September 24, 2007

Garden on the wall

Filed under: food, Fun, art — soleilsundance @ 11:10 am

Wow, this is brilliant! It’s an herbal shelf where you can grow your seasonal herbs on your wall!

Garden on a wall

I really love the idea that you can grow something you can then eat off of a decorative frame in your living room or kitchen. Great alternative to just having a plant in a corner!

The only challenge (for us) is to find a piece of wall getting enough sun throughout the day.
I also couldn’t quite figure out how much it costs.

April 14, 2007

How to become a wired fat person: the Buzz Donuts™

Filed under: food — soleilsundance @ 12:36 pm

Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, invented a way to implement caffeine into donuts.
It even has a little name…the Buzz Donuts™.
Ok, so now let’s break this poison down for a sec.

Donut: A small ring-shaped cake made of rich, light dough that is fried in deep fat. (answers.com) Yummmm…. A ring of dough filled with saturated fat, often coated with lots of yummy sugars and stuffed with creams containing trans fat. How healthy does that sound to you?
Ok, I’ll admit, I eat about 1 a year, because they taste somewhat good. But knowing all the crap that’s in it makes me not want to intake any of it. Solution? Just don’t eat it.

Caffeine: An organic compound found in foods such as chocolate, coffee, cola nuts and tea. Scientific studies have shown that caffeine stimulates the nervous system, kidneys and heart, causes the release of insulin in the body and dilates the blood vessels.(answers.com)

Ceffeinated donut equation

Here’s how caffeine works according to http://coffeetea.about.com:
“Caffeine causes changes in the chemicals of your brain, mainly in 2 ways.
It mimics adenosine, and binds to all the adenosine receptors in your brain. This prevents the real adenosine from doing its job, which happens to be the slowing down of nerve impulses and the causing of drowsiness. So your brain becomes more alert. Caffeine also increases the levels of dopamine in your brain, which improves your feeling of well-being and improves your mood. It’s this dopamine effect that is the root of caffeine’s addictive properties.”
Bottom line, it keeps you awake by fooling your brain and it makes you feel good…How can we resist addiction?

So, by putting an addictive substance into a highly rich food is the road to DEATH! Yes, death. People who need their caffeine so much, and like to eat donuts and know that by eating one of those donuts they’ll get more caffeine than in a regular cup of coffee, they’ll want to eat more of those donuts and clog their arteries, create a heart disease and die.

Dramatic? No, I think, pretty realistic. People get to that critical point without having caffeine and fat in the same bite. It’ll just make it even easier to become a wired obese person.

Thank you Robert, America really needed that!

February 25, 2007

The soufflé that blew!

Filed under: Bilingual, food — soleilsundance @ 10:44 pm

Justin and I are in the process of making a specialized cook book… Everything you can make with ham, cheese and mushrooms. And one of our ideas was to make a soufflé with all these ingredients…and it BLEW! (which is interesting because in french, the verb “souffler” means to blow)

The soufflé didn’t rise, the inside was mushy, the taste was ok, but the texture was literally gross! So, we ended up eating the crust and anywhere it was a little brown but threw the rest away. Yuk!

What went wrong? Could it be that the amount of filling was too heavy? Did I mix the whites in weird? Not gently enough? I have to say that translating a french recipe is also tricky, maybe I got proportions wrong…

soufflé that blewAnyhoo, to make our culinary evening a little more satisfying, we cracked open a bottle of Mumm Champagne and baked some chocolate chip cookies. Much better!

Justin et moi sommes en cours d’écrire un livre spécialisé de cuisine…
Tout ce que vous pouvez faire avec du jambon, du fromage et des champignons.
Et une de nos idées était de faire un soufflé avec tous ces ingrédients… et ca a raté !

Le soufflé n’est pas monté, l’intérieur était mou, le goût était correct, mais la texture était dégueulasse! Alors on a fini par manger seulement la croute et tout ce qui etait un peu brun. Beurk!

Qu’est-ce qui a mal tourné ? Peut-être que la quantité de guarniture était trop lourde ? Est-ce que j’ai mélangé les blancs étrangement ? Pas assez doucement ? Je dois dire que traduire une recette française n’est pas commode, peut-être que mes proportions sont fausses…

Bref, pour rendre notre soirée culinaire un peu plus satisfaisante, nous avons ouvert une bouteille de Champagne Mumm et avons fait quelques chocolate chip cookies. Tellement mieux!

January 17, 2007

Weekend d’enfer!

Filed under: Weekend Adventures, Bilingual, San Francisco, food, photography, Fun — soleilsundance @ 5:35 pm

(English speaking people, please refer to Justin’s post… I need to feed my french crowd)

Franchement le weekend dernier etait tres sympa! On s’est fait une petite soiree a la maison avec quelques amis et on a joue au DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). Ce jeu est trop drole, specialement avec beaucoup de monde autour. On a mange sur le pouce, mais on a fait des bonnes petites choses…. J’ai fait un cake aux olives, sans olive mais avec du jambon, des champignons et du fromage. Mmmm. J’ai aussi refait un saucisson au chocolat, mais cette fois sans marshmallows et des noisettes a la place, et puis avec un peut de barre praline importe de France. Grand succes! Justin a fait son pistou decompose, son hummus et des petits legumes grilles. On s’est casse le ventre. Mais on s’est tellement amuse, qu’on a oublie de prendre des photos… mais notre amie Joy en a pris.

Le lendemain, il faisait un temps splendide, alors on a fait une randonnee depuis le Golden Gate Bridge jusqu’au Cliff House.

Justin a fait une carte de la rando si vous voulez voir…
Donc voici quelques photos de nous par un temps magnifique, froid mais pas venteux (exceptionnel!).

pointing
Une vue pas comme les autres du pont celebre.

Best view to be on the phone
Probablement le meilleur endroit pour avoir une petite conversation avec son pere.

Shadow
Les ombres, c’est toujours amusant!

Justin & Steph sunset
On se croyait presque a Hawaii avec un coucher de soleil d’enfer! Rouge!!!

December 12, 2006

Tic Tac…where does it all go?

Filed under: Bilingual, Weekend Adventures, food — soleilsundance @ 7:18 am

I feel like I don’t have enough time to do things….like live my life and blog about it! Is that a common blogger problem? I suppose so.
J’ai l’impression de ne pas avoir assez de temps pour tout faire…comme vivre ma vie et la blogger! Est-ce un probleme commun pour les blogueurs? J’imagine bien.

Anyways, I have meant to talk lots about our eventful weekend, now 2 weekends ago (!!!!)… but you can read Justin’s blog post about that. I’ll just provide some fun pictures…
Donc, j’avais l’intention de parler de notre week-end tres charge, qui est maintenent il y a 2 weekends (!!!)… mais si vous parlez l’anglais, vous vouvez aller voir le blog de Justin pour les details. Quant a moi, je vais me contenter de vous donner quelques photos illustratives…

In a nutshell…we met up with friends at The Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, where Adam and Eveline gave us the trendiest onion cutting goggles.
En gros, …on s’est rencontres avec des amis au Russian River Brewery a Santa Rosa, ou Adam et Eveline nous ont offert les lunettes a couper les onions les plus tendances.
The Birthday Team

And then we went for a little ice skating at the Snoopy Ice Arena….the boys went crazy…
Ensuite, nous sommes alles faire du patin a glace dans la patinoire de Snoopy…les garcons se sont eclates…
Justin on skates

We went to see the closing show of “A Chorus Line” at the 6th street playhouse, with the company of my Dad and Sabine. (Very cool! + I knew a lot of people in it, which was fun).
On est alle avec Sabine et mon pere voir la derniere de “Chorus Line” au theatre 6th street playhouse
(C’etait vraiment cool! + Je connaissais aussi pleins de monde dedans, ce qui etait le fun).

A Chorus Line

Had the amazing and very anticipated dinner at The French Laundry in Yountville. You can read Justin’s detailed expo about it (or also called…food porn).
On a mange un delicieux et tres attendu dinner chez The French Laundry a Yountville. Vous pouvez lire l’expose en detail de Justin…(meme si vous ne lisez pas l’anglais, la plupart des plats sont en francais)…(ou bien aussi appele…le porno culinaire).

The French Laundry

Did I mention we spent the whole weekend at Hotel La Rose?….Soooo cute and cozy!!!!
Est-ce que j’ai mentione qu’on est reste 2 nuits dans l’hotel La Rose? …Tres mignon et comfortable!!!

And for you, visually curious people… here’s some more pics on Flickr…
Et pour vous, les curieux du visuel… voila d’autre photos sur Flickr

Ahhh! Finally a blog post out…yeah!
Ahhh! Enfin un post sur mon blog…yeah!

November 28, 2006

Saucisson au chocolat?

Filed under: Bilingual, food — soleilsundance @ 11:31 pm

Saucisson au chocolat
(picture from Poele au nez)

Apparemment, c’est quelque chose de tres rependu mais franchement, je n’en ai jamais entendu parler…Peut-etre que ce sera au menu pour Noel?

Apparently, chocolate salami is something well known (in France), but I’ve never heard of it before…Maybe will it be on Christmas’ menu?

Voici quelques recettes:
Here’s some recipes (in French…sorry!):
Odelice
Marmiton
Toquentete
Poeleaunez