I Got the Key...

Doesn't the key look awsome?!

To my Parisian apartment! Okay, it's not my Parisian apartment, but it is where me and Ryan are going to stay for 3 nights in Paris! We found a US based company, Vacation in Paris, that offers many different apartments all around the city. We decided we wanted to stay in the Rue Cler area, so we began our search there! (district 7).

And we were hoping to have tons of options to choose from. BUT, most of them were actually booked! We went through all of the studio apartments and one bedroom apartments in district 7, and made a list of places we wanted to stay. A few factors went into this. First of all, it had to be semi-reasonably priced. There were a few luxury properties that were just WAY out of our price range. Secondly, it had to be one that had a minimum stay of 3 nights. Of course, because we are only staying 3 nights, we had to pay an extra cleaning fee. Also, we wanted to like the look of the apartment (at least a little!).

So, with my list of maybe about 10 apartments, I called Vacation in Paris. I was disappointed to find that there were so few apartments available for the days we wanted, but there was one available that matched one of the apartments on our list. So we booked it!! Here are the pictures straight from the Vacation in Paris website. I'll be sure to post real pictures when we get back!

Living room/dining room

Taken from the couch (seen in the picture above this one). You can see the kitchen in the background...

Close up of the kitchen

bathroom!


bedroom

I am glad that we ended up with a one bedroom place instead of a studio, although either would have been fine. I'm just really glad that this is almost our view:

It's not taken from our hotel, but it is taken just down the street (or so they say). I'm so excited!

Cooking at Whole Foods

So, yesterday (false) a few days ago (false) a few weeks ago (false) 4 months ago (ding ding ding, yep, it's been a looong time since I started this post!), my work team went to Whole Foods to participate in a cooking class! I had no idea Whole Foods even offered this....but they do! Before we got there, it was decided that we would do the "Pacific Rim Fusion" menu, which consists of:

Waterfall Salad

Firecracker Shrimp

Thai Chicken Green Curry


Five Spice Beef Sate

Sesame Rice


Grilled Plantains with Coconut Milk over Ice Cream

Believe it or not, I actually worked on the Five Spice Beef Sate. Obvi not my first choice, but honestly, I didn't really care too much. Anyway, unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of the "during" phase....I thought I would look like a freak in front of my co-workers if I pulled out my camera and started snapping away at the food. Well, by the time everything was almost done, I ended up doing it anyway, because I had to have some pictures!

The recipe I'm going to share with you is the Firecracker Shrimp. It was by far the best thing we had! The beef sate that I made, with the help of others, was tough and not well flavored. I mean, how could it have been? The marinade soaked in for all of 5 minutes, when it should have been AT LEAST over night! And the chicken curry....not much flavor, unfortunately. Oh, and I should mention that I did not try the dessert for two reasons: 1) Lent and 2) plantains (vom). Ok, so here's the recipe for the shrimp:

Firecracker Shrimp
-1/3 cup sliced or whole almonds
-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and halved
-1 bunch cilantro
-6 scallions, cut into 2-inch lengths
-3 garlic cloves
-2 tsp cumin
-1/8 cup olive oil
-1/4 cup water
-2 lb medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined
-1 tbsp olive oil (for the pan)
-1/8 cup lemon juice
-sea salt to taste

Place almonds, jalapenos, cilantro, scallions, garlic, cumin, olive oil, and water in a food processor and blend for 1 minute, until a smooth paste is formed. Marinate the shrimp in the refrigerator in a covered container for at least 1 hour in the paste (this definitely did not happen when we were cooking, and they still tasted super yummy!).

Heat olive oil over moderate heat in a large saute pan. Saute shrimp, stirring continuously for 4 minutes, until pink and opaque. Deglaze plan with the lemon juice, and season with salt.

The recipe is taken straight from the pamphlet we got from Whole Foods. Since I didn't actually make this dish myself, I can't offer any insightful hints. But the shrimp was definitely the favorite!

Ok, so clearly I haven't been blogging much in the past few months, but I'm going to try to pick it back up because I have a few more yummy recipes to share, a few scrapbooking projects, and, of course, plenty of info on my upcoming Europe trip (21 days until I leave)!!

Finally!

I feel like I've been waiting forever...but my passport finally came about a week ago! I've been meaning to get it for a while, just in case an opportunity came up to travel outside of the US. Anyway, Ryan and I have been thinking about going to Europe for a while, and since airfare has been dropping, we booked our flights (yesterday!) for this September!!!! I'm soooo excited, you don't even know!

Where are we going? Well, I'll just give you an overview for now. I'll go into more detail about some of the places and what we plan on doing in later posts.

1. Venice, Italy

[source]

So we knew for sure that we wanted to go somewhere in Italy. But where? We have a limited amount of time for our trip (thanks to Ryan's super limited pto...), so we knew that there was no way we could see everything! So, for me at least, I didn't really care whether we spent the time in Rome, Florence, Venice, Sicily, because I definitely plan on going back and exploring the rest of Italy. Well, after watching Rick Steves's Venice episode, we both thought it looked so romantic. Oh, and what if it's not there in 10 years (apparently it might "drown" at some point...hmm)?

2. Cinque Terre, Italy

[source]

Originally we wanted to go to Portofino. We wanted to go somewhere on the "Italian Riviera" (not sure if it's actually called that...), found Portofino on the map, recognized that name, and decided to try that out. Well, turns out there are only a couple of hotels, and they were both pretty pricey, so we looked around that area and stumbled upon Cinque Terre. About a week later, Rick Steves had an article on cnn.com about Cinque Terre, and it sounded awesome! We've since done more research since then (including reading about Lisa's adventures here) and decided that Cinque Terre will definitely be on the list of stops!

3. Nice, France

[source]

Our next stop will be the French Riviera! Specifically, we are looking into staying at Nice. Looking at the pictures, I just realized that all of these places are on the coast. But, whatever, why not? I've always heard great things about southern France, so I was excited to add Nice to the itinerary. Also, I am very excited to stop by Monaco, and maybe check out the Monte Carlo!

[source]

I guess only the REALLY rich people gamble here, but it sounds like there's another casino nearby, so I'd love to check that out as well!

4. Paris, France

[source]

This is the last place we'll visit on our trip. I've wanted to go here for a while, so I'm excited that it's finally happening! I don't even know what we'll be doing while we're here. There's way too much to do in the small amount of time that we'll be there, but we do have some ideas (to be shared soon!). In the meantime, for those of you that have been to Paris, or have done some research, let me know if you have any suggestions! Or, let me know if there is anything I should not "waste" my time doing. Oh, and I really hope the Eiffel Tower sparkles when I'm there (like it does in the picture below!).

[source]

2009 Calendar Wrap-Up Part I: Every Page

As promised in my previous post, I will be sharing all of the pages in my 2009 calendar, and will go into detail about some of them. For this first post, I would simply like to post the front cover and each of the 12 months for you to see. As I mentioned before, many of the pages were incomplete when I first posted them, so I want to make sure I get them all on here! Enjoy!

Front Cover

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Long Time, No Scrap!

It's been a long time since I've posted about my progress on Ryan's calendar (see here & here for the first 9 pages). I have finally, 3+ months late, "finished" the calendar. I would like to work on it a teeny bit more, but honestly, I may never get to it, because Ryan now has it! Finally!

10. April, Trip to San Francisco

I went cricut-happy with this one. Dannelle has the wonderful cricut machine, so I was able to make the tags, the swirly thing, and the city skyline with the machine. I definitely did not have a plan in mind when I started this one. I kind of just started organizing things, and it kind of worked out. This is actually his favorite page... (so maybe he'll be in favor of me getting my very own cricut)

11. February, Formals etc

This one started with a really pretty piece of paper I had. It had blue, purple, green, yellow-ish slash beige, etc. I started putting the pictures together, and realized that almost the entire background paper would be covered up. Oops. I didn't want to completely cover it, so I ended up changing the background to a plain black piece of cardstock.

12. September, Stanford Football

I can't wait to go into detail about this page. It took me FOREVER to do, because of the background, because I made it by hand. I really like it, probably because I know how much time went into this page (overall, probably 12 hours? Something ridiculous, maybe even more). I also love the colors (!) and the pictures. And I really like how it isn't super "Stanford-y" which I wanted to stay away from, because I had another Stanford football page in the 2007 calendar I made for him. And it just so happens that the page from 2007 was super cute, and I didn't want to try to compete with it!

Thanks everyone for your patience (as if you really cared, haha)! I had such a great time making the calendar, but I am definitely ready to start working on my own scrapbook.

Next up: I'll provide pictures of every single page from the calendar. The reason for this is that many of the pages were unfinished when I first showed you. Especially the lyrics. And by the way, the lyrics on each page were the most difficult part. It is very tough to find small letters in all different colors that can be used for this!

I will then end this calendar series by posting 3 or 4 additional posts, and I'll focus on some of the details of the calendar. I'm going to try to post some other non-scrapbooking posts too, so I won't bore you all too much!

Recipe #10: Fusilli with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Artichokes and Sausage

And goat cheese toast! I didn't think all of that would fit in the title.

This meal is probably one of my favorites! Both recipes can be found on foodnetwork.com (compliments of Giada de Laurentiis). We've probably made this 7 or 8 times.

First the goat cheese toasts. These are super easy to make. In fact, you don't really need to "make" much! Start out with one of those skinny french baguettes. Cut them up into pieces, maybe about 1/2 inch wide or so. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil on each piece, and put them in the oven for about 15 mins at 375 degrees.


Meanwhile, make the goat cheese mixture to go on top! You need 8 oz of goat cheese and 4 oz of cream cheese (or whatever you have, but approximately 2:1, goat cheese to cream cheese). We buy the goat cheese with herbs in it already, but feel free to buy anything. Mix together the cream cheese and goat cheese, and really, add any herbs that you like. I forget what the recipe calls for, but we always add thyme, chives, lemon zest, garlic, salt and pepper. Yum!


Once the bread is done in the oven, simply spread the goat cheese mixture on top of each one.

So easy! And you're done.

Now the main course: Fusilli pasta with artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, and sausage. For those of you who, for some reason, hate fusilli pasta (Alex....), you can substitute whatever pasta you like! I actually first found this recipe online, but she has the exact same one in one of her cookbooks, except she uses penne instead. But lucky me: fusilli is my absolute favorite!

Ok, so the ingredients:
3/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, packed in the oil (you need the oil for the sausage)
2 (8oz) packs of frozen artichoke hearts
1 lb hot italian sausage
1 3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
2+ cloves of garlic
1/3 cup fresh basil
1 lb fusilli pasta
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
8 oz mozzarella cheese
salt and pepper

Take 2 tablespoons of the "sun-dried tomato oil" and heat it up in a large pan. Place the sausage into the pan, and cook until it's completely done (about 8 minutes). Transfer the sausage to a plate, but leave the oil in the pan.

So, I didn't take the best pictures, which can be seen by the one above. Haha, you probably didn't really want to see that plate of meat, but too bad =)

In the same pan (with the oil), put in the 2 cloves of chopped-up garlic (or more) and the frozen artichoke hearts. Mix them around in the oil, and leave them in there for a few minutes. Next, pour in the chicken broth, wine, and sun-dried tomatoes. Stir occasionally and let simmer for about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, grate the parmesan cheese and cut the mozzarella cheese into little cubes. Oh also, start cooking the pasta! I accidentally started it too late last night, so the above mixture was simmering for twice as long as it should have. I'm not sure it did anything, except maybe make it so that there was less sauce available for all that pasta!

Once the pasta is done, drain the water, but do not rinse. Put the pasta, sausage, parmesan cheese and basil into the same pan as the rest of the stuff. Let it all heat up, and then throw in the mozzarella cheese.


Keep it on the heat until everything is melted and heated through. Enjoy!

Picture from the first time I made this dish. It looks like I forgot about the basil, oops!

April Fools FAIL

Just want to say, that I officially FAIL at april fools! My post below was, in fact, my attempt at a joke! Well, kind of! Ryan did NOT buy a house (and if he did, I really hope it wouldn't be that condo thing that I posted pictures of...) and I am NOT moving down there this June. But who knows what the future will hold?

I think I should have posted pictures like this, to make it more "jokey":

[source - actually in Bako]

[source - not in Bako]

So I failed...but I tried! Sorry for being too believable! hopefully you can all forgive!!