Happy ☺

There are two reasons why I'm very happy as of the moment: first is the painting. I finally finished it after working on it for an hour each midnight since Thursday, and what made me even feel more fulfilled was that Auntie Jeannie loved it! I promise, nothing else warms the heart better than someone appreciating the love and effort you put into an art piece.

I love you, Auntie Jeannie! :)

I mean, I'm not saying my work is that good or beautiful, but knowing the person you made it for liked it and finds pleasure in it feels beyond gratifying. Oh, so in case y'all were wondering, here's what I came up with.

I was able to personally hand it to Auntie Jeannie when she dropped off Jacob at the house, so that was pretty cool. Jacob and I were basically on our Macs the whole time talking with beautiful friends we love and miss.

The second thing that made my day however was winning our Scrabble tournament last night. Woo hoo!

Thank you, LETTUCE for my +50pts! The losers are posing with the Scrabble board LOL.

I won the second game, too! HAHAHA!

It's all good guys, at least y'all tried! I know, I'm shallow. But you'd enjoy Scrabble, too, if you're as lucky as I am! Haha!

☮ and ♥, Denice

Thank you, Jacob!

This week was as food-ful as any other, only a tad bit better. Yeap, because my good friend Jacob's finally home from Hawaii. And he didn't come empty-handed. Thanks for the extremely scrumptious and intensely delightful malasadas! It made my week, my month even, especially knowing how difficult it was for you to get to Leonard's with your knee surgery. ☹ I am beyond appreciative and beyond grateful!

Thank you, Cobyyy!! ♥♥♥

Still fresh after Jacob's 6-hour flight.

Yummy custard.

Do y'all see the crisp of that? Yummmmm..

Chocolate filling! ♥♥♥

I could finish all the malasadas in one day, but that wouldn't be too healthy would it? It's also so incredibly delicious that I had to save some for later. And so we did. In addition to Leonard's awesome pastries, Safeway's Signature Cafe 5-Cheese Pizza also helped made eating fulfilling!

Look at that cheese!

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "She said healthy, and she's showing off her pizza?" It's because I thought before I kill y'all with ambrosial fruity goodness, I should mention the junk food first.. Moving on, Mama Julie and I went to the Farmers Market at Rockaway Beach and Serramonte on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, and bought these awesome treats!

Garlic Pita Chips and Spicy Hummus from the Hummus Guy at Rockaway Beach

Organic strawberries from the Serramonte Farmers Market

Fresh and organic strawberries and navel oranges from the Serramonte Farmers Market

And if you've been following my blog for awhile, you'd know how much I love sushi, Kani Kosen's sushi most especially. I can almost confirm that we go to eat there at least once every week or every other week, and this was our second visit to the cozy, family-oriented restaurant in a span of six days. Kani Kosen was definitely the icing on top of my already drool-worthy cake!

Restauranteurs/owners Mama Keiko and Kelly-kun. Such a lovely married couple.

Toro Sushi

Fresh Raw Scallops

Rock & Roll, Spicy Albacore Tuna Roll

☮ and ♥, Denice

4th of July

While most of my friends spent 4th of July out of NorCal, driving all the way to either LA for Disneyland or SD for Seaworld, I simply stayed in town and enjoyed a lovely day with my three F's: friends, family, and food! Mama Julie and I woke up early this morning to make our favorite home breakfast    omelette! 

It looks like a tortilla, but that's actually scrambled egg with milk

BACON GOOOOOOD.

The goat cheese and arugula were the perfect garnish!

Since Mama Julie and I already had our kitchen-game-face on, we decided to bake coffee crumble cake for Cafe Reina, and banana nut muffins for ourselves. We lack foresight sometimes, but we were lucky enough to have bought some stock of unsalted butter and organic turbinado sugar during our last visit to Trader Joe's, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to function at all.

The coffee cake was baked to perfection. Crumby on the outside, soft and moist on the inside.

We used the excess crumbs on the banana muffins, and they gave it that right amount of crumby sweetness!

Papa Cali invited some of his family over, so it was incredibly perfect timing that we made something for the house. We cooled the pastries on the rack and proceeded to plating them for our guests.

I love this family.. The Baltazars having fun in our living room.

Mama Julie's favorite serving dish

Aside from baked desserts, we also had tortilla chips, salsa, and sausage, as any Mexican household would. Tonito loved his chips!

And for drinks, we had Mango Tea from Peet's. Good stuff!

As soon as everything was set, Mama Julie and I had to take off for Cafe Reina. Just so y'all know, Tita Reina also just recently celebrated her birthday, so aside from delivering her coffee crumble cake, we had to visit her as well to give her our presents. Tita Reina loves Bikram Yoga and the colors brown and blue, so that was basically how we themed our gifts.

We neatly put all her gifts (blue yoga stuff) together in a brown and blue colored sports bag.

Oh, we gave her a baking pan too. She loves to bake! Visit her at Cafe Reina to try her great pastries!

Mama Julie poses with the gorgeous birthday girl!

In exchange for the coffee crumble cake, Tita Reina treated us to her delicious turkey avocado grilled sandwich and white mocha. Yay! Just what I wanted.

No cafe can ever compare to Cafe Reina's white mocha (made with love)

So we simply played Scrabble the whole time   Tita Reina won all three rounds    until it was time to close shop. I loved my 4th of July, if you asked me. We spent quality time with quality people, and you can't get more quality than that.  As I type this, we just witnessed the last firework in our neighborhood crack, while still enjoying the bibingka my step-mom sent for us from the Philippines. ☺


☮ and ♥, Denice

My Last Birthday Treat

Tonight officially marks the end of my birthday week, and Papa Cali and Mama Julie totally made my 19th celebration awesome! We went to Century 20 at Daly City for Transformers 3, and I thought the film was the best one of the series. While the story was simple, and did not contain anything different from a typical Transformers movie, the mind-blowing explosions and robot-killing action made it worth every penny! I contemplated sharing a few of my favorite scenes, but decided I didn't want to be a spoiler and make T3 less exciting for y'all. Nonetheless, I do promise it won't disappoint, and it would probably give you a ride of your life   if you're in Chicago that is. LOL.


Anyway, let's proceed to the funnest part of my Saturday.... FOOD! Papa Cali and Mama Julie has done everything they possibly can to make my 19th a blast, Red Ribbon, Kani Kosen, White Russian, etc    and they did!    so it was my turn to treat them this time. Thanks Daddy!! We drove to ShabuWay in San Mateo for some authentic Japanese shabu-shabu, and the Large Kobe Style Beef platter we ordered was beyond delicious. The last time we were here was when my dad and sister visited in October, and we found their kobe beef and vegetables still tasting as fresh and good as ever.

Good times from last October. I can't wait for Dad's visit this month!

Papa Cali and I ate so much that we even had to get an additional plate of beef, while at the same time stealing some of Mama Julie's (she pays more attention to the veggies! YAY FOR US!)

ShabuWay's Large Kobe Beef Style Plate

Nothing's good without rice!

I'm not a veggie person, but ShabuWay's assorted vegetables were incredibly fresh and flavorful!

Since we were already in the neighborhood, and Peet's was just a few blocks away, being a self-confessed mochaholic, how could we not pay Peet's a visit? Papa Cali and Mama Julie were even most willing, people always fall in love over a cup of coffee    and I could definitely feel the love between them. Yikeee! :">

Only happily married couples can smile like this!

I, on the contrary, simply enjoyed my white chocolate mocha by myself on the lonely side of the table. Hahaha! Peet's has the best white mocha in my opinion    well, next to Cafe Reina, obviously.

Peet's White Chocolate Mocha and Papa Cali's fave Iced Chai Latte

After a busy day out, we finally headed home, just in time to make the beautiful landscape and sunset unique to the Bay Area    when it's not foggy. Haha!

Isn't that beautiful? Life is a blessing. 

☮ and ♥, Denice

The Bonfire

It's going to be Fourth of July in a few days and Beta Theta Omicron celebrated a tad earlier with good friends last night at Ocean Beach. Everyone brought food, chocolate, graham, and marshmallows for s'mores, pizza, soda, fruit platters, double stuffed oreos, and cake of course, for the lovely birthday celebrant, our amazing student body prez-elect, Heidi Hansen.


We all know a bonfire is most fun when dark, so while waiting for the sun to set, we enjoyed Domino's Pizza and cake.

Domino's Pizza's mushroom, olive, and ham pizza.

SafeWay's Fourth of July cake.

Amber, on the other hand, spent quality time with our NFF, Khlood's baby yorkshire. Thank you for being so awesome and taking responsibility to retrieve Chanel when she ran off to eat other people's food.

I think this photo of Amber is simply gorgeous!

And just in case y'all were wondering, products sold during the July 4th holiday with red and blue and white aren't actually because of anything patriotic in nature, it's simply because it's Heidi's birthday. So let's pretend those are her favorite colors, and fireworks are all dedicated to her. Haha! I kid.

The lovely couple, Heidi and Mayank

I also thought it was pretty cool how we were able to start a fire. Not necessarily from scratch, but hey, we made it work with scraps of wood we found along the beach. The bonfire probably had us all go be domestic and stuff.

So here's me being all domestic.

And we made fire!

The fire's up, we're ready for s'moreszzz!

Yay us!

That's why we're the honor society. We're smart to just stick the skewer in there!

Also, to make it clear to everyone, we are not a sorority. As y'all can see, we have some guys with us too! LOL.

 ☮ and ♥, Denice