US meets UK

There’s a twist to this edition of “Miss It, Make It”, it’s sort of in reverse.  I know much of what I’ve posted has to do with things I miss in the US that are difficult to acquire in the US.  This time though, I wanted to figure out how to recreate one of my new favorite treats from the UK to eat in the US.

The naked bars are delicious! I’m not 100% sure I can or can’t get them in the US, but I attempted an at home version anyway.

I found the recipe here, after finding it on Food Gawker – after finding Food Gawker from That Wife.  Did you follow? Would you like a tip guys? It’s called READ THE RECIPE. Simple I know…However, I did not read the recipe the whole way through.  Instead of saving the cinnamon to roll these balls of deliciousness in I put all 4 tablespoons into the mix. Can you see the large layer of cinnamon?

They still taste delicious even though they’re a bit (okay, a lot) on the cinnamon-y side. From mound of chocolaty goop:

To neatly rolled balls of deliciousness.

OM NOM NOM.  Nutritional info available here, although it says they’re high in sugar Calorie Count forgets that it isn’t high in refined sugar. Woo hoo!

What should I call these? “Raw cinnamon truffles” and “balls of deliciousness” just isn’t cutting it for me…

I can’t think of a single place I’ve lived where I couldn’t find sushi…until now.  Lancaster (UK) has tons of great Indian restaurants, a few cute Italian places and several (unsurprisingly) English Pubs – but no sushi can be found.

So we bought our own sushi mat, I wrapped it in plastic wrap like The Pioneer Woman told me to and purchased the necessary ingredients.  In case you’re in the UK, you don’t necessarily need to hunt down the specialty shop (like I did) for your nori – Sainsburys carries nori! Go Figure.

For my first experience I tried to keep it simple and purchased “krab”, avocado, cucumber and sesame seeds. However, I used brown rice and it was wonderful! While on a work trip to Houston I went to dinner with my friend’s family and had fantastic sushi with brown rice, so I decided to use it for my at home version.

Then I placed the rice first, then the nori, then the fillings and rolled – following Pioneer Woman’s Instructions.  What did I learn from my sushi experience? “Rice inside” rolls are way easier (and prettier) for first time sushi makers.  The only down side being I couldn’t cover them with the toasted sesame seeds Nick likes.

My other tip, use a sharp, sharp knife.  We had a dull one (even though Nick re-sharpened it, it was still pretty dull) and we pretty much had to saw through the roll.  This loosens the integrity of your roll and shakes the rice off if it’s a “rice outside” roll.

You can see the difference between the “rice inside” vs “rice outside” ones…and why I angled the plate to try and show only the “pretty” ones.  They were all delicious though, and we enjoyed with a lovely view of the English countryside.  Next time though, I’ll be making miso soup and edamame (sans salt) to enjoy with them!

Have you ever tried making sushi? Can you find it near-by?

I had to share this video with you guys…the tweenbot is just so cute!

Full story here. Say “awwwwwwwwwww”!

There are lots of reasons that motivate people to lose weight.  For some (like Ash is Fit) it’s a wedding, for others it’s playing with their soon to be born children without getting winded, for Seth Rogan – it’s playing the Green Hornet. For me? It’s a combination, I’m tired of being overweight and blaming my knee surgery (it was 2 years ago, I need to get over it), I don’t want my wedding pictures to feature an overweight stranger, and most importantly? An audition in June for a local dance company.  I want to be back to my fit, healthy and dancing self.

Here are a few blogs that continue to inspire me:

I first saw Tyler on the Consumerist, I started following his blog, and then I was inspired by him – he’s gone from 344 pounds to 279 pounds in 13 weeks. He writes about his weight loss journey and blogs about his calories, weight, exercise and everything in between.  He even posts pictures about himself and clearly has more cojones than I do.  He’s run a 1 minute pledge on his blog – for every comment he promised to work out for 1 minute on the elliptical at level 14 (he ended up with over 90 comments!). Sure, he’s not losing weight for his wedding, but that doesn’t stop him from inspiring me!

My other favorite weight loss blog (which Miss Ballet Flat also loves) is Ash is Fit. I recently checked out her cooking site and tweaked her Chili Bean Burgers.  Mr.D (a meat lover) actually begged me to make them again in the same week! Ashley has lost almost 80 pounds in 2 years and was motivated to lose weight for her wedding.  I always figure if Ashley can  shred levels 2 and 3 back to back then I can at least do level 1 or 2 back to back.

Of course, no Weddingbee inspiration would be complete without a bit of bee lovin.  Mrs. Avocado continually inspires me as That Wife. A few months ago I would delete ALOT of pictures of myself – I just really wasn’t satisfied with the way I looked, so I’d delete the photos.  A post of her’s reminded me I should keep them so I have something for before and afters and that just because I didn’t like something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What other bees inspire me? Obvi there’s Miss Meatball and her flab to fab series, but I also Gchat with Miss Ballet Flat daily, she sends me clips of the Biggest Loser and we gab about our days, diet and fitness.

I’ve started a weight loss race among my friends, inspired from Budget Beautiful. Instead of starting with 20lb we’re shooting for 10lbs and doing the race in legs, so that the goals are tiny and manageable. Obviously, this race isn’t for people that are at a healthy weight, it’s for people with more than 10lbs to lose. It’s been pretty fun so far, everyone sends a check in weight on Friday and I’m creating little charts for my friends.

What inspires you to be healthy?

I can’t get enough of them!  Nick and I are making “30 before 30″ lists (though his is 30 before 35) and I wandered over to 43things.com.  While there I found an online quiz…so of course I forwarded it to Nick.

This was my result:

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m an

Organized Healthy Extrovert

This was his:

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m an

Traveling Treehugger Extrovert

How come he’s the traveling treehugger…and how on earth am I organized? I’m a horrible mish/mash of organization, there are few things where I am really on the ball and other cases where all these balls are just rolling away and I haven’t even noticed.  Ah well!

I’ll share our lists with you all later in the week, it takes a while to formulate all the things I’d like to do before I’m 30!

Have you made a “30 before 30 list” or something similar?

So…I was supposed to let Mr.D surprise me with the honeymoon.  Heres the thing though, I’m terrible with surprises.  I’m so bad with surprises it’s difficult for me to surprise others because I usually tell them what the surprise is.  Basically I’m a big surprise FAIL.

So I’ve begun taking a preliminary look into destinations.  As the D’orsays we have a few complicating factors, for instance, is Mr.D even allowed to leave the country after we get married? Once we receive the government approval to marry we have to apply for the Adjustment of Status so Mr.D can do things like live/work/function in the USA. Because he’ll be in limbo we aren’t sure of what the rules are.  But enough serious talk – let’s just hope we can leave the country!

New Zealand, Australia, Egypt and Hawaii were high on my “go -to” list, unfortunately so is the airfare.  So let’s forget those for now (we’ve got visas to pay for!). Next I turned to Miss Gloss who is also hunting for a hurricane free honeymoon. I started with researching airfare on sidestep because if we can’t afford to get there then what’s the point?  For example, flights from Baltimore/DC to Egypt are about $1390, although the exchange rate in Egypt would be to our advantage getting the flights together AND finding somewhere to stay and eat would be difficult.

All of these prices are from the Baltimore/DC area, there are 3 airports we could use so all of these are averages for late August/early September.  Hawaii came in around $700, Aruba around $400, Curaco around $620, Bermuda at $350, Cabo San Lucas at $440, and Puerto Vallarta at $400. Hmmmmm… would Curaco and Hawaii please leave the arena – all other destinations can stay.

What’s next? Weather.  Some like it hot – that includes us.  Except Mr.D will need SPF 100…cause he’s English and well, you know. Aruba weather in September is apparently “relentless heat with little to no breeze (we don’t like it THAT hot).  Bermuda seems cool and breezy – but I have hurricane paranoia. Cabo San Lucas sounds like it can be in the realm of the 90′s all the way to 100+, which is okay if it’s in the 90′s but not so much if it’s 100. Which leaves Puerto Vallarta – the rainy season being in September….

I started checking out the housing options on VRBO and reviews of hotels on TripAdvisor to see what people were saying about these destinations and their general pricing when…

…Weddingbee reader (and my fellow compatriot in the US/UK visa torture) BlightyGirl informed me that we in fact, could not leave the country.  Or even the lower 48! So again, Hawaii is out. This more than likely means a domestic mini moon destination. I’m okay with this because we’ll most likely save money  and be able to save (who am I kidding) it or spend it on another wedding expense (hello videographer).  Maybe we’ll just have our real honeymoon on our one year anniversary or when it’s not hurricane season.

So my question to the hive is this – where would you reccomend a mini-moon for the D’orsays?  We’d prefer within driving distance (5 hours or so?) from MD/DC but wouldn’t rule out options in sunnier/beachy locales. Muchas gracias in advance!

The D’orsays have gone into a flurry of activity.  Mr.D is filling out forms in duplicate and I’m…blogging about it.

The cliff notes version of our journey so far – fill out I-129F forms, the G forms that accompany them and send these (along with $455) to the immigration folks, wait 6 months, receive a letter saying the petition (not the visa) is approved and is being sent to the State Dept., wait 4 weeks, wait on hold at international calling rates to find out your package was sent to the embassy in London the day prior, wait 2-3 weeks and receive a letter from the embassy directing you to two internet links. Set up medical appointment in London (£300 {approx $435} in travel for us to get to London and £180 {approx $260} for the medical appointment). Contact the police for a police certificate (pay £35 {approx $50}, get my tax returns notarized ($75 approx $110), find Mr.D’s birth certificate, passport photos (approx £15 {approx $21}), mail a letter and several forms in duplicate to the embassy, wait, wait, wait and receive an interview date.

Since I’m more efficient than the US government I’m going to give you the two links, though I’m sure if I had searched earlier I would have found them after awhile. This is the link which has the forms you need and this is the link to the medical appointment info (you have to click the link on the right for any real info). I had been tipped off about several of the forms we’d need from WB readers (thanks blightygirl!) and from Visa Journey.com.  Because of my fears of not making enough money to sponsor Mr.D my mother has graciously agreed to co-sponsor him to ensure that we’re actually able to be married.

What I wish we had done in retrospect? Applied a year out for the whole process, we thought the second half of the process would be much faster than the first part.  Boy were we wrong! We budgeted 6 months for the first step and 2 months for the part we’re in now.  We should have budgeted 4-5 months for all the paperwork and mail to go back and forth before the actual interview at the embassy takes place (when Mr.D would hopefully receive his visa). Since the K1 visa is good for 6 months we would have still had plenty of time to use it, AND Mr.D could fly back with me in June.

The way it’s currently looking is that I’ll have to fly back alone in June and Mr.D will have to wait a few months before he can join me.  Have I mentioned our wedding is in August? Yeah…. thankfully our wedding is at the end of August which should hopefully allow the government time to approve our upcoming nuptials.

We only budgeted $455 for the K1 visa and $1,100 for the Adjustment of Status part, it’s looking like we should have budgeted $2,000+ for the whole process (bye bye videographer…).

D’orsay Immigration 1

D’orsay Immigration 2

D’orsay Immigration 3

What are some surprise costs that you’ve faced in wedding planning?

But I don’t care.  I love it.

More flowers that is! In retrospect I should have planned our wedding around growing season. This way we could have lots of purple flowers like sweet peas and grape hyacinth.  Instead I’m left scrambling for summer’s scraps of purple.

It’s okay though, I’m learning to love the flowers I can get and be grateful for them.  Not to mention I’m becoming very talented at internet searches.  Can I put that on my resume?  In case you’re looking for lavender flowers in August here are a few that we’ll probably be using for my bouquet. More than half have been approved by our florist and the other half I’m waiting to hear back about.

lavender flowers by MsUsUk on Polyvore.com

(all sources available here)

That’s Lavender, Lavender Spray Roses, Lavender Hydrangea, Lavender Stock (seeing a pattern here…), Brunia, Lavender Freesia, Lavender Carnations, Lavender Lisianthus, Lavender Roses and Lavender Sweetheart Roses (not pictured).

We’re working to make an August version of this spring bouquet.

(source)

Since the bridesmaid dresses are a dark purple I’m checking out different white flowers for contrast. You know what I dig? I like spider mums, and normal mums, and button mums.  I’ll just say it – I love mums.  I think that this bouquet in a slightly smaller size would be lovely for the girls.

(source)

I think that that specific bouquet has dahlias in it, but I don’t think that those are in season in August. In fact, for all the research I’ve been doing growing seasons seem to be floating in and out of my head and I’m not even sure anymore when anything is growing.  Except that I know bulb flowers, sweet peas and peonies are all out of the picture. Boo That.

Have your flower choices been easy? Or have you had to hunt them down?

Hi hive!

This Friday at 2pm EST I’ll bee on the Beeroadcast system called BeeTV, join me for an international Bee Love Fest!  You guys can have sneak peeks of our Save the Dates, Invitations and you just might hear Mr.D’s (terrible) attempt at an American accent.

See you there!