It’s about gone, kids. 2011. All done. 2011 has been a serious roller coaster for me professionally and personally. It seems like it was just yesterday when I was updating the 2010 end of the year list! Golly. 2011 in Pictures Jan – March: Welcome to the family, Robin Hood the Hyundai Sonata! / Custom made truffles from Drago Centro / Got laid off April – June: New Zealand vacation / Cochon 555 / The Nerd Machine Slave Leia PSA

While I *am* indeed the official partner of Ghirardelli and a hostess to the upcoming Ghirardelli Intense Dark Pairings event for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there was a glitch in promotion and folks are being sent here to OakMonster HQ for information on the event instead of to Food.OakMonster.com where all the coverage of the event will be. Click on the banner on right or… Click here and head on over to Food.OakMonster.com now! Get the information on the

I think it’s time we move the HmmFoodGood food blog to our real home here on OakMonster.com. Food.OakMonster.com is here, yo! We’ll be working on some graphics for the food page on here. And possibly update the blog over all as well. This whole limiting my television time seems to be working out. A little bit.

First week of 2011 and the goals have gone mostly untouched. Alas. The first cold of 2011. The game changer. I made New Year’s Eve dinner of 40 clove garlic chicken to feed James and Aurora and her sister Lee.  I took pictures of everything as it would be my first post for HmmFoodGood for 2011 according to Goal #5.  We sipped some wine and hung out until 11:30 before Brandon and I shambled home before the drunks got back

Before we move forward, let’s see how I did with 2010 goals, shall we? Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10 1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon.  But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me! 2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of

It has been a crazy year.  You can tell by the infrequency of my posts.  Despite the fact that I have given up my involvement with Thrill the World almost completely (I still do twitter for TTW headquarter), I managed to remain as busy as ever. I mean, look at how neglected this blog is!!! Let’s take a look back this year, see what all I did, and give out some 2010 awards, shall we? 2010 in Pictures: Drinking Buddy

No, I did NOT give up on Meatless Tuesday.  However, I’m giving up on blogging about it. Guys, the Meatless Tuesday experiment has stuck.  16 weeks I haven’t wavered and my resolution is as strong as before.  It’s just that now that Meatless Tuesday has become an established routine, writing about it seems, well, tedious.  And absolutely unimportant. I have been tempted to drop it and go for meat a couple of times when I was stressed out.  Sure, I

Technology. Entertainment. Design.  = TED. Ideas worth spreading = Spirit of TED. TED conference is where the brightest minds came together to share their ideas.  I’ve heard of the event last year for the first time, and have been wanting to attend ever since. And I finally got to do it this past week at TEDxUSC, an independently organized event hosted by USC. In a small world, Amy G told me about her friend who were going to TED who

Yes. I was at TEDxUSC. My mind was thoroughly blown. That’s another post unto itself so I’m not going into it here much. Breakfast: My Starbucks treat: decaf tall Americano with caramel sauce. Leftover plantano frito con frijoles y crema–fried plantains with beans and sour cream–from my Friday’s foray into Salvadorian cuisine. Ahhh…Sarita’s Pupusaria at the Grand Central Market! . Lunch: Mendocino Farms’ Vegetarian BLT.  Yes, you read that right. It has vegetarian “bacon” and pepper jack cheese. And it

This Easter weekend brought out friends old and new. Saturday I spent the morning with my hubby cruising down to San Pedro for a feast that is breakfast at Gaffey Street Diner.  The rest of the day I spent baking, mostly. That night, the hubby set me loose to party with my Twitter crew. We threw an early birthday party for @always_blond at @fstop23′s place.  The ever gracious host didn’t call off the party when he heard that his daughter-in-law