We just got back home from Hawaii earlier this morning, and we had the most amazing time there! Can’t wait to share photos and stories here, but first I wanted to make sure I recognized my two awesome fathers on this day, before Father’s Day is over. I feel very grateful to not only have been raised by a wise, patient and hardworking man such as my father, but to also be so lucky to have the sweetest father-in-law that a girl could ever ask for.
Misono and her father, circa 1984.
Dan with his father and sister, circa 1983.
Happy Father’s Day to all the hardworking, wonderful fathers out there.
Important Note: Our blog has just moved from danandmisono.com/blog to simply danandmisono.com. The old URL has a redirect on it, but please take a moment to update your bookmarks, feeds, and Google Readers. You can still access it at coupledconfessions.com. Our wedding site, which hasn’t been updated in nearly two years, is now at danandmisono.com/wedding.
Saw these lovely peonies on the way home from work at Bloomies in Rockridge, and I couldn’t resist! I picked up a bundle to take home with me. 🙂
Peonies are a close second to cherry blossoms when it comes to my favorite flowers. I would have made my bridal bouquet all in peonies if they weren’t so expensive! (These three stems alone cost me a pretty penny… :() I prefer when they are still sort of in bud form, rather than fully in bloom and open. I just love their plump, round shape and the lush, tissuey layers of petals… gorgeous!
Believe it or not, one of the things I miss most about college is the food. Meals at university dining halls may not seem so inspiring to most, and of course Virginia Tech had its own share of unsavory cafeteria meals. But we have West End Market, which makes up for it all. Serving up steak by the ounce, fresh lobster, gourmet soups & salads and mouthwatering wraps, it is hands down the most popular dining center on campus. Built relatively recently in 1999, it has since received several awards, most recently earning Virginia Tech the title of No.1 Best Campus Food in the United States in the 2010 edition of The Princeton Review! You read right, NUMBER ONE in the nation, bitches.
The dish I miss most from West End Market is without question the London Broil. It’s marinated just right, cooked to perfection, and the mushroom sauce that it’s topped with harmonizes so well with the steak. I still suffer from cravings for it, three years after graduating from Tech. I’ve talked to some other alumni and it appears that this is a common condition that hits during post-college life. I just do not have the same luxury that most of them do to make the 4-5 hour drive down from DC to quench such cravings every so often, since I am now on the opposite side of the country from my beloved London Broil.
The other day, as I was daydreaming once again about those moist, tender cuts of steak, I got curious and tried doing a search to see if there was a recipe out there to replicate West End’s signature London Broil. Sure enough, there was. I nearly peed my pants with excitement! I scurried off to the supermarket to gather the ingredients and set to work on preparing my favorite college meal. Instead of marinating for 3-4 hours as the recipe instructed, I let the steak soak in the marinade overnight to make sure the flavors really sank in. Also, we don’t have a gas grill that we can use, so we had to improvise in the way that we cooked the steak — I seared them a couple minutes on each side on the stove, then stuck them in the oven for approximately 7 minutes.
London Broil out of the oven, ready to be carved.
The mushroom sauce... I made a little too much.
Pouring the sauce onto the steak....
Ready to be devoured.
…and devour it I did. To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed. The London Broil itself came out pretty good, although it probably could have been better had it been cooked on an actual grill. I think the failure was mainly in the mushroom sauce. I’m not sure if the recipe has it all wrong or if the type of teriyaki sauce I bought was too strong, but all I could taste was teriyaki, and it kind of ruined the London Broil altogether. Absent were the flavorful notes and subtle mushroom taste that I had loved so much in West End’s London Broil. It just wasn’t the same. And so my quest for West End’s London Broil continues. If one of you Hokies out there has mastered how to recreate this nostalgic dish, please share your recipe with me! Because if I don’t find a way soon, I may just have to kidnap one of the cooks at J.P.’s Chop House at West End to personally make it for me….
P.S. This was the 100th blog post on our blog! I’m personally impressed with myself that I’ve been able to consistently stick with this blogging project thusfar. Truth be told, it’s me blogging 95% of the time and Dan only 5%, so I’m not sure if you can really call it a couple’s blog… ::sigh:: Gotta step it up, hubby!
Memorial Day weekend just flew by! It was so nice to have the three-day weekend to get some relaxation in — we saw some friends we hadn’t seen in a while, watched movies and Japanese dramas, and got a lot of shopping done in preparation for Hawaii. I love shopping for summer clothes! (Except that it never gets quite hot enough to wear them around here.)
Here are some photos from Sunday, when we went to a BBQ hosted by Dan’s coworker and friend Kane, and his wife Cristina. Dan loves lizards, so he had fun with their pet bearded dragons….
Dan and Cristina at the BBQ
Cristina with Petra... Cristina's due in a month! Can't wait to meet their baby! 🙂
Hello there, little fellow.
Mouth wide open.
Our gracious host Kane in the background.
Earlier in the weekend, I went on the hill in El Cerrito with my friends Yumi and Mark, and discovered this fun swing atop the hill. It’s just a board hung on a single thick rope from a tall branch, but you can get a lot of air with it. The hill is the prominent one you can see from the highway (the 80), and the view from there is pretty neat! One one side, you can see all the East Bay hills, and if you turn around, you’re greeted with a sweeping view of the whole bay and San Francisco, even the Golden Gate Bridge! I took Dan back to the hill after the BBQ so he could check it out too.
Me on the swing atop the hill in El Cerrito.
Perhaps having a little too much fun.
Dan's turn on the swing. The branch is pretty high!
It’s back to work tomorrow, but I’m grateful that we were able to have a relaxing, productive weekend. 🙂 I can’t believe it’s already June!!! Hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend as well!
I’ve had all sorts of cobblers before, most of which have been fruit-based — peach cobbler, blueberry cobbler, apple cobbler, cherry cobbler… all delicious. But I’d never heard of chocolate cobbler until I saw this Tasty Kitchen blog post (a cooking community founded and led by The Pioneer Woman, whom I mentioned previously) come through on my Google Reader earlier this month. I was immediately intrigued by the idea and was determined to try it, especially when my chocolate cravings struck today.
Here is the mouthwatering result:
My first chocolate cobbler!
The recipe, which you can find here, is surprisingly simple! The ingredients are very basic and are things that you normally have already stocked in your pantry — I didn’t have to make an extra trip to the grocery store or anything. The steps went super quickly, and the batter was ready to go into the oven in ten minutes!
What is at first alarming about the recipe is that you create the main cake batter, then pile on a mix of sugar and light brown sugar, and then pour hot tap water on top, and then stick it in the oven without stirring it. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I thought that there must be some missing step or misprint in the recipe, but the blog post assured that this was how it was supposed to be, so I trusted them despite my reservations as I uneasily stuck this visually unappealing mixture into the oven.
All watery and muddy-looking on the top. Doesn't look too appetizing, does it?
Somehow, 40 minutes later when you take it out of the oven, the liquidy portion has sunk into the inside and the top has set in a cakey layer. It’s like magic! (Or some science to baking that I can’t quite grasp.)
Out of the oven.
Smells pretty good!
Breaking open the top of the cobbler to find the chocolate oozing out.
The chocolate filling is still steaming when I break the surface. (It's similar to those molten chocolate lava cakes in that sense.)
Enjoying some chocolate cobbler for dessert!
Dan described it as a “liquid brownie” when he took his first few bites, and then when the cake mixed more with the syrupy filling, he said it started tasting like pudding. He couldn’t get enough of it and ended up eating about a third of the cobbler! 😮
It was delicious (although admittedly indulgent) and the best part is that it’s so easy to make with on-hand ingredients. Big thanks to Tasty Kitchen for such a great recipe! Dan and I were talking about how we want to try our hand at some fruit cobblers too! We’ll let you know how that goes…
