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Back in 2009, I started this project called Ma Belle Vie that was an attempt to record my entire day from morning to night in photos. I haven’t set time aside to do the project in 4 years, so this is a reintroduction. You’d be surprised how easily you forget to take pictures from morning to night so I forgot to photograph our night – whoops! Next time, I’ll be sure to be more thorough. Our day wasn’t too out of the ordinary, however it was Josh’s first time at Marukai. You can see how entertained he was being in a Japanese grocery store he’s never been to. I swear there’ll be less domestic photos in the future for this project; something worth capturing. For now, you just get boring housewife photos. To begin my journey through the day, click on the first photo & navigate using the arrows.
Marukai wasn’t the only grocery store we visited that day as our last & final stop was Trader Joe’s! My recipe for Matzoh Ball Soup, the one Josh has described as “the best Matzoh Ball Soup” I’ve made so far that reminded him of his grandma’s, will be posted in a few posts. You know you’re mastering the art of Matzoh Ball Soup when your Jewish boyfriend says it reminds him of how grandma used to make it. HIGH FIVE, VERY NICE. MY SUIT IS GREY, NAHT. Stay tuned for the watermelon smoothie recipe & another refreshing summer recipe. In other news, check out what’s new on the sidebar: sponsors. If you’ve ever wanted to run an ad to generate more hits, visit my sponsorships page for more details. More exciting news soon, but I don’t want to give away all my good news just yet! How else am I supposed to fill my blog with content if I just spill it all in one post, right?
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I absolutely love posts like this – I always mean to do one, but my life is so dull and I never go anywhere interesting…or do anything worth blogging about. 😛 Anyhow, I think I’m in love with the Japanese grocery store – and one definitely needs to open near me. Out of mild curiosity, does the food taste as good as it looks? I’ve been dying to try sushi lately, but I always forget that I want to when I’ve got money. 🙁
The grocery store food isn’t nearly as good as a restaurant, but that much is obvious haha. I think a lot of their lunches aren’t too bad for grocery store food. Just make sure that you Yelp a good sushi restaurant before you dive on into it because you don’t want your first experience to be a bad one. The last thing you want is to get food poisoning!
Good luck with future morning-to-night posts! I can imagine anyone being entertained in Marukai for the first time. I remembered being surprised by the amount of products they carried in the stores from food to household products. It sounds like Josh loves your cooking!
I love it! They have so much stuff haha.
Awesome post! This is a good idea for posting on the blog on the regular. I might start something like this next year! And I had no idea that Marukai has green tea oreos! I seriously love green tea anything! 🙂
Me too! 🙂 I’ll try them next time & report on it.
I didn’t like doing it because it took me over 2 hours to actually compose the post since I used to make thumbnails out of all the pics & then link them all up to go together on my post. Now WP has a gallery function so it makes things so much easier for me haha. You should! It’s fun. You get to be really creative.
I love it when you make something and your boyfriend says “Tastes just like Grandma or ma used to make!” You know you did a great job. I always loved cooking. In this house it’s rather hard to cook for everyone :(. Picky eaters. :/ .
Amanda over at musicalpoem.me actually taunted me with ramen earlier. Now you’re doing it! Haha! I used those cheap ramen noodles that are highly processed, but I had put in some spinach, onion, home grown gypsy peppers, and chicken. It tasted pretty good. Tristan actually had me make him some. I also had Jasmine Green Tea with honey, with my dinner. It was delicious. One of these days I’m gonna have to convince Tristan to take me to either a Sushi restaurant that serves Ramen, or to a Pho vietnamese restaurant.
By the way, I do love your pictures. Where is Marukai located? I have to see this place when I get paid.
Aw that’s too bad that you can’t cook for everyone in the house. I can cook for my brother & my dad, but my mom is really attached to her unhealthy familiar foods. When anything healthy, new American graces her kitchen, she shuns it immediately. It’s kind of frustrating because I want her to eat better. We all know your nutrition plays a huge role in your health!
Instant ramen is always a crowd-pleaser, but it is incredibly unhealthy. Marukai does have these great noodles that are made with a special plant that’s healthier for you. Not as processed as the instant noodles. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend venturing to a sushi restaurant that serves ramen to enjoy ramen. Sure there are lots of restaurants that are good at doing both, but ramen & sushi are two very difficult culinary cuisines to master. So Yelp a really good, affordable sushi restaurant when you want to splurge or try making cucumber/avocado rolls at home because those are so cheap & healthy to make. Yelp a good ramen place too because ramen shouldn’t be more than $10 per bowl. It should always be less or so! Best ramen I’ve had in LA has to be at Tsujita Annex in West LA. One of my favorite restaurants for sushi in LA that isn’t in Little Tokyo is called Haru Sushi Cafe. It’s still in LA, but it’s absolutely divine.
As for Vietnamese restaurants, remember to always Yelp these restaurants so you don’t get an unpleasant first experience! The best pho is in Little Saigon, which is in Orange County. 🙂 It’s really cheap though, much cheaper than many ramen restaurants ($5-7 per bowl!).
As for where Marukai is located, it’s located all over.
http://www.marukai-market.com/#!store-location/c1n8m
I think Mitsuwa is actually much better than Marukai though. I only venture to Marukai because it’s on the way home from school, but otherwise I’d head over to Mitsuwa. There are Asian grocery stores in Temecula! You should visit them. It’s actually much cheaper to shop there for produce & goods than at a typical chain grocery store that doesn’t sell Asian goods.
How lovely to be able to read about your entire day with such beautiful and memorable photos including with your b/f, Tiffany, I would love to do that sometimes. The smoothie you made looks delicious: juicy watermelon, sweet nectarine and refreshing mint…ahh, I miss making smoothies right now and my favorite smoothie is blueberry & coconut water & mint. Looks like awesome sushi place – did they have any vegan options? Oreo Matcha Milk?! Darn I wish they are vegan since I love their other Oreo flavors. Aw thanks for including me in your blog group at the bottom of your post – looks lovely, hehehe! <3
Oh yeah, I forgot to email you back, but you won the giveaway I was hosting! The advertising part at least. 🙂 I would love to see yours & D’s day. You two have such interesting lives that it would be such a fascinating post to read. I heard that Oreos are actually vegan friendly! I’m not sure if that one was though. The vegan sushi options were probably the cucumber rolls. I know, it’s so upsetting because I try not to eat so much fish so finding a vegan option is near impossible. But, the world is changing! So 10 years from now, there will be tons more vegan options everywhere. That smoothie you described sounds wonderful. I must give it a go!
I love this idea! I think it’s always fun and interesting to sneak-a-peek into other people’s lives. I guess that makes me a bit nosey, lol! Your hydrangeas are beautiful! The colors are so vibrant. The ramen looks amazing! I had to look up Marukai and we don’t have one or any Japanese supermarkets around the area. We have several H-Mart’s in the DFW area though! Their food court is great! But that ramen though…yum!
And Green Tea Oreos?! I just can’t. Haha!
I did see that Marukai has an online store, so I’ll have to look and maybe make a purchase if they have things that they don’t carry in H-Mart.
I loveeeeeeee H-Mart! Perfect place to get both Korean & Japanese goods. Mitsuwa is also a huge chain grocery store, maybe that might be within your area? I know you said that there aren’t any Japanese markets in your area, but that’s okay, H-Mart is also great!
I’m very curious to find out why your soup is called Matzoh Ball Soup! We have a place in London where you can buy all thing Japanese which this store reminds of. I will try the oreo matcha one day!
Matzo or matzoh ball soup is made of matzo meal. It’s a Jewish dish that is pretty much chicken noodle soup with a flour ball! It’s really quite nice. I’ll have a recipe up for it soon!
Yes tell me how the taste if you try it!
I love the idea of taking photos throughout your day 🙂 I might give that a try too, especially since I always have a smaller camera in my purse.
Murakai has so much ready-to-eat foods! I want them all too! That’s awesome that your Matzoh Ball soup reminds Josh of his grandma’s. What a compliment! I wish I could try it 😀
You SHOULD do it. I’d love to see all of your photos. I feel as though every time I visit your site, I can’t get enough of your photography like you’re teasing us with these tidbits & .. I want more. More cake pics! More landscape pics! More house renovating pics! More house organization pics! More pics of stuff because I’m just nosey like that.
I’ll be posting the recipe soon so you will get to try it! It’s perfect for when you’re sick or if you just want soup. 😀
Beautiful photos, and it looks like that ordinary day turned out to be extraordinary (see what I did there? Hahahaha). I love this idea so much. I might have to use it one day. Maybe.
Hah Josh would enjoy this. Go for it! It’s not really so much a challenge as it is about memory, that is, remembering to take a picture.
Ahh so jealous! I wanna go to a Japanese grocery store too 🙁
I think the one we have in here is korean grocery store and even if I’m not that interested (I’m like Japanese biased ….I’m horrible), the place is so far from where I live. There probably is a Japanese grocery store but who knows.. may no longer be operative. Then again all the Japanese products can be found in the supermarkets inside malls (of the same brand).
There’s oreo matcha milk!! Wow. haha Japan…they all like to matcha-ed everything. do you like pocky? matcha pocky tastes weird though
I love this post ugh I love how homey this feels. Your “housewife photos” are beautiful, they have beautiful tone *o* teach me how you edit your stufff~
P.S: what mascara brand is that?
haha umm you live in a country in Asia so you shouldn’t have a problem finding these things in the Korean grocery store! I love matcha everything, so yeah I love the matcha pocky! It’s my second favorite one after the panda one.
Thank you! I’m actually thinking of releasing some of my Lightroom presets to my other website. I’m planning on turning AI into a more photo editing based tutorial & resources site. Maybe you can help write tutorials for photo stuff – you know, “how not to be a bad photographer” or something hahaha.
matcha kit kat though… it’s heaven it’s bliss *o* the panda pocky is awesomeeee!! TT_TT i can’t find it here ha.. haha.. i did buy lots when i went to hk. they’ve got the oolong tea flavor; kind of weird but whatever it’s pocky so it’s good.
have you ever tried making matcha dessert? like…i don’t know, matcha soft ice cream haha i wanna see chef tiff makes ice cream 😛
yes yes please do. please release your presets *o* you seem to be a good friend with the lightroom~
oh boy that’d be such an honor i mean….. WOW if i ever contribute an article on that in your site it’s gonna be unbelievable because i never actually think my photos are…well, worth the attention? i won’t say i’m extremely horribly terrible but haha wow if someone actually think i take good pictures, i’d probably float in cloud nine.
p.s: recommend me good mascaras that are budget friendly and do not make my lashes clump and turn all caterpillars, please? i’m currently using maybelline’s magnum volume express and it’s close to drying so i need replacement… thinking of getting maybelline’s cat mascara but some people said it sucked :s maybelline has lots of variety and i’m confused haha
P.S. it’s Maybelline. Maybe it’s Maybelline hahaha. I don’t like that one as much their “Falsies Volum Expresss” one, but I don’t even remember what that other one was called because I threw it out. It was all dried up & it kind of sucked.
LOVE THAT MATCHA KIT KAT. SOOOOOO gooood. I want more, but you know…can’t dine on them forever & they’re expensive here so….I have to curb my splurging.
I love making ice cream! I haven’t made it in a while so I’ll make a green tea one, good thinking!! You think it’s cheating if I use a green tea latte mix? hahaha. Yes -_- you’re right, it is cheating. I’ll just add a little green dye to make it show.
Your photos are really nice, Alice! I love them. 🙂 I think your contribution to AI would be invaluable & it’ll really help get more photography centered content out there. Think of any advice you wish you had starting off with film or a dslr or whatever. Write it down somewhere & I’ll let you know when I get around to fixing up the site! TB comes first though. I have big dreams for it…in terms of a layout…gah someone do it for me…for freeeee because I hate coding. 🙁 🙁
Aw thanks for the compliment! I’m still learning a lot about LR. I just started using it a few months ago this year so it’s been a learning process. Download some of the free presets out there! It’ll really help you understand some of the settings better!
As for good mascaras….I’m still searching myself!! I do really like the Maybelline The Falsies Volum Express. There’s this yellow one that I also really like. I’d recommend going with waterproof mascara because it lasts longer. To avoid clumping, make sure to prime your eyelashes first by using that eye contraption thing that is known as the eyelash curler haha. If you have an eyelash comb, that will make a huge difference in preventing clumps. Comb your eyelashes a few times & then apply the mascara! Mascara is so expensive BAH. My mom gets lots of sample ones, so I just use those too hehe.
No day is ordinary with Josh 🙂
Oh, Ben. You see the photos from Joshua Tree?