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Christmas Treats!

As we’ve done for the past few years now, Mom & I got together to make our annual Christmas goodies. We decided to be a little different this year and try to make some candy! My favorite holiday treat is Peppermint Bark, so I definitely wanted to try making my own, and then I decided to make Peanut Brittle – because its old school and a holiday classic!

(See last year’s cookie packaging or my gingerbread and pumpkin loaves from the year before)

Its a good thing my mom had a candy thermometer. Talk about old school, this belonged to my Dad’s grandmother. The display shows “Soft Ball” & “Hard Ball” stages, as well as “Crack” stage and “Hard Crack” stage. Looking at it, I thought to myself what a lost art candy making is becoming. After all, “soft ball stage”?!? What? (click the photo to enlarge)

The Peppermint Bark was easy enough … just melt semi-sweet chocolate, add peppermint extract, pour in a pan and top with a layer of crushed peppermint candies. Set it in the fridge and let it cool for about an hour. After its hard, just repeat the same step with white chocolate and make a second layer. I love how festive it looks with the crushed peppermint candies on top! (It’s also no secret that my signature holiday aesthetic is red & white stripes).

The Peanut Brittle wasn’t as easy – but it’s something my mom & I won’t soon forget! It’s quite a process, but the end result was some seriously authentic Peanut Brittle! Here are a few shots throughout the process:

First, we had to boil the sugar and corn syrup until it reached 250 degrees (thanks, Candy Thermometer!) …

Then, we could add the peanuts and butter, and had to keep stirring until we hit Hard Crack Stage (290 degrees!) …

Once we added the baking soda, we got a quick, frothy surprise! This is when it really starts to look like the real deal. You have to get it out and pour into the pans quickly though, or else you’ll burn it all up …

It sets until cooled, then you break it all up. We got about 2.5 lbs. of brittle from this batch.

The finished product, in all it’s glory!

Of course, I always enjoy making the goods look good, so I worked on my custom tags for each candy:

I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did making it! And of course – thanks, Mom!

4 Years!

4 years and counting as a Mr. & Mrs., and as cliche as it sounds – it just keeps getting better every year. What else can we say? We love being married to each other!

We have so much to look forward to in the upcoming weeks – new home, new baby, new life! We both are happy and grateful for everything we have together. Now if only we had some of that delicious wedding cake still … :)

Feeling nostalgic? Our friend & wedding photographer Suzi Q. did a great photo recap on her blog of our wedding 4 years ago. You can check out the photos and all the fun details of our big day right here.

Ed on Fox Again!

I was called by Fox Business yesterday to come onto their show to talk July 2010 auto sales. I haven’t been on in a few months (and it’s been even longer since they’ve posted any news clips I’ve been in). I was on with two other experts and with Dagen McDowell, the anchor.

Usually, Brian Sullivan is there too with Dagen, but as it turned out, he was at the LA studio looking for a flight home to New York, so I actually got to meet him in person before going on the air! We talked cars and the business for a few minutes before I was whisked off for makeup. Anyways, here’s the clip!

(In case the video doesn’t work, please click here to view on the Fox Business News website)

Cars, Cars, Cars in February

Though a lot of cars come and go through the Kim household due to my work, I don’t usually blog about them. February so far has been an interesting car month though – interesting enough that I thought I might share a few here.

2010 marks the 25th year of AutoPacific being in business…and I have been at the company a total of 9 of those years! So, we put on a birthday party of sorts at the office, inviting clients, potential clients, and even some members of the media to showcase our unique office that doubles as a consumer research space. I even gave two out of the seven speeches, the first about the state of the auto industry today and over the next five years, and the second about what the car companies can learn from non-automotive consumer brands like Apple, Target, and H&M.

We asked several car companies for some cool cars to use as props throughout our office, and Ford, Hyundai, and Kia happily obliged with some of their latest and greatest. As they arrived a few days prior to the event, I even took a couple of them home.

Let’s start with the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500! Some of you probably remember the awe-inspiring Shelby Mustangs from the 60s. This new one hearkens back to those, but also packs a 5.4L supercharged V8 with…wait for it…540HP. Yes, 540HP!

Pretty mean looking car, isn’t it?

I couldn’t get enough of that color too, called Grabber Blue.

I love these vertically striped seats with the horizontal stitching.

The car was so powerful that I wasn’t even really able to experience the car’s full acceleration until I went out to a deserted road (not many of those in Southern California) out in the foothills of Irvine. The car is scary fast, able to lay rubber even shifting up to third gear. When starting off from a stop, you actually have to be gentle with the gas pedal or else the back wheels will start spinning and losing traction due to insane power. Yes, this is probably the most powerful car I have ever driven, and I’ve driven a lot!

I leave you with this shot of the gauges. Yes, red, white, and blue. It’s so campy given what the car is that you gotta love it.

And now for something completely and totally different, the Ford Fiesta. The car has been on sale in Europe since 2008, but now that Ford is integrating its global operations and because there is now a bigger focus on fuel efficiency in America, Americans will finally start having more access to the very cool smaller Fords available in Europe. The Fiesta goes on sale this summer, but Ford lent us a European-spec model (complete with metric calibrated gauges and German language in the readouts) for the event. That was truly exciting for yours truly as many of you know that fun little cars are my favorite (my own car is a Mini Cooper).

I just absolutely love the styling. It’s dynamic, exciting, and fun – certainly a lot more interesting to look at than most entry level cars.

The American version will have a slightly different front end than seen here, with a smaller grille and a slightly longer bumper for better protection in parking lot speed impacts.

I’ll leave you with a few shots of the setup of the event, which went great!

The Fiesta and Transit Connect (another European Ford that has made its way across the pond to America) in the research showroom space.

We even got the all-new 2011 Hyundai Sonata to display on our turntable! Yes, it’s a Hyundai. Great looking, isn’t it? You’ll be seeing a lot of these on the roads soon.

All the tables and chairs, along with the stage and screen where we gave our speeches. We had nearly 100 people come! As a bonus, lunch was catered by the In and Out burger truck. Yum!

Hi there

We’ve been busy Kims, and busy lately has resulted in less blogging! No restaurants lately, because we’ve been cooking up a storm here at home (and eating quite well, due to our developing culinary skills, I might add!). No traveling lately, simply because we’ve been a little broke. And, no camera lately, because it seems we’ve become even more dependent on our beloved iPhones! It’s all terribly boring, so we’ve been keeping pretty quiet these days.

But because we can’t let our blog get too dusty with inactivity, I gave it a little makeover. And, I’ll leave you with a few things that have been distracting us lately:

#1: Flight of the Conchords!
We can’t get enough of this show! Too bad the fun had to end after Season 2 …

#2: LOST
Not much to say here except that we are giddy its back! It is a little bittersweet however, because the further we get into the season only means we’re getting closer to the point that it’s over … for good! (Did you forget what LOSTmaniacs we are? Check out our party at the Long Beach Hatch to refresh your memory …)

Okay, so I just realized our excuses are two TV shows, and that’s just sad. But we have some fun stuff planned that’s coming right up, so things should get a lot more interesting around here soon!