New (Blog) Look, Newly Wed

Hello, everyone! I realize it has been forever, but I am determined to not abandon this blog of mine. I have been quite active on Yelp and Instagram, so I thought I should show some love in the blogosphere as well. I cleaned the blog up a bit and chose a new, simple design for a fresh look. Also, Mr. Tall and I recently got married, so yay! We had an amazing time, which could not have happened had it not been for our vendors. A big part of our wedding was the food, of course. The Darlington House in La Jolla was our lovely venue, and we were required to choose from a list of caterers. Out of the long list, we enlisted Culinary Concepts to provide the food for our wedding. We contacted 2 other catering companies, and had tastings with CC and another company, but CC won us over with their food and presentation. With the modern Mexican fiesta theme in mind, the folks at CC created the perfect menu for us. (Photos courtesy of our amazing photographer Aaron Huniu at Aaron Huniu Photography.)

One of our appetizers for cocktail hour were the pernil arepas, which are Columbian cornmeal cakes topped with braised pork. Our guests' favorite was probably the inside-out nacho, which is especially a scoop of fresh guacamole rolled in crush tortilla chips and panko breadcrumbs, deep fried, and served with chipotle creme and roasted tomato salsa. Delicioso!

Instead of having the usual sit-down dinner, Mr. Tall and I opted for a plate salad course and 3 food stations of chicken mole, beef short ribs, and street tacos. The stations gave our wedding a less formal ambiance (but a bit more formal and service-oriented than a buffet) and allowed our guests to try more dishes than they would have gotten in a traditional sit-down dinner.

Everything tasted great, but my personal favorite was probably the short ribs kabik (apparently, a Rick Bayless recipe), which are beef short ribs braised with garlic, banana peppers, fire roasted tomatoes, onions, oregano, and achiote, served with arroz blanco. Muy delicioso! If you are looking for a caterer for any event, weddings, birthday parties, etc., we would highly recommend Culinary Concepts--great food, great presentation, and great service!

Also, another favorite thing from our wedding were our favors, which were from Jackie's Jams. We wanted something edible for our favors, so naturally our local favorite jam-maker Jackie's Jams came to mind.

We ordered the 1 1/2 oz. jars of mango raspberry, strawberry rhubarb, mango habanero, and, our all-time favorite, triple berry jam. We taste-tested the jams at their location at the Little Italy Mercato and picked up our order from the Ocean Beach Farmers Market. David from Jackie's Jams was super nice and helpful throughout the ordering and jam-making process. He even provided blank labels to us since we wanted to design and print the labels ourselves--and even threw in a jar of their cherry apple jam on top of our order!

Our wedding was a fantastic fiesta--totally worth all the stress, time, and effort! But I am glad that everything is back to normal, and we can enjoy our day-to-day lives without having to panic about a wedding detail. Until next time ... not 5 months from now!

Enjoy,
LMC

Coming up next: as promised, LMC's Culinary Adventures in Los Angeles (Pizzeria Mozza!) and wedding desserts!