Add a little Shabu Shabu to your step

First, I would like to start out this post with a Thank you for reading!! Second, Happy Monday!! And third, I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend! I know I did!

My weekend started on Friday night with a girls' night spent with delicious homemade Spiced Mulled Wine (thanks Kaila!!) and the New Moon movie!

***Guys reading this, you will probably want to skip to down a couple of paragraphs at this point...***

Side note with this one.. I LOVED the Twilight books! I have never been more into a book or series of books than I was with this one. The first movie, however, not so good. It was almost embarrassing for me to watch this one in the theater. I guess the characters (and acting) just was not what was in my head from the books.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the squeal to Twilight! The acting was much better in this one and the time seemed to fly by during the two hour movie. I thought it followed the book a little more closely than the last one. All in all, it was good. And Jacob... oh my... he's hot. Too bad he's only 17 in real life... *sigh*

***Guys can return reading now***

Anyway, Saturday was spent getting a much needed hair cut and walking around downtown San Jose, followed by lunch with the boyfriend.

Sunday I decided to actually attend one of the Meetup.com groups that I am a "member" of and go on an 11 mile hike! We hike the steep hills of Almaden Quicksilver area in San Jose. It was beautiful and the weather Gods were on our side during the whole 4 hours that we were outdoors. The actual hiking milage was a little over 10.5 and took us 3 hours. The whole hike took 4 hours since we stopped a few times along the way to have our guide tell us a little history of the area.










I loved it. And, I'm not even sore today! I am surprised since those hills, that made up most of the hike, were very steep and we walked pretty fast. Hmmm, maybe I'm in shape. ;-)

Here's a few pics from dinner with the boyfriend. He's my little chef, as I've mentioned before, and he likes to eat. So, we ate! And this was his treat for me... he did all the chopping and preparing!

Shabu Shabu!

Shabu-shabu is a Japanese variant of hot pot. The dish is related to sukiyaki in style, where both use thinly sliced meat and vegetables, and usually served with dipping sauces... The dish is prepared by submerging a very thin slice of meat or a piece of vegetable in a pot of boiling water or dashi (broth) and swishing it back and forth several times. (The familiar swishing sound is where the dish gets its name. Shabu-shabu directly translates to "swish-swish".) -Wikipedia

Wine, cabbage, tofu, glass noodles, green onions, carrots, pork, beef, wasabi, and raw Thai sauce
We loaded own little "baskets" with whatever items we would like then simmer them in the broth in the middle (on hotplate)
Did I mention this was a picnic in our den? Movie and Shabu Shabu night.