Wednesday Surprise

I miss my little Nate. They’re supposed to visit me today but my daughter got sick so I have to wait for another week before I get to see my “apo”. I am looking forward to having him around again and see what he has learned and accomplished in a month.  He is almost six months old now, time flies!

Last Wednesday, Josef and I went to Pasig City market just to buy fruits. It was his day-off so what better way to spend the  early morning  but to visit   a place that I haven’t seen for so many years?  I’ve been told by some friends that the price of fruits there are really cheap. The place is where fresh produce coming from the provinces are sold wholesale and by the kilo. I was simply awed by the variety of fruits they have, all housed in a large complex that used to  be just a  few stalls ten, fifteen years ago. Where can you find a kilo of sineguelas  at only P20? They had sacks and sacks of it lining up several stores.The other day, I asked some vendors here in our place how much a kilo of it costs and I was surprised that they were selling it at  P60/kilo. One  large  pineapple that sells around P75 to P80 a piece in our place costs only P50 in Pasig. Green and ripe mangoes are sold by the sacks and crates too.  Would you believe Indian mangoes are at P10/kilo? As we just took a commute to the place, I didn’t  buy much except these, all for the price of P400, a half kilo of fresh peanuts, a kilo of  sweet potato, sweet corn   and a large watermelon included.

I will definitely come back here if only to buy more sineguelas and fresh pineapples.  I haven’t explored the place yet. There are other fruits on display like bananas (all kinds, I think), durian (which I don’t eat). Think summer, think fruits!

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Fun Way To Cook Okoy

Okoy or Ukoy is a traditional Filipino dish. It is usually made of different ingredients common of which is shrimp or vegetables. It is the way that it is cooked that makes a little difference. It is usually eaten as a side dish or appetizer.

Ingredients:
4 or 5 cups of fresh squash, cut into strips
1 medium size onion, diced
1 beaten egg
batter of cornstarch or flour to coat the squash
wanton or molo wrapper
dash of salt to taste
dash of fine ground pepper
oil for frying

Directions:
Cut the squash into thin, small strips, add a dash of salt and pepper then add diced onion. Set aside.Make the batter mixture, add one beaten egg.Coat the squash with the batter and put on top of each molo wrapper. Fry in hot oil, reduce heat while frying. You could add small shrimp on top but it is optional. The molo wrapper also serve as a binder and it makes the okoy crispy.

Serve hot with your favorite dish.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Color

Sometimes, you need no words to express the beauty of life and all it brings.

For more of this, please click this link.

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Happy Thoughts On A Sunday Afternoon

It’s been a while and I really missed WordPress. There is something wrong with our server. For more than three  days now, the connection has been quite erratic.  When you’re blogging every day your thoughts come in burst of inspirations and it is easier to share. A week’s lapse seems a long time. I feel as if I have forgotten how to blog

Would you believe if I say that one of the highlights of the week is discovering new and old things in the wet market? I like going to the wet market twice or thrice a month with my son in tow, of course. Fruits and root crops are in season nowadays. I’m beginning to think it’s summer now because you can see summer fruits like mangoes aplenty.

Yeay, we bought fresh green mangoes to go with the bagoong alamang which I plan to cook with lots of chili. Sweet potato comes in different varieties, I bought the yellow ones. There are so many ways of preparing this, you can have it baked, simply boiled, make it into fritters or just mix it with other vegetables.  Turnips or what we locally know as singkamas are also in season now. I mix diced turnips with ground pork to make a simple siomai which is a favorite in our household.

I remember the times when I was in grade school and every summer break, we go to our relative’s farm in our place in Pangasinan and help them harvest peanuts. By the time we are ready to go home, we are loaded with a sack of freshly dug  sweet potato and peanuts. We boil them together in a large pot and enjoy eating them at night while we just relax and exchange ghost stories with my cousins.  Mom used to buy them in bulk and save them for rainy days for everyday snacks.  Those were the days when life was simple. I was fascinated seeing this sticky black rice and asked the vendor how it is cooked. He said that it is prepared same way you cook the white one. I bought half a kilo of this and two pieces of panocha, a type of mascuvado sugar made into rounded blocks and used for making sweets. This is the first time that I made use of  black rice, it needs more cooking than the regular sticky rice sold in the market.  Using two pieces of coconut and one piece of panocha, I made a rice cake which in our native dialect is called binanlay or biko in Tagalog. I love its purple color and the taste is a little different compared to the regular sticky rice sold in the market. It’s  another successful kitchen experiment, I guess

It tasted so yummy that I intend to cook more of  it and top it with latik.  My son is also interested to learn how to cook  so I taught him how to make a simple vegetable lumpia using the fresh ingredients we bought at the wet market – carrots, Baguio beans, sweet potato and turnips. I love any kind of lumpia and this is good with spicy vinegar used as dip.

It’s what I like about observing the season of Lent because we get to eat lots of fruits, fish and vegetables and a little of meat on the side. Abstaining from eating meat  most days of Lent and all Fridays of the year, we get to invent recipes that  need simple ingredients.  Eating healthy is eating well, don’t you think?

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Country Lanes and Byways (Part Two)

I miss traveling around, finding places where silence still reigns. I miss the fresh green of the countryside.  How I wish I am close to places like these.

I took the first three pictures along the highway in our province in Pangasinan while we were on our way to Manila. The last two shots  were taken at  a  hilltop  somewhere in Sual, Pangasinan where you can see the Lingayen Gulf at a distance.

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On A Clear Day, You Can See Forever

♫♪♫♪On a clear day

Rise and look around you

And you’ll see who you are

On a clear day

How it will astound you

That the glow of your being

Outshines every star

You’ll feel part of every mountain, sea and shore

You can hear

From far and near

A word you’ve never, never heard before…

And on a clear day…On a clear day…

You can see forever…

And ever…

And ever…

And ever more…♪♪♫♪

I think I am having  a LSS. That’s Capones Island located in San Antonio, Zambales. Someday, I would love to come back here and wait for the sunrise…maybe just greet the early morning with a smile.

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Gulaman at Sago

If there are popular street food in every corner of Metro Manila, there are also popular drinks that you will find in malls and yes, food cart on the street. Buko juice and gulaman at sago are just examples of these. Gulaman is simply the Tagalog term for  jelly while sago are tapioca pearls that go with it.  Don’t ask me why they go together but they taste good especially when they’re home-made. The ones they sell in food kiosks  in malls contain only about half a spoon of gulaman and probably  a teaspoon of sago. That’s P10 for you for a small plastic cup. Sago is also used in those very popular pearl and milk teas. I tried making a pitcher this afternoon, it’s better than sodas or soft drinks.  Gulaman of course is so easy to prepare while sago needs a lot of  boiling time to soften.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

Here are my own interpretations of what the word Beyond means to me in pictures. Come to think of it, I always look forward  to this weekly photo challenge because somehow you get to look  once more at some pictures which at the time you took were just pleasing to your eyes and senses. Sometimes though, they acquire a meaning and you wish you could capture the essence of each view and place you see.

Beyond this mountain is my provincial home which I haven’t visited  in quite a while. My old memories of this places is tied up to the river running below this mountain where we used to catch fresh-water fish during the early parts of rainy months. And yes, the impromptu picnics  beside  the river and taking a long soak after.  Fresh, unpolluted running water and lovely river stones that sometimes my cousins and I used to bring home  for our Piko games.

The cool mountains of Tanay. I remember taking this shot three weeks after my six-sessions of chemotherapy ended.  It was a kind of litmus test how far I can go without tiring myself after such a life-changing treatment.  I miss this place, I hope someday I would be able to come back here.

What lies behind closed doors, do you know? Dreams! Pockets of happy days!  Actually, I was fascinated by the stained-glass door. I seldom see this kind of window and door treatments except in places where they value old-age decor.

There is always something that fascinates me in discovering places and looking beyond.  I took this in Caleruega, the hanging bridge was simply irresistible. And beyond this is a vast garden and an upward climb to a hill that gives a wonderful view of the Batulao mountains in Batangas. It’s one of my favorite places to visit.

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Ah, The Good Old Suman Sa Latik

I haven’t tasted this for quite sometime but I chanced upon a vendor selling it at 3 pieces for P50.00.  They call it suman sa latik -  made from glutinous  rice (malagkit), wrapped in banana leaves then boiled to cook. It’s the latik (coconut cream mixed with brown sugar) that makes it so delicious and tasty. It’s perfect for that hot cup of tea or coffee.  In our province in Pangasinan, we prepare suman  by wrapping them in young coconut leaves after cooking it in  coconut cream then boil it again to get that nice flavor.  I say, ours is better when it comes to taste, not that I am biased of course because suman sa latik is actually bland without the latik. And would you believe that there are as many ways to cook suman as there are so many provinces in the Philippines? Take your pick from what region they come from and they’ll surely vary in taste the more you explore the countryside.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflection

This may come a bit  late for last week’s challenge  but you may have noticed that I don’t get to blog everyday nowadays. Just too busy catching up on things at home that blogging has become my least priority. Well, for one thing, I just set up another blog for my grandson so I am somewhat focused there.

I have only two shots that I want to include here, not because they reflect the challenge at hand but they remind me of the happier days when we used to go on road trips with the kids. These were taken at The Farm, a spa facility that boasts of large gardens and  nature at its best. This is located in Lipa City, Batangas, about three hours away from Metro Manila. Would love to come back here one of these days, God willing.

This is their Lagoon where I spent so much time reading and just looking at the ducks feeding nearby. Why not try visiting this place, they have some excellent reviews from people who’ve been there.

 

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