Equality Month

December has been quite the busy month around these parts. It began with the celebration of the husband's 26th birthday. I took him to a surprise dinner date at Mastro's steakhouse in Beverly Hills. We see the place all the time, but have been saving our first visit for a special occasion. I surprised him with dinner reservations on his birthday. While I'm not a huge fan of big portions of meat, husband loves him a good steak.

Dinner was excellent, as was the service. My only complaint- and this isn't really a valid complaint- is that the portions are huuge. We split a French Onion Soup and a side of lobster mashed potatoes. Husband enjoyed a bone-in filet, I ordered the Kansas City Strip. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we had plenty of left overs for lunch the next day. If we were to go back it would have to be with a group so that we can at least put a dent in the food. They had such a great selection of sides and appetizers, too. I wish we could have tried more of them! Overall, it was a delicious dining experience at a quintessential American steakhouse.

Feliz cumple, mi amor!

Fun fact: December is the only month where the hubby and I are the same age, so we've dubbed it "equality month."

The month continued with the celebration of my nephew's 1st birthday. This probably sounds a bit morbid, but the kid loves everything about the Nightmare Before Christmas. He even shares names with Jack Skellington. It's no surprise that his first birthday party was themed after his favorite movie.

Mom, sister, and a sleepy birthday boy.

Uncle and dad. Always providing the entertainment.

Precious!

We are super lucky to be able to spend the holidays with parents and friends. Both our parents traditionally celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, so that evening was spent driving from one household to the other.

Nacimiento at the husband's parent's home.

When we arrived at my parent's home, my mom was in full-blown tamale making mode.

My little brother is her official helper.

I love my little sister's dogs. Although they aren't as innocent as they look!

We spent Christmas day in the company of good friends and enjoying a massive Filipino/Indian feast. The family ordered a pig - an ENTIRE PIG. They chopped off the head and cut up the rest of the meat. I can't get over this picture (hope PETA doesn't read this blog):

The Lechon.

The carnitas were delish! As were the pancit, chicken tika masala, and other dishes that I can't spell or pronounce.

Quality time with family & friends. Homemade meals. Laughs and memorable moments. This is why I heart the holidays.

La Boda: Empieza La Fiesta

I know, I know the wedding was over a year ago and I'm still not done talking about it. There are a few more posts that I had brewing so I'm gonna try and finish em up.

Last time I left off, people were getting drunk at cocktail hour. No, seriously, from what I heard cocktail hour was where the party was at. Plus we had more of a 1.5-2 hr cocktail time because guests got there super early and we were still busy taking pictures. Whoops.

When we finally got to the LA River Center & Gardens, it looked like this:


We were greeted by our day-of coordinator who lead the way to the main reception area to show us the setup before guests were seated. This was one of my favorite parts of the day. Mr. Tortolito and I jumped with joy as we walked around admiring the end result. It was so, so nice to take everything in before people started filtering in. The muffled sound of mariachi music was playing in the background, faint laughs from the cocktail area could be heard in the distance. We were at our dream wedding!

It was time to let guests into the reception area, so Mr. Tortolito and I made our way towards the bridal room to take a breather with our wedding party. We took a shot of Patron to get the party started.

{Foto by family friend}

Once we got word that all the guests had taken their seats, it was time to make our entrance. The parents went first, followed by the rest of our posse.


And then it was our turn!


The band introduced us (more on them later) while the mariachi played festive tunes.


As soon as we walked in, we got set to do our first dance. We had planned it all so that we got all the formalities over with at the beginning of the reception. I don't think I ever mentioned it here, but our first dance was a mariachi waltz. We kept it gangsta! The song we danced to was Dios Nunca Muere.

{Foto by a family friend}

We had practiced the choreography only to recordings of the song, so we were a bit nervous about how it would pan out with the live mariachi. In the end we had nothing to worry about; the mariachi were bomb and played the song perfectly.

After the first dance, we made our way back to our table only to be called back down. It was time for toasts!



Mr. Tortolito's brother - the best man - went first. He's quite the poetic one. True to his style, he wrote a poem filled with sweet words and well wishes. My little sister - maid of honor - is too cute! Her inner cheerleader came out as she invited guests to lift their glasses with her.


The dads were next. My dad and his handwritten notes- he stayed true to his style also! He shared a few words of advice as he wished us a happy marriage. Mr. Tortolito's dad shared a sweet message, enough to bring the groom to tears!


We were so lucky to have such sweet toasts made in our honor. Now that the formalities were over it was time to get the party started! Up next: a bailar!

{All fotos by the fabulous Phoebe Joy unless otherwise indicated}

Update and a Recipe!

OK here's the deal: I've been taking pictures and want to blog about everything. Too bad Mrs. unprepared over here does not have a USB cord for the new camera. The ghetts point and shoot can't read the new SD card either. So you see I'm in quite a predicament. I'm planning on getting my shiz together this weekend and get to uploading some new pics. In the meantime, I'll share a little sumthin, sumthin that's been sitting as a draft post for a while.

Several weeks ago I hit up one of my favorite lunch spots, Lemonade, for a mid day bite to eat. It's one of my favorites because they offer a super assortment of delicious and healthy lunch options. I can hardly make up my mind on which salad I want to try every time I go. This past visit I had the butternut squash, chicken, and grape salad. It was so yummy and seemed like something I could easily make at home. I made a mental note of the ingredients and then attempted it. I told myself that if the recipe was a success I'd blog about it. Luckily, it came out great!

Wanna try it out? Heres my very loosely put together recipe.

Chicken, Butternut Squash, and Grape Salad (Inspired by Lemonade)

Ingredients:
2-3 chicken breasts, chopped/diced/cut up however you want
1 butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded, and diced
raw slivered almonds (for toasting; however much you like)
grapes, halved (however much you like)
2 scallions, sliced
parsley, chopped (~ 1/2 cup)

Dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
*Whisk all 4 dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Throw the diced butternut squash onto your biggest baking sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt, and pepper and toss until the squash is evenly seasoned. Bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until the squash becomes soft.


Meanwhile, season your chicken breast pieces with salt and pepper. Heat up some olive oil on a skillet and cook the chicken pieces thoroughly. Set aside.

In a separate skillet, toast the slivered almonds until they start to brown. Careful- they toast quickly!


Combined your cooked chicken, toasted almonds, chopped parsley, and scallions.


Finish up by incorporating the butternut squash and grapes. Toss in the dressing and mix it all together really well.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Weekend 2010

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

What a relaxing 4-day weekend we had! Among many, many things that the husband and I are thankful for, we are especially grateful for having our families local and not needing to travel anywhere!

Our Thanksgiving festivities were divided into two days: one with my parents, one with husband's parents. My mom and dad do their best to make sure that they'll be able to gather all 4 of their kids at once. Recently, they've had more luck with that by having dinner the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Watching my mom do her thang in the kitchen is the best. She refuses to let any of us help her so we sit and relax. Dad is in charge of making sure everyone has a wine, beer, or cocktail in their hand.

Mom is always in charge of the turkey. This year I told her I'd make a few sides. I contributed mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and smashed yams to the feast.

Baby Jack. The newest and cutest addition to my side of the family. My mom is enamoured. For the second year in a row, my mom proclaimed that maybe by next year she'll "have a grand daughter at the table" while giving us the evil eye. False, mother. False. She fails to comprehend that we are much too selfish for kids. Jack smells good, but the part I enjoy most is when I get to return him to his owners. (Sorry cutie, tia loves you!)

Black Friday! 3 years ago, Felipe and I braved the 3am line at Best Buy. It was miserable and we promised to never wake up so early for Black Friday specials again. As a tradition, we do venture out to Macy's to take advantage of their early bird discounts. Although nowadays we go at 6am rather than 3am. We managed to pick up gifts for most of our family members and essentially finished our holiday shopping. So glad to get that out of the way! After Macy's we enjoyed breakfast at Urth Caffe and then headed over to the Grove. We received a coupon for Crate and Barrel in our latest catalog and figured that we'd use it for some home items we've been wanting. We arrived at the Grove before Crate and Barrel opened, but noticed that the Gap was having an early bird special: 50% off the entire store before 10am. Score! After about 45 minutes of searching through the racks, trying on clothes, and indecisiveness I walked out with one shirt and a pair of flats:

{Image source}
So much for taking advantage of that 50% off special. The husband couldn't find anything that he really liked either. I've been eyeing those flats for a while now, so I'm glad to have waited until I got a killer deal on them.

On Saturday night, one of my besties and I enjoyed a girl's night. We ended up at Drai's - a nightclub in Hollywood located on the rooftop of the W Hotel. We had never been, but it was exactly as we imagined it: very LA. It's funny how all the random people you talk to at these type of places are either a producer, actor, photographer, or some sort of other artist. Nothing wrong with that, but it cracks me up every time.

Finally, the highlight of our weekend:

{Source}

Nikon D3100, baby!

The hubs and I have been talking about getting a DSLR for a while now and, well, we took the plunge! I'm so relieved to finally give the boot to my craptastic point-and-shoot. We are totally beginners, but are really excited to start learning how to take advantage of the new camera's fancy features. Expect many more pictures of life in LA, food, city people, and travels (keep those photo quality expectations low for now, though!)

Anniversary Weekend

A week ago the hubs and I celebrated our 1st year anniversary. Things have been quite busy around these parts so we decided to keep it low key. No extravagant getaway, no fancy gifts. Just a husband, wife, their pug, and some good eats. It was perfect.

On Saturday we drove up PCH to have lunch at a favorite seafood shack. Not before spending some time on the sand, though.

The husband practiced his Lola art on the sand.

The dog has already been taught to roll over. Next trick: cartwheel. Too bad she was more interested in licking my face.

We made our way to Neptunes Net, a seafood shack just north of Malibu.

There's no real appeal to this place except for its to-die-for view of the ocean and fresh seafood boiled for you on the spot.

For our anniversary evening we made reservations for the Water Grill in downtown LA. It has amazing reviews and is touted as one of the best seafood restaurants in town.

We were most definitely not let down by our meal. To top it all off, they're currently offering a "no corkage" special! When we found out about it, we grabbed a Merlot that we purchased during our honeymoon in Napa and brought it along to enjoy with our dinner.

The waiter offered us an amuse-bouche to begin our meal. We've never had one of these before, and we were pleasantly surprised! Its purpose is to stimulate the 5 senses in preparation of the upcoming meal; and stimulate it did! This thing was aaamazing. A bit of salmon rolled into a thin slice of cucumber, topped with a dollop of horseradish, garnished with dill, and a mini slice of grapefruit on the side. I could have eaten 15 of these for dinner and would have been totally satisfied. Good thing I didn't though because we had an entire seafood feast yet to enjoy.

The real meal began with selections from their raw bar.

An assortment of East Coast oysters (per the recommendation of our waiter from Boston), king crab nuggets, and Peruvian scallops.

First course included Big Eye tuna tartar and a roasted beet salad.

We've got this love affair with tuna going on. Can't get over it.

A variety of roasted beets, lavender cured(!) feta cheese, greens. The salad was out of this world. I know it sounds so plain, but it was nothing short of excellent. It had beet chips!

The husband ordered Pacific Swordfish with peppadew hummus and mint yogurt sauce.

I enjoyed Sturgeon with a side of beet risotto. Perfection.

For desert, we ordered a black cherry chocolate cake. I'm not a huge chocolate cake person in the first place (although husband <3's>

Pecan shortbread cookies. The melt-in-your-mouth kind. Totally made up for our less than impressive dessert.

The Water Grill was hands-down one of our most favorite dining experiences. I can't believe we waited so long to visit it, especially with it being so nearby! We also happened to be sitting at a table behind an older couple celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary (we overheard them sharing the news with the waiter). I couldn't help but poke my head into their table and congratulate them. We shared with them that we were also celebrating our anniversary: the big #1, to which the older man replied "it only gets better!" Yes, indeed it does. :)