Kellybean

(Of course, without pictures. I’m getting really bad about not taking pictures. Something to remedy these coming months.)

Not only was this past Sunday the first day of summer, it was also Father’s Day and my friend G’s birthday.

G was kind enough to extend an invite to her family get together to a few friends, and luckily we were able to join them for a picnic on Angel Island.

If you were in the Bay Area this past weekend, you know it was just an absolutely GORGEOUS day! What better way to celebrate the start of summer, Father’s Day and a birthday than taking a quick ferry ride to Angel Island for a picnic. (A Filipino picnic, at that, so you know there was PLENTY of food!)

We spent the day there eating, relaxing, partaking in a water balloon fight and playing on the mini-beach at Alaya Cove. Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and catch the last ferry back to Tiburon.

Swim…lessons?

With our upcoming vacay to Maui, we decided to sign Mads up for swim lessons of sorts. Since everyone in SF sends their kids here for lessons, I signed her up and her first class was last Saturday. The downfall is that the school is on a perpetual schedule, meaning every child in Mads’ group had way more experience than she did. Children in her group were practically swimming on their own, whereas my child refused, REFUSED to wear the goggles, wear the fins or even partake in the class activities. Yes, money well spent…and we’re locked in until the end of July at least. I will give them props though…these other kids were not afraid of the water (which is good and bad at the same time) and didn’t mind being purposely dunked in the water (to get them used to water in their face). My child on the other hand, wanted to do her own thing, play with the toys, etc. Though, by the end of the 30 minute lesson, she seemed to enjoy jumping into the water into S’ arms.

The nice thing about the lessons is that it takes us to Crissy Field. We rarely make it out to those parts of SF and on nice days, it’s a real treat. After our lesson, we walked to the Warming hut for a late lunch and managed to meet M&K&H and visit with them for a little while and catch up. Perhaps, next time we’ll take Lucie and we can all enjoy a nice afternoon at Crissy Field.

Is it time for vacay yet?

I apologize for a blog-less May (and I’m well on my way to a blog-less June if I don’t step up!). There has just been too much going on around here…or I’ve just been too lazy to post.

So after all that vacillating on whether to tweet or not, I opened my account, and as I had expected, probably 2 weeks into it, I was finished. Officially, I’m following a few friends here and there, oh and the beloved food carts of SF. But that’s the extent of my Twitter experience.

Let’s see what else has been going on…

Mads starts her weekly summer field trips with her day care this coming Friday. This time, they’re asking parents to volunteer for at least one outing - which could be a lot of fun, but I’ll let you know.

Which brings me to a related topic - since Mads is getting on to her 3rd birthday this August (where does time go?!), I’ve reluctantly started looking into preschools. Starting slowly, I’ve only gone so far to request information & admissions packages from this school and this school. These are our only two choices really - especially since she will need to learn French. Sigh…I still can’t believe my little girl is en route to preschool.

Oh, lest I forget, we were in Carmel the weekend after Memorial Day weekend for T & JC’s wedding. We drove down Friday afternoon, settled in and made our way to the rehearsal dinner here. It was a fun night with decent Mexican food and a mariachi band. The ceremony itself was at the beautiful mission basilica. The dinner reception was held at Il Fornaio with a hilariously narrated slide show by the bride’s brother. I skipped the post reception festivities at the beach - but S tells me it was good times.

We packed up Sunday, grabbed brekkies at a diner and decided to stop at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Now, we had been to the temporary Academy of Sciences with her, and thinking it’s the Monterey Bay Aquarium it HAS to be at least 10x better than SF’s aquarium. Um, yeah, no. I was a bit disappointed as I felt there was much more to see at the Academy. At least we know we don’t need to go back. The stop at Ghiradelli’s for a sundae made up for it.

And now, here we are in (mid-late) June. We had a low key birthday celebration for S - a “special” dinner for papa, as I told Mads: S’ favorite lasagna, salad, birthday cake and home made strawberry ice cream. He was gifted with a bottle of Lagavulin 16 and Apple store gift cards.

I promise I’ll try to update more often, we’ve got fun filled weeks and weekends ahead of us!

I recently was in France - unfortunately, not for vacay, I did have to work. Fortunately, I was able to make it to Paris twice - my extended family lives just outside Paris (about 20m on the RER) - so going into Paris isn’t a big hassle. It was a short visit, but it was a nice reminder why I love this city. So, naturally, I’ve put together a list of my 10 favorite things about Paris, France.

• Le Metro - Probably because I don’t take public transportation on a daily basis, but I LOVE the metro system in Paris (you probably think I’m crazy now, if you didn’t before). There is a metro stop nearly everywhere you go - unlike London - and you can get pretty much anywhere. Where else on a metro will you have crazy musicians or gypsies with portly babies begging for change?
• Le Tour Eiffel lit up at night - so beautiful, so romantic
• Crepes in the 5th - nothing, nothing beats a nutella crepe from one of the many crepe stands in the Latin Quarter
• Lu - not really Parisien, more like a French thing. Lu is probably the French equivalent of Hostess, but they put out much better snacks. A recent find of mine were the Pockitos - a shortbread type cookie bar filled with chocolate. Another good one is the Chocolate Oursons - yellow cake shaped teddy bears filled with, yes, you guessed it, chocolate.
• Walking - the only way to really see a city is to walk its streets. No matter how tired I am, I find walking Paris is…energizing. Especially at night. We took a lovely post-dinner walk from the 7th, along the Champs Elysses, through Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome to Opera.
• Fresh baguettes - you haven’t tasted anything until you’ve had a FRESH baguette from the boulangerie
• History - the city is just teeming with history
• Croissants/Pain au Chocolat - sorry, I just can’t seem to get away from the food!
• Picpus - I just think it’s fun to say.
• Steak Frites

I know that this doesn’t even come close for some people. What are your favorite things about Paris?

taken from pont de l'alma

I gave in.

You can now follow me on Twitter here or via the link to the right.

Happy Tweets!

Not quite a birthday weekend in Paris, but it sounds a lot better than, working remotely from France for one week and I happen to be in Paris for my birthday. Fortunately, or unfortunately, with the internet/WiFi/VPN one is able to work anywhere.

So, yes, I am managing to work, what makes it difficult is a clingy-jet lagged child. Finally, after 4-5 days, she’s not so clingy and is playing well with her cousins. She’s looking up to her cousine, wanting to do things like her. For example, this morning, her cousine was granted a spoonful of nutella post-brekkies. Next thing I know, Mads wants “like cousine”. Ugh. A spoonful of nutella isn’t what I had in mind for her brekkies, since she only had hot chocolate. I suppose anything goes chez grandparents.

an assortment of saucisson...

Friday evening, I managed to take the RER from Le Pecq to the 7th to meet S, family & friends for dinner at Chez L’Ami Jean. L’ami Jean is a tiny Basque restaurant in Paris’ 7th arrondissement and definitely not a place for vegetarians.

We started with plenty of saucisson, two small casseroles of pate campagne, some jambon, and a jug, yes, a jug, of cornichons. There were so many options on the menu, S & I made it easy on ourselves and ordered the menu for two: cote du veau. For some reason, I had scalloppine on my mind, so I was a bit overwhelmed when a small cow was presented on our platter. Our meat was accompanied by sauteed spring veggies and the most sinful mashed pureed potatoes I’ve ever had! Unfortunately, I’m not one to say non to dessert, so I opted for strawberries, but I did get to try the drinking chocolate that someone ordered and regretted not getting one of my own.

Chez L’Ami Jean 27 rue Malar 75007 Paris

Dinner was followed by a lovely walk from the 7th to Opera - passing such sights as Pont Alexandre III, Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome, Longchamps, John Galliano, Cartier, Hotel Costes, Buddha Bar and the like and a late RER train ride home.

Come Saturday evening, I was too tired to make the trek for a Parisien birthday dinner, so we opted for dinner in Saint-Germain-en-Laye at La Feuillantine. It was a small restaurant, charming and chic at the same time and food was SO good! Turns out Saturday was a popular night for birthday celebrations - 3 other people were celebrating their birthday, too! I guess, La Feuillantine is the place to go for your birthday. We started with an amuse buche of pureed lentils and chorizo (yum!). Followed was foie gras cooked in a vanilla-mushroom cream sauce for S and a feuillantine (puff pastry) with green & white asparagus, grapefruit, and prawns, with, of course, a citrus cream sauce for me. It was here that I noticed this was the second resto to serve us non-white flour bread - which was nice, seeing that I probably met my carb intake for the year in the past couple days. Our entrees were just as tasty - yes, there’s more! - lamb shank (I think) with couscous and fish baked in parchment with baby spinach, proscuitto, fresh goat cheese and a (salty, for me) thyme au jus. To finish, an Ile flottante on green matcha and a chocolate-raspberry dessert. (Sorry, no pictures of the food here!)

What a wonderful start to my thirty-something-th year!

I was taken aback to see that Maureen Dowd borrowed the blog post title that had been stewing around my noggin for a while.

I have yet to sign up for a Twitter account and am (gasp!) even contemplating doing so…but I’m hesitating. Do I really need membership to yet another online “social” network of sorts? It’s difficult enough keeping up with the blog, fbook, flickr, yelp, kaboodle, polyvore…and do people really need to know what I’m doing at any given moment?

(But am I happily surprised that the Bay Area NBC affiliate sports page has “published” my photo! Sweet!)

Anyhow, I digress…If you’ve seen Wall-E, you can understand my hesitation. Lack of human contact and being tied to a device/gadget (though my new one, does come in handy!). Besides, my husband argues that I won’t sign up for Twitter as it’s not mainstream enough.

I dunno, what do you think? Should I tweet? Or should I stay tweet free?

To satisfy my need to make lists (with pictures!), I’ve put together a list of my favorite 10 choses (things) in my kitchen.

by kellybeanz

• Round Dutch Oven - The work horse of my kitchen. From soups to roasts to easy, peasy Chile Verde, I think this is must have in all kitchens. I love it so much, I invested in the 9-quart oven as well!
• Stand Mixer - Making cookies, cakes, whipped cream and even pizza dough has never been so easy.
• Slow Cooker - Manna from heaven for working moms. With some quick prep the night before or the morning of, a wonderful & healthy family dinner is yours.
• Prep bowls - for your mise en place, it makes cooking and baking move a lot quicker
• Rasp grater - for perfectly grated citrus zest, freshly grated nutmeg. It grates even onions, ginger and…yum, chocolate.
• Santoku knife - i heart my santoku knife
• Mandoline - not made for slicing soft items (like eggplant; ask about the stitches), but made for perfectly sliced potatoes for a gratin or dauphinois.
• Ceramic baker - I use this baker for everything: lasagna, brownies, casseroles. Probably the 2nd hardest working horse in my kitchen.
• Rice cooker - I am no longer an Asian without a fancy pants rice cooker. It takes a bit longer than cooking rice on the stove top, but so far every batch of brown rice I’ve cooked in it has come out nice and fluffy!
• Peeler - for easy peasy peeling, this Swiss peeler rocks!

Apparently, miracles just don’t happen at Xmas.

As Mads was getting dressed for Easter festivities, she asked, ASKED!, to wear her Cinderella undies!

After months and months of putting the undies out, her refusing and putting on pull-ups, finally, undies. Still, there were a few accidents, but, she wore her undies for most of the day. (After her 3rd accident, I caved and let her wear her pull-ups, not good, I know.)

She even wore them this morning. Maybe a little peer pressure at day care will help things along…

apres egg hunt

That would be me.

I haven’t forgotten about my blog.

I’ve just been so dang busy the past couple weeks and most likely will be busy into the next month or two.

There’s so much to talk about, but when everything is fine and done and at the end of the evening, the only thing I want to do is veg out and watch Gossip Girl.

There wasn’t a Little Miss Lazy.

(image borrowed from here)

Before I emptied out my spam folder, I thought I’d share my favorite spam subjects (punctuation cleaned up slightly):

“this night your bedroom will be jungles and you? wild tiger!”

“protect your head against morning after syndrome”

“have you ever tried Superman’s costume on?”

“get healthier life - it’s better life”

“magnesium oxide replenishment to your organism.”

“don’t bury your intimate life before time.”

“do the favourite woman of happy! Purchase itself medicine!”

“how many are you ready to give for the health? we will help you to economize!”

Honestly, who do these spammers think they’re kidding? With grammar like this you’d be nuts to actually click thru.

image borrowed from here.