Happy Birthday Kat!

February 7, 2007

Today is Katharine's birthday!

As Kat was getting back from Miami for work in the early evening, we planned a low-key seafood dinner. On the menu for the evening:

• Ahi Tuna Tartare with Terra chips
• Bacon-Wrapped Scallops
• Clams in White Wine Sauce
  
• Miso-glazed Chilean Sea Bass
• Mixed salad with fresh corn, avocado, cherry tomatoes
  
• Cheese plate with brie, manchego and fresh bread

For my contribution, I brought the tuna tartare and bacon-wrapped scallops (yumm!). I did a little research on the web and found a bunch of tartare recipes and eventually put one together based on what I found:

Asian Tuna Tartare:

Ingredients

• 3/4 lb. fresh ahi tuna (cut into 1/8 to 1/4 inch cubes)
• 1/4 cup minced sweet onion
• 1/8 cup sliced green onion
• 1/2 cup lite soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 1/2 tbsp black (or white) truffle oil
• 1/2 tbsp Sambal Olek
• 2 pinches of brown sugar
• fresh ground pepper
• 1 ripe Hass avocado (cut into 1/8 to 1/4 inch cubes)
  

In a bowl, combine sweet onion, green onion, lite soy sauce, sesame oil, truffle oil, Sambal Olek, and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, add half of the ingredient mixture to the cubed ahi tuna and gently mix. I found that I didn't need all of the sauce immediately and used about 2/3 to marinate the fish overnight. The next day (today) I added the fresh avocado and added a little more (1/2 of the remaining sauce) to the tuna and mixed gently.




The tartare was yummy, the tuna marinating overnight gave the ahi a really nice brown color. Adding the avocado right before we ate, adding the fresh taste and green color. We had terra chips to pile on the tartare.



Wrapping anything in bacon makes it delicious, and these little scallops were delish!


Wendy's awesome miso-glazed sea bass, apparently super easy to do. I think she marinated the fish with soy sauce, brown sugar, salt and pepper, and miso paste.

Anna's reaction to the bacon-wrapped scallops.


This was the most bizarre cake I've ever laid my eyes on or eaten. It's a "novelty" idea, a kitty litter cake. Key made this for our cat-loving birthday girl. The cake is crumbled white and spice cakes with pudding and vanilla sandwich cookies crumbled on top. The "poops" are tootsie rolls. It was actually very tasty, but it looked so real.




HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATHARINE!

Weekend Re-Cap: BM Season Ender Bender...Finally!

February 5, 2007

Last week sucked, there's no nice way to put it. I succumbed to a vicious, life-sucking flu-type illness that pretty much knocked me out for most of the week. All signs point to my nieces and nephew as the guilty infectious parties, as those little ones were kinda sickly when I went to visit last weekend. So, for half of Tuesday, all Wednesday and Thursday, I worked from home and it was exhausting! For example, 2 hours of work = 2 hours of exhausted sleep. Ridiculous. I lived off of Chicken Noodle soup for two days. You know I'm sick when I don't have an appetite...

On Friday, I managed to go into work, but boy, thank goodness the week is over!

Good timing! Because Friday night was the season ender party for Brass Monkey 2006...finally! I was happy to have enough energy to at least go to that.

Kerry Soo made a 9-layer tiramisu cake! With yummy cream cheese frosting! Mmm!!!

Uh oh, we gave the boys Dewar's AND musical instruments!?! Trouble!

Funny thing is that we usually have our first team meeting in February for Brass Monkey, but we needed to get the season party out of the way. We're a little behind.

The rest of the weekend was pretty low-key for me, partially out of fear of flu-relapse, and partially because there's no freakin' snow in the mountains! C'mon snow!

Weekend Re-Cap: Back to the "Grind" & Tracy's Big 3-Oh!

January 28, 2007

Thankfully, there were only two working days before the weekend, so I managed to eek through those without any major damages.

FRIDAY

On Friday night, I went for Vienamese (at Sunflower, of course) with Key and then we watched "Miami Vice" at his pad in Inner Mission. Now I know why that movie didn't do so well in the theatres.

SATURDAY

On Saturday morning, I headed down to San Jose to get my dose of little love with the kiddlins.

It took us about a half hour, but we packed the kiddies in their strollers and took them on a walk in the neighborhood.


We stopped at Starbucks and ran into Kenny, Andrea and their little one, Dominic. Great timing! We had a great visit and then headed home. Luckily, we turned the corner to Angie's street just at the rain started to fall...

Once everyone was tucked safely and dry back in the house, I headed back up to the city. I was meeting up with Abe for dinner in the mission and then to join up with Tracy's birthday celebration bandwagon.

Abe and I stopped into Yo Yo Sushi for another dependable sushi experience. We tried the escolar nigiri (they called it super white tuna), which is delicious, a little more oily than tuna but very rich in taste. We also had the hamachi toro (yellowtail belly) which was also delicious.

From Yo Yo, we headed over to the Elbo Room where all the folks were meeting up. We only stayed for one drink, as these folks wanted to do some cheesy dancing! So we went down to the block to Blondie's, a place that I hadn't hung out in for quite some time. Truthfully, I used to come here to visit Katharine, who used to work at the door. But, it was great with such a big crowd, as we took up a lot of the dancefloor and stayed there for over 3 hours. We sweated to the oldies, for example "It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ Easy Rock, and "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Good times! See pics below...

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TRACY!

SUNDAY

Sunday was a perfect catch-up day. I slept in until 10:30 am, then headed over to Katharine's in outer Richmond. We went for a 3-mile run (also known as a jog) along Ocean Beach and back to her house and it was perfect running temperature.

From Katharine's, I then went over to Therapeia Spa, where I was scheduled for a nice deep tissue massage. And boy, did she ever go deep tissue. By far the strongest woman masseuse that I have ever experienced, she nearly killed me, but it was good in that painful kind of way. Her name is Jeanelle if you ever want to challenge your pain threshold during massage.

After the massage, I was feeling a little toxic, so I stayed in for the evening and was trying to down as much liquids as possible. Little did I know, my little nieces and nephew had passed on a violent flu to me that was just starting to percolate in my system...

Welcome To The World: Aisha Tennesey Ketcheson!

January 28, 2007

While Will and I were basking in the sun in the Caribbean, our good friends Adam and Arissa welcomed their new baby girl into the world.

The stats:
Aisha Tennesey Ketcheson
Born January 23, 3007 at 10:17 AM
8 pounds, 1 ounce, 21 inches long

Check out their blog here for great pics and detailed stories/updates.

From the pictures, it's clear that Aisha is one sweet little bundle of joy and thank goodness she doesn't look goofy like her dad. Big props to Arissa for being so strong to endure hours upon hours of natural childbirth before having to go through a C-section, you are woman, hear you roar!

Congratulations to Adam, Arissa and Aisha! One happy little family!