We celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early this year, because I had plans to visit my best friend in Philadelphia with my girlfriends on February 14th. I took some photos of the girls matching in red to commemorate Valentine’s 2015!
It was impossible to get them to both smile in one shot! Sigh.
Smiling sweetly for the camera! ♥
Mirei’s expressions look so mature lately…
Dan and I got to have an early Valentine’s dinner date on Thursday, thanks to my sister watching the kids for us! We dined at Maple Ave Restaurant, which we had heard so many good things about! We were pretty excited to have a quiet romantic dinner together, and the food did not disappoint. Everything was so incredibly delicious!
Steamed PEI mussels with saffron coconut broth, chinese sausage, and crostinis as an appetizer.
I ordered the duck leg confit with caramelized brussel sprouts, truffle aioli, and apple cider gastrique.
For dessert, we had the chocolate dumplings with fried pastry shell, melted chocolate ganache, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate sauce.
…and the “omg” flourless chocolate cake. Both were amazing!
Love you hubby! Thanks for a lovely and romantic evening.
When we got home, Mio delivered surprise Valentines gifts from Dan!
A sweet Valentine’s card from Dan and the girls!
Mio signed her Valentines to her classmates this year! This was actually her first time writing her name out. We’d been encouraging her to write her name for a while now and she always resisted so we’ve tried not to push her… but she willingly wrote it this time. So proud of her!
Mio’s Valentines haul from her classmates. She loved it, and has been treasuring her bag of Valentine’s cards in the days since!
On the same day (Friday), we received this card in the mail. Mio’s preschool class has been learning about the post office, and apparently they sent their Valentine’s to their parents out in the mail in time to get to us by Valentine’s Day! I will treasure this always.
Mio telling us about how she sent the Valentine in the mail.
Thank you sweetheart for such a beautiful Valentine! We love you and your sister so much!
I am a huge fan of macarons, and haven’t been able to get enough of them in the past few months! It’s been said that the macaron is the new cupcake, now that the cupcake craze is dying down (even I had started getting a little tired of cupcakes, despite how much I love baking and eating them!) — and I admittedly have caught macaron fever. These delicate French confections are both eye-catching as well as palate-pleasing, and biting into one of those little sandwich cookies transports me to cloud nine! I love the light-as-air shells that yield to the generous dab of ganache — smooth, rich, and creamy — perfectly complimenting each other.
The thing about macarons, though, is that they’re pretty expensive to buy in bakeries (I’ve seen them go for $2-3 each or more), but they are also finicky little devils that are really difficult to make yourself! I asked my friend Stephanie (who is a seasoned macaron-making expert) for some tips before my first attempt at making macarons, and she warned me not to get discouraged the first few times because she says it literally takes most people 4-5 times to get a decent-looking batch! Truth be told, my first few attempts were complete botches — there was always something wrong with them, whether it was a cracked or splotchy surface, lack of pieds (feet), or being flat and sticking to the baking sheet. I grew more and more disheartened with each try and put off making macarons for a while.
I decided to rise to the challenge once again this past weekend, though, especially since my friend Tarrin had bought me a lovely macaron-making book for my birthday! I followed the general directions in the book and tweaked the recipe a little to add my own flavoring, to create these almond vanilla macarons with matcha buttercream filling! I’d say this is definitely my best batch yet — the surface is smooth, domed, and glossy, the feet formed well, and they have that airy crunch that I’d been longing to recreate. I’m feeling a little more confident now, and hope to try out more variations of colors and flavors! Oh capricious macaron, I have finally tamed thee!
On Christmas Eve, we went to lunch with a bunch of my girlfriends from college — we went to Bon Chon Chicken in Centreville. I’d heard of how great Bon Chon was from all my friends in Virginia and had to try it! True to its reputation, the chicken wings were some of the best I ever had! Great flavor but not too greasy! (I ate mostly the soy garlic flavor ones because the hot ones were too spicy for me… although Dan was all about the spicy ones!) It was great catching up with familiar friends… felt like I got transported back to the good old college days! 🙂
Delicious ddukbokki! (The chicken was so good, I forgot to take a picture of it...)
Mio is all smiles!
The girls surprised me with a birthday cake! Red velvet… so delicious!
Mio is dying to dig her hands into the cake...
It was great seeing everyone and catching up! Thank you everyone for the delicious birthday cake!
Later in the afternoon, Miyoung and Mike came by to visit us at my parents’ house. Miyoung and I had a great time having a couple hours of girl talk while our hubbies played video games together and Mio napped.
Miyoung brought by these lovely macarons… they were almost too pretty to eat!
Look at all the colors!
I love macarons!
They were so delicious... between me, Dan, and my sister, we killed them all before the day was over.
Some more random pre-Christmas photos…
Mio playing with a magnifying glass. This just might be my favorite picture of the year.
Huge box of chocolates from a family friend to our family. The box is bigger than Mio.
Mio gets to spend her first Christmas in Virginia! What will Santa bring...?
