Thursday, January 30, 2014

November: Month in Review Part 2


Nov. 16th: Christina's Bridal Shower

Drove to Pasadena Saturday morning to attend Christina's Bridal Shower at Cafe Bizou. Matt's mom and sister were the hosts and they did an amazing job. After the shower, we walked around the Pasadena area. We happened to walk into Crate and Barrel since Christina's mom had a gift card she had to use and it just so happened that they were doing their Thanksgiving Giveaway. I entered the giveaway not really thinking anything but I actually won! It was pretty crazy because they called me the Monday right before Thanksgiving to tell me I had won. I've never really won anything in life (that I could remember) so this was a huge surprise.


known this girl since the 3rd grade! oh how fast time flies!


Nov.18th-21st: Work


Nov. 22nd:

Tanya flew into SD for my birthday weekend and the Drake concert on Sunday Friday night. We headed straight for ramen at Ramen Yamadaya. Afterwards we went to watch The Hunger Games Catching Fire. I thought it was a pretty good movie. But I felt like people were exaggerating how good the movie was.  I thought it was good but not THAT good.




Nov. 23rd:

People started coming for my birthday weekend Saturday morning. Plans were to hit up Snooze and then go Go-cart racing. The wait at Snooze was quite long but worth it for this baby.

OMG French toast



spending time with the bestests

after go-cart racing

That night we headed out to Little Italy for dinner. We went to Bencotto per my coworker's suggestion and it did not disappoint. I absolutely love pasta and I had been looking for a good place in San Diego. My coworker was telling me about their squid-ink pasta and how it was the best squid-ink pasta she's ever had. Well, it was absolutely delicious. Cooked to perfection and the flavor was all there. My new go-to Italian restaurant.




Nov. 24th:

The next day, people were heading back to LA but we decided to squeeze in brunch at Prep Kitchen before everyone left. It was pretty delicious.







Instead of a cake, Judy opted for some macarons instead. Delish!






Thank you to my beautiful friends for making the trek all the way down to San Diego to spend the weekend with me! Ya'll sure know how to make a girl feel special!

After brunch we headed home to take a nap and then made our way to the Viejas Arena for the Drake concert!




My 3rd time seeing Drake and the only time I fully remember the concert lol. It was seriously a huge party but just don't Drake and drive (...or you'll end up at your ex's house) :P.


Nov. 25th:

The next morning we woke up at the break of dawn to drive to Disneyland!







 







Nov. 26th-30th:

Took the rest of the day off to go to the eye doctor to get a new prescription for my contacts and then worked the rest of the week. Made it to two Thanksgivings with Tony's dad and mom's side of the family which always means amazing food. Went Black Friday shopping and got a bunch of cool stuff.




That concludes November Month in Review (finally!)! 
Working on October and December and soon January! Stay tuned!



Monday, January 27, 2014

Goals for the New Year 2014


This year I opted for 5 goals that I'll follow up with every quarter. I'll go ahead and get started with what those goals are.

1) I've been telling a lot of people about this goal and that is to not purchase any clothes for the entire year. The past year I've bought so much clothes that I don't even wear. The whole point of this goal is to learn which clothing items I use the most and what it is about them that I love whether it be the fabric, the fit, or the style. A lot of the time I try to buy things that are colorful and things that are outside of my comfort zone but those items seem to spend the most time collecting dust in the closet. What I hope that this clothing detox will also do is help me figure out which items I have to do away with because despite not being able to buy any clothes, I'm still unable to fit those items into my daily wardrobe. Lastly, I hope that because I won't be purchasing any new clothes, I'll be able to find some new uses for some of the items that I already own. Too much of the time I purchase something that I thought I really liked, only it gets replaced by a newer item I purchase and gets forgotten. With this goal I'll try to follow up as much as I can but I'm confident I'll be able to do it! (Let's see how confident I am 3-4 months out lol.)


2) I currently have 2 large student loans. Both were due to grad school but one is a subsidized loan (6.5% interest) and the other is the unsubsidized Grad Plus Loan (7.65% interest).


My goal for the year is to pay off half of my Grad Plus Loan. Based on the amount that I currently owe, that'll be approximately $38,200. It's a pretty hefty goal but go big or go home right? lol. That's also not including the massive amounts of interest that will accrue overtime. Based on the $38,200 amount, divided over 12 months, would be $3,183 per month. I'm not as confident with this goal but once we hit the first quarter, I may reevaluate where it's going.


3) Since we don't have kids or any real obligations, I'd like to do a bit more traveling this year. Last year I went from having 3 weeks paid vacation to zero because I went from being part of the Guild to not. I'll be restarting with 2 weeks this year (hopefully). Last year we also had a few weddings to go to which were 4 months out of the year so vacation time was really limited. We haven't received any wedding invites this year yet and I have some trips planned but I'm still waiting for approval on my vacation time so we'll have to see how it goes.


4) Health wise I'm opting to actually eat lunch on the daily. Usually when I work I always get McDonalds. I've been changing it up and getting Pick Up Stix which has really made me much more productive. I've been bringing my planner with me to lunch and it has really helped to organize my week. I usually put down what I want to do each day of the week and it's obviously been helping with this blog and getting other work related items done. I actually use a meal planning calendar to plan out my week like this one that I found at TJ Maxx.




5) Looking at some of my older pictures I've noticed a tad more flabbiness in my arms and thighs. Once the craziness of the start of the year ends which I'm going to peg as after Valentine's Day which is when I'm betting that most people would've given up on their New Years Resolutions of going to the gym, I want to restart my 24-hr membership. I've been using a Fit Bit recently to track my activity and I do get quite of a bit of activity in daily (at least 10,000 steps) but I need to tone up some more. Besides restarting my 24-hr membership, I also wanted to do one of those Ballet Barre classes. I'll definitely update you guys on when I actually start lol.


So those are my five goals for the year. Some of them more difficult than others but 2014 is a new year and I'm confident that there will be so many opportunities to succeed! I hope everyone had a great weekend! Let's start off this week with the right attitude and positive thinking!






Sunday, January 26, 2014

Sunday Sounds: Coachella 2014 Series - Alesso




"Can we freeze karma and surrender our rights and wrongs
Can we just for a night let the stars decide where we belong
Maybe heaven right now is a devil or angel away
That won't change
Together we vow that our colors will sparkle the faith"

For awhile at work we would go in 2 hours before we opened to get started in the morning to just set up for a good day and coffee wasn't really enough to wake us up so we'd always play the Levels by Avicii radio station on Pandora just to get our blood pumping. There was one song that I remembered that I kept running to my phone to see what it was. Turns out it was "Calling" by Sebastian Ingrosso and Alesso. Absolutely love the song. What I also love about the song is that it is such a great song for a video montage of sorts. I wanted to use it as the background of my Coachella 2013 memories video but I still haven't had a chance to make it lol. Hopefully I can use some of his songs in this years' video since he'll actually be there. I also feel like his songs really capture a journey and the energy at Coachella. I absolutely cannot wait to see him live!!! Below are a few of my favorites from Alesso. If I Lose Myself from 2:00 to 2:10 really reminds me of Space Mountain for some weird reason (the background noise that makes it sound a little ghoul-y). City of Dreams has been a recent favorite of mine and is currently on repeat 1.










One of my favorite videos to watch of their road to Coachella featuring snippets with Ryan Tedder. I love how it shows some of the behind the scenes to how they collaborated on the song as well as their energy level in creating a masterpiece. Definitely worth the trip over to VEVO on YouTube.

Friday, January 24, 2014

San Diego Restaurant Week 2014: Tapenade



Our third and final stop for Restaurant Week was at Tapenade. We opted to get the wine pairings with our meal which even though on the online menu states $58, turned out to be $60 (which is really a steal since our cocktails at The Marine Room were $15 each). 

For our appetizer, we got the soup and the duck pate. The soup was really interesting tasting. It tasted like some of those herbal remedies my mom used to make me drink when I was a child. I couldn't put my finger on what it was though.. The duck pate was actually quite tasty. The only thing that I didn't really like was the nuts in the pate. Other than that, it was pretty tasty. The pickled vegetables were really good as well but I'm a fan on pickled anything so.. lol. 





For our main entrees we got the Wild Boar and the Maine Diver Scallops. I had a small forkful of the Wild Boar and it tasted super homemade. If you've watched Ratatouille, it was like the end of the movie when the guy eats the Ratatouille and has those visions of his childhood. The scallops were COOKED TO PERFECTION. Honestly, when we went to The Marine Room on Sunday and had the scallops, I thought they were slightly overcooked. I wasn't completely sure until yesterday night when I had these scallops. They were 100x better than The Marine Room (although The Marine Room might have been having an off night? They looked completely slammed.). As soon as I pushed my knife and fork through the scallops I knew they would be melt-in-your-mouth good. The risotto was not extremely flavorful but it went well to not overpower the taste of the scallops. Would highly recommend getting the scallops here.




For dessert we got the Petite Pot au Chocolat and the Profiteroles (which I had to Google to find out what it was lol). I'm not a huge fan of sweets especially chocolate pudding of sorts so I didn't have much of the Petite Pot au Chocolat. The small spoonful that I had tasted like melted Ghiradelli's chocolate. The Profiteroles were actually quite tasty despite the fact that I didn't enjoy the Grand Marnier ice cream. I think it was the slight hint of orange-flavor that just confused my taste buds a little too much. I would have much preferred the cream puffs with French Vanilla ice cream or even Butter Pecan (lol I like the old people ice cream flavors lol. So sue me :P).




Overall, I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5. The wine pairings were a bit mediocre, especially the dessert wine. I don't remember specifically what the wines were since they did not put them on the menu (that may have been a red flag lol). The duck pate and the scallops were my favorite part of the meal. I would probably come back to try some other seafood dishes since I was super impressed with their scallops. Again, for the price of $45/person and $60/person with wine pairings, I would have much rather spent it at Amaya. Nonetheless, it was nice to go out and try out a different place. 

That concludes my San Diego Restaurant Week posts! Hope you enjoyed them and aren't too hungry! I hope you all have a great weekend!





San Diego Restaurant Week 2014: NINE-TEN Restaurant and Bar




Second Restaurant Week stop was at NINE-TEN Restaurant and Bar. Tony and his friends had gone there previously but due to work I wasn't able to attend. He said good things about the place so when my friend Christine asked if I wanted to try the restaurant, I jumped at the opportunity. The entrance to the restaurant is actually inside this hotel so if you end up going there you don't have to look like the noobs we were.

We were seated right when we arrived even though we were early for our reservations. The menu had some variations from the Restaurant Week menu that was posted online. 

We started with the Hamachi sashimi and Jamaican jerk pork belly. The Hamachi sashimi was good and had decent flavor. I'm a big fan of vinaigrette so it was good lol. Apparently the Hamachi sashimi and Jamaican jerk pork belly are the signature dishes at the restaurant that they never change. According to the waiter, the head chef Jason Knibb actually grew up in Jamaica so it should be pretty authentic. I didn't get to try it but from what I heard from my friend, it was quite tasty.

hamachi sashimi

jamaican jerk pork belly

For the main entree, the three of us opted for 3 different dishes. We went with the Swordfish, Scallops, and Beef Short Rib. I had the Swordfish and it was decent but I think I might have gotten sick from it. It wasn't that it was bad quality but I've noticed that anytime I get grilled fish (besides salmon), I literally have to run to the restroom so I just don't think it goes well with my system. The dollop of white sauce on the side (not sure what it was lol) was really good and added a lot of flavor to the swordfish.

grilled swordfish

sea scallops

beef short rib

Lastly, we ended the night with the Caramel Apple Custard and the Half Baked Chocolate Cake (which is supposed to be another signature dish). The Caramel Apple Custard was definitely not what I had expected in presentation or taste. It wasn't too sweet which was good for me since I'm not a huge fan of sweets. Its one of those dishes you'll probably have to try out yourself to see if you like it. It's interesting to say the least lol.

caramel apple custard

half baked chocolate cake

dinner with friends old and new :)
thanks christine and tram for a great dinner date!

Overall, I would give the restaurant 4 stars out of 5. My favorite dish was the Hamachi sashimi which is interesting since it's not a sushi restaurant or anything. Again, there were no stand out dishes that were must haves but I only had the 3 dishes. I think I would definitely want to try to Jamaican jerk pork belly if I ever returned to the restaurant. Also, next time I would probably get the wine pairings with dinner. In comparison to my dinner at Amaya which was also $45 and $65 with wine pairings, Amaya tasted MUCH better and was much more worth it. 

Hope you've been enjoying these food posts! I have one more restaurant week post and some catch up on some month in reviews! Stay tuned!





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