside down and filled with a cushion and blankets and then covered with another blanket. So for now he has a safe place to sleep since the other two cats can't get inside it, they're a bit too fat.

Because I thought they might be uncomfortable in the smaller box, I just moved their bedding into the larger box... for some reason they like this blue fleece blanket. Probably because it used to belong to Maxwell so they always want what Maxwell has. Just like jealous siblings.

We'll see how long this lasts...