Friends visits from South Africa and Delicious Huevos Rancheros

Very good friends (a couple and their son) came to visit us for about a week. Last time we saw each other was April 2010 so it had been a while. My husband and I were so thankful that they came over to see us. (Click here for their last visits post)

Their son is now 1 year and half and he is developing quickly. Now he can understand what we are telling him and he can talk and do all kinds of stuff. He is so smart and cute. He smiles all the time and I already miss his smiles...

Anyway, the husband of the couple is very good at cooking. One of the things he made last time and my husband and I wanted to have again was his "Huevos Rancheros". (Click here for his last huevos rancheros)

I tried to make it on my own once but it didn't come out as I expected.

He offered to make a breakfast for us one day and asked us what we would like to eat. So of course, we told him that we want Huevos Rancheros!! We were waiting for this.

He never use recipes so even when he makes same things, the result will be a little bit different each time. This time, he made roasted tomato salsa. This salsa was so good. He just roasted tomato, red onion and jalapeno under a broiler and blend with lemon juice, cilantro, salt and pepper in a blender. Since we like it spicy, we added more jalapenos in the blender.

Heat up the corn tortilla, spread tomato salad, add fried eggs and cheese. Since I don't like beans too much, I had just a little bit of beans on the side but for everybody else, he add beans on top of corn tortilla. We also had hushed potatoes and avocado and vegetarian sausage on the side.

Since we were having so much fun, 1 week went by so fast. This is something I think about everything I see my good friends but I really wish they live close by. They used to live in Connecticut so we could visit each other every few months but now they are in South Africa so it is quite far away. Never the less, I am very thankful that they always make an effort to contact us via phone and visit us when they can. I know it is not easy to travel with a small child so I really really appreciate their effort. I guess, we have to go visit them next time!

Anyway, NY had another snow storm on Tuesday night but it was not as bad as I had expected. At least it was not as bad as last time. It is cold but sunny now. I hope it will get warmer and all the snow will melt. I can not wait for spring! I really don't like winter weather. Oh, I miss California. I just checked the temperature of the area I used to live in California. Their high is upper 50's and lower 60's F (about 14C~20C). It sounds like a paradise....

New Year's Eve and New Years Day with Friends

Happy New Year! Thank you for all the people who visited my blog last year and I hope you will keep on visiting my blog in 2011 :-)

It has been three days sine this new year has started but let me tell you what I did on New Year's Eve and New Year's day. I had great new year's eve and new year's day and I feel that 2011 will be a great year for me!

Anyway, on new year's eve, we invited one of my husband friend and had Fondu at home. When you think of Fondu, I think you think about Cheese Fondu but my husband family have broth fondu every new year's eve so we decided to keep the tradition and have broth fondu also.

Unfortunately, I didn't take good pictures of this night so I don't have any photo of fondu but it was really good. We had chicken, salmon, shrimp and lots of different kind of vegetables. I also made dipping sauces which my mother-in-law taught me. Egg sauce, Garlic sauce, Onion sauce and Banana sauce. I also add one more sauce with little bit of Asian flavor, sesame sauce.

I had a photo of cheese plate which I served as an appetizer so here we go. I bought this dates and apple spread and this was really good with cheese. I served three different kinds of Spanish cheeses.

Our New Year's Eve was very relaxed and pretty quiet. Nothing crazy like it used to be when I was younger :-) but it was really nice and I loved our relaxed New Year's Eve. We watched Time Square on TV. This year's new year's eve and new year's day was very warm so I think it was great for the people who were at Time Square.

Then, on New Year's day. We went to Manhattan to watch a musical. It is a musical called "American Idiot" by Green Day. From this New Year's day, the lead singer of Green day was performing on this musical for limited time. Even though he was not a main character in the show, it was great to see Billie Joe Armstrong in the actual musical. Everybody was so excited when he showed up on the stage.

Since the musical was Matinee, we had dinner after that with one of our friend couple. We went to a restaurant called "The Standard Grill". It is in the standard hotel on highline. My husband had been to this restaurant once and he had this amazing mushroom bread pudding there so he wanted to take me there.

First, we ordered appetizer. Green Beans salad and Potatoes with aioli sauce.

For main course, I ordered Pasta. The portion was very small but the taste was really rich with beef red wine ragu so I couldn't even finish them all despite the size of the dish. It was really good but it was really rich.

My friend ordered duck dish. I tried a piece and this was also pretty good with some spices.

My husband and my friend's husband ordered Mushroom Bread Pudding.

This was extremely good as my husband told me. I never had mushroom bread pudding before but I really loved it. I would love to make this at home but I am not sure if I will be able to recreate this dish. I checked for some recipes on-line and found lots of mushroom bread pudding recipe. I will definitely try it sometimes when I get different kind of wild mushrooms.

My husband even asked the restaurant the day before to make sure that they still have this on the menu. He was really happy to have this dish again.

For dessert, my friends order some kind of chocolate dessert.

My husband and I shared this caramel apple dessert.

Everything was really good and we spend great time with our friends. I wish we live closer so we can do this more often.

Anyway, it was a great way to start a new year and I am very happy. New Year's day in NY was really warm and I saw some people without any jacket. I wish it will be a spring already.

Well, there will be more fun coming to our way. Our friends from South Africa will be visiting us from tomorrow for a few days. It was April last year when we saw them last time (Click here for the post about their last visit) . They will be bringing a baby (1year and 1/2 old) so I am excited to see how much he grew.

Well, I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2011!

Christmas Dinner (Shrimp Pasta with Garlic Sauce) and Blizzard in NY

This year's Christmas was very quiet and  relaxed Christmas with just my husband.

On Christmas Eve, we Skyped with my husband's parents and we opened the presents together. It was really nice and fun! On a day after Christmas, we Skyped with my parents and also had a nice time. It is great to have this kind of technology for the people like us who live away from family. They are away but it feels like they are just there right in front of you.

Anyway, for Christmas Eve dinner, we made shrimp pasta with garlic sauce. This is something my husband's family eats on Christmas Eve every year so we decided to follow the tradition and eat this dish on this day.

This is a super easy dish. Garlic sauce is something my husband make quite often. You just mix sour cream and crushed garlic with chopped chives and salt and pepper. (We didn't have chives so we omit chives this time)

I just sauteed some shrimp in butter with salt and pepper.

Then, add a dollop of garlic sauce on top of cooked pasta, then add sauteed shrimp. We sprinkled with some chopped parsley for color.

For dessert, I just heated up Apple Blossom which I bought from Trader Joe's in the oven and add some ice cream and sliced apple. This is really good also. If you have Trader Joe's near you, I would recommend this product. It is in the freezer section.

This year's Christmas was very very relaxed and I felt very peace. We played Christmas music all day and enjoyed each other's company. Well, we have been playing Christmas music this year since Thanksgiving so I feel like I had long Christmas this year. I really appreciate that we were able to spend great happy Christmas this year again!

However, we had a big blizzard on a day after Christmas. We had lots of snow in just one day. On Monday morning when we try to open the front door, this was what we found.

Since we didn't have the outside door right now, we were able to open our door without much problem but our neighbor told us that they couldn't open the outside door which opens towards outside so they had to call their son who live near by to come over and shovel the snow from outside to open the door.

We had so much snow everywhere in NY and NJ area. It seems like plow couldn't catch up with this amount of snow plus it was very windy so I think that made it difficult to plow and clean the street and stuff. Luckily, our street was plowed on Tuesday morning. (Well, since we park our car on the street, we first had to shove our car out of the snow. This was lots of work. Thanks to my husband for the hard work!)

Lots of people couldn't get to work on Monday or even Tuesday. We didn't have to go anywhere on Monday or Tuesday so we were lucky to be able to stay home on these crazy mess. I have to think about nature's power again. It is amazing what nature can do in one day.

Anyway, I was born and grew up in Tokyo and after that lived in California for about 9 years so I am not used to having this much of snow. I heard that it will warm up now for New Year's eve and New Years day so hopefully all these snow will melt soon.

It realized that it is much more difficult to live in a area where it snows a lot. I appreciate all the people who worked really hard during this blizzard to make street and public transportation functional. I think I had enough snow for this season already.