March, march.

August 2009 was when we found out that my husband was finally getting promoted to Staff Sergeant. He found out while he was on a week long duty in Georgia. When he came back, he needed to do some formality and Airman Leadership School was one of them. One of the things they had to do was march for the
Veteran's day parade. It went so successfully, he decided to volunteer again this year.

I woke-up really early this year though. Part of it was anxiousness, part of it was because I was home alone. This year was different. I started with some tribute videos for service members and it was a sure fire way to just start with the water works. My son also picked out his outfit and he was so excited about the fact that he gets to wear his Air Force kid shirt. He's been so giddy and so proud about the fact that Daddy is in the Air Force. It warms my heart and breaks it at the same time because I know just how much of a whiplash military kids get. My kid is particularly one of the luckiest because he sees his dad daily. He was looking for him tonight after we came home from a friend's house, and I just explained how he'll see him tomorrow morning. That's a dream for a lot of kids out there of course.

Yesterday, Brian went to work Wednesday, came home Thursday then just ate breakfast, put on his unform again, then hopped in the car to drive downtown. The crowd was wonderful and brought tears to my eyes the moment they clapped loudly as the airmen, one of which was my husband, marched perfectly in sync down the street. My son waved his flag proudly and my friend's niece exclaimed "I love how their feet march all at the same time!"

Three and a half hours after he came home from work, drove to go on formation, marched at the parade, it was time to go home again. He was welcomed by a broken closet door in my son's room and by the time he was done, he's been up 22 hours straight. Even though Air Force duty was done, dad duty couldn't wait. He was running on fumes and a can of energy drink. He was up for that long because he needed to do a job for his country, provide for his family so we can eat, and seriously, the warmth from the community was a great enough thank you to him and to us as well because it makes all this worth it.

We survive this lifestyle with ample support from family, friends and one another, and without it we'd be a wreck. We would crack more often than not. Having a positive yet realistic outlook also helps. There is no perfect schedule, no perfect base, no perfect command, not even assignment. It's just making the best of what's given to you. It's all the key to survival to this military life. My husband has been gone for months, he's been gone for hours, sometimes just days. It's not miserable, but it's hard, but looking at it as some sort of punishment will just make the hours and months longer and less tolerable. If I complained about anything and everything that came my way, I wouldn't get anything out of it. Seriously, I get enough gray hair from stressing over my own schedule. I'm due to dye my hair again.

Being in the military is like buying a house for a family. There will be that wishlist of all the needs that house has to have, but maybe only 70% of the dream is actual reality. That reality needs to be embraced instead of mulling over the 30% and figuring out how much worse it can be. A lot of families have it a lot worse than others, but it takes everyone's effort to make the system a functioning one, whether it be in front of a computer, or behind weapons in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan.

There's an upside to everything, even this crazy pick-up and go way of life. Some people might not like this idea of life, and we have gotten our share of words and looks, mostly because of political opinions. The bright side of all this though is that my kid has his own personal superhero. Nothing can beat that.

Crocheted hats courtesy of youtube

Sooo I think it's safe for me to say that I HATE the $2 regular red heart yarn. It's not my friend when it comes to crocheting. I used it to start my first bear hat, a grizzly bear hart for my two year old, and well, I started eight times before I chucked the dang thing in my yarn cubby. I of course had back-up, red heart soft yarn, I only started it 4 times, 5 you tube videos on "How to crochet a hat" and voila, a grizzly bear hat!

Now it occurred to me that I made it a little too big. I made it so big it can last him for many winter years to come. I'm starting another one and forcefully putting this hat on my child for now while I pull a "Don't you love your mother?" face whenever he thinks it's ridiculous I'm giving him a hat 2 sizes too big.

Well, maybe 3 sizes too big.

Dinner tonight was fall-back option dinner night because I wanted tuna casserole. My husband isn't too big on tuna casserole. Bless his heart, he'll eat it though, even though fish isn't exactly his favorite protein. Let's put it this way, he'd rather eat tofu than anything with a gill, fin or claw, but out of love, he'll eat fish (as long as of course, it's made deliciously). It's not in his top food request. I compromised, because I really wanted tuna. I made a meal that I used to make when we were stationed in Monterey. It was quick, easy, and lemony, and he usually would gobble up the whole plate. The acid from the lemon cuts down a lot of the fishiness of canned tuna. 

Warning, do not make this meal if you're not into citrus, It's very tart that it makes you pucker up a bit when you're eating it. It's a great dose of vitamin C.

Tuna with lemon vinaigrette spaghetti

1 box thick spaghetti, cooked to box's instructions until al dente

Juice of 2 lemons (or just 1 if you don't want it too tangy)

Zest of 1 lemon

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or more, depending how spicy you want it

2 tbsp parsley, chopped finely

shaved parmigiano reggiano to top

2 small cans of tuna, in water, drained

Combine the juice, zest, oil, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes and parsley in a bowl. Whisk the vinaigrette until it thickens up a bit, then stir in the tuna. Toss in the pasta until thoroughly mixed, top with parmigiano.

Please DON'T use the stuff in the green container. Grana padano works, but no icky fake parmesan stuff. A little effort is worth it especially since this is a no cook sauce pasta. 

I use this vinaigrette base for salads too, but with a bit of variation. It's really easy to vary up vinaigrette and it really will go a long way.

Just remember that there's a 2:3 ratio, 2 portions of acid to 3 portions of oil. It can be any oil or acid you'd like. An emulsifier helps, I like using honey and/or mustard. This time of the year, cranberries are of course aplenty so go ahead and use a sweeter vinaigrette for your salad. 

This was last night's dinner, it was just a chicken salad I tossed with a honey mustard vinaigrette (uh, courtesy of whole food though, I was REALLY lazy) but I just grilled the chicken and tossed it with chiffonade lettuce, craisins, candied pecans and feta. 

I'm going to go back to finishing that crocheted hat, part two. I'm hoping I measured it more properly this time , the weather is getting pretty nippy and warm hats are in order.

I'm having one of THOSE days

I actually went to bed early last night despite the fact that it was going to be daily savings time the next day. That was the smartest decision I made because it's 7:00pm and I should have passed out hours ago based on my day's events. I woke up at 1:00am because my husband's alarm clock went off. He was on his way to protect America and I wasn't able to completely go back to bed until 2:00am. It's cool yo, you know why? Because I've had 6 hours of sleep, a relatively hefty amount of sleep for me, but still, it was early. I fell asleep again and was awoken up at 4:15am by thudding and the sound of waves crashing. I rushed to my living room to see that it's storming so bad even Noah would have gone "woah, dude." He would add the dude part because he was a drunk, and I felt like a drunk stumbling down the street based on the site I just reckoned. My brand spanking new retractable awning has collapsed. Water was everywhere and the side of my master bedroom window has been chipped. I went out there in the cold and rain in my victoria's secret sweats and my husband's SF giants flippy-floppies to attempt to fix it. Needles to say, I was a MESS till he got home. I felt like I needed to chew $2000 in pennies, it seemed like the wisest way to rid of the numbness. My city man that has never in his life had to do any type of home repair fixed our awning before the rest of the storm came. I think he did pretty good for his first major home repair DIY even though it took most of the day.

The rest of my day was consumed by trying to figure out how to crochet a hat. Pretty uneventful except for the fact that maybe my first successful hat was out of mere luck. After restarting my current project four times which even included one round of untangling yarn, the future grizzly bear hat for Elliott is looking like it's headed on the right way, although I'm sure it's using a GPS barking in German. The crocheting and the awning took over my day and my original plan of Coq au Riesling for dinner is set for another day. Manicotti was the second option, that also was shoved to the side especially since this was one of the sights I encountered today.

He said he was flying.

The time for dinner was looming over me and I had no clue on what to serve the boys for dinner. One thing I really wanted though was tomato soup, the Campbell's kind. With all it's MSG and high fructose corn syrup, I wanted it in and around my mouth, but alas, this whole limit processed food deal has left my pantry without it. I remember in high school, this one girl shared a recipe her mom would make for her as comfort food and it was just canned tomato soup, pasta, sour cream and cheddar cheese. I wanted that tonight, I needed to get it. No way in hell though I'd go out there just for tomato soup. I looked in my fridge and it's like it yelled at me. Oh lookie loo, there's canned diced tomatoes from 2 days ago that's in desperate need of attention. I decided to indulge it and make what I desperately wanted: tomato soup with noodles. Really, and I'm serious, my goal here was to make tomato soup so good, it'll warm the tummy like it was Campbell's. Gratuitous Campbell's quote, enter stage right: Mmm, mmm, good. 

It had to be served with grilled cheese. Isn't that how it looks like in commercials? I want an all-American advertisement type of dinner. I'm all for it. God bless this country. I want to feel like one of those suburban kids in the Campbell's commercials from the 50's. Everyone needs to have a goal in life.

Now, I only had fiori pasta. I bought this because it was the only way I can have anything overly floral in my house that the boys wouldn't care about. Flower pasta, aren't they cute?

The tomato soup was a success and it made this rainy and horrid day end on a good note. My awning is fixed, I have no desire to consume mass amounts of copper plated coins and my son's room is still a disaster. I feel so good tonight, I'm going to end this post with the recipe. I hope you try it, it's one step closer to making the good people of Campbell's shed a tear and it's like kicking them in the groin. Everyone wants to kick someone in the groin. Right? No? Oh well. 

Tomato Soup

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large can of petite diced tomatoes

1 carrot, finely diced

1 celery stalk, finely diced

1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced

2 tsp garlic, minced

2 tbsp chopped basil

2 1/2 cups chicken stock

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp dried oregano

1/4 cup (or more based on how tangy you want it) ketchup

2-4 tbsp of sugar (again, based on how sweet you want it)

Salt and pepper to taste (I used approximately 2 1/2 tsp salt and 2 tsp pepper, but I'm a pepper monkey)

Toppings

Cheddar cheese or Monterey jack, shredded

Cilantro

Flat Leaf Parsley

Sour cream

Heat a large pot in medium high heat, add olive oil, carrots and celery. Saute until onion is a bit translucent, add garlic and basil. Once onion is fully translucent, add tomatoes, chicken stock, tomato paste, oregano and ketchup. Simmer until carrots are soft. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup, or just use a blender, food processor or food mill. Whatever you have handy to liquefy the soup works. Return to the pot, add the sugar, salt and pepper. The goal is to get that tangy and sweet tomato soup taste.

Ladle it on top of cooked pasta noodles, it can be anything you like, as you see, I used fiori here. Then top with cheese, herbs and cream. Feel free to add or omit any toppings. My little man is happy with just cheese and parsley on it. 

Taking too big of a bite off the hobby part of life

As a stay at home mom and housewife, life can have its moments of daunting tasks and busy days and weeks where it doesn't seem like there's any end in sight, nor does it feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sure I have a lot of friends that would empathize with that. Then there would be days that it would feel like every second of the day feels twice longer than normal. I've had a lot of those days, that's why I decided to take on hobbies or discover if I have any hidden talent or possible potential. I've also had too many of those days which have then resulted to too many hobbies.

I've always been a bit cocky about it, I'd remark to my husband "well, my goal in life is not to be great at one thing but to be OK at A LOT of things." Since I was a kid, I've dabbled on things left and right, from fashion designing, to cross stitching and painting. I'm OK at all of those.

The other day, while attempting to wring the living daylight out of the poor paypal (lack of) customer service rep, my toddler decided it would be cool to hang out with me in the office. He picked a specific spot between a huge box of Daddy's guitar pedals and Mommy's bass guitar.

This is my girl Ginger, she's a Fender Mustang bass that husband got for me as a gift for Valentine's day in 2007 right after the first show I played with him in Berkeley. Elliott accidentally knocked her over while I was busy fiddling with the computer and my heart dropped. My heart dropped for two reasons, one, because he hit the little TV we have in the room, two, my bass could have been damaged. Then guilt sets in and realization that she's just one of the many hobbies I've tackled on to fill my time then ultimately put on hold so life can have time. I just haven't made space for her in my life lately and that kills because I have things I need to do, and she becomes categorized under the "can wait" section of life. These hobbies then get placed in the back burner. She's currently being kept company by my current lack of interest in reading.

This is one of those hobbies though that I can't just set aside like I did with knitting (which is currently replaced by crocheting. I'm much faster at it so I like it better). For some reason, this one hits home and hurts whenever I see her sitting in the corner collecting dust. I put in a lot of emotion into learning how to play bass, it was a sort of rebellion against my childhood classical piano lessons that I loathed like no other. I do hope to pick her up again one day, just to dabble (along with my fantasies of becoming a rock star. ha!). Some hobbies are easier to let go or set aside than others, and this is the dilemma of adulthood, life gets in the way. Some hobbies become a part of one's self, then it just becomes this fight where there's just a continuous need to make sure that the uniqueness doesn't get drowned in life. 

For now, Fall 2010, I'm consumed with running, crocheting, photography and the usual cooking and baking. 

I'm planning to maybe finally do that whole culinary school deal, we'll see. That's another story for another day, kids. It's just another thing I need to insert along with being a wife and a mom. On the bright side, taking on all these activities is keeping me busy especially since the Air Force needs my husband a lot more than usual lately. I just hope I don't forget things all the time, like today, I forgot my SD card for my camera. That was an unplanned halt for a hobby but was a surefire to do it.

Run and you don't stop

I'm obviously not very good in this whole updating blog thing. I'm going to be more earnest about it from now on though because I feel like I've been splurging and divulging way too much information about me on a certain social networking site (ahem... facebook) and the whole tweeting thing just isn't cutting it for me.

This was once a culinary only blog, but seeing as I have issues letting go of recipes due to the youngest child syndrome, I've decided to combine all of it in one big pile and make a mess. It's more fun that way. Plus, the reason being why the whole culinary blog thing hasn't been working out lately is because of the myriads of vacation my family and I have decided to partake on. Also, being a big SF Giants fans, our lives were consumed for the duration of late summer to yesterday. Oh, and I took on running. I now have runner's guilt to food. I still stock up on butter and heavy cream heavily. I doubt that will change. It's an inner battle I plan to continue to fight.

Supposedly, the weather is going to change to cold, but that's not happening anytime soon. I definitely freaked out today when it's 80 degrees out and trees are orange and red. It didn't stop me though from taking our summer bedding off and revamping it to winter appropriate bedding. I'm a creature of habit and have trouble letting go of the color blue, so I stuck to it again. It's not very wintery but I guess I'm hitting that country feel vibe I've been longing for. I went to wally world to purchase a cheapo but sufficient comforter and I kept my organic sheet set. I also moved that ottoman that can't find a spot in this world to the front of the bed. I hate it there. I swear, one day, I'm just going to kick it to the curb--- literally. I will roll it down my driveway due to hatred. I'm not one of the people that abuse the word literally, so if I ever do say it, I mean it. Otherwise, I will substitute it with the word figuratively.

I think I'm pretty satisfied with it. I spent $30 on the comforter and $20 on the cream colored blanket, $10 for the pillow covers. All purchased from walmart. One day I will paint these walls, once I stick to a pallette scheme, and seriously, it is looking a lot like gray to just match with the blue.

I'll post a cooking story here again at some point, I'm too devastated today. What I thought was a can of matcha green tea powder turned out to be a can of bagged matcha green tea and green tea leaves. I'll get it over it, maybe. Maybe a Coq Au Riesling recipe will come in the near future, but don't tell Julia Child's soul I forgot to buy lardons. She'd punish me. 

Macarons, Macarons, Macarons!

I did it, I conquered both nut-free and almond version of macarons. It's addicting and easy to make once i got the hang of it. Ok, let me rephrase that--- I should have started on making the almond version first because this took me one try. One lousy stinking try that could have saved me tears and personal humiliation (not to mention, a whole lot less eggs cracked and separated). The nut-free ones I made for the previous post left me questioning myself on whether I should just stick to cupcakes and cakes. I had a pretty good record of success with those things and maybe macarons just couldn't be added to the mix.

One night though, I decided to just make the almond version at night while my allergic-to-tree-nuts son was in bed. My ever supportive husband got me a bag of slivered almonds, he's awesome like that. He knows that buying me ingredients is the way to win me over. I looked at several videos and recipes online and adapted a version for myself and my temperamental oven and one try, and almost half an hour later I got these babies.

Banana macarons with raspberry white chocolate mousse. I didn't pipe them all evenly but they have feet. I said the exact same thing while jumping up and down in my kitchen "they have feet, they have feet!" My husband looked at me like I was insane... again. It also didn't help I accompanied the squealing with dancing and probably way too much booty shaking.

The next day, while my son was pretend napping and I was supposed to be cleaning, I went for it again. I had a lot of raspberry mousse left, they had to be used. So I made coffee-mocha macarons. It just made sense, plus I was twitching to make a batch like a meth head looking for the next hit.

Did I really just compare my addiction to make macarons to a meth head's addiction to meth? My, someone has issues. Definitely has issues because the next day, I bought black sesame seeds, coconut flakes in bulk and then I made these nut-free versions.


Just what I wanted, flat on the top, little macaron feet. The ones on the right are just vanilla, which I believe baked a little too long so I then adjusted the temperature for the left ones which are pandan flavored macarons. They taste different than the almond ones, but in a way that they seem nuttier, definitely a good substitute. I wish I didn't fill them up with ganache though and instead made butter cream or put jam in them. My son was pretend napping again that day so I was rushing. All in all though, I was pretty happy about these. I can't wait till I have an excuse to make them again. That excuse just might come this weekend.

The horrible, yet delicious, habbit of deep-frying

I'm not too big into deep-frying for the obvious reasons. It's a heart attack ready to be served to you--- a warm and scrumptious delight of a heart attack. A few years ago, I received a deep-fryer as a gift for Christmas, it never found use because I was being smart with my cooking and several moves later up and down California, it's lost but now I slightly miss it. It's probably for the good that I don't have it, but nothing some vegetable oil and a hot pan can't fix, right? These are those times I wish i didn't know how to cook well, it's ok though, I have been running my ass off. Literally, since Sunday, the day I decided to deep fry a twinkie, mochi ice cream, snickers, marshmallows and an organic late july cream sandwich cookie, I've been clocking at least 20 minutes on the treadmill. I somehow have this facet that it will counter all the monstrous calories I'm consuming. Of course, it doesn't affect my husband one bit-- then again, when I looked at his treadmill, he was clocking in at 9.5 mph run and it all of a sudden made me feel like crap that I was only doing 5.0 mph. SO in revenge, I fed him this:

Deep fried, English style battered shrimp. I spared no expense on this baby. I battered and slathered and dipped this thing in hot splattering oil. I even got hit in the eye, no joke. As a result, this warm, buttery (and there wasn't even butter, gasp!) shrimp. I put in a little kick in there with some cayenne and paprika. I suggest with anything deep fried and battered, just put in 1/4 teaspoon each of cayenne and paprika. And parsley, because it's pretty and putting parsley in things is just like walking to me. Lately though, it's been cilantro, and I used to hate cilantro-- that's another story.

I was a bit sad I only had 15 pieces of shrimp left in freezer. What was I thinking not replenishing that? We happily divided this whole thing within our family of three (there was steak on the side, surf and turf night--- I need to do that more often). This whole working out mantra though is making me eat less because I would never dare just eat a salad for dinner. I'll probably end up putting pancetta and parmesan shavings on it.

This deep fried sea food feast is for sure healthier than this atrociousness though.

Why did I ever deep fry a twinkie and a marshmallow?