peekie wu!

LOL and amen sister to this:

I was reading Audrey mag this weekend, and saw this excerpt: Home cooking from asian cuisines??  Oh yea, sign me up!  I immediately went to the wordpress blog referenced via feedly on my phone, and got stopped by a recipe I saw.  First, I have to mention that I've been meaning to use up some whole milk and heavy cream that I've had in my fridge since valentine's.  I originally purchased them to attempt to make Gordon Ramsay's souffle for Lucas for Valentine's: But, I ended up not having enough time or energy to do it after attempting Lobster (shrimp) truffle mac n cheese.  So...back to the milk, they were both just past their expiration dates, but have never been opened.  So, they needed to be used or tossed. That is why this receipe stood out to me from her blog: Ice cream is a surefire way to get rid of some milkiness, especially uber fattening milk.  Hehe... So I started whisking together the heavy cream, whole milk, vanilla, salt, and sugar: After coursely grin

I had found out about this Asian American magazine a while ago, I think perhaps from the Kollaboration after party Jenn got us into. These were handed out for free, and I think someone I recognized was on the cover, so I snatched it up. Ever since then, I've been following them on twitter and fb. I finally made the plunge and subscribed to them at the end of last year, and I'm so glad I did! I finally got around to reading through the winter and spring issues recently, and they've got gems of interesting articles as well as good recs for books and beauty products to check out. One fun section is about dating in our modern age, and a little section about poor pick up lines had me cracking up:

Last night, we ordered some Thai Basil to go because it was so late by the time I got home. It's been a little while since we got food from there, so I had kind of forgotten how yummy our usual was. We always order: Spicy Basil Fried Rice (usually with seafood for more flavor) and Pad Kee Maw (it's a less-saucy version of pad see ew). Lucas finished first and headed upstairs to work on homework, so I was left with the rest of the food. Usually, we have to pack up leftovers, but it was so tasty! I told myself that I should just finish it all to avoid having to put it in a storage container. I was so full afterwards that this pic of Tina is very fitting for my current state at the time:

My skincare routine has evolved over the years as I've blundered through life sampling across drugstore and high-end products (Dermalogica, Philosophy, etc) trying to find my holy grail items.  I should start with saying that I have combination oily skin that is acne prone.  It has been slightly less acne prone than when I was a teenager, but that may be due to a better understanding of how to care for skin instead of changing hormones.  I used to have the worst misconceptions about skincare, e.g. don't use moisturizer for oily skin!  Wrong!  Oily skin needs moisturizer because it is often oily due to being too dry underneath, and the body tries to overcompensate by producing too much sebum (oil). About two years ago I believe, my bestie Jenn, gifted me a starter set from Murad: Acne Complex Kit $60 from Sephora For the longest time, I kept repurchasing the set or full-sized versions of certain items within the set when they ran out.  My favorite was definitely the Murad Acne S

I had a celery stalk sitting in my refrigerator since last week's farmer's market haul, so I decided to get on it and use it! I looked up celery soup on google, and Martha's recipe was the first one that came up: Martha's Creamy Celery Soup There were some comments on her site saying people added vegetable stock instead of water and the addition of bacon to add flavor. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick up some vegetable stock while at Sprouts. I think if you just use less water, it would have been less bland as well. I also happened to use sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes since they're healthy for you. So, overall, the soup came out as 'good,' but could be better. I would use less water next time, but it was tasty! All the celery, sweet potato, and onions simmering away the soup after it got pureed in the vitamix! the final product with a generous dose of black pepper  

I'm not sure what this is called, but I need to get myself some, stat. My mom and I had purchased bottles of this stuff ages ago, and I actually finished up my bottle a few months ago because I was using it for making pickled eggs. It's traditionally used as a shortcut to making that Korean side dish of sweet pickled cucumber or seaweed. I miss it ;-(     I took a chance and looked up my favorite Korean cooking guide online, and it looks like this may be a good recipe to make a similar sauce: http://aeriskitchen.com/2009/08/seaweed-side-dish-%eb%af%b8%ec%97%ad-%ec%b4%88%eb%ac%b4%ec%b9%a8miyeouk-chomuchim/   We've made a few things from Aeri, and they were always spot on delicious.  My personal favorite is her Spicy Tteok Bok Ki .  She even fulfilled a request I had submitted to her quite a while ago for that cool, sweet, and spicy noodle soup: Mul NaengMyeon  (You'll see my shoutout request in the accompanying youtube video!).  I'm a huge fan, I even bought her f

My newegg purchase came today, and their box made me smile. It's just cardboard, but it's #thelittlethings

Teehee, I'm so excited to try out my new and first yoga DVDs. Yup, I watch Tia and Tamera's reality show on the style network, so I got suckered in to give these a try finally. Plus, they sent me an additional DVD when I had only ordered one, FTW! Actually I've been getting quite a few 'accidental bonuses' in my online orders as of late, yay!

I've been on a green juicing kick ever since I got the Vitamix. My first green juices consisted of spinach/kale, carrot, lemon, apple, frozen pineapple/berries, greek yogurt, and coconut water. Then, my mom introduced me to her realm of beets, dates, almonds, and flaxseed. I also require the use of a fruit/veggie washer on everything, even organics. The water is definitely not clear after that. I'm in the habit of drinking my greens now, and saving some leftover for breakfast the next morning too. Grab and drink, I'd say. Drink on, drink on.

I see pretty, floral dishes all the time at places like Marshalls, Ross, TJ-Maxx.  I need to remember to scoop up ones I really love if I happen to desire wanting a cake or dessert stand one day.  DIY dessert stand: candlestick holder + plate http://www.abeautifulmess.com/2013/03/at-work-with-amber-vander-vliet.html Also, check out that lamp shade gorgeousness, love the colors!

Just saw someone on Instagram mention this: Cocoppa app, so I promptly downloaded that freeness. Check out my current main page (I still need to figure out how to do the icons):

I went to one of our local farmer's market last weekend to buy produce for juicing. I came across this adorbs sign:   I totally should have bought the sign so that I would always have an excuse to not tidy up before company comes ;o)

Tina's new daily ritual in the morning is to soak in the sun while cleaning herself and sleeping. What a life...

My blu-ray player stopped working all of a sudden on Friday. I was thinking oh well, I've been wanting to upgrade it anyway for a while. Then another thought came into mind, hey, I should try upgrading the firmware before trashing it. Just upgraded, and I get to see this now:

I was shopping at Michael's last night and couldn't resist these precious creatures in the sale section. Also, turquoise happens to be our house's main accent color, so I couldn't go wrong, right?

I love how lived in this office looks. But, I mainly took this pic from the latest west elm mag because I would have never thought to use such a vibrant rug in the color story of the room. I like how dynamic the rug is and how it adds a sense of liveliness to the completed look. Me likey!

This happened two nights ago when I was working with Lucas. And this is quite simply why I married him...well, just one of the many ;-) "Why are there only five letters on the screen???" a hyper-illustrated self-portrait

Sometimes, I think Tina is the smartest cat ever. This is evidence of her favorite position when it's bright outside. This is her when it's too bright inside (light from ceiling light):

My sweetest big sister sent me a lovely birthday surprise! Thank you so much Jenny! They will be gone within a week!

It dawned on me the other day to use youtube to learn about how to use lightroom.  I found this video that's a bit long, but is actually pretty instructive in how to retouch your photos. Here's my attempt at editing a photo from our recent oystering trip: Here's the before/after shot (shortcut key 'y' in lightroom!): I've got a ways to go, but it's nice to see such immediate results from just one youtube video.  Yay youtube!

Pop rocks were always a fun experiment in my youth, so when Jenn introduced me to this new chocolate bar called Chuao that had them, I fell in love. Thanks to her, I get to sample a bunch of their flavors! Local supermarkets need to start stocking this brand!

My sweetest hubby sent me some delicious strawberries today ;-)

LOL... 1:30 Also, love his music in general:

My gift to myself this year, albeit a little early, is a Vitamix!  I finally admitted to myself that my magic bullet just wasn't cutting it anymore.  After turning a deaf ear to my mom about how amazing the vitamix is for years, I finally ceded.  Now, I can liquify apples in a matter of seconds! My green juice before: The green juice ten seconds later:

If you remember my previous post about Yakult + Grapefruit juice, I learned that from this dinner at Chester's.  We made taco rice, roasted a chicken, and drank some of the nom nom concoction while watching Jiro dreams of sushi.  Taco rice = brilliant idea.  It never occurred to me that you could make yourself a version of a Chipotle bowl at home.  I also think his version of taco meat seasoning is bullet-proof.  SO good.   Taco meat seasoning:  1/4 tsp of ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground cumin, and cayenne pepper.   Then, we also need to talk about that roast chicken.  I named it the fire alarm chicken because we spent most of the time fanning smoke away from his apartment's fire alarms due to all the smoke in the room!  Between the "Fire!  FIre!" shouts emiting from the alarms, and our sore shoulders the day after, I'd have to say I have never worked so hard for a piece of chicken before.  But, gosh darn it, that's some pretty beautiful leg, thigh, and

I remember the very first Chinese New Years I celebrated with Lucas while we were "dating."  We had some fried fish, probably some steamed veggies, and noodles.  Oh, and for dessert, we had bought those candies that look like lanterns, and were in red wrappers. So, this year I thought we elaborate on the same theme as I recall you're supposed to eat these kinds of things for good luck.  Lucas took charge of the fried fish, and it's his favorite: the pomfret.  It has some Indian curry spices he brought back from India, so it was fun being able to finally use those.  For veggies, we wanted to get cong qing cai, but for some reason couldn't find any at Ranch 99.  Thus, we settled for some good ole whatever you call those long stalk thingies, with some oyster sauce over the top.  Then, I wanted to try my hand at Crustacean's garlic noodles.  I did some research on the recipe some people have come up with, and went with one.  It was good, but it could have been bet