...my burning kitchen...

The groom.

The dress.

The beach house.

The officiant.

The song.

The band that played that song.

The kid that almost stopped the wedding. (Not really.)

The cupcakes.

The photos taken by the person that also made the necklace.

The official photographer.

The comic.

Labels: married, wedding

It's an entirely different thing to have your wedding in a rented house beach. So in preparation for our three day rental, we've been packing up things that we may need including all the things we need for the day of. And making a list of things I need to do every day leading up to Friday has helped my sanity.

One of my biggest fears is that there will be enough food. Our guest list has been expanding and contracting the last few days: either someone's spouse is sick or they are suddenly bringing a guest. Another factor is the time of the wedding: 6:30 p.m. A lot of people will be coming straight from work on an empty stomach. So instead of having everyone wait until after the ceremony to eat, I've enlisted the help of my good friend Ani to set up a cheese plate to have ready for everyone when they arrive.

Last night we bought a few hard, soft and tangy cheese. Now only if the clouds will start clearing up...

Labels: appetizers, cheese

I brought my mom along to the post office yesterday. That was a mistake. While speaking to the counter person, my mom went on to relay to him about the events happening in the next few days.

It went something like this:

"You know why I'm here? My daughter is getting married in a few days." (Gesturing to me.)

"Really?" (Looking at me.) CONGRATULATIONS!"

"Uh...thanks. Well, I want to send this..."

"Yeah. I'm visiting here for her wedding! I came straight off the plane from the Philippines."

"Well you know what they say..."

"WHAT?" (My mom leaning over the counter.)

"The future son-in-law always looks at the mother to see what the daughter will look like in a few years and you're one very pretty woman."

"Nooo...You're pulling my leg."

"No, I'm not pulling your leg." (Conversation progressively getting louder as the line gets longer.)

"I've had a lot of people try to pull my leg and I think you're doing that..."

"Well I'm telling you that you're future son-in-law is one lucky man."

"I think you're still pulling my leg..."

Apparently this whole conversation was to practice my mom's English to prepare for the next few days' events. And it was all at the expense of my embarrassment. I'm guessing I should get used to it because I can only imagine what stories she will relay to my friends about me the next few days. >sigh<

But I have to give her props on her pecan mini tarts. They are still as good as I remember them.


Pecan Mini Tarts

3 oz. cream cheese
1/4 lb. soft butter
1 cup flour
1 cup chopped pecans

Mix together and shape into 24 balls. Refrigerate for an hour.

Place balls of dough in mini muffin pans and press into cups to form crust. Add pecans into muffin tins.

1 egg
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine all ingredients. Pour filling into cups and bake for 25 minutes.




With mom and my ginormous boy head.

Labels: mini pecan tarts

The weather in San Diego has been less than desirable and downright crappy. Yesterday it was sprinkling all day and today more of the same. With 12 more days to go, I'm looking at the weather very closely in case my beach wedding turns into something else like an indoor house party which happens to be on the beach.

With the weather as chilly as it's been, I pulled out a recipe handed down from Paul's mom for stewed chicken with dumplings. Paul waxes poetic about this dish. I think it reminds him of Michigan or Nevada. I really don't know because I didn't grow up with gravy.

When we first attempted this recipe we substituted the stewed hen in the recipe with chicken breast. Bad idea. There wasn't enough chicken fat for gravy. On the second attempt we used a whole chicken, bones and all and it was perfect. The recipe for dumplings can be substituted with Bisquick or even spaetzel. Stew may require additional salt to taste.

Stewed Chicken with Dumplings
3 lbs. or more chicken , cut up
1 1/2 teaspoon of salt
5 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 carrot

flour for gravy

Barely cover the chicken with water. Add all the seasonings, including the celery and carrot. Heat to simmering, cover and simmer gently until meat is tender, about 3-4 hours.

Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. Skim the fat from the top and reserve for later.

Take the meat from the broth and remove all skin and bones. Discard. Strain the broth and thicken for gravy.

Blend 1 teaspoon of flour and 1 teaspoon of fat for each cup of broth. Blend into broth. Return the chicken to the hot gravy and drop in dumplings (recipe follows).

Dumplings
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon butter
3/4 cup milk

Shift together the flower, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter until crumbly. Add milk gradually. Drop by spoonfuls on top of meat and inch apart and cover tightly. Steam for 12-15 minutes.

Labels: chicken with dumplings, family recipe

You know what the best thing about The Knot is? It's that it tells you how many days are left until your wedding. When I logged into The Knot today, it told me that I had 18 days left!

Sure, The Knot has great resources and I found a lot of advice on the site this past year -- but it really wasn't the wedding I was envisioning. In fact, my idea wedding was as far from anything on The Knot than I had imagined. In actuality, Off Beat Bride was more my style -- whenever I felt that I was doing something too left field, I would visit Off Beat Bride and be reassured that what I wanted really wasn't different than the norm.

In choosing what to serve for my wedding, I was stuck between two potential bakeries. It came down to Twiggs Bakery and Sweet Cheeks.


Twiggs Bakery wedding cake tasting.

Twiggs Bakery had the wonderful white velvet cake and we were blown away with the tasting board. The owners of the bakery were truly nice people that we enjoyed talking to. Up until Sweet Cheeks, I felt like that they were always number one in the running to make our wedding cake.


Sweet Cheek's tin cake.

On the other hand, Sweet Cheeks offered professionalism as well as a visualization of what our cake would look like. Our cake would be unique, made with deft eyes and careful hands BUT we weren't completely sold on the cake and there was no comparable flavor to the white velvet.

If the taste of Twiggs Bakery was combined with the skills of Sweet Cheeks, it would have been the perfect fit. Paul and I kept going back and forth between the two until we came up with a third option: cupcakes.

During this time, we changed plans from having our wedding at a formal restaurant to a beach house. It wanted it to be more intimate and relaxed, especially since a lot of our friends would be coming from out of San Diego. We didn't want formal seating arrangements; we wanted everyone to have a choice of where to sit or wander at the beach if they wanted. It was then that I brought of the idea of cupcakes. Since the food is going to be a self-serve taqueria, why not have the dessert be just as easy?

That's why I called up my friend, JustJenn. Actually, I think I may have coerced her into inviting us over for a cake tasting. Initially, she misunderstood our intentions as an invite for her to tag along to a cake tasting, but no -- we wanted her to host us to taste her cupcakes. In her home. Yeah, we can be pushy like that.

I'm not a stranger to JustJenn's goodies. She makes delicious desserts and we've been honored to be the recipient for some of them. I knew that whatever she would bake, I would love it and I did.


The cupcake spread at JustJenn's and we took home leftovers.

Jenn blew us away with the spread she set out for us. There were eight different cupcakes for us to taste! I hadn't eaten breakfast that morning and I think I ate more than my full share but they were just so good. She had even made some custom flavors for Paul, knowing his undying love of Ovaltine and coffee-flavored cake. If I could have chosen them all, I would have. But after much debate we selected only two. What Sweet Cheeks and Twiggs lacked, Jenn has in spades. In addition, we know that the cupcakes she will make for our wedding will be made with the utmost care and attention. We are so lucky to know her and have her bake cupcakes for us from her home in Los Angeles.

As for the wedding itself, I can't wait until it's over but I imagine even months after, I will still be visiting Off Beat Bride. Just check out this wedding that has Bridezilla and Groomera cake toppers.

Labels: Bridezilla, cake tasting, cupcakes, Groomera, Off Beat Bride

I've seen breakfast cookies, sugar-free cookies (yuck) and cookies that look like panda bears. But cookies that help you lose weight -- that's just too good to be true. The great thing about this blog is when I have the time to update it, I occasionally get offers to try stuff or attend events. All of it is very cool but when I got an opportunity to try some diet cookies, it seemed too good to be true.



I got a big box of these Smart for Life cookies at home. The thing behind these cookies is that you have to eat an entire box off cookies in one day. That makes about 6 cookies that come in chocolate chip (the variety sent to me), blueberry and oatmeal raisin. Then a sensible meal at night which basically means no junk. Each cookie is 100 calories. I've known salespeople in my office who have done this diet with amazing results, losing up to 8 pounds in two weeks. But those salespeople must be crazy because these cookies are disgusting. Have you ever had a "mockocolate"-covered sponge with a diet aftertaste?

The F*Cup cookie was something I picked up at Nijiya for the, ahem, packaging. I got it as a joke for Paul, but when it rang up on the register, it was almost $5 for four cookies. What exactly did I pick up and why was the cashier checking me out? It seems that F*cup cookie claims to have breast-enhancing herbs that will increase your cup size to a double D.

They tasted a bit like shortbread, nothing too special. As for their claims… no news to tell. I wonder how many of those cookies I'd need to devour to look like Katie Price. (answer: ALL OF THEM) Beside the vanilla cookie, the F*cup cookie also comes in chocolate.

I can't help but wonder what would happen if I combined the breast-enhancing cookies with the weight loss results of the diet variety. The world will never know because I prefer cupcakes over cookies.

Labels: F*cup cookie, Smart for Life Cookies

I don't know why I've been obsessed with donuts lately. Maybe because I find myself at work lingering on food boards that discuss regional donut shops. Maybe it's because I avoid the Thursday donuts at work at all costs because it looks like the selection has been ravaged by a pack of angry wolves. But I woke up Saturday morning to satisfy my fix, distance be damned. And that location was 24 miles away in Imperial Beach.



I grew up near Imperial Beach. I learned to swim at the pool in Mar Vista High School and after band practice in high school, we would often hit the Rally's where my friends worked. I haven't been to Imperial Beach in a while since my parents moved away and frankly the neighborhood has gone downhill since. But one thing drew me back for this visit, it was Stardust Donut Shop.



Stardust Donut Shop is located on state Route 75 right before you hop on the strand headed for Coronado. It's almost too easy to miss with its old sign, rusty from years of salty air. I found out about Stardust Donut Shop not from my experience as going there but from Yelp while searching for donuts in San Diego County.

According to posters on Yelp, the owners of the Stardust Donut Shop open whenever they want and close when they sell out. O-kay. These guys obviously don't wake up at the crack of dawn with fresh, hot donuts for the early morning crowd. I left for Imperial Beach around 9 a.m. wholeheartedly sure that they were open early for Saturday. But despite the small line forming they were still closed. Parked behind the shop, I called them and asked their hours.

"10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today" said the voice on the other end of the line. Not too bad, just 15 more minutes until I can get a warm donut in my mitts.



I got out of my car and queued up in line, joining salty hippies and locals by the time they opened almost 30 minutes later. Or an hour since I arrived. But I used that time to study the empty bins. There were only nine varieties available, ranging from old fashioneds, buttermilk twists and chocolate raised for 84 cents to $1.39 for their glazed pecan roll with caramel. By the time the window finally opened, I knew exactly what I wanted.

Even though I was the fourth person in line by the time I hit the window, the first pan of cinnamon rolls was gone. The donut guy had to get me two rolls from the second batch.



Stardust's cinnamon rolls don't look like much. They are actually quite modest in size with no visible icing on top. I was skeptical but one bite took all doubt away. The icing is in the roll! Each bite had icing in it. The cinnamon roll itself was wispy and light which almost seemed to melt once it hit your tongue. Not too doughy at all. The secret? They deep fry it. Yeah, crazy but it works. I should have stopped at the cinnamon rolls because everything else paled in comparison.



Or course, I had to try a small selection of other things Stardust had to offer. You know, for research. I had to see how the other donuts fared. The chocolate-raised, old fashioned, buttermilk twist, chocolate iced and raspberry-filled were passable. The glazed came in a close second after the cinnamon rolls. Somehow, the tasting selection of donuts seemed to disappear by 4 p.m.

I don't know about driving out to Imperial Beach again to line up for fresh cinnamon rolls, but it did remind me that there are still a lot of good things left in the area.

---------------------------

Read more about the owners of Stardust Donut Shop here.

Labels: cinnamon rolls, Imperial Beach, Stardust Donut Shop

I've been calling Paul almost every day around noon to asking him if any RSVPs have come in the mail. I want to know who's coming to our wedding. Let me tell you that even with a few days left to return them, I am starting to hound people. My brother still hasn't sent his so go figure.

When I called on Friday, Paul failed to mention to me that a package came in. A very delicious package with the contents clearly marked on the outside.



I'm surprised that Paul didn't just go ahead, rip it open and finish it up before I got home because he loves those cookies. I like them too but I don't love them. But they are certainly better than those Keebler knockoffs. Gag.

The cookies were mailed to me from Kellogg's via Foodbuzz because Kellogg's bought the trademarks and are continuing the production of Circus Animals. And they return to store shelves on the West Coast starting May 4. Today and they taste exactly the same.

As for me, I'm not rushing off buying them anytime soon because that bag more than satisfied my sugary addiction for those frosted cookies.

Labels: Circus Animals, Kellogg's, Where the hell is your RSVP?