The Superbowl

Everyone and their mom is probably blogging about the Superbowl... and I am no exception. haha I had a great time... I had some girlfriends over and they were rooting for the Saints, so in fairness (and my admiration of Peyton Manning), I rooted for the Colts. Even though the Colts lost, I'm not unhappy, because I feel like the Saints deserved their moment :)

However, I will say, I'm very disappointed in Peyton... those interceptions!! They had a chance!! booooooooo. the Manning brothers were very disappointing this year.

There were some highlights! The best commercial ever!!! 18779876401! I assume they are using this as part of the next episode of How I Met Your Mother.

"That, Lebron, is how you shoot a free throw.
Hey, Barney Stinson speaking.
A recording?
No this is really me!
Anyway, glad you called 'cause you sound really special.
Let's get to know each other.
What are your hobbies?
Oh my god, I like that too!
Wow, I'm really feeling a connection here.
You know, I never do this but what the heck.
Let's meet up at MacLaren's Bar at oh, say, 3:45 am on Monday, Oct. 12, 2016.
I can't wait to meet you. I love you"




Also, I found out today that I missed this little gem of a commercial! I don't know how I missed it, but its pretty awesome. Its so short, you would think that CBS would give its own Letterman some more time. With Letterman, Oprah, and Leno all together... the potential!! I wonder if Conan wasn't able to participate because of contract issues.



This Bud Light commercial is awesome! Almost as cool as the coors light knight I saw during Halloween 2 years ago... I want to live at this house haha



I ate too much yesterday. Way too much junk food and beer. haha

The snacks. Made the pommes frites and garlic aioli myself along with the artichoke dip (notice the 'A' theme, so will be posting those recipe adventures soon). Notice Max is sniffing around the pommes frites? That sneaky guy stole like 3 of them! I had to punish him by locking him in his crate in my room until halftime haha



The food. 1 large pizza (half was garlic chicken with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, ham and spicy sausage, other half was pepperoni, spicy sausage, mushrooms, onions, jalapenos, and sun- dried tomatoes).. gotta love that $10 papa john's deal... my angel hair pasta from the day before, chicken wings, and of course beer. We were 5 and half people - 5 girls, 1 child, and 2 dogs. One and a half of the 5 had to leave early, so it was really 4 of us pigging out haha I'm very impressed with all that we accomplished!!



Not pictured: Bagel bites, quart of ice cream, haribo gummies, almond cookies, 10 lb heavier but happy girls.

A - Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Fire

Another recipe tried for the letter A! Notice how I didn't just call it Spicy Angel Hair pasta with Shrimp? I added the "Fire" so the recipe could start with the letter 'A' in case I got called out on a technicality.

Anyway, I was inspired by Giada de Laurentis' Fiery Angel Hair Pasta recipe, which I used as my guide with a few tweaks. I did follow her Chili Oil recipe for this pasta to a T, which was really simple!

The Ingredients
* 1 pound angel hair pasta
* 1/2 cup Chili Oil
* 1/2 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves (or 1/4 dried parsley flakes)
* 1 lemon, juiced
* Coarse sea salt
* Dried crushed red pepper flakes

In her original recipe, she uses lemon peel and lemon zest. Honestly, I don't know what the difference is, but I opted not to use either. Also, I added half a medium onion and a can of diced tomatoes and 1/4 pound of shrimp.

First I started off making the Chili Oil. All you need is 2 cups of olive oil and 4 teaspoons of dried red pepper flakes. In my case, I used extra virgin olive oil, because I have a huge costco bottle that is expiring in May... Also, you'll noticed I used packets of red pepper flakes that you get from pizza places... I'm so asian.

I think each packet yielded about 3/4 tsp, so I used 5 packets haha



I put the oil and red pepper flakes in a small pot and put it on low heat.



Its done once the temperature gets to 180 degrees F. Let it cool for about 2 hours before putting it in a container.



I made the oil yesterday, so today I was able to start on the rest of the pasta. I boiled a pot of water and added lots of salt and about 2 Tablespoons of EVOO. Once it was boiling, I added the angel hair pasta. I cooked it for about 6 minutes until it was al dente and drained it.



While the pasta was going, I cut half an onion. I was going to add the whole thing but omg it was so potent! My eyes were burning like pee so I only cut one half.



I put a little bit of the chili oil in a pan and cooked the onions on low to medium heat.



I used a can of diced and peeled tomatoes (lazy to pick tomatoes and cut them myself). I tried to get out as much liquid as I could, but I figured, any excess water would be ok since I was going to toss it in with the pasta anyway. I added the tomatoes to my onions and added 1/4 cup of dried parsley flakes. The recipe calls for fresh parsley, but all I had were dried.



Once the onions, tomatoes, and parsley were mixed well, I added shrimp. I just bought a package of little shrimps that were already peeled and deveined, I think it was less than $3 worth.





Once my onion, tomato, shrimp, and parsley mixture was combined and cooked through, I put 1/2 cup of the chili oil I created earlier into a large bowl and squeezed the juice of 1 lemon in.



I dumped my noodles in and topped it with the onion/shrimp mixture.



I used a spoon and fork and mixed everything in the bowl together. It took me a while because I think I should have used a bigger bowl. I had to toss quite a few times to get all the noodles covered. Then, I added some sea salt and dried red pepper flakes. I like things spicy, so I added more red pepper flakes to my taste.



Once everything tasted good, I plated some for myself and topped with grated parmesan cheese. Ta Da!!!



I was really pleasantly surprised! I like the heat that comes through with a little hint of the lemon-y citrus. It was full of flavor, and I think it was a good call to add the tomatoes and onion.

If I were to make this recipe again, I would suggest using the whole onion and using more shrimp (maybe 1/2 pound - 3/4 pounds). I like more filling in my pastas than noodles typically. I don't think I realized how much pasta the 1lb box would yield. However, if this was made as more of a side dish, I think it would be ok.

The recipe can feed A LOT! I ate a big bowl and Lisa had some as well, but I have a giant bowl of it left! I think I'll plan on serving it tomorrow as a pasta side dish for the superbowl party.

A - Almond Amaretto Cookies

I should get bonus points for using 2 A's in the first recipe of my challenge. I'm pretty proud of myself, I almost forgot about this project... haha it must have been some form of hypothermia from last weekend.

So, Almond Amaretto cookies (try saying that 5 times). I took some recipes that I read online and made a few tweaks to make them almost a fusion of the traditional chinese almond cookies and an italian almond cookie.

The Ingredients

* 1 softened stick of butter (1/2 cup)
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1 egg
* 3/4 cup ground almonds
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 2 tsps amaretto liqueur
* 1/2 tsp pure almond extract

For this recipe, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F.

For the almonds, I only had a container of mixed roasted unsalted nuts, so I picked out a bunch of almonds and ground them up in the Magic Bullet until I had about 3/4 cup. I think you can use up to 1 cup of ground almonds, but it was getting hard picking up the almonds at the bottom haha



I started by softening the butter by leaving it out at room temperature, but then I got busy with work, then had dinner and totally forgot about it! I think I left it out from 2pm to 10pm. Hopefully it was safe to use.

So we cream the butter with the 1/2 cup of sugar



Then we add the egg once the butter and sugar mixture is smooth and creamy



I used a bottle of Amaretto liquor that I got from Trader Joe's. It was like $6.99, pretty cheap so I don't know how good it is, but I think it works for baking.



So we add 2 teaspoons of the Amaretto liquor and the ground almonds to our mixture



After all the ground almonds and Amaretto are mixed in, slowly incorporate the 1 cup of flour. I incorporated 1/4 cup at a time and scraped the sides to get it all in.



Mix all these ingredients well and then I added some almond extract for some additional almond oomph!



This is what my batter looked like in the end, so you can see there are little bits of almond throughout. nom!



I took the teaspoon I used for the amaretto to measure out drops of batter and dumped them on a cookie sheet I lined with foil. I use foil because I try to reduce my cleanup as much as possible (I'm lazy to do any more dishes than necessary)



I shaped each mound into more roundish shapes and topped each of the mounds with an almond. Again, I was lazy to dig deep to get the almonds at the bottom of the jar, so I ended up using some raw sliced almonds that I had laying around.

kinda embarrassing, u can see the bottom of my oven, so gross.



I baked the cookies at 400 degrees F for 8 minutes. They came out a little whiter than I expected, but they still tasted good. Not too sweet and a nice subtle almond flavor in a soft cookie. :)



I think this recipe should yield about 24 - 30 cookies if you make them about 1 tsp size like I did. I only made 12 for this blog entry, so I have some batter left which I refrigerated. I'll update this blog later if the results of the refrigerated batter varied in any way. Yay for my first accomplished recipe. :)

Igloo Inuit - The results

hooray! we survived! now to tell the tale...

this is me and Lisa's igloo after we gave up on it. I think we built too high before angling inwards. I think since I was digging my ice blocks from inside the igloo, it ended up becoming deeper faster. I should have started angling inwards from the start.



here is my friend jeff outside of the most successful igloo that was built. They were worried it would collapse but it held up through the night! They were so close, only a small hole at the top left to fill in.



When you're in extreme weather, why fight it? Embrace it! Embrace the cold and make it your bitch to make....

jello shots!



unfortunately, the cold weather tried to retaliate and solidified our jello faster than we could pour them into the cups!

here is my friend charlie eating the jello stuck to the bottom of the pan.. since the jello solidified so fast, the alcohol wasn't really absorbed so it was really really strong tasting.




There was a glorious full moon that illuminated the snow field with a bright light. I thought this picture came out pretty cool.



My igloo in the morning... the other igloo became Charlie's poop domicile later that morning...



Frozen eggs! Everything froze, but I've never seen frozen eggs! In case you've ever wondered...



Before we left, we decided to try knocking down the most successful igloo. Peter the destroyer took on this task very well.





... unfortunately for Peter, Grace peed in that igloo just prior and he jumped into her pee. ha!

It was an awesome trip and there's many more stories to tell. I hope to go again and champion an igloo... and hopefully build a snowman.. and go ice fishing... :)

P.S. I was watching an episode of The Real World DC... and the 3 guys in the house go to happy hour at Nellie's, which I know is on U Street, since I've been there before. I got excited when I saw them walk there because I recognized it... then I remembered... it's a gay bar! haha it was funny watching the Real World kids slowly figuring out that it was a gay bar just like I had to slowly come to that realization when I went. Thinking back, I believe it was the drag queen bingo that gave it away haha

Igloo Inuit

I'm leaving for the weekend with Lisa and some friends to go up to Carson Pass (CA/NV) to go snow camping!!! The plan is to build igloos in the snow and sleep in them! It sounded like a good idea at the time...

Inspiration from:
http://www.snowsaw.com/movies.html

What am I getting myself into!? Plan will be to go up to the Tahoe strip and stay in a hotel Friday night (will be gambling) and then head to Meiss Meadow/Carson Pass early to build our igloos! Apparently it takes inuits 30 min to build their igloos... we are estimating 4 hrs for ourselves which might be a little too confident in our abilities in the freezing snow haha

I'm counting on these to save my life...



Hopefully I'll make it back to tell the tale!

Mona Lisa and da Vinci the same person?

In the news today, apparently a group of historians have a theory that Leonardo da Vinci was a homosexual and his painting of Mona Lisa is actually himself in drag. They want to exhume his body and compare the skull structures...

interesting theory... who pays these people?!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100126/en_ynews/ynews_en1075

A-Z FOOD Mission

Ok, so I've given this some thought and I have come up with a mission for myself this year. I read a lot of food blogs and I want to make everything!! Sometimes I just don't know where to start! I usually tend to pick to make things that are simple and need a few ingredients (plus I cheat a lot with my ingredients). So, I've decided that my goal this year will be to attempt to make a dish that begins with every letter of the alphabet. I will devote 2 weeks to each letter, which will give me all 26 letters for the year (52 weeks in a year divided by 2). My goal is to make 1 dish during those 2 weeks pertaining to the theme letter, but try to make as many as I can (I'm a single woman, so it takes me forever to eat the stuff I make .. maybe I need more friends to help!).

Unfortunately, I have self-diagnosed myself with A.D.D., so I tend to lose interest or switch gears easily... hopefully the pressure of doing this on a blog will keep me in check!

A - Feb 1 - Feb 14
B - Feb 15 - Feb 28
C - Mar 1 - Mar 14
D - Mar 15 - Mar 28
E - Mar 29 - Apr 11
F - Apr 12 - Apr 25
G - Apr 26 - May 9
H - May 10 - May 23
I - May 24 - Jun 6
J - Jun 7 - Jun 20
K - Jun 21 - Jul 4
L - Jul 5 - Jul 18
M - Jul 19 - Aug 1
N - Aug 2 - Aug 15
O - Aug 16 - Aug 29
P - Aug 30 - Sept 12
Q - Sept 13 - Sept 26
R - Sept 27 - Oct 10
S - Oct 11 - Oct 24
T - Oct 25 - Nov 7
U - Nov 8 - Nov 21
V - Nov 22 - Dec 5
W - Dec 6 - Dec 19
X - Dec 20 - Jan 2, 2011
Y - Jan 3, 2011 - Jan 16, 2011
Z - Jan 17, 2011 - Jan 30, 2011

wth am I going to make that starts with 'X'?! Oh well, I'll worry about that in 11 months haha. I might not even make it past 'E'! haha this will be an interesting year...

The Shake Weight

Is it just me... or is this infomercial especially hilarious and seemingly ignorant...?



haha I really want one... to tone my arms...! really.

this shake "workout" instrument is a good grind in my book (bad choice of words i know, but this blog is called what grinds momo)...


*** UPDATE! ***
haha I found this on youtube... Ellen agrees with me! haha I know what everyone's getting for xmas this year! haha

Conando and the Masturbating Bear

So, tonight is the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. It's so sad... I hope Conan gets another show... he's hilarious and he got seriously screwed. It's also really sad for The Tonight Show franchise.

I am officially boycotting The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ... even if he becomes super hilarious and super awesome... i will boycott. Jay Leno really grinds my gears! he was so-so before, but now i boo him. It's pretty sad for NBC too (but im not feeling sorry for them) if you think about it... NBC is left with Jay Leno (everyone hates him now), Jimmy Fallon (not funny), and Carson Daly (forgotten) ... wtf were they thinking to lose Conan!!!

He brought us such greats as...

Conando!






The Masturbating Bear





The Year 2000!






The Bugatti Veyron Mouse







Triumph the Insult Comic Dog









... and so much more! I hope NBC doesn't own the rights to these characters... I hope there's more to come!

Mandarin Oriental Art?

So, during my recent trip to Las Vegas, we encountered this "piece" in the Mandarin Oriental mall... at first, I thought it looked interesting. Then, my bf asked if they were tampons...? It looks like tampons doesn't it? I had to take a picture after we made that realization! haha I had to laugh too, because a lot of people were standing in front of it taking pictures of themselves with...

tampons.

i was amused (i'm so immature), so I thought I'd share in case anyone is going to Vegas anytime soon... haha

P.S. the Mandarin Oriental is the new high end shopping "mall" that opened in front of the new Aria hotel and city center. I personally think they just named the "mall" the Mandarin Oriental because asian people like to gamble haha

P.P.S. I categorize this as a good grind. Tampon art grinds me in a good way (oh man, we need to change the name of this blog).

TEAM CONAN

Just wanted to say, I'm on Team Conan! I think he's hilarious! I would tune in to watch him over Jay Leno anyday...

I watched him today, and I was a little shocked at how many jabs at NBC he took, but he seems hurt and angry... rightfully so.

I'm gona respond to his ad...
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/clt/1551463643.html

Happy New Year!

It's 2010! I can't believe it! It's been 10 years since I graduated high school!! It's been 10 years since the big y2k scare... which, by the way, I heard some German bank had a similar problem when the year became 2010. It's been 10 years since Britney Spears released Oops! I did it again... (pre-crazy). It's been 10 years since Madonna married Guy Ritchie...

Anyways, its been such a busy December!! I have a lot to post about!! In the past month, I've traveled to France, came home for Xmas, spent some time in Vegas, then rang in the new year in LA. I think 2009 was a good year, and I have high hopes for 2010 :)

I hope to have time to go into detail on some of my adventures... here's just a taste! :)

I was pretty excited to get to see the real Mona Lisa in person at the Louvre in Paris.... but I was surprised at how small it was!! Apparently, so many attempts have been made to steal it that every time thieves cut her out of her frame, the painting gets smaller and they have to put her in a new frame... soon there won't be much left!! Also, kinda sucks, but its understandable, she's behind this big glass layer, so there are reflections when I try to take a picture haha



I saw these guys in Vegas, and I had to laugh... I've never seen advertising like this... so high tech! Not as exciting and sign flipping, but still turns heads.



So on NYE, we went to eat kbbq in Ktown in LA, and I was grossed out by this choice of meat... apparently its delicious.... but i stuck to my ssam gyup sal and kalbi, thanks.




Also, I'm reading Julie & Julia... the book that made the movie... its pretty cool because the book is based on the actual blog that Julie Powell wrote! Pretty cool, because there's a slight chance a lot of the events are real! I am enjoying the book... she writes in a pretty witty way, but I'm very disappointed in the blog. What's a food blog without pictures?!? Here's a link to the blog if you're interested in checking it out...

http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

I think I should do something like that... a blog with a mission.... any ideas?!

Girls. Drama, Boo.

Mean what you say and say what you mean. PERIOD. Why do we insist on being polite instead of saying the truth? Why cant girls say what we are really thinking instead of saying what others want to hear? You would think amongst the closest of girlfriends, the honest truth would be heard. Apparently I am mistaken. I understand etiquette is key with strangers and acquaintances, but if you're a true friend, be real. Say whats really on your mind. If a question is asked, don't say what you think I want to hear. I might not agree with what you're saying or even like it, but I will respect you a whole lot more. I know I have my faults, so TELL ME. If something bothers you, TELL ME. Don't let it fester. This is what grinds my gears. Boo girls.

Obama Paper Dolls

So the last time I was in DC, which was a couple years ago, they were remodeling the Smithsonian American History museum. I was so excited to go during my trip this time! There were a few interesting things I saw that I have to talk about. I would definitely recommend going to the Smithsonians if you are ever in DC. I feel like I'm in grade school again learning about history and science... and it might have been boring to me then, but I really appreciate it now that I'm older.



Did you know... that this was not the first Washington monument?



This was the original statue of Washington...! Apparently it was completed in 1841, and many people thought this 12 ton marble statue of Washington was inappropriately dressed... any thoughts on which one is better?



Did you know... Abraham Lincoln had giant hands? I can't imagine shaking a hand that big; his hand would eat my hand.



The thing that captured my interest the most at the museum was the gem I found in the gift shop! On sale for $4.99, I had to get it!!



I think the contents of the pages inside can speak for themselves of why it intrigued me so much. I mean, this is our PRESIDENT!! and the first page has him half naked!!



You can even dress up Michelle Obama and the first daughters! At least they didn't draw them half naked too...



... Michelle's wedding dress...



Barack as a cowboy...? Apparently he really dressed like this in TX. This book is full of interesting facts on the first family's wardrobe!



I can't believe I found this at the Smithsonian!! Paper dolls of the Obama family... with drawings of a half naked president in his like underwear! I don't know why this shocks me so much. I find it so awesome. One day this will be worth something haha