Moments in My Life

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.  It is a glutton holiday feast.  There will be so many food served including turkey, ham, sweet yam, different pies (pumpkin and pecan are popular ones), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cornbread … and the list continues.  So what will I be making for tomorrow?  NOTHING!  We’ll be heading to my in-law’s home for Thanksgiving dinner.  She will be preparing a small roast turkey, mash potatoes and sweet yam.  My sister in-law loves cranberry sauce but not me.  We’ll probably bring a Marie Callendar pie over for dessert. 

We’ll come home and be ready for bed early tomorrow night as we are looking to go out for Black Friday shopping the next day at 6am.  *wink*

We make the hotel reservation for Las Vegas earlier this month.  Our plan is to be there for the Thanksgiving weekend.  Hubby will be taking two days off from work and spending a total of three days/two nights mini vacation.  Why we choose Las Vegas?  Because is near to drive there.  Gas is cheap now too.  I saw it today was $2.33/gallon. 

Hubby already planned out our meals.  We will be hitting a few buffets in the town.  As you know, when I am at a buffet, it is hard to control the amount I take.  The last time we were at Mandalay Bay’s buffet with my brother back in May, we spent more than 2 hours.  We were there from the time they almost done with lunch menu.  So we were able to taste the lunch as well as dinner menu for the price of lunch.  We ate so much that day.  This time, Hubby planned to do the same thing.  Going to the buffet around 2:30pm and sit till they changed the dishes.  hehehe … I know I know … I already put on 6 pounds from my trip to KL.  Now with this again … I better prepare myself with the best diet pills available. May be I should give some to my Hubby too.

What is ‘Shirasu‘? ‘Shirasu‘ is a Sardine variety of fish in infancy. They are expensive. If they are not on sale, they are selling for $17.98/lb. If is on sale then is stil $13.98/lb. A small little box like below cost approximately $4.

Buy my son loves it very much. He calls is crunchy crunchy fish. Instead of deep frying them, I bake them in my toaster oven.

To start off, I bake them at a lower temperature (~200F). You have to lay them down, spread them out.

Use a spoon or heat-proof spatula to turn them around every few minutes so they don’t get burn on one side. When I feel they start to dehydrate, I set to a higher temperature. Estimated time for the intial low temperature baking is around 10-15 minutes.

Then I bake it until they turn golden. This may take another 10-15 minutes. Remember to move the fish around to avoid burn. When I see them turn golden, I will have a taste test and see if they are good enough, then I stop the baking process.

Let them cool and then store them in a tight container.

I sprinkle them over noodles, rice, porridge and sushi. My son loves to eat them just like that too.

San Francisco Day 1 Part 1
San Francisco Day 1 Part 2
San Francisco Day 2 Part 1
San Francisco Day 2 Part 2

October 19th 2008

Finally it was the last day for our trip. We woke up around 7 something in the morning. Had the deluxe breakfast at the hotel. Finished packing up and left around 9am. We drove down to Gilroy and then drove through the 152 Pacheco Pass Highway to reach 5 freeway. Our next destination was to get to Harris Ranch for lunch. Brandon napped for about 45 minutes and woke up when we arrived at Harris Ranch.

Firstly, we visited their restrooms. Then we waited for a little while for a table. One of the main seating/dining rooms was under renovation and there was a wait line for lunch crowd. Once we were seated down, I looked at the kids menu. We ordered these dishes for our hungry stomach.

Brandon finished two slices of the pizza and some fries. We helped finished up his other portion. It was a very delicious lunch. Before we began our road trip, we made a stop at their deli store next to the restaurant. Here is a loot at their fresh selections of USDA Certified Natural Beef.

We returned to our car after another stop at their restrooms.

An hour down the 5 freeway, something really funny and unusual happened. If you are worried about gross and if you are eating your meal now, don’t continue, just stop reading at this point. If you are not afraid … what you can do is to highlight using your mouse the paragraph below to continue on my story.

We were still out of no where. Both sides of the freeway are farms. My son prompted me that he needs to go, “Sshh Sshh.” I told him to do it in the pull ups but he gave me a funny look. So I told Alan to make a stop at the next exit. We parked beside the dirt and pushed the driver seat all to the front to make more room at the back. Alan was forced to wonder around outside the car. I found an unused paper cup which I took from the hotel room. I wanted him to do it in the cup while standing up. My son gave me another funny look with his eyes squinted. I couldn’t help but I laughed out really hard inside my throat. You see, I didn’t want him to be startled. After 5 minutes or more, he still not going yet. He then bend down a little bit and give me another weird look. I didn’t know what it was initially but I was glad my mind shifted in time to know what was coming. I moved the paper cup to his behind. I was glad the paper cup was big enough. A small piece fell down the car map but it was dry anyway. Alan got a plastic bag and tied tightly with everything in it. We didn’t chuck it by the road side. We took it home as souvenir for our garbage bin.

After that incident in the car, Brandon was a happy boy again. He even napped for about an hour during this segment of the road trip. We got home around 3pm. All and all, it was a very nice trip.

October 6th 2008

This was Brandon’s first Bento to school. I made some star shape peanut butter jelly sandwiches, some baked Goldfish and some dried mango bar from Trader Joe’s. I added some star shape confetti on the sandwiches too. This Bento looked more interesting as I added the bento food decoration/divider to it. Finally I got myself some of those.

When we got to school and opened up his box during snack time, one of his buddies came over and snatched some mango bar out of the box. I think he couldn’t resist how cute the food was put together. His mommy was trying to stop him, but she couldn’t. Brandon first finished up the baked goldfish. Then he went for the mango bar, but then only a few were left. Then he finished the sandwiches last.

San Francisco Day 1 Part 1

October 17th 2008

We were back on the road after an hour stopover at Solvang.  The drive up to Gilroy we passed through many grapes farms.  I am not sure if they are vineyards or just farms.  This is the longest part of our segment.  I was really hoping Brandon could hold his needs to go as long as he can.  Since he didn’t have much during our lunch, I gave him a box of Horizon Organic Chocolate Milk a little while into our drive.  He took a second nap for about an hour during this segment or our drive. 

When he woke up, we knew we had to find a spot to stop.  We were in Salinas and saw a mall by the freeway with an exit right after it.  Of course, we took that exit to stop by the Macy’s departmental store in the mall to borrow their facility.  It was about 3:40pm by now.  We hopped back into our car and towards Gilroy we went.

Alan had been bragging about this ‘garlic’ restaurant at Gilroy just across the freeway from the outlet malls that a co-worker of his told him how great this place is.  He wanted to give it a try.  I was really looking forward to it because I love garlic.  It was only 4pm when we arrived at Gilroy and it was too early for dinner.  We stopped by one section of the Gilroy Premium Outlet Mall for a little bit while waiting to pass time.  And because of that, I spent over $100 on a handbag at Coach.  My first Coach Handbag.

We filled up our car before going to the restaurant.  The gas here is more expensive than in LA.  It cost us $3.65/gal for the mid grade.  We paid $3.43/gal before we left LA this morning. 

The restaurant was on Leavesly Drive, just one block across the freeway from the outlet mall. We arrvied at 5pm. The restaurant has a Black Bear Theme thus the name Black Bear Diner.

I was expecting to enter a restaurant with a lot of garlic aroma but it has none. It is just a regular American diner unlike how Alan’s co-worker has mentioned. We looked through the menu and the only item I noticed with garlic recipe is the garlic french fries. We didn’t order it as we had french fries during lunch. Alan had meatloaf while I had pot roast petite dinner. Alan’s chose his two side dishes - mac & cheese and onion rings. My petite dinner came with the green bean caserole and mash potato.

The food filled us up well. I couldn’t even finish my plate but Alan finished his except for the mac & cheese. Brandon had very little of the mac & cheese. We had purposely order that for him as I didn’t see anything else on the menu he would like (except french fries). He is not a big fan on mac & cheese. He probably missing his rice/noodle dishes already. Lately, Brandon loves to be in front of the camera. He has learn to say ‘cheese‘ for picture. Here is one.

We drove up to the hotel after we were done with the dinner. It was around 6pm and we got there at 6:35pm. Check in was a breeze and our room was on the ground floor with the patio facing the pool and it was very near to the parking exit too.

To be continue …

October 17th 2008

We began our trip slightly after 9am on Friday morning.  I had some work errand to run earlier that morning thus the late in our departing time.  Or else, we would have left around 8am. 

We drove up north on 405 and then switched to 101 north.  There were some work traffic along 405 and we didn’t get to drive smoothly as we hoped for.  By the time we got to Camarillo Outlet Mall it was about 10:30am.  We didn’t stop there for shopping, but instead we had to use their restrooms.  It was about time for Brandon to go as he had his 8oz morning milk before we left.  Brandon napped a little bit during the second segment of our drive and woke up 20 minutes before we arrived at our first destination.  It was a little before noon by the time we got to Solvang.

Found a shady parking spot, and headed out to the … restroom of course!  The public restroom has a family unit which has an adult toilet as well as a children toilet.  There is even a changing station in it.  This unit is huge, and able to fit the stroller and 2 adults and 2 children.  Next we went hunting for food. We actually stopped by the visitor center and asked for recommendation and the kind lady gave us 3 selections.

We stopped at the first restaurant she recommended. It is the Belgian Cafe. They serve breakfast and lunch American style.

Alan ordered the belgium waffle and sausage while I had their tri-tip sandwich with french fries.

Brandon was patiently waiting for our order and I snapped a few pictures of him. Here is one with him and his ‘favorite’ helicopter - Chukz.

Brandon had not much of the food we had. Only some french fries and sausage with ketchup.

By the time we finished our lunch, it was close to 12:45pm. We stopped by one of the bakery but bought nothing. Went back to use the restroom again before we began our second segment of the trip which would be another 3.5 hours.

To be continue …

My third Bento Box. Again, this was nothing much. We were going out in the morning, and this was packed as morning snack for Brandon. I only had two items here, seedless black grapes and raisin bread. The bento still looks very plain. I really need to get some colorful food divider to go with it. Without those, it looks so bare. But luckily, my toddler didn’t mind about that. He ate everything. It was just this mommy whom want it to looks nicer and adds a little color to the box.

It is Marie Callendar’s Pie Month this month.  Almost all their famous pies are going for $6.99 each plus tin.  The pecan pie is $12.99 at regular price but we don’t think we will like pecan.  So far, we already got two pies over the last two weeks.  The first one we got was a Kahlúa Cream Cheese (Kahlúa mocha velvety cream cheese filling with a chocolate cookie crust and a thin layer of tangy lemon topping).  We finished it in four days.  I had a piece of it every day after lunch.  Then beginning of this week I got the craving for another one.  This time around we got a Lemon Cream Cheese (cream cheese filling with a graham cracker crust and a layer of tangy lemon topping). This one is heavenly. I like this so much and I can eat half the pie in one serving. With this noted, I should get some diet pills just in case I put on too much weight after this pie month has ended.

A slice of Kahlúa Cream Cheese Pie

A whole Lemon Cream Cheese Pie

This was the second bento box I did. Simple it was. It had some shaped honeydew (which turn out wasn’t my son’s favorite) and some tuna pasta. I figure my bento box still not colorful enough. I should get some of those beautiful food decoration/dividers to add to it.