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Last Friday night, hubby and I had a late celebration of our 3 years of marital bliss! He’s really busy this week that’s why we planned to have it on a Friday night. We had a Morton gift certificate from my parent in-laws last year from our bday.  I’ve been really wanting to experience Morton’s steakhouse!  Before heading out we already “planned” what we’re gonna order because based on our dining experiences we always end up ordering too much.  I’m not really a big fan of left overs, especially steaks.  So the “plan” was to just get 2 appetizers, 2 main entrees, 1 side dish, share a dessert! We stuck to the plan and hubby got a mojito for his drink! All in all it was a nice experience, the food was great and service too. Despite that, we didnt order a lot this time, we still have left over steak because I couldn’t finish my filet mignon, I was kinda full before the main entree were served, Oh well!!

This week, we’ve been  “eating out”  more than usual because we’ve been out and about most of the time this week! Just wanted to share some of the pictures I took for the last couple of days!

So today Hubby and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary and we wanted to just stay at home and celebrate later this week!  We wanted to invite Zach’s parents because we prefer to celebrate it with family (wish my family were our neighbors too)..Zach’s sis couldn’t make it because of prior commitments!  We prepared steaks and roasted potatoes / sweet potatoes, cornmeal fried onions (all Ina Garten Recipe) .  Ina’s recipe is simple, easy and special, after all it is a special celebration for us.  So we decided to use Ina’s steak recipe because I’ve seen her episode on this one and I was really amazed at how simple the steaks were to prepare..”seared then put in the oven”, how easy is that?..Off to whole foods (whole paycheck…hehe) to get filet mignon and our fave dessert wine (only found in whole foods too).. I also prepared a chicken dish (similar to chicken cordon blue) because my mom in law is not into steak!  The steaks were salty for our taste but still good, we love the Roquefort chive sauce too.. We will definitely do this again but will adjust the salt that Ina called for!  I had a lovely evening with my hubby and in-laws..so special to be with people who guide and continue to be an inspiration in our marriage 🙂

This April 5th (today!!), we will be celebrating our 3rd year as husband and wife!  I love being married to my wonderful husband Zach.  Aside from my family, he really is the greatest gift God has given me.  Everyday I always say a “thank you Lord” for giving me my husband because I don’t want to take things for granted and I know I’m so blessed to have a husband like him :-).

August 15, 2005 the day I met my husband online, 2pm (PI time) and 10pm (Seattle time).  I wasn’t really expecting to meet my future hubby on the other side of the world.  I took the local Philippine nursing board exam June 2005, someone texted me that around August the result will be released, so August 15 I got a text from a classmate saying that today the result will come out.  For whatever reason our computer at home was broken (so unusual for our computer to not work) so I had to go to the nearest “internet cafe” because I cannot wait any longer to see the result!  So there in the cafe, I paid my $1 fee (i think 50 pesos that time) and you can use their computer for 2 hours or so.  After waiting for like 5, 10 minutes, still no exam result, I asked my cousin who I brought along with me, “What can I do here?”  I didn’t have a Facebook account around 2005, so he suggested why don’t you just “chat”.  I responded “I don’t want to talk to mean and jerky people”..LOL! so he said “go to a Christian chatroom” maybe lot’s of “nice” people there! So he took care of that.  It was such a random chat room.  All I remember was that it’s a yahoo christian chatroom..so he asked me “what’s your nickname”, I said “vannurse”..after having my so called nickname “vannurse”,  someone messaged me asking  “Do you enjoy being a nurse?” so I politely explained “I’m not a registered nurse yet, Im here coz I’m waiting for the result to see if I passed!”..BTW, that someone is Zach here in Washington who is online most of the time because of his work (he’s a software Engineer).I asked him what made him go to that Christian chat room and he said he got bored from work and hadn’t explored the yahoo chat rooms before, but was enjoying listening to some people debate scripture. ( how random!).  After this “initial” explaining He started talking about his relationship with the Lord, and asked me if I’m a Christian..so I have to ask “Are you a pastor?”..I’m thinking if this guy is a pastor I’d better be careful here!  haha..  He asked for my email and after that asked if it’s Ok to email me..so I didn’t care and said whatever, I mean who takes chatting the first time seriously?  He emailed me anyways, but I only read it after 1 week when our computer at home was fixed.. So we started emailing each other, texting, phone call and around november 2005 he wanted to visit me in the PI, I said nope..it’s too soon!! I finally said “OK” you can visit me January, 2007 and you have to ask my parents permission!!  I’m playing hard to get and testing his patience..most guys probably wouldn’t wait for almost 2 years just to visit someone!  Asking my parents to visit me was so foreign to him especially since I was 23 and he was 25 that time..Hey, I’m a conservative Filipina! Lol!

 

 

Between 2005-2007 before allowing him to visit me, we’ve been praying about our relationship, especially on my part because Zach is my first boyfriend.  Before seriously saying Yes to him, I always prayed to God that I wanted my first boyfriend to be my husband.  Unlike some women they want to date around and get lots of experience or whatever!  For me, I just wanted the “right” person that God wants me to be with!  I know what I wanted.  I wanted a Christian guy who will make me a better person and servant of God!  God’s timing is just amazing!  I had my boyfriend when I was 23 (others have boyfriends when they’re 13, so I’m a late bloomer! LOL) got married at 26 and now celebrating our 3rd year as married couple!  Whenever we talked about how we met,we really are amazed at how God’s timing works and His control over the whole thing!

 

We are now content with our little Riley until God blesses us with a child at some point in the future.  Thus concludes the beginning of our love story.

I was really excited to prepare this corned beef dish because growing up in the PI we only had the canned “purefoods” corned beef which we prepared with scrambled eggs breakfast style.  So when my father in-law Phil brought over  this meat, I immediately looked online specifically Foodnetwork to check some corned beef recipe that’s easy (coz this is my first time to deal with “real corned beef”)..This Sandra Lee recipe caught my attention because it looked simple and I had all of the ingredients and I’ve always wanted to use our slow cooker so I thought this was perfect!  The cooking time was around 8 hours, so I prepared all the ingredients mid morning so by dinner time everything would be ready to eat!

So after 8 hours, I still find the meat kinda hard so hubby suggested to add another 4 hours because he agreed that the meat is not as tender as we thought it should be after 8 hours..By this time I decided to stir-fry some easy dinner because Sandra Lee’s recipe failed us!LOL…so to conclude I will not prepare this again because after 12 hours in the slow cooker,the meat was dry and tasted awful if you ask me,hubby said it’s OK..such a waste of money and time but then I learned a thing about corned beef: DO NOT USE SANDRA LEE’s recipe!

We had dinner @ cheesecake factory with sis in-law Julia! I was kinda worried that we will be waiting for a long time to be seated, good thing they had an alternative for people who don’t want to wait for an hour just to have dinner..We opted to sit in the heated patio section of the restaurant.  It’s always crowded at this resto, I think it’s because the food is decent and the prices are reasonable!

Here are some of  the dishes we’ve had for march 2011!

Earlier today we went to a Japanese buffet and were kinda disappointed with the food! This is our third time to visit this place so I was really looking forward to it and didn’t expect it would turn out like this.  I was not happy with their sushi selection and the dessert part was limited to fresh fruits (helloooooo where are the chocolate cakes and fondue here, Im sure Japanese people loves chocolates too!).  I included some of the pictures of our mexican dinner a couple of weeks ago, I had carne asada my fave mexican dish..I’ve never ordered anything else whenever we go out to a mexican resto, Hubby has been encouraging me to try other stuff but I’m not yet ready to let go of my carne asada obsession! LOL..

I didn’t plan to make this when I realized that I have lots of leftovers from our taco night.  I wanted to use the rest of the flour tortilla and shredded cheese. Perfect for a quick lunch for my home based hard working hubby!

I Love Ina Garten!  I’ve seen all of her shows/episodes on her Food Network show Barefoot Contessa!  Aside from the fact that her recipes are easy and she’s so in love with Jeffrey!  I think she has the best kitchen on any food network show!!  How I adore her kitchen and her 8 burner stove, 2 dishwashers!  LOL..Im feeling lucky that we have a little specialty store here in Issaquah where I can easily buy some of Ina Garten’s products, although I’ve checked it online and found that you can also buy her products on the Barefoot Contessa website (I’ve never done this yet).

I made a not so yummy corned beef dish the other day, so I wanted to compensate with a yummy dessert to make up for it.  I especially love the frosting of this cupcake recipe, creamy and sweet!  You can check the recipe on the food network of this Red velvet recipe if ever you’re up for making cupcakes from scratch!