Turkey Day!

It's Thanksgiving time!! Phil and I have Christmas worked out pretty well between our families, but Thanksgiving is a little more difficult. It's kind of hard to split 2 dinners in such a short period of time. So I stay at home with my family and he goes to his Aunt's with the rest of his family. Over the years Thanksgiving with my family has expanded from just me, my mom, my sister and her husband, to include some of their friends as well.

Here is everyone sitting around the dinner table getting ready to eat (minus my mom who is hiding in the kitchen, and me...because I'm taking the picture). Mandy, Jack and Tam:
Mike, Rehan, and Nina:

Special appearance by the lychee martini...

And of course Thanksgiving dinner. Mom decided not to carve the turkey at the table, so no giant bird, just plates of turkey slices. Not as visually exciting, but tasty none-the-less.

I was in charge of picking up the turkey this year, and I ended up picking up "young turkey", which apparently is different from regular turkey...who knew...supposedly it's supposed to be more tender than regular "old" turkey. Not sure if I could taste the difference, but it was yummy.

We also had bacon wrapped asparagus and bacon wrapped scallops. I think the only reason we didn't have more things wrapped in bacon was because there were vegeterians at dinner. It's probably better that way...

Then we had stuffed mushrooms and green beans with sliced almonds.

Asparagus, brussel sprouts (yuck...those were for Tam...), mashed potatoes, stuffing balls (stuffing made into the shape of balls), and in the right corner you can see some garlic cheese bread and baked yams.

And of course dessert. Homemade apple pie and Kahlua cookies, and a layered cheesecake of sorts that Jack brought, which was really good. Apparently he bought it at a place called Lady M's in New York.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving dinner was delicious!

Brooklyn Wedding

The evening after the baby shower in Belle Mead we had another exciting wedding planning adventure in New York. One of the DJs we went to check out that weekend told us about a wedding his group was doing in Brooklyn. At first we felt a little weird stopping in at someone else's wedding uninvited, but he assured us that it wouldn't be a problem at the restaurant where the reception was being held. So we made our way into Brooklyn to the Spring Garden Restaurant. We could tell this was the right place because of the giant balloon arch decorating the entrance to the restaurant. When we entered the restaurant we found out that, not only was there a wedding taking up half the restaurant, there was another quarter of the restaurant being used for a baby's 1-month old celebration. So, lots of celebrating going on...

Once you're inside the restaurant it's easy to see what the DJ was talking about when he said we'd be able to watch the wedding without any problems because there was practically no divider between the reception and the rest of the restaurant. Everything was all in one big room, so everyone in the restaurant was focused on the bride and groom as they made their "entrance" from one half of the restaurant into the other.

We couldn't sit in the restaurant and watch the wedding reception without ordering something, so Phil's parents ordered us some food. Some tofu and spicy eggplant...

Taiwanese sausage and Gai Lan veggies...

More eggplant...

And some sort of beef...overall pretty good food.

We didn't stay too far into the reception. (The wedding games were less than entertaining...)

Afterwards we stopped next door to the restaurant at a produce store called Three Guys from Brooklyn so Phil's mom could pick up some fruits. I think they've probably been on some food network show or something...

And a random picture of cactus pears...Never had a cactus pear before, but they looked interesting, so here they are ^__^

Baby Shower in Belle Mead

After an exciting day in NY we went back to Jersey in time to attend a baby shower from an old friend from highschool. My sister helped me put together a diaper cake for the shower. Some of you may be wondering what a diaper cake is - and no, it's not edible...It's basically a tower of diapers put into the shape of a cake and decorated with baby things - pacifiers, toys, bibs. And sometimes you can hide some other things inside the cake itself. This one has some baby shampoo and lotion tucked away inside. And a cool duck on top that you can use to tell you if the baby's bathwater is too hot.

My friend lives out in Belle Mead, which is a more countryside type of area. While we were driving through we almost felt like we were back in Ohio!

All the houses around this area are pretty big and fairly new. Here's a picture of the happy father-to-be.

And here is the mother-to-be opening one of many presents.

As with many showers there were plenty of games, one of which was tasting different kinds of baby food and trying to guess the flavors. This is one of the uncles-to-be trying to guess the flavor of mystery jar number 10.

And what would a shower be with cake! Apparently the thing on the right is a stork...my guess was duck. It's just so yellow!

Now, you may be thinking what was Phil doing during the baby shower (aside from trying to avoid the baby food tasting). He was playing with the kids!...What else would he be doing? ^__^

The older brother-to-be got a Star Wars lego set and Phil was attempting to assist.

And when the kids got bored of wrestling with lego pieces, poor Phil was left to fend for himself...

The hard earned engineering degree at work. ^__~

Wedding Planning in the City

Saturday was wedding planning day. The wedding is still about 6 months away, so we keep thinking that there's tons of time left, but we still have to book a DJ/MC, photographer, etc. At least we have the reception area booked, so if nothing else we'll have a seat and food for our guests. ^__^

But in the interest of trying to have some music and photos for the wedding we went into NYC to meet with some DJs and photographers. Our first meeting was at a Starbucks on Delancey (which apparently used to be a Burger King back in the day) since the guy didn't have an office. It sounded a bit shady at first, but he was pretty professional and not too fobby, which is a plus.
While we waited Phil got in some quality Nintendo DS time. Look how happy he is!
After our meeting we stopped by a restaurant nearby called Congee Village for lunch. The decor was very cute - lots of greenery, murals on the wall and bamboo decorations. This isn't the actual table we sat at, but our table didn't have as nice a decoration behind it...

Being in Congee Village we had to order a bowl of congee. Yum!

It was tasty, except for the bits of octopus...blech.

And chicken and Chinese mushrooms with rice in some kind of bamboo steamer. Also very tasty. Just watch out for the ginger! It may look like bamboo, but it is most certainly not...

Here's Phil posing at the front entrance of the restaurant in a comfy wooden chair.

After lunch we had some time to kill before we were scheduled to meet the next DJ, so we went to a bakery called Golden Dragon Boat that Phil's parents frequent for some tea. Phil was really excited about getting bubble tea for some reason so we picked up a cup on the way. Nothing like warm bubble tea to warm you up. Phil gives it a thumbs up.

After we met with the second DJ we headed over to Elmherst to the place where we're going to be having our reception, just to touch base with the coordinator there. The restaurant is called East Manor. Here's a little preview of the restaurant.

Phil's mom and dad were kind enough to join us and help negotiate our meeting with the coordinator.

And since we're there, might as well have dinner! Tofu...(minus a few pieces...)

Chinese veggies...

Ribs (of some kind)...

and Lobster...A full day of Chinese food in NY - Phil is definitely happy ^__^

House Warming in Secaucus

It's been a while since the last update on life in Jersey.

Last weekend was busy, but nothing photo worthy. I did have a college friend/ex-roomate come visit our house for the first time, but we were too busy catching up to take any pictures. I even missed pictures of the yummy food at the French cafe on Main Street...so sad.

Anyway, on Friday Phil and I went to a house warming party in Secaucus for one of his coworkers, Ghimel. Well, it was an apartment, but apartment warming just doesn't have the same ring to it...Here is Phil's coworker Ghimel and her older brother. I don't think I've ever been to Secaucus before. The apartment complex is kind of in the middle of nowhere, back near a more industrial area. It's fairly new - the address isn't listed on my GPS or on Google Maps. But since it's new it's very nice and high tech. They have fingerprint pads so you can gain access to the apartment instead of using a key. Craziness!
Here's a picture of the L'Oreal group: Mohammed, Madwa (sp?), Joanna, Phil and Ghimel

And of course some yummy house warming hors d'oeuvres. Not sure what everything was, but it was all very tasty.

Chocolate!!

I couldn't come back from a trip to Japan without bringing back KitKats! They're very popular with Mandy and Phil. I actually didn't buy all the ones in the picture. Apparently Mandy knew that I would be bringing her back chocolate so she brought some back from her honeymoon in Australia.

From Japan we have Caramel Macchiato, Strawberry Cheesecake, Blueberry Cheesecake, Caramel Pudding, and the BIG KitKat (basically a giant KitKat bar with double the layers). From Australia, we have Caramel, Cookies & Cream, and Mint Chocolate. So far we've tried the Strawberry Cheesecake and the Cookies & Cream. The Cookies & Cream was interesting - it was actually a layer of cookies and cream filling on the inside of the KitKat. Very tasty.

Why is it that every other country has such interesting KitKat flavors except for the U.S.?
Here are some more of the chocolates that Mandy brought back from Australia.And that's not all...
We haven't tried many of them yet. So far we've tried the Milkybar and the Picnic. The Milkybar is basically a big bar of white chocolate, and the Picnic kind of tastes like a really chewy Snikers bar with little rice krispies.

So much chocolate, so little time... ^__~

Places and Things in Japan

My week in Japan was spent doing training for work. This is the training center where I spent most of my time. It's in a smaller city, tucked away down a small side street. Thankfully the train ride from the hotel where I stayed to the training center goes against normal morning traffic, which means I actually got to sit on the train a couple times instead of being smooshed against the door.

This is the internet cafe where I had to go to check my e-mail. Normally there's free internet at the hotel, but apparently my new laptop didn't seem to want to connect, so it was off to the internet cafe. It was actually my first time in an internet cafe, so it was an interesting experience.You go up a small elevator just big enough to fit 2 people to the second floor. Once you get off the elevator there's a tight hallway lined on each side with tiny rooms. Each room has a desktop PC and television. Then they have rooms that just have a seat and footrest, or ones that are more like an elevated cushioned platform where you can lie out. Here's one of the cushioned rooms - that's pretty much how wide it is...just far enough to slide the door open.

So compact and yet very functional.
But the trip over wasn't all work. I did get a chance to do some shopping on Friday afternoon after class. I stopped by Shibuya to pick up some presents and took a picture of Shibuya's "Time Square". It's supposed to be one of the most crowded intersections, and this is what it's like almost all day! This picture probably doesn't do it that much justice, but you get the idea ^__^

And meet the newest edition to our bobbly-head family. I can honestly say that this one wasn't for me this time. Japan has a whole line of solar powered figurines that bob their head left to right in the sun. Most of the original ones look like smiley faces with bodies, but every now and then they will have ones like this or Winnie the Pooh or something else cute. Now we just have to find somewhere to put all of them...