thank you for my fat ass

thanksgiving. we all know it's about family and a celebration of relationships, whether they be functional or dysfunctional (hopefully more functional than not). but the underlying goal of thanksgiving is to also turn you into a big fat turkey. seriously.

and if you look at the larger picture, from thanksgiving till christmas, it will be a month long of gorging, of eating till you're stuffed, and of wearing loose clothing to grow your fat belly as you make your rounds in the eating circuit, double fisting turkey and pumpkin pie. oh dear lord, it is a time to excercise restraint peoples! a time to say, "no more," rather than "yes, please." a time to look at your own thigh, rather than the turkey's thigh! one word of advice: put the mutherfuckin' slice of honey baked ham down, ya hear?!

did you excercise restraint this thanksgiving? did you? let me turn this question on myself, DID I? NOPE. CRAP. haha, i am a walking anomaly of conflicting messages...yes, no, maybe, ok! dang.

thanksgiving this year was spent with my fiance's clan, a boisterous group of folks that spilled out of the little house that it was held at. since i helped out with some of the prep work, i did not get the opportunity to snap a ton of pictures, but let me just say, asian gatherings always mean over the top, way too much food and a whole lot for you to take home.

there was a turkey getting fried. this huge tin pot was where it was entombed in. a greasy dead-bath of sorts.

here's my fiance, mixing a huge vat of mash potatoes. yes, it may look like he's getting ready for the salvation army, but in fact, this vat of mashies will feed all of us...all 40+ of us, bejeebus.

and one of the best thanksgiving items of them all, a WHOLE ROASTED PIG! it had the crispiest skin ever. this oinker was polished off in seconds. SECONDS.

so i'm THANKFUL. THANKFUL for all the usual things, fiance, family, friends, dawgs, my job, and writing blogs that actually have folks that read them...and i'm absolutely THANKFUL that i never have to worry about being hungry and that eating well, eating to the point of obesity, can be a possibility if i choose to...er, not that i would...just sayin'.

i will forgo stepping on the scale till new year's eve so i can then make my typical new year's resolution: i will lose weight.

till then, i am stuffing my face! holla.

merry thanksgiving!

hola folks!

wishing you the jolliest gobble gobble day in the world! there is much to be thankful for this year, much to look forward to, and much to eat. i leave you with the porkiest turkey i have ever found on the interwebz and wish you the very best this holiday season.

smoochies,
bagnatic

happy howl-o-ween!!

halloween is that special time of the year when my fam (2 and 4-legged) geek out more than necessary. is it to the point of ridiculousness and downright embarrassment? sure, probably. hence i say geek out.

after a long day at work, i came home on friday to a very excited sis. VERY. a lot of the geeky excitement actually originated from her so we got in her car and drove to target to look for doggy costumes cuz our local dog park was hosting their 3rd annual "howl-o-ween" costume contest. omg. like you had to ask if we were going to participate.....

it went from us browsing the aisles, to figuring out a theme, to laughing hysterically at our brilliance when we figured out our plan.

we ran across a white rabbit costume (from alice in wonderland) and also a generic kingly robe. since charlie was going to be the white rabbit, i suggested that lucy go dressed as the queen of hearts. all i had to do was sew a red felt heart on her robe which i did and a smaller red heart on her crown to emphasize our point. hearts + more hearts = the queen of hearts. that's how we roll.

although lucy did look super cute as the white rabbit if i must say so myself but we wanted to stick to the gender roles. besides, the robe was waaaaaay too big for charlie. we tried. we really did as he struggled to get away.

unlike last year when charlie was the only participant, we upped the heat and wanted to make sure that we won SOMETHING this year, so we decided that the WHOLE family had to be a part of the act. since my sis had a blue dress, she was dressed as alice and my fiance and i became the playing cards. brilliant. you know you love it.

when we got to the dog park, it was PACKED. it was quite the celebration indeed because everybody was in a jovial mood and all i heard was laughing. i love that people celebrate with their pets in all manners of silliness.

i did see a not so happy butterfly. perhaps pink wasn't her color.

here's a dog straddled by an angry cowboy.

a cow that jumped over the moooooooooooon. omg, so cute!



and a dog with the largest set of muscles ever. what a great body guard he would make!

a mummified dog. so scary!

marie antoinette with her one eye.

and the smallest giraffe in the world. i was floored when i found out that the costume was all handmade by the owner. i'm telling ya, the heat was on!

but in all seriousness, my dogs were 10,000% cuter! come on now! C-U-T-E! <3

we saw another themed group there, but ha! please don't cry when we dominate you captain america...especially since yours is not a cohesive collection.

cuz we are rockin' it alice in wonderland style!



and we won! THE END.

juicy lucy

hi, my name is lucy. i'm getting kinda big and my momma always threatens to starve me so i won't grow anymore. i know she's joking....do you think she's joking? my daddy feeds me in the morning before he goes to work and my mommy feeds me at night...but after eating all that food, all i really want to do is run around and play but stupid charlie is fat and sleeps too much. sometimes i get so bored chewing my rope by myself that i fall asleep too, just like this. zzzz.....

mommy thinks she gets a nice break when we take our naps, but i'm still a puppy so that only means i'm resting so i can jump higher and run faster around our wee house...especially when she's watching something she had recorded on t.v. it's funny watching her rewind the shows over and over again because she missed something. maybe if she didn't yell at us to be quiet all the time, then she would have been paying attention to her shows. i don't understand her sometimes....

other than running around and annoying my mommy, i also like to eat a lot. i'm trying to grow up to be big and strong so that i can knock charlie out with one paw swipe. even though i eat everything in my bowl, i like to sit REALLY close to charlie when he's eating his food. sometimes so close that my nose touches his bowl. my mommy laughs at me when i do that.

now that i'm older and taller, i also know how to dig into things so i've been playing a game called "retrieving." my mom throws something in the recycling bag and then i take it out and she throws it back in again and i take it out again.

it's really fun until she yells out "NO!" really loudly and then i run into my kennel and turn on my rock music and pretend she doesn't exist.

oh darn, where did the time go? it's already 2:34 in the morning and my mom said something about us being busy tomorrow because we are getting ready for halloween. ok, nice meeting you! i need to go to sleep! talk to you soon!

smoochies,

lucy

unpacking

there is no reason to be reflective when it's so late in the night. what i really need to do is go to sleep so i don't look like a sloppy raccoon tomorrow. but here's a few thoughts that ran through my mind as i sit here listening to my loved ones snore (dogs and fiance) right next to me:

1) it's hard to be happy for people when you hold a grudge against them.
2) it's hard to say good bye, so when you do, you gotta make sure that you're committed to doing so in the first place.
3) when there's no feelings left (be it positive or negative) about the matter whatsoever, the cycle is finally complete and you can give the baggage a mental rest.

so good bye, good night, and in a few hours, good morning. somewhere in the grand scheme of things, everything does happen for a reason.

(i should not have eaten that coffee dessert that keeps me up thinking way past my bedtime........)

my oasis

after a sick collection of water bottles (plastic, metal, red, blue, and silver), i've finally found THE water bottle to end all water bottles. please say hello to my new best friend and the sole reason why all the aforementioned bottles have been dumped like dirty diapers. hello lifefactory water bottle! thank god i finally found you for a mere $22 (not factoring in shipping and handling).

if you don't know me much, one thing you should know is that i HATE, HATE, ABSOLUTELY HATE the taste of tinted water. the metallic twang from a metal bottle, the plastic notes from a plastic bottle is plain blasphemous on my tongue. i would rather suck down a paper cup filled with my own saliva than drink from containers like those. no really. i.can.taste.ick.

when i found out about this glass water bottle encased in a silicone sleeve, i thought it was purrrrfect. no more worries about the nasty aftertaste that permeates my tongue after drinking out of a metallic/ plastic container. and FINALLY, i can bring my filtered water from home to lube up my chords. i love it. now is this the most perfect bottle if you hike, jog, or excercise? probably not...i'm afraid the silicone sleeve can only do so much if the bottle ever falls on the ground. it is glass after all. and it is also a tad heavy too.....

but for pacing about in a carpeted room, this bottle is just purrrrfect.

feed me!

staycation has been rather rad. i get to play with my dogs and to shop for things that i normally don't have time to bother myself with. i also get to cook like a pretend chef without a time constraint. that means using more than 3 ingredients at a time...yes, i am a badass.

staycation right now means cleaning up and organizing my crap in my wee house. waaaahhhh! 3 adults, 2 dogs, very little storage space, means a shot at being on an episode of hoarders. anyways, the first step was boxing everything. it's not so fun going out and buying plastic storage boxes....but THIS BOX i enjoyed purchasing. whoo hoo folks, here's my unique recipe box with my two favorite doggies in the world depicted on it :) the dog on the left is charlie and the one on the right is lucy. i looooooove the way the artist marked lucy's face. so unmistakable and sooooooooo freakin' cute.

this is them sleeping together. see the resemblance? i should probably try to take a pic of them sitting up, but they are too tired to pose. they've had a looooooong day rough housing, these darn dawgs.

the top of the recipe box is pretty darn cute too. the bird on the left is me and the bird on the right is my fiance. if you ever meet me in real life, i want to alert you now that i do have a blue belly and an ass that looks like a fan. as you can tell, the dogs are waiting for us to feed them just like they do in real life. woof!

the inside is divided with four tabs; main dishes, side dishes, dessert, and drinks. i didn't even mess with the appetizer tab cuz i don't make any, that's why. besides, isn't a glass of wine a great appetizer? hehe. so now that i have a recipe box, i will slowly organize my random recipes on cute little index cards and pack them in. i have a few of my own, but in no way do i have enough to fill this bad boy. any tried and true recipes that you would like to share? looking forward to building an awesome recipe collection and cooking authentic meals created by other peeps in my wee house.