A few weeks ago, my friend Allison told me about her homemade mayonnaise. I was intrigued! She said it was so easy to make and tasted a hundred times better than any processed mayonnaise you could buy. I had everything that I needed to make it, except for pure olive oil. When I scoured the web for homemade mayo recipes, they almost all recommended using pure olive oil (meaning not extra virgin). The boy finally found a tiny bottle at Mollie Stone's the other day. 

Coincidentally, Melissa Clark of the NY Times wrote about mayonnaise today! In it, she shares that the best way to make homemade mayo is by hand, with a whisk no less! Mayonnaise is perishable, she says, and the whisk allows you to make a smaller batch than a food processer would. 

I broke one egg and separated the white from the yolk. I put the yolk in a bowl then realized that I had forgotten to leave it out enough to get to room temperature. No worries, I let it sit out for a bit. The boy and I had to take turns whisking (where did all my arm strength go?). In less than 5 minutes, there it was! Yummy, delicious, lemony mayonnaise! Of course, now I am craving a sandwich, no less than a BLT to slather it on. 

(Recipe on the link above) 

Enjoy!

 

On late Friday night, the boy started craving ramen. Sometimes, you just crave something at an ungodly hour. Thankfully, Himawari (San Mateo), which is our new favorite ramen stop is open quite late. We used to go to Santa Ramen, however, got tired of their long waiting lines, early closing time and pretty pricey stewed pork. One day, my darling friend suggested we try Himwari. One look at the menu and I knew that I had to get the Shio Butter -- butter and ramen!

It only made sense to get the same thing this time. And of course, I just had to get the stewed pork as well ($2.50 - fair!) All I can say is, yum, yum, yum! This ramen came with butter, corn, seaweed, green onions and roasted pork. Heaven. Granted, I could never really finish a bowl of ramen but the boy happily did! :D

 

 

 

To celebrate mother's day, we met my parents at the Ferry Building. What I thought would be a quick cruise from 4th St was marred by stop and go traffic once we hit Embarcadero. Why? There were three giant cruise ships docked at San Francisco. I had never seen a cruise ship and frankly, I still do not see the appeal. (No offense to those who love it, though!)

As we were all starving, we headed quickly to our favorite lunch spot at the Ferry Building, Il Cane Rosso, which my parents had yet to try. My parents each got the soup and sandwich (slow cooked pork) combo while I opted for the fantastic egg salad sandwich. The boy was silent the whole time he was devouring his rotisserie chicken with a side of farro. Yum! My parents loved it. This place never fails! For dessert, we got some bombolinis which were so good! I tried to forget they were fried! :) 

We then walked a few blocks to get a Thai massage! Happy mother's day, mom! :)

 

 

 

 

At last, I finally found some time to blog! :) We still haven't had the chance to go on a honeymoon (more on this later), but our wedding was featured at apracticalwedding and sajawedding blogs! A few months ago, we visited our amazing photographer, Christina and gave her a box of amaretto cream puffs which I just made that morning as a thank you present for the wonderful photographs from our wedding! A few weeks later, we received an email from apracticalwedding (the blog that kept us sane though the whole planning stage) about wanting to feature us as part of their Wordless Wedding series. We were floored! Apparently, Christina submitted our wedding for their Wordless Wedding series! After working on the writeup and choosing a song (it's Vetiver's Everyday), they posted it the very next week. Thank you to apw readers for the warm response!

Saja Wedding, who designed my short wedding dress, also did a feature on brides who chose short wedding dresses. They asked me some questions on how I came to that decision and this writeup along with some photographs from our wedding by Steph and Christina were included. Thank you, Saja! 

Honeymoon update: 

After months of trying to get vacation days, they are finally approved so I booked our trips to Hawaii and Paris! We are so excited! We just found an amazing Paris apartment on airbnb! :) Now it's time to map out the places we'd like to visit.. and condition our bodies for miles of walking!

 

Paris photo courtesy of Sherry from Culinary Getaways

 

Hello dear friends!

I know it has been a while.. Arnold and I have been married for six months now! Time flies. I have a few posts lined up but for now, I want to share photographs from our portrait shoot in July! We met with Crhsitina RIchards, our wedding photographer, at SF City Hall where we had an appointment to get our marriage license. See my Star Trek badge below ;) After getting our license, we headed over to the Ferry Building! We love going to the farmer's market there so we decided it would be fun to just take our portraits while shopping the market. And for those who dream of eloping to city hall but also want a wedding, you can do it just like we did, have your photos taken while you get your license at city hall and have the wedding elsewhere, too! :D Once we were done shopping and eating, we went to the wharf to visit Scoma's! Enjoy!

 

 

I'm so, so lucky to have a friend who is not only very talented, who not only introduced me to my husband, but was always there for me despite living in distant continents. These are a few of the photographs she captured at our wedding. Thank you for capturing the gorgeous light, love, happiness and the warm feeling of the day! Thanks, Steph! >:D<

Hello dear readers! Terribly sorry for the delay in posting photographs, I guess you do get sucked into a blackhole soon after getting married! :D 

Here are a few photographs taken the day before by the amazing photographer and my dear friend (and maid of honor), Steph Tan. 

It was a bit warm that day which was great for setting up our decorations! We had no wedding planner but we had crafty and talented friends on hand! :D 

We just reached another milestone last weekend, C and I finally printed our letterpress wedding invitations!

Can you believe it? C really wanted letterpress invitations from the beginning of our planning journey but according to her numerous calculations, it was expensive! Certainly, not doable with our $10k budget. Fast forward to December 2010, C was on Craigslist (as usual) and found an artist and printer who offered letterpress workshops! Enter our letterpress printer: Rebecca Peters!

Rebecca has a studio in Oakland where she does her own print work and holds workshops for people interested in learning letterpress printing! Best of all, you are able to work on your own designs just like we did!

C designed our invitations with Rebecca's help on Illustrator! Rebecca showed us how to mount our plates, mix ink and we even did most of the printing! Our invitations required 4 runs (tiring!) but so worth it. After the workshop, now we both understand why letterpress printing is so expensive. It is very labor-intensive and definitely requires a lot of tweaking! It took us about 4 hours and lots of editing and quality control but it was all worth it in the end! Our invitations look amazing and we can't wait to send them out!

For more information, check out Rebecca's website and printwork at http://rebpeterspress.com.

 

(From Left: Rebecca, C and A)

Thanks Rebecca!

- a

Something about this past couple of weeks... I've been finding and watching proposal videos...

I guess, I'm just celebrating the one year anniversary of the day I proposed to my dear c.

Since our wedding is in August, I guess this is the only anniversary I'm glad we're not celebrating next year. ;)

Anyway, here's another cute proposal video where a guy used muppets to convey his message.

so cute.

- a