Happy Birthday Forrest

For Forrest's 33rd birthday, I was able to share with him one of the most defining experiences of my life...a meal at The French Laundry. We had lunch there on Friday for four hours. It was wonderful, everything more than I remember!

I forgot to take a picture of the Cheese Gougeres..almost forgetting that I had a camera.

The now famous, Salmon canape. The cone is filled with creme fraiche.

Cauliflower panna cotta with caviar, please note the VERY generous heaping spoonful of caviar.

Truffled egg custard - not on the menu :) I have seen this in the cookbook and have only wondered about it. I believe Mike poured a wonderful '78 Madeira for this.

Forrest's Beet Salad with pickled onions and cucumber ball salad.

My gluttonous serving of foie gras au torchon. I don't care how much more that costs...I will always want it.

Selection of sea salts to go with the foie gras and the rest of our meal. Clockwise from the top: Hawaiian black salt from molokini, french fleur de sel, japanese salt in the wooden box, grey fleur de sel, hawaiin red clay salt from kauai and finally, jurassic salt from montana.

My fish course = Sea of Japan Bigfin Squid. This flippin calamari tasted like honey.

Forrest's fish course = Fillet of Pacific Kahala (a Hawaiian fish similar to Hamachi)

There is a lobster course in here and I forgot to take a picture of it because I inhaled it before I knew what was happening. But is was "Butter poached Maine Lobster"

Forrest's meat course = Liberty Farm Peking Duck

My meat course = Wagyu beef tartare with a crazy orange egg yolk = crazy delicious

I forgot to take a picture of the lamb course as well - ARG - that was also crazy delicious.

I also forgot to take a picture of the flippin cheese course.

Sorbet course to cleanse the palette before dessert. Comice pear sorbet - Super light and refreshing.

The famed "Coffee and Donuts" made its way to our table. It is no longer on the regular menu, but it is something that I have read about time and again. This is a quintessential TFL dish, much like th salmon canape, that captures the essence of the restaurant. Perfectly refined food that conjures up much savored memories that are playful, making the dining experience more than just about eating.

I also forgot to take a picture of our dessert course which was lovely and of all the other yummy treats they brought out to us once we were done with dessert. At this point, there is no blood left in the rest of my body because it has all concentrated onto my abdomen trying to digest my lunch.

The rest of the weekend was equally as gluttonous and joined by wonderful company of Molly, Mike and Forrest's parents. We had a crazy wine nerd kinda time.

Movie Review: Cloverfield

I have no words to describe this movie. It didn't suck, but I left the movie completely pissed off. I dislike the "Blair Witch Movie" style of filmography, that stupid from the first person's camcorder perspective. After a steak dinner, I was on the verge of vomiting for the first 30 minutes of the movie. Nevermind the fact that the young adult characters in the movie were all retarded and support the theory that the current generation of working young adults are all self absorbed idiots with no awareness of the world around them.

ARG

Movie Review: No ccountry For Old Men

Technically AMAZING - well filmed, good storyline, well developed..very methodical. For no other words than "it is a very complete film." You really weren't left with any hanging questions or a need for an explanation as to why things happened a certain way to confuse the story. It would get a perfect grade if it were graded on technique. Did I like the movie, subjectively? I am not entirely sure...

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it as it is well worth the full $20 billion dollars a ticket or whatever movies cost these days. The tagline of "there are no clean getaways" is spot on to describe the movie. Forrest and I actually discussed the movie for a few days and many other theories came up as well, like this is symbolic of how you cannot escape or cheat death no matter what you do. The entire movie foreshadows the subsequent scenes but not in a manner that is predictable but in a way to build the story in a timely manner from one scene to the next...very complete.

"you're not fat, just slightly overweight"

Word for word quote from the husband about my stature. Well, wait let me clarify...my stature when we first started dating. Keep in mind that I wore maybe a size 6/8 then and now I wear a 4/6...not a huge difference.

The best part is, he said this with a smile...like it was a compliment...LOL - this was one of the most hilarious statements from our vacation.

MalibuBetty, the drink!

Found today on the internet... HA! I guess we're going to have to stock up on pineapple juice and Malibu Rum so we can serve this to all guests that come over to the house! Post Hawaii, I'm all crazy for Mai Tais, so the next house party will be a luau....
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Malibu Betty
Equal parts of vodka, coconut rum and pineapple juice are shaken together with ice for this drink.

Ingredients:
1 oz vodka
1 oz coconut rum
1 oz pineapple juice

Method
Combine all ingredients into a shaker filled with ice. Shake and serve as shots.

Hawaii 2008: day 6-7

So yummy and delicious is the SPAM musubi. The Hawaiians have it all figured out. This fist sized combo of rice, fried SPAM and nori is the perfect pick me up snack during a day of extracurricular activities. Forrest referred to them as "cute" and I must agree...but they were quite delicious during our snorkeling trip. In honor of the roaming gnome, we traveled with our musubi...so here is a little "fun with SPAM."

Hawaii 2008: day 6

Snorkeling off Molokini and Turtle Bay. There are more pictures - many more, and each are so funny because nobody looks good wearing a snorkeling mask. Underwater nerds.

Hawaii 2008: day 5

Got up at 3:00 am for the Haleakela sunrise bike tour. Never doing this again - LOL. We barely remember most of the morning, but we were back by 9:30 am and had the rest of the day to ourselves.

Hawaii 208: day 3

Obligatory couple photo...mai tais at the hotel bar watching the sunset.

View from the top of the big island. There's a hike down to a beach then another hike up to the top of the cliff in the background.

Forrest holding a monster avocado...the thing was the size of a football. I don't know what they got in the soil in Hawaii...but it is crazy!

Hawaii 2008: day 2

Hawaii Day 2. This is the day after our arrival onto the big island of Hawaii. This first day of traveling was filled with visits to Volcano National Park and the Living History Coffee Farm.

Look the ground farted! This is in the place called the "Steam Vents"

That's the Kilauea Caldera...notice the crater of the volcano is STILL STEAMING! That is some crazy shiz. At the visitor's center they mentioned how there has been recent magma activity at the crater. From all the cracks in the hardened lava and the steam coming from it...I would agree

Forrest amazed by the lava tubes in Volcano state park

Hawaii 2008: day 1

Those are the controls for our crazy first class seats to Hawaii!!!! I used some miles to upgrade us and we ended up with these pimpin seats that fold FULLY FLAT! Too bad we were too busy playing Scrabble to actually make use of these seats to take a nap.

somewhere over the pacific ocean :)

Mahalo Bitches

That's right - we are back in California. Thankfully having just missed the worst storm in recent history, we are sporting mild tans. I have some funny pics to get up this week from our excursions...particularly my rekindled appreciation for the canned preserved meat, SPAM.

heeheeheeheeheehee

This Christmas, Forrest got me a wallet...because I specifically needed a wallet. The insane thing though, is he bought a Louis Vuitton wallet - which I think is absolutely beautiful but crazy expensive...it took me almost a week to just take it out of the box.

Once I finally became comfortable using the wallet, I was then ashamed that the purse carrying the wallet was a fraction of the wallet's price. This is crazy, I know...I am just talking myself into buying a purse worthy enough of the new wallet :)

So in Hawaii (lower sales tax and all) I went to the LV store in Wailea and did some damage - viola, there it is.

I was also afraid to take this out of the box (which is also beautiful-they must spend a fortune on packaging) It will now house my new wallet and be my "nights and weekends" purse only - I am literally afraid of it.

Aloha Bitches

That's right, we're off to Hawaii tomorrow for our much anticipated late honeymoon. By this time tomorrow I will be sitting with mai tai in hand!

Victory!!!

Finally, I beat the robot at Scrabulous!