Tonight's Dinner: May 22, 2012

Since the proposal we hadn't seen Nick's family.  To have a little mid-week celebration we went to  Lark Creek in Walnut Creek.  Nick and I have always passed by and looked in but never actually gone there to eat.  The food was pretty darn good, though if we're going to have a date night I think I still prefer Postino.  What I did really like about this restaurant is that they support the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program that promotes sustainable fishing.  (That is the Cooking for Solutions event that we went to over the weekend.  I'm still working on that post.)

Starters of muscles, calamari, and spinach-artichoke dip.

Melissa's Chicken Fried Steak

My Paella

Nick's Wild Salmon

Small bites dessert trio.  I think that's a pineapple upside down carrot cake on
the to, espresso creme brule on the bottom, and something else.  

Melissa got a butterscotch pudding.

The Big News

As most of you know, Nick proposed on Friday night.  Can I get a HALLELUJAH!  I don't know if it's because I told my Mom a week into dating him that he was the one, but it seemed like a long time coming.  We've only been dating for two and a half years, but I guess we are getting to the age where we know what we want and how to get to it.  I of course, have not stopped smiling since Friday night.  This weekend by far has been the best weekend of my life.  (I'll get to the rest of it another day.)  I can't stop looking at it.  This is how it all happened.

I was at my parents house doing laundry and Nick went to his to have dinner.  Really, he went to his parents house to get the ring to surprise me.  I had done my nails at my parents place before I headed back to the apartment.  While carrying the laundry up the stairs I had throughly messed them up.  Nick helped me take the laundry into the bed room and I started grumbling about how I messed up my nails.

Nick: Babe, I have present for you.
Me: You do?
Nick: Look in the guest room.

So I go into the guest room and see a long box on top of it. It had been a very long and trying week so I figured he got me something to cheer me up.  He wrote me a nice very sweet little letter with a magical spell worked into the poem.  After seeing the gold writing on the box:

Me:  You got me a wand?!  (Tears start coming)
Nick: Look inside the box.

I opened the box and pulled out the wand.  My fake engagement ring that I wear when I go out with friends was on the wand.  I was confused and looked in the little wand bag but there was only paper stuffing.  He told me to look in my jewelry box and there was the little black box.  It even had a little light in it to make it sparkle.  When I turned around he was on his knee.  Tears were pouring at this point.  I couldn't even say yes because I was crying so hard.  The rest is history and many phone calls to family and friends ensued.

Originally, Nick wanted to propose on our favorite beach in Carmel, but my mom pointed out that I might do a swish and flick with the wand and the ring would go flying.  Proposing in the apartment was a much safer idea.

I was supposed to say the spell and then the
real ring appeared.  Yeah...I didn't get it.  He
was also going to do it the following morning.

Holding my new wand!

Tonight's Dinner: May 17, 2012

Our wedding photographer friend was coming over to pick up some equipment for a wedding that she's shooting this weekend so we invited her over for dinner as well as her roommate.  They're pretty healthy eaters so I fell back on some trusted favorites, turkey-zucchini burgers and grilled romaine.  It's easy for a weekday to throw together and delicious while also being figure friendly.

I also made some rosemary mayo to go with the artichokes, but I like mine
plain.

Vanilla-carmel ice cream over cantaloupe with cinnamon sprinkled on top.  It's
a great figure-friendly alternative to chocolate syrup. 

Tonight's Dinner: May 16, 2012

Frozen pizza for $4 really isn't that bad. It got the job done when you're super lazy.  We were also prepping and cleaning the apartment for friends coming to dinner the following night.

Tonight's Dinner: May 15, 2012

Boy was it a lonnnnggg day at work.  Naturally, I didn't really feel like cooking anything elaborate so after a run with Emmy I popped some chicken in the oven with zucchini, yellow squash, and mushrooms with a cream of mushroom based sauce.  Easy peasy and it tasted delicious.  

Easy Sauce: 

2 cans cream of mushroom
1/2 cup light sour cream
2 1/2 cups chicken stalk
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp ground pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper flake 

Directions: 

Mix all ingredients until blended.  Pour over desired pasta or poultry.  

Tonight's Dinner: May 13, 2012

For actual Mother's Day, my family headed out to San Francisco for Chinese food with our larger extended family.  Usually I have a difficult time taking pictures of Chinese dinners as the dishes come out one at a time and get scarfed down almost as quickly, but tonight they were piling the food on the table faster than we could eat it.  Plus, most of the people who read my blog are around one of our three tables.  I LOVE Chinese food.

Crab and lobster medley

Tonight's Dinner: May 12, 2012

For Mother's Day this year Christopher and I decided to cook for my Mom since we couldn't think of anything that she really needed and/or wanted.  What we do know is that she loves seafood and that the simpler the better.  This was the first time I've ever killed the crabs myself.  I was very proud.  Usually cooking the crabs is my Dad's job, but I took on the challenge this time around.  To make the crabs feel a little bit better, I sang the Little Mermaid to them before they hit the pot of boiling water to their deaths.

We also popped open a really nice bottle of champagne that was given to my parents for their 40th anniversary.  It was pretty sweet and crisp.

Alive and waiting their death sentence

Look how big this guy is compared to the chopstick.

Soy-based dipping sauce for the prawns.

Cheers!

One of three plates of shells

This is all that's left!

Tonight's Dinner: May 11, 2012

I had defrosted some fish at the beginning of the week that I wanted to use up before the weekend since I knew I wouldn't be around to eat it.  A friend stopped by for some drinks and chit chat so we did a little fish and asparagus fry.  As we know, fish isn't my favorite so I wasn't really sure if it tasted okay or not (or even how long to cook it for that matter).  It was fine to me, but Nick thought it could have used some salt, which I didn't add.  I figured the breading and garlic flakes was enough, but clearly not.  The texture was nice and flaky without being dry so the two minutes on each side worked well. I'm just glad that I was able to use the fish.  I've had my fish fill for a while.

I didn't realize this was so blurry, but I was trying to get dinner on the table
before it got cold. 

Tonight's Dinner: May 9, 2012

I was craving sushi midday so Nick called his parents to see if they wanted to go to our favorite place in Concord.  They were happy oblige.  These pics look pretty much like the last ones I posted, but the food is just so pretty that I wanted to share again.

Oysters!

Grilled hamachi cama

White tuna and hamachi

Rainbow roll for me

Uni nagiri, salmon nagiri, california rolls, and unagi nagiri

Dirty Dog

The grounds keepers must have just watered the lawn where I play frisbee with Emmy because it was like a swamp. After two passes with the frisbee she was filthy so I figured she may as well have fun.  On our walk back to the apartment Nick and I hosed her down in the car washing station much to her chagrin, but that wasn't good enough for me so she got a full on bath before we met Nick's parents for dinner.

If her rear end is this dirty, just imagine her under carriage.

Tonight's Dinner: May 8, 2012

Even though our apartment was a stifling 85 degrees at 6:30pm and we were both tired, we decided to cook inside because our second balcony where the grill is located was even hotter. We made Hawaiian BBQ again, but this time tried to make it even more like the restaurants.  Our macaroni salad is getting very close, the cabbage was pretty much the same, and I added some fried garlic flakes to the panko which made it extremely delicious. I like to use chicken tenders because they're small and pretty much fool proof for pan frying.  Fry for about 3 minutes on each side and then pop into a warm oven on a rack to keep warm and let excess oil drip off.  They were so moist and tasty.  I didn't even have to add salt or pepper.

Without gravy

With gravy

Tonight's Dinner: May 7, 2012

Tonight Emmy and I went on a run so for dinner I didn't want to have anything that was heavy.  Nick went to dinner with his family and we were on our own.

Yup, this was my "light" dinner.  Seared filet of fish and two sunny side up
eggs over lettuce.  No need for dressing!

Tonight's Dinner: May 6, 2012

We try to eat healthfully while still indulging in delicious food.  Tonight we had grilled burgers.  Actual beef burgers.  That's a big deal.  We haven't been eating that much red meat lately so beef burgers were kind of a big deal.  (We'll be having turkey burgers later in the week.)  Okay, I lied.  I guess we did have a giant steak last week, but that was a gift and we couldn't let a gorgeous cut of meat like that go to waste or be frozen.

To me, anything on the grill is at least 50% healthier because most of the grease falls into the grease pan.  Plus, grilled food is delicious.  Basically, I'm justifying our ground beef burgers.  If I get a meat grinding attachement for my Kitchen Aid I'll grind my own beef, but for now, since I'm lazy, I buy ground beef from Costco. 

Yes, yes, more zucchini.   I even said to Nick last night that if he gets tired
of it he needs to tell me because I love squash and will eat it all summer while
it's in season.  So far he's not tired of it thankfully.  

Tonight's Dinner: May 5, 2012

Cinco De Mayo!  Margaritas!  Yuck!  Bonnie and I found that we don't like them much, but they certainly did the job.  We followed up by a hearty BBQ, which was much better than the margaritas.  At first I thought that I had just made them incorrectly since I've never made them before, but Nick said that it tasted like normal margaritas to him.  (He celebrates margarita days with his coworkers after work sometimes so he has more experience than I do with them.)  Whatever the case, I'm sticking with wine and beer.  The food, however, was much more pleasing than the margaritas.  Shanna, if you're reading this, you need to come home to drink the rest of the tequila bottle for me!

We made some pretty standard stuff that I was able to whip up while being slightly tipsy.  Spicy grilled chicken, marinated squash quarters, caesar salad, and buttered spinach noodles.  By 8:30pm we were sober and watching Sweet Home Alabama.  Thank you Bonnie for always watching terrible TV with me...including but not limited to cat breeding shows like old ladies and circa 2002 chick flicks.  We will grow old and wrinkly together with our disgust for margaritas and love for wine.

Nick's face and Bonnie's thumbs up.

Lazy dinner

What do you do when you don't feel like cooking but need to cook the meat in your fridge so that it doesn't go bad?  You put it in pasta sauce and bake it.  I had five pork chops that I had defrosted on Monday that needed to be cooked before they went bad.  I had also defrosted some of our lamb pasta sauce that I needed to use up as well.  Easy dinner!  I opened a pre-made jar of sauce for the bed of the pork and then poured our lamb sauce on top.  So easy and should be delicious.

Yup, the pork chops are in there.  I was so lazy I didn't even slice the silver skin,
but they didn't seem to shrink that much during cooking. 

Tonight's dinner: May 3, 2012

I love pizza!

Papa Murphy's take and bake: Murphy's Stuffed Combo

Tonight's Dinner: May 2, 2012

I had terrible indigestion and heart burn from my lunch of Bean Thread noodles that we call Thy Foon.  I grew up eating this stuff and now it makes me so sick I can barely do anything.  I think I just had too much of it at one time because I had two bundles at once.  If I had one then it doesn't make me feel ill.  So even though I was not feeling super well from food, I still wanted food.  I made a simple soup of chicken broth, star pasta, one squash and lettuce.  It was delicious but left me hungry by 10pm so I made an enormous breakfast burrito in the morning.  

Spoon full of soup

Annual Mosquito Bite Blow-up

As most of you know from past years, when I get bitten by a mosquito it looks terrible even if I don't scratch it.  I got bitten three times on Monday when I was playing frisbee with Emmy.  The one on my leg is gigantic.  We suspect that it's because there is more blood flow than on my back or arm.  Nick read that if you put a hot compress, like as hot as you can handle, that it helps with the swelling.  I decided to give it a try since the bite was as big as a baseball.  Today the swelling is gone and it barely itches.  I'm going to have to try this on my other two bites!

Right after the hot compress