Featured Seller!

Yay! Featured Seller on Daibe's awesome blog:

http://daibebeads.blogspot.com/2007/12/featured-weekly-seller-savor.html

And I just hit over 700 sales in less than two months!! Outstanding :) I'm so thrilled!

Got Soap?

Got Soap?
Originally uploaded by Jeremy Brooks

This is Jeremy Brooks' awesome shot of my new calendula oatmeal soap (it doesn't have a snappy name yet!)

He's rad! I think the pic rocks.

Here's Jeremy's flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/

Runnin

Back on the treadmill! Working off thanksgiving.

Monday Monday

"Black Friday" was a great day for my store. I've got 25 orders ready to go -- in the Costco bag, US priority and first class mail, and in front, International priority and first class.

This is going to be a heavy trip to work.

Runnin'

A nice, hilly run-walk on the treadmill today:

Not to Fifty!

Fans of Princess Bride might recall this line spoken by Count Rugen when Prince Humperdink shoves The Machine up to fifty, bringing a world of pain to Westley.

Well I hit fifty today: fifty miles! Hopefully not in as bad of shape as poor Westley.

Treadmill Runnin!

OK! Treadmill take two. I did an "aerobic" workout, where it varied the incline to change up the intensity. This one, the ipod did not eat:



This was my NEW personal best mile! Sweet! It was 10'11''!

Treadmill Runnin!

Got on my first treadmill today, at the gym. Work basically pays for membership (I pay income tax on it) so why not go -- sidewalk has been mucho rougho on my knees lately and I've been using that as an excuse/reason not to run.

Today was a walk/run for 30 min. Nike ate this workout so I can't find my little widget for it :(

Blogs

I've been scouring around to find some interesting blogs, here are some that caught my eye:

Chocolates:

http://www.boogaj.com/chocolate_blog/
http://www.chocolateobsession.com/

Dessert making:

http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/

Food:

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/
http://cookingwithamy.blogspot.com/

New Flickr Page

In the interests of self-promotion I've made a Flickr page, and then I had to go look at all the SF photos and found Jeremy's site (hi Jeremy!) and then I had to go look at all the FOOD PICTURES and now I am really hungry.

I better go running tomorrow, this is getting silly. I gotta hit 50 miles total, I am so close! I am feeling discouraged because running on the sidewalk is really hurting my knees now. I am going to have to get up early and hit the trails, or run at work (which is still basically sidewalk). UGH.

Whew, soap makin!

I opened my Etsy store today! Only a handful of items up, as it does take a bit of work to get organized. Now I really really really want a nice SLR to take some great product photos with. I think that'll be the Salamida christmas gift this year.

My store is called "savor" -- soaps based on food, basically. Yeah I'm a bit one-dimensional sometimes :)

Check it out: savor !

Runnin

Runnin

Runnin

Tough run today -- planned 3 mi but only made 2.66

Runnin

Longest run yet!!

Back to runnin!

Did my first post-flu run today, in the pouring rain. It sucked.

I've been sick and I got a new kitty

This is Neva, the stray that we just adopted. Unfortunately she's FIV+ but we are going to keep her anyway. The only real alternative is putting her to sleep and we just can't do that. Here she is on our first night. Poor girl was so dirty, she had been living in our parking lot for at least several months, since we moved in in March.

Neva means snow-covered, in Spanish.


Here she's a bit more cleaned up, much nicer! And not smelling so much like a dog.


I've had the flu for the past couple days so I have not done any running or weights. I'm gonna pick it up tomorrow where I left off. Still mangaged to lose two pounds, just keeping my food consumption in check.

Today, we decided to introduce her to our other three cats (Zad, Coco and Miki). Coco and Zad have been spending all day outside her door, talking to her, etc. Miki is a momma's boy and he's been downstairs sulking, so he hasn't had as much interaction. Coco and Zad came into her room, Coco immediately ate her food, and Zad jumped in her litter box. Weird cats!! Then they finally noticed her, and while there was a little bit of hissing, there was mostly some yowls, but nothing physical at all. I am really struck by how much bigger our housecats are compared to Neva! She might weigh five pounds and they're around 12-15. They're too fat, really. Neva was pretty nervous, but Coco and Zad we're mostly ho-hum about the whole thing. I took Neva downstairs to meet Miki, I sat her on my lap and he just stared and stared at her. Miki hates Coco, but grew up with Zad and likes him, so I was nervous about how he'd react to her. Honestly, he was huffy, making snorting noises, but otherwise he didn't really care! Neva gave me this look like "How many freaking cats do you guys have???" but she was OK. I fed them all some wet food but Neva was too nervous to eat near them, so we just took her back to her room to chill.

Neva still needs a good bath so we'll probably do that today. I gave her a bath the first day with a very gentle, fragrance free bar soap (for humans) because I figured that was better than the parking lot grease and oil she had on her, and we did get her a leave-in soap foam for cats, but I think she needs a good scrubbing. She is absolutely docile and such a sweet cat.

Coco, chillin in Mike's old apartment:


Zad, when we lived in the Mission:


Miki, also when we lived in the Mission:

Dinner

We had Margot and Joanna over for dinner, and I made chicken adobo, rice, pumpkin fritters, no-need bread, chapatis for the adobo, a cheese plate and lemon mousse pie. We played a lot of Nintendo Wii and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mike and I had a double TKO in Wii boxing, it was amazing. Margot and Joanna each scored a run and tied in Wii Baseball.

Fritters:

Bread:

Ooh gourmet!

English blue cheese, brie, honecomb, quince paste. We also had white truffle porcini mushroom oil and hawaiian black sea salt for the no-knead bread.

New placemats cause the old ones were getting grungy.

Fight!

Swing batta!

Keep your fork, there's pie!

Lemon Mousse Pie

I had another batch of the yummy lemony crust from the lemon tart last week, so I thawed it and made it into a lemon mousse pie.

Weighting down the crust to prebake it. The rice helps keep the dough from puffing up.

Dissolving gelatin in lemon juice, mixed with rind. I then creamed together confectioners sugar and cream cheese, then added to the lemon gelatin. I next whipped heavy cream, and folded the two batters together after the gelatin had set for 15 minutes in the fridge. The pie had to sit for 2 hours after assembling.

Pie crust cookies are always a good leftover (and they make good garnishes!)

Chapati

I made chapatis to go with the adobo I made for the dinner party. Here's the dough -- almost 1:1 whole wheat flour to water, plus curry powder (like a tbsp or so). Let sit for 2 hours. It's very wet dough so you need a lot of extra flour to roll it out with.


Frying -- cast iron pan, chapati is brushed with ghee on both sides.

Oooh yes. Easy to reheat in the microwave.

Pumpkin Fritters

Here is one of the dishes I made for our dinner with Joanna and Margot! A nice, quick appetizer.

These were soo tasty! Pumpkin, flour, curry powder, cardamom, salt, pepper, egg. Fried in peanut oil and salted at the end. Yum!

Chole - Chickpea curry

Last night Mike needed some sinus relief, so I made a chickpea curry called chole, with shrimp added. I used ginger, garlic, chilis, red pepper paste, onions, curry poweder, garam masala, chickpeas and water from the can, and shrimp.

It was very spicy!



I had a craving for a sunny side up egg, so I added that on top. The creaminess made such a perfect contrast to the curry. Egg and curry = friends4evar

Weight Training

Cleaned the house to warm up! Gonna have Joanna and Margot over tomorrow for Chicken Adobo, curried chapatis and a secret dessert (actually I just haven't planned it yet, heh).

Workout A
Bench 4x10 @ 20
Overhead lift 3x10 @ 20
Squats 4x10 @ 20 <-- improvement!
Abs 3x20
Supermans 3x15
Curls 3x10 @ 10 per arm
Tris 3x10 @ 10 per arm <-- improvement!

Lifting

A nice, solid guide on Strength Training. This blog looks promising, I like it!

http://stronglifts.com/how-to-build-muscle-the-definitive-guide/

Runnin

Weight Training

Cleaned house and did laundry as warm up!

Workout B
Incline press 3x10 @ 10
Pullups 5x5
Lunges 3x10 @ 20
Calf raises 4x20
Abs 3x20

I am trying to convince Mike that we need to adopt a stray kitty I have named Snow Cat. Any advice appreciated!

Runnin

2 Miles completed today:

Weight Training

I ran 1 mile to warm up today and hit a new personal best mile! 10:13!



Workout A
Bench 4x10 @ 20
Overhead lift 3x10 @ 20
Squats 4x10 @ 10-20-10-20
Abs 3x20
Supermans 3x15
Curls 3x10 @ 10 per arm
Tris 3x10 @ 10 with both arms

Tri Tip Roast

Tri tip is not my favorite but I've never made it and it was a good price at Trader Joe's. We also got some wine, this is a bordeaux, which I've never had before. I enjoyed it. We're going to try working on our wine education. I know that I love Nero d'Avola, syrrah and vin santo, but we want to try more. Mike likes Cabs.


Coco wants steak.

Here it is after searing and baking in the oven until 130 degrees. Let stand for 10 minutes until almost 150ish.


Perfect.

Sorry for the flash but it was otherwise too dark. Tri tip, rice noodles with broccoli and sesame oil, and a side of palm hearts. Sauce is oyster sauce, peanut sauce and hoisin mixed.

Palm Hearts

My first recipe (well, I only made part of the recipe) from the French Laundry cookbook Jeremy let me borrow. I want to go to dinner there soon but it's a couple hundred dollars for all the courses. I think Mike and I might go there for Christmas but we'll have to see what's available.

I left out the marrow beans from this recipe because I didn't want to do anything fussy, but I loved the idea of coating the palm hearts in panko. I had both, so it was a simple thing to make. Coated in flour, egg, then panko and fried in peanut oil. This is my new favorite oil: light, flavorless, and high smoke point.

These were soooo good. Crispy, briny, and kinda like artichoke hearts. Some times almost creamy and nice and salty. Mike was reminded of scallops.

Suppli

OK the main reason I wanted to make risotto was to have leftovers, to make suppli!! Or arancini, but that's the sicilian version. Basically, these are balls of risotto stuffed with cheese, breaded and then fried. YUM OH MY GOD.

Traditionally they have sauce, meat, even peas inside, but I wanted just cheese. Couldn't get a good pic of the inside but I tried. I think these were stellar. I made the sauce w/ tomato, tomato puree, basil, oregano, garlic and olive oil.

Coconut Pudding

This was supposed to be a gelatin/jello kind of dessert but it never solidified. I guess not enough gelatin. I boiled coconut milk (the light version), vanilla, anise and pink food coloring with some cane sugar.


Poured into vintage tin molds after straining out the anise seed. It was a very good pudding but not what I expected. I served it with chocolate covered bananas.

Shrimp Stuffed Squid

I marinated baby squid and shrimp in Hot Lime sauce, mango chili vinegar, chilis, lemon and mint for two hours. Then I chopped up the shrimp and tentacles, and stirfried them quickly in the marinade and added some breadcrumbs.



Then I stuffed the squid and broiled them. They were soooooo good! This recipe was from the Silver Spoon (although it was modified).

Negra Modelo Chicken

My current favorite beer is Negra Modelo, and we had one bottle left so I made beer chicken.

I browned the chicken first (only salt and pepper on it) and then poured in the beer and braised for 30 minutes. At the end, I poured off the beer and browned the chicken again.

Served with pasta.

Lemon Tart

Another recipe from the Silver Spoon cookbook. I have to say I was disappointed in the filling -- maybe I used the wrong pan tho, because I used a removable bottom tart pan and my filling leaked out. My bottom crust was very soggy and the filling was very concentrated because so much leaked out. But it was extremely tasty!

Here is the crust. I am going to use it for a lot of things. Oddly, there was no water in the recipe. I had to add some! It wouldn't hold together with just butter and egg yolks. It contained a lot of sugar, and lemon peel as well.


Even adding a scant 1/4 cup of ice water, it was still crumbly.


Here is the filling, basically butter, eggs, sugar, lemon juice and lemon peel.


Baked. You can see the second pie plate under to catch what leaked out.


Dusted w/ confectioner's sugar.


Food porn close-up!