for these and more

- for the delicious pochero that filled my tummy tonight. the warm soup seemed to have the power to heal me from the inside. replenishing.

- for the steady job that provides for us. we may not have all the luxuries in the world, but in these trying times, as long as we do not get hungry, we are in a better state.

- for the little girl who drives us crazy. she may be learning new things each day, but it's more for my benefit when i watch her learn. for the priceless hugs and kisses that magically melt the worries away. so powerful.

- for the husband and wife that alternately become sponges. a sponge that absorbs tears, anger, frustrations, happiness, craziness, worries, fears, and everything else that's unimaginable. for us who vowed to make it through the good times and bad times.

- for my mother's loving voice. in life's most terrifying moments, all you really need is to hear that magical voice. it's like having warm milk.

- for the warm showers that don't make me jump, because i'm ginawin that way.

- for the tiptop health (so far). no medication, life support needed.

FOR THESE AND MORE, I THANK YOU, FATHER!

gardener

nakakaaliw ang panlasangpinoy.com. i'd spend saturday mornings just browsing through their youtube videos. parang ang dali dali lang magluto! i love how they demo even the most complicated recipes in less than 10 minutes. not a drag!

i saw this hardinera recipe and tried it out last, last week. it's something new. the name is catchy too :) it's like embutido / morcon / afritada in a lyanera... or in a garden jejeje.

the recipe calls for pork cubes. i used ground pork instead to lessen the cooking time. it also calls for a can of liver spread, but i used some ground fresh liver instead. we don't have the almighty reno in this corner of the universe, it's a luxury (aka bawal). i just popped a big capsicum in the oven as a substitue for canned roasted sweet peppers.



pics:

UL: assembling the sliced hard boiled eggs, capsicum, and raw eggs at the bottom of the lyanera.

UR: mixing the pre-cooked ground pork with all the other tidbits: raisins, bread crumbs, pineapple, hotdogs, cheese, pickles.

LL: dumping 'em all in the lyanera, then steam galore!

LR: as usual, no pic of the finished product. pwede na ang picture ng pangalan ng recipe :p

what didn't go too well:
* the absence of the liver spread. bitin sa linamnam.
* i may have used a bit too much bread crumbs. i could taste some bread in there!
* medyo bitin ata ang raw eggs ko as binder. it came out a bit loose when sliced.

but it's all good. kakaiba sa panlasa at pananaw :)

overheard

guy 1: you're rude!

guy 2: f#*@! you tell the truth and it's rude?!

muni-muni

- you can't go wrong with being too much appreciative.

- a little thanks will also do.

- no matter how angry you get, contain it. there are creative and unhurtful ways of releasing.

- yes, you can quit, and you can quit now.

- when you cough, it's great to have a hagod on your back.

- when there's an opportunity, grab it. you don't get it everyday.

- you are not building a sari-sari store. don't hoard.

- share.

- if it's for your own good, you can't be mad (sometimes).

- sometimes "don't settle" just won't work. you really have to settle, and it's just so sad.

- it's disgusting to dahak in public.

sweet treats

some 15 years ago, mami and i marvelled at watching heny sison bake on tv. she did it all in a breeze - mixing, folding, decorating, ikaw na ang magaling! :)) i just wanted to watch her then. i never thought that i would try baking!



last year, april convinced kuya that we need an oven and an electric mixer. april and i have had an on and off relationship with baking. sometimes tsamba, sometimes it's just a plain disaster. there was a meringue that looked like slime, there was a sponge cake that had lumps of uncooked flour even after baking, there was mamon that tasted like egg whites. so weird! :))



i learned that baked goodies are so bad for you - with all that eggs, flour, butter, sugar. sugar is crazy! sugar is bad, all those ingredients are bad. it would be good if there were healthier substitutes/options simply because i feel good doing it :)



i learned that it's very difficult to substitute ingredients because using the wrong ones will affect the outcome big time, and that's in a bad way. unlike with cooking, you could always use any handy ingredient in your cupboard in the absence of hard-to-find (read: expensive) ingredients.



i learned that it's hard to estimate when you are a newbie. when it calls for 1 cup, it can't be 1.20! and when it calls for sifting, it means YOU HAVE TO SIFT. hindi pwede ang pwede na! :)) hindi pwede ang tamad!



and i still stand by my belief that as long as you can read, you can cook, and you can even bake! it's fun! here are some of my attempts:







upper left: banana chocolate cupcakes, recipe taken from home cooking rocks. please excuse the holes on the cupcakes. i used, ehem, chopsticks instead of toothpicks. we don't keep toothpicks in the house :p



upper right: revel bars (but in cupcake form), recipe taken from somewhere in the internet (can't remember where). it was a wish from mike. he said his, ehem, ex made the best revel bars during HS. revel bars are made of oatmeal-soft-batch-cookie-like stuff. there's a chocolate coating on the top. i like that it's like an energy bar (with all that sugar, who won't be energized?)



lower right: basic vanilla cupcakes, recipe taken from "bake, sell, give" magazine. it tastes a bit like mamon :) kulang na lang ay frosting, which leads me to...



lower left: an imbento recipe for icing that looked like neon pink paint. so annoying! :)) it was sent staight to the bin. sayang!



looking forward to more sweetness in life. ang sweeeeeet namaaaaan!

wiwi

i had a dream last night... well, make that this early morning. papa and mami were there. we were taking mami to a job interview. somewhere along the way, we had a pit stop (read: wiwi stop) at a posh building. i saw a vacant cubicle, but there was a suspicious looking plastic bag on the floor. so i thought it wouldn't be safe to use this cubicle for wiwi purposes... but i really, really had to go...

then i woke up. poof! and felt the urgency to go to the toilet to wiwi. thank God! i could just imagine what could have happened if i didn't wake up and i made wiwi in my dreams. nasty!

it was 1987. i was in grade 1. my teacher was mrs. dela cruz. i don't know what issues she had back then. when you need to go to the toilet, you'd say, "ms, may i go out?" to which she'll reply with a stern face, "no."

the toilet was just adjacent to our classroom. it was old and smelly. it had 3 cubicles. i can't recall if there was flush but there certainly was running water on the faucet, which was a relief, but still it stunk big time. or was there just a big, blue drum of water that collected water and kiti-kiti? can't recall.

sometimes she'd say yes if you asked if you could go, but on that particular sunny day, she said no quite a lot... and i really, really had to go... and i had no choice but to go back to my seat and hold back like forever.

the unavoidable happened eventually. you see you could only hold back for so long :-S "pssssssssssss," so said my wiwi trickling through my chair and on the floor :-S it was 1987. i was in grade 1.

ang bigo at ang wagi

last night, mike requested for pancakes for saturday breakfast. "kaya lang wala na tayong pancake mix," he said.

i told him that my lola used to make pancakes from scratch, and that i can do it too! all i have to do is look for a recipe online. the internet will never fail you.

i found this: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/good-old-fashioned-pancakes/detail.aspx

it looked promising and super easy. however, i thought it would be wise to use just half of the measurements since it's just for us 2. everything was doing fine with the half-half until i came to the egg. ok, no sweat, i'll try my best to divide a beaten egg into 2.

kwengkwengkweng... it was hard! i ended up using the whole egg. the pancakes somehow ended up looking like a crepe and tasting like a salty crepe. creep!

anyway, i think i could still pull this off. there are still 4 slices of ham and maybe it will taste pwede-na with the crepe a la pancake.

when i started frying the ham, it smelled panis! haha weird how ham could smell that way. ok, that's it. i told mike that we should go to mcdo for breakfast instead.

here's the bigo breakfast meal:



and here's the wagi breakfast meal:



what more could you ask for? :)