Oscars III

We hosted another fun "Night at the Oscars" last night which has become an annual tradition. We had more people in our house last night (?20) than we ever have!

Our menu included pizzas, and snacks including cocktail meatballs, stuffed mushrooms, coconut shrimp, veggies, apples, and popcorn. (Those are my evil-but-delicious salted caramel bars on the right plate of the three-tiered display). We had sangria, non-alcoholic punch, sodas, cider, etc.

 

Pepper Vu looks really excited pre-party, doesn't she? 

 I think she was a bit overwhelmed with all the guests.

We again encouraged our guests to dress up in costumes from this year's films, or in black-tie attire.

Lisa and Scott made homemade costumes from "Gravity," a film which we have yet to see, and again went above and beyond

Their attention to detail and creativity is always incredible!!

KV dressed as the "Wolf of Wall Street" and I was a slave (although you can't very well see my linked chains in this pic) from one of the year's most powerful films and Best Picture, "12 Years a Slave"

Josh, in period attire from "The Great Gatsby" (with his own bourbon, I think)

Jenna and Sean (from movies "Kick-Ass 2" and "Pain and Gain")

Susana and Amanda, from the animated film "Despicable Me 2"

NCC goofiness

 Bernal and Emily Anne (a Hobbit) crammed to fill out their ballots 

 These mini-Oscars awaited our winners of trivia, Oscars categories, and best costumes...

 

The gang filled our living room!

Jenna, Sean, Emily Anne, Amanda, Josh, Susana

I was happy with the category winners this year, and think that the Academy nailed it for the first time since I've been watching the Oscars (which is since I've known Kelvin).
"12 Years a Slave" won Best Picture and I was thrilled for Lupita Nyong'o, a first-time star who won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Patsey the slave. I thought Cate Blanchett absolutely deserved Best Actress for "Blue Jasmine," a heartbreaking film about charades, trust, scams, and appearances which we recently watched on Netflix. I can't wait to see "Dallas Buyers Club," an apparently devastating movie about AIDS which stars Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, who won for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively, and delivered two of the best speeches of the night. I haven't get seen "Gravity," but will one of these days.

A few of the other great moments from this year's Oscars were:

1. Ellen Degeneres hosting, and the "Most re-tweeted photo of all time"


2. How John Travolta butchered the name of "Idina Menzel" who performed the anthem "Let it Go" from "Frozen"
3. How Jennifer Lawrence was very Jennifer Lawrenc-y this year (and adorable, although she didn't win an Oscar this year)

And our winners were:

Josh, taking home the Trivia award (for yet another year running)

Alyssa, who got 21/24 of the category winners correct!

Of course, Lisa and Scott won for "Best Costumes"

Can't wait to see what they come up with next year!

Until next year...

Salted Caramel Butter Bars

(emphasis on the BUTTER).

I rarely blog about cooking/recipes.
I rarely bake (Recall my NYE cookie fail).
My baking outcomes usually turn out like these (although I don't use Pinterest, I appreciated these hilarious pictures of things of people who "NAILED IT!")

However, we have an Oscars gathering coming up this weekend and I thought I'd try my hand at some salted caramel butter bars from a recipe I got from Lisa, who we met at our weekend in Chico last month. I love the sweet/salty combo, and they were heavenly when she made them. (Original recipe here from Alyssa, the Recipe Critic).
(I also bought some brownie dough as a baking-backup in case the bars didn't work out.)

While they weren't the quickest to make due to the from-scratch dough, it was totally worth it! And
while I cut them a bit too early while they were a bit soft and gooey, they now taste perfect.

Enjoy!!!

• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1½ cups powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 4 cups flour
• 1 14 oz bag caramels, unwrapped or 11 oz unwrapped Caramel Bits work great
• ⅓ cup whipping cream
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 1 Tbsp coarse sea salt (ok to use a little less for a less intense salty taste)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Lightly spray with cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl cream together butter, sugar, and powdered sugar. Add vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour and combine until it forms a soft dough.
3. Press half of the dough in the bottom of a 9×13 dish and place the other half of the dough into the refrigerator. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the oven and melt the caramels, heavy cream and ½ tsp vanilla in the microwave for 1 minute (it was more like 4 minutes for me!). Stir together until smooth. Pour evenly over the hot crust. Lightly sprinkle the coarse sea salt over the crust (may be a bit less than 1 Tbsp). 
5. Take the remaining dough out of the refrigerator and crumble over the top of the caramel. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until filling is bubbly and the top is firm. Let them cool completely (i.e. for 12 hours!) before cutting.

DELICIOUS!!!

Petersen Rock Garden: pebbles & peacocks!

After 2 days back at work, I need another 4-day weekend....

Needless to say, we're back home now, but before leaving Bend, we stopped by one more attraction-- the Petersen Rock Garden, which per the online reviews was deemed either "cool" or "creepy." Either way, I was enticed and thought it worth a visit. We also were granted a reprieve from winter/rainy weather and enjoyed some sunshine.

The garden (now on the National Register of Historic Places) is the handiwork of a Danish immigrant, Rasmus Petersen, who moved to Central Oregon in the early 20th century and by the 1930s and for twenty years was creating mini monuments using local rocks.  The property, situated north of Bend just a few miles from our hyggelig room I discussed in a prior post, still remains in the family.

 

I was quite puzzled by this sign!

 

Free-roaming peacocks also graced the property, which interested Pepper greatly 

beautiful creatures!

(and Denmark!)

Wintertime coziness...thanks, AirBnB

We spent two nights in Bend amidst our winter getaway to central Oregon (our second time here [see a previous post from Memorial Day weekend 2012]). Mt. Bachelor is certainly the best mountain I have ever skied, with loooong blue runs (and which has powder until July, although it closes to skiers at the end of May), and which also offers a shuttle service there and back when you're worried (as we were) about your car (a Prius) getting stuck in snowdrifts. With all the rain this area has had, the snow was high and it was pretty exhausting, but definitely worth it.

For this trip, we decided to try staying off-the-beaten path, in a room we found through AirBnB, a lodging-finding site that friends mentioned to us, which lists lodging located in 192 countries (in fact, we'll stay at an AirBnB-listed apartment in Seoul during our trip to Korea in April). The site allows you to search for and find private apartments/suites/rooms outside the typical hotel/motel mold but whose prices are very competitive with local hotel rates (even with their booking fee). Kelvin booked this steal of a cozy room just north of Bend, with a private entrance, king bed, adjustable heating, kitchenette with dishes/fridge/microwave/coffeemaker, wireless internet, flat screen TV (great for our Olympics-watching), neighborhood parks and trails, great hospitality, and which was über dog-friendly. The hosts, Angela and Brandon, actually rent out this back room to help them fund their adoption of a baby girl from Ethiopia... so the money was well worth spending!

Pep enjoyed frolicking in the community parks (extensions of people's back yards) and meeting this 12-week old scottie-dog puppy, Wilson.

 

We'd love to live in a neighborhood like this one some day, and will continue to use AirBnB for our national and international lodging needs :). Check it out!

Painted Hills and Pad See Ew

Kelvin and I took a day off (in addition to our Monday holiday) to have a weekend getaway to the Bend area of Oregon for (with hope) some winter fun/skiing (a lot of CA ski resorts have been lacking snow due to the drought, but now we and this area have been having flood warnings as it's been raining nonstop since last week!).

(west coast snowfall, melted by a bunch of rain, and typical winter attire)

Today, we drove past Bend to visit one of the (three) units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, the Painted Hills Unit.

This area of Oregon is now considered "High Desert," but houses fossils and pretty geologic marvels dating from millions of years ago.

The painted hills were really beautiful, even in the gray/cloudy light.

We passed some livestock

... and took a short hike to an overlook

While it wasn't raining during our hike, it was reeeeeeally windy!

Bend is a very quaint town. We enjoyed a quiet but tasty dinner at Noi, a Thai place which got great Yelp reviews.

Fingers crossed for safety and skiing at Mt. Bachelor tomorrow.

What state fits your temperament?

Have you ever wondered if you are residing in a state that is right for you?

Having moved multiple times since I was a child and having attended college, med school, and residency in three different states, I found this TIME questionnaire interesting. I do really love California, which has been my home for the past 6.5 years and whose outdoors, weather, and relatively tolerant mindset does fit my interests and values. However, per this survey, I may be living on the wrong coast for my personality!

You can answer a 10-question survey about your personality here  which will give you a temperament-matching state.

Being a scientist, I took the the test three times, about a month apart, to improve its accuracy and came up with the same result:

North Carolina! (Good news, Laura and Tony?) :)

However, then I got word of another, different survey circulating around facebook (from Buzzfeed). While its questions are of a different nature, I'm not sure if it's more or less accurate.... I got ALASKA!  (while I love the state, I'm not sure I, who whined my way through 4 years of med school in Minnesota could handle the cold.)

What state(s) did you get?