Miogi and Rhea's Civil Ceremony

A couple of weeks ago Justin's cousin, Miogi tied the knot in a civil ceremony. Miogi and his blushing bride, Rhea, are planning on having their church ceremony in the Philippines next year, but they opted to also have an intimate, local, civil ceremony with close friends and family ahead of the church ceremony. The festivities were held at L'Auberge Chez Francois and although we were hit with snow the day before, you couldn't have asked for a prettier day!

 

They reserved the side room at Chez Francois for the civil ceremony. The architecture of the entire restaurant was so cute. It looked like a European villa both inside and out. Here comes the ring bearer! 

Here's a shot of the couple exchanging their vows, and a picture of Miogi's sister, Maha, reciting a poem in honor of their union.

 

 

Miogi and Rhea lighting their unity candle...

 

Now it was time for the Filipino paparazzi...LOL, I mean pictures ;) First one of the groom's side...

 

And with the Honorable Judge Mann who presided over their ceremony....

 

 

Here's my picture with the happy couple!

After we took pictures it was time to eat! Here is a picture of the reception area with its high ceilings and dark wood beams.

  

 

Now for some food porn...some of which I may or may not have taken a part in. ;) Here's the beautiful wedding cake with the wedding favors on the side. The favor was a wine stopper/pourer, which I thought was really cool!
 

The inside of the cake was so colorful. Full of rich Filipino flavors of buttercream, pandan (young coconut), and ube (purple yam).

Here is a shot of the hour d'ourve tray with a bunch of tasty nibbles!

The braised beef cheeks were a popular choice at my table. 

And you couldn't go wrong with the roasted meats as an entree (i.e. lamb and beef)

That was our first wedding of the year, and we have many more to come in 2013 (four more to be exact).  I can't believe Miogi's married! Although, Justin couldn't make it to this one, we both want to wish you so much happiness in your married life together!

Weekend Review: Relaxing St. Patrick's Day

Hi Everyone! I hope you had a good weekend! I honestly didn't do much. Since I can't drink due to my nutrition challenge (I'm saving my cheat days!), I decided to stay in most of the weekend. As unsocial as it sounds, I'm too fond of not drinking while others partake in alcoholic libations (I just get tired!). So while Justin was off "gallivanting" with our friends around Chinatown and H St., I had a relaxing Saturday night with the Frenchies prepping our St. Patrick's Day meal!

 

A couple of weekends ago, Justin and I spotted corned beef at Costco. I knew it would be perfect for a St. Patrick's Day meal so in the cart it went. Fast forward to Saturday night, after thawing it out, I opened the package...

And plopped it into the slow cooker (seasoning packet and all) to cook overnight so we could have a piping, hot breakfast the next day...

Unfortunately, when we woke up we realized that our garbage disposal was clogged and the dishwasher had leaked overnight. :( For some reason, when our garbage disposal is clogged, our dishwasher overflows with water. I don't understand how or why, but that's just what happens. Does that happen to you to? Justin was all ready to call the plumber but I told him that we should first look up and see if we could fix it ourselves. After all, I had seen my dad do it plenty of times--it couldn't be that hard!

 

Luckily, we were able to fix it ourselves (I knew it!) and  crisis was averted. :) Isn't homeownership wonderful? Anyway, it was onto the corned beef! It was piping hot and ready to go!

Mmmm...fatty meaty goodness!

We baked some sweet potato fries and fried up some eggs and it was the perfect paleo, Irish breakfast! We had a ton of leftovers and ended up grazing on the corned beef the entire day!

 

 

After the whole garbage disposal fiasco and eating a huge breakfast, we were exhausted. We relaxed for a bit before tackling our huge mountain of laundry.

 

While relaxing, Justin decided to pull up some frenchie YouTube videos. The boys love watching other frenchies on the computer for some reason.

 

You can hear me saying, "Synchronized 'Why?' face." LOL...

 

 

*Side Note: That sound you hear in the video is a typical frenchie whine...both Louie and Derby do it sometimes (especially when you put them in their crate when people are around). It kinda sounds like a human baby crying, doesn't it?

 

So what did you do over the weekend? Did you celebrate St. Patrick's Day on Sunday or had you celebrated the weekend before? Whatever you did, I'm sure it didn't involve french bulldogs watching YouTube. ;)

Nike Women's Half Marathon DC - I'm In!

More like..."I'm in?"

 

Just to give you some background, back in November I entered the the lottery for the Inaugural Nike Women's Half in Washington, DC. Needless, to say I didn't get in. :( I had run the Nike Women's Half in San Francisco a couple years ago and had a blast so I was bummed, but I got over it...

 

Then last Friday, I received an email from Nike saying that they were offering a second chance to get into the DC Nike Women's Half. But there would be catch. The catch was I had to log in 6.2 miles via Nike+ that weekend for their virtual 10K race.

 

Eek.

 

I hadn't run much since the Army 10-miler and I had only logged in a mile or two during crossfit. I'm sure you can imagine how freaked out I was that I needed to bang out 6.2 miles in order to gain entry in into the Nike Women's Half. But I did it. On what is typically our "lazy Sunday," after coming back from Philly, Justin and I ran to the Washington Monument and back (with me huffing and puffing along the way ;). I'm glad I did it because it gave me a good gauge of my sucky cardio level.

 

Unlike the last time, my entry into this race was somewhat anti-climactic. And unfortunately not many people I know are running this race so I'm pretty much riding solo. Regardless, I'm super excited to be "in," despite being waaaay behind in training as compared to those who knew they were in and actually "won" the lottery back in January December. It just means that I have to work that much harder in the next month and a half!

Somethings that I'm looking forward to with this race:

• I looked over the course map and it looks similar to the Cherry Blossom 10-miler course (one of my faves!)
• The Expotique...Nike does it like no other!
• We'll have some guests visiting from out-of-town that weekend so it'll be nice to have that extra support!
• The Tiffany's swag of course!

This is the only long distance run I've registered for so far this year. Wish me luck on the next few months of training!

Weekend Review: Motown Philly - Part II

Hi Everyone! I had such a busy weekend, and I haven't begun writing about it until now. So much for a weekend review, being that it's already Wednesday, huh? I'm late as usual, so don't act surprised ;)

Anyways, on Friday we saw the comedian Jo Koy at the DC Improv, and he was hilarious! One of my favorite bits that he does is when he talks about his mom (who's Filipino) and roofies as seen here below. The show was great and his opening act was awesome as well!

The next day, Justin and I woke up bright and early to go to Philly. You might be thinking to yourself, "Joanne, didn't you just go to Philly not too long ago?" Yup, I in fact did go to Philly with my sisters in February.  I'll let you know some time later why we went there again...*wink, wink* In any case, Justin wasn't opposed to going because he wasn't with me the last time that I went with my sisters.  He may have also wanted to go because of all the great places to eat at around Philly, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The first thing that we did was go the the University of Kentucky bar for the UK-Florida men's basketball gamewatching. The UK Alumni Association has their viewing parties at the Tavern on Broad. It was a small group (they are under new leadership!) compared to the huge gatherings we go to at Grevey's, but it was nice having the Jim Beam room all to ourselves with a few other people.

After watching Kentucky pull off the win, we went bar hopping to a couple of the bars in the area. Being on my nutrition challenge, I was a little bummed that I couldn't drink, but I still liked being social with our new friends from the UK gamewatching, and Justin's friend from college, Oak.  He lives nearby in NJ and came into Philly to meet us up.  It had been a couple of years since Justin and I had seen him, so it was great catching up and rehashing old memories.   It was pretty cool walking around and seeing some of the local bars celebrate St. Practice Day because not too many bars in DC celebrate it, especially if the actual St. Patrick's Day falls on a weekend.

All the walking around got us hungry, so we went into Schlesinger's where Justin had a Doris Reuben. His sandwich was huge, but not as big as the other sandwich he encountered on our Brooklyn trip.  It was a decent amount of food that was enough to fill him up and get him sober for the time being.

I had the cabbage soup and pastrami sandwich (I didn't eat the bread).

Here's a picture of Justin and Oak. As you can see, Oak's name is quite fitting because he's super tall!  He earned the nickname playing rugby with Justin at Xavier University.  Justin's nickname was "Oddjob".  Sounds fitting too, eh?

After saying our farewells to Oak, our evening began with us checking into our hotel. Situated in the Historic District/Old City area of Philly, we decided to check out the neighborhood.  We walked along Market Street, past many bars, and stragglers from the "St. Practice Day" festivities. In the end, we came across The Continental, which had a cool retro looking facade that drew our attention and caused us to check it out.

Their concept was small plates, but you could also get an entree if smaller portions weren't your thing. Justin started off with the Korean Pork Tacos, which I must admit were pretty spicy even for me!  

Poor Justin went on a sweating spree, which didn't hamper his drive to finish the whole plate.  He certainly claimed victory, but did so with many beads of sweat all over his forehead and bald spot :)

I started off with the beef kofka (aka: Indian meatballs). They were delicious and I even got Justin to try one, too!

For my entree, I ordered a bunless bacon burger with grilled onions underneath. I got a huge side salad to go along with it. It had some feta cheese in it, but I was able to pick around it.  I was so hungry that I found it to be too much of a hassle to send the salad back just to avoid the feta cheese.

Another item Justin ordered was the barbeque chicken quesadilla. I didn't get to try it, but they looked good! It came with a black bean salsa, which was also untouchable due to my diet.  Justin was so full by the time he tackled this one.  We both can agree that stepping into The Continental for our dinner was a great choice.

On my last Philly trip with my sisters, we made a trip to Reading Terminal Market to try the many food options it had to offer.  We'd seen this place on TV, and figured we would try it out for ourselves.  When we returned to DC, we had a few leftovers that Justin kindly took care of.  After his little taste of Reading Terminal Market, Justin made sure that he too got a chance to pay a visit.  On my second visit, I chose to try out Wursthaus Schmitz, which served German food such as sausages, sauerkraut, smoked meats, and potato cakes.  I tried the bratwurst, sauerkraut, and baurenwurst.

Justin went to Tommy Dinic's for the roast pork and broccoli rabe sandwich that was featured on Man v. Food.  Unfortunately, he ate it so fast and I couldn't get a photo of it.  I did get a photo of this jerky place, which was closed at the time of our visit.  Some areas of Reading Terminal Market were closed on Sunday, due to the fact that most, if not all are run by the Amish.

So delicious, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.  Just another excuse to make another trip to Philly in the future, definitely during the week when this place is open.

Before our departure for DC, Justin wanted one more thing for the road.  We saw a long line that swung all around this restaurant, so we decided to give Spataro's a try.  We figured that the place must be pretty good to attract such a long line.  The wait for our Philly Cheesesteak was about 15-20 minutes.  The sandwiches were freshly made to order, and the staff was very friendly.  Although Justin waited until we arrived back in DC to bite into his sandwich, he still claimed it was pretty good.  Again, he ate it so fast, I couldn't snap a photo.  Luckily, I was able to get a shot of the huge menu at Spataro's.

That was our weekend trip to Philly.  It was definitely a fun time, and I'm sure we'll be back sooner rather than later.  With so many great places to eat at all over the city, I'm somewhat glad our trip was a short one.  The awesome food options would put a wrench in my diet plans, and I'm sure my weight loss goal would be harder to come by.

Our Paleo Eating for the Week: The First Week

Hi Everyone! I know I didn't post much this week, but it's because I didn't really have much to say! The weekend was chill and I've just been hard at work with my Performance Nutrition Challenge. I submitted my first week's data to my Coach, and unfortunately the numbers didn't quite match. When I put my information into the challenge spreadsheet the calorie outcome was way low. I'm not sure what caused the discrepancy, but I assure you I've been eating a lot and eating well! Here's a sample of what I've been noshing on this past week.

The first day on the challenge caught me off guard since I forgot to plan! Whoopsy! But I was able to scramble and throw some turkey slices and mushrooms in a container, along with some fruit (eaten with nuts of course!). The little packets of mustard you see in the background are key to this meal! ;)

I also made some homemade paleo banana nut muffins. I replaced the chocolate chips for nuts for obvious reasons. This particular recipe uses the perfect mix of coconut flour and almond meal. For some reason I find using only coconut flour makes things a little dry and only almond meal makes things a little greasy!  

For dinner one night I roasted an entire bag of brussel sprouts...

While Justin sauteed some onions and mushrooms...

We had this with my hubby's broiled rib eye, yum! I swear he has perfected this method and the end result is a big, juicy steak with the perfect crust!

While we were prepping the rib eyes we were also making the next night's meal. Crock pot chicken provencale:

It's what you would call a "dump" recipe in which you just dump things you have in your cupboard/fridge. (i.e.: canned tomatoes, chicken breast, chopped garlic, Italian seasoning, etc.) Here's a shot of the finished product we ate the next day. Justin had his with cannellini beans, I obviously had mine without.

The next evening Justin was in the mood for meatloaf so I looked for a paleo version of meatloaf that omitted breadcrumbs. Fast Paleo with their smokey bacon meatloaf recipe to the rescue again!

I ate it with a huge salad with vinegar and olive oil!

Look at that meatloaf! That bad boy is seriously a brick!

I'm really thankful that Justin has been open to making paleo dishes for me. And the fact the enjoys the paleo meals himself is an added bonus! It's great how giving up eating out for Lent combined with my nutrition challenge has sparked new creativity for us in the kitchen!

Around the House: New Chair and Touch Ups

I know I haven't posted about the house lately, but I wanted to let you know about the few improvements that we made to our house and/or its decor. First on the list, we got a new chair and ottoman for our living room! Our poor recliner had been licked to death by Louie.  The final straw came one weekend when Louie licked the recliner into an oblivion, resulting in him puking all over it. I know that might be TMI, but at that moment we knew we needed to get rid of it...

Justin and I dragged our recliner on the front porch as a final "nail in the coffin" that it was ready to be sent out to pasture. While I was at work, I put up a craigslist post, advertising a "free recliner needing cleaning" (no picture attached either!).  By the time we got off work, someone had picked up the recliner off our porch! Also, Justin was able to find the recliner's replacement on Craigslist! Isn't it neat how things come full circle?  You get rid of something, via Craigslist, and you find an even better replacement from...you guessed it, Craigslist :)

We were able to get the Crate & Barrel Cameron Chair and ottoman, in a beige microfiber material for less than 25% of the full price! I swear, Justin has the uncanny knack of finding some pretty good stuff on CL! ;) 

In addition to buying a new chair and ottman, we figured it was high time for us to touch up some of the paint around the house. As the house expands and contracts with the changing seasons, along with the natural settling of our new kitchen, we have noticed some fine cracks that have appeared in our dry wall. Nothing earth shattering, just something that needed to be fixed for pure asthetics. Over the weekend, we broke out the spackle to fill in the cracks and busted out the paint.

The trail of spackle...

In case you're wondering why Justin is wearing a mask, when sanding the spackle, the dust that is produced gets everywhere! The dust settled all the way on our kitchen countertops that were at least 20 feet away!

Now it's prime time! We learned from painting the upstairs bathroom that paint sticks better on dried spackle if you add a layer of primer first.  This is even the case when using a 2-in-1 paint/primer.

Then we finished it off with the paint. It took a couple of tries to get all the spots with the lighting that we had, but we eventually got it!

Which brings us to the finished product of a nicely painted, crackless wall you see today :)

What about you? Any recent furniture purchases? What about crack-filling or painting? Please tell me I don't have to do this every year!