Refreshing Watermelon Cucumber Juice

It's quite hot here in LA! So I bought Watermelons and baby Cucumbers and made a juice to beat the heat. I loved it totally. The subtle flavor of cucumber blends very well with the watermelon. Addition of ginger gives a little zing to the juice.
I am sending this recipe to Culinarty's Original Recipe event.

Ingredients:
Watermelon pieces-3 cups
Baby Cucumbers(not the bitter ones)-3(skin peeled)
Tomato-1(optional)
Ginger pieces-1 tsp
Salt-a pinch
Sugar-1.5 tbsp
Lime juice-1 tbsp

Method:
Blend everything together with little water to a smooth paste. Sieve through a strainer and enjoy this refreshing drink.

All For a Good Cause

Okay, we're famous!

Well, maybe we're not famous, but we are mentioned in a news article for a local homeless shelter. Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach recently did some work, remodeling, among other things, their bathrooms. AB&R Plumbing did the plumbing! You can read the article under "It takes a village to build a bathroom". They liked our work so much that they have asked us to quote the bathroom on the floor above!

This was a pretty good job and it shows off the versatility of AB&R Plumbing. Most "service plumbers" aren't set up to do this kind of work. AB&R has an advantage; we have our parent company. New Technology Plumbing is a new construction commercial plumbing company. They have done many large commercial buildings, including the 8-building Broadcom complex for The Irvine Company. Check out their website to see what kind of work "the Hawgs" can do.

This means that, between AB&R and New Tech, we can handle anything from a clogged drain to new construction of your eight-story office building - and anything in between.

Now, off the subject of plumbing...

Have you watched Dancing With the Stars? My wife and I love this show and we Tivo and watch it faithfully. Between this and So You Think You Can Dance, we get a good "dance fix" from our TV for most of the year. If you have read any of my earlier blogs, you know that we are ballroom dancers, so it is a lot of fun to watch really good dancers dance.

Cloris Leachman has to go!

I loved a lot of the acting she did, but as a dancer she is a train wreck! Enough is enough! Some of the other dancers are really doing well but the fact that people keep voting her back every week is unfair. I think she should have gone in the first week, even if she did dance better than Kim Kardashian this week.

Let's hear your thoughts!

Chocolate Marquise

This was one of the best selling product at Bake To Order no matter in what season. It's made by dark chocolate that would definately satisfy those chocoholics. The recipe extracted from BBC-Food website conducted by my idol chef, Lesley Waters.


The texture is quite like mousse, soft yet rich cocoa flavour. You would rather let it melt slowly in your mouth for few minutes and swallow it slowly before you have the next spoon. The recipe is quite simple to make as it could be made in advance. Store it in the fridge then serve it right after a meal for the guests with no hastily. I used 70% dark chocolate and reduced 1/3 sugar from the original recipe. It's best serve with a dollop of whipped cream and fresh berries.