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Archive for January, 2013


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Sometimes, there is that nostalgic longing for a place you’ve been to…..just once . There’s a tug at the heart that says, will I ever visit this place again? Will I ever know how it’s like to walk those hills and commune with the wild flowers, smell the earth beneath and wonder where those clouds will go? There is something there that makes you think of long ago days – the dreams you held in your heart but never materialized, the days you thought that happiness and joy are forever things that make  life so meaningful. You think of the missed opportunities, the what-ifs, the might have been, the regrets and love lost in between.  You think how times flies  and leaves you breathless because once it’s gone, it comes back either as a pleasant memory or an event you’d  rather not dwell on.

Hello February, what have you got in store for me?

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This is the best thing ever. Not that  I would let WordPress take a backseat  because it now occupies a special place in my heart and my time but knowing that my site at Multiply is still alive and yes, everything is intact, is like winning in a small-town lottery. Earlier on, I thought that everything I posted there from October 2007 until about three  years later is gone just like what happened to Friendster. When I visited it yesterday though, my photo albums, music videos, CD uploads (I used to upload entire CD albums from my collections) favorite links, recipes are still there. Take that to mean a big smile  🙂 from me. And the main reason why I am a little sentimental about it is, it was there that I learned the rudiments of blogging. And every blog that I did at that site was precious to me. I hope,  they would let it stay that way. We could no longer use it as social networking site but we could retain it  as is.

Kudos Multiply! I could listen to my favorite music albums while blogging here at WordPress. Thank you, thank you!

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♫♪♫♪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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More thoughts to hold. More dreams to realize. And when you see something as lovely as this dainty pink Begonia, you’ll just simply say, “life is beautiful”. Flowers always give you that feeling that life is one long road of lovely surprises.

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For my friend Elizz who’s wondering what these flowers are called, search no more, your orange blooms are called Crossandra.  Here’s another shot of these lovely blooms.

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Feel free to visit my garden blog, there are lots of flower pictures I posted there.

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“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Chipped nails. Dirty hands. Rough palms. They’re just minor disasters compared to the happiness you feel when you are in a garden. I tell you, it won’t be gardening at all if you always use gardening gloves and don’t feel the rich earth in your hands.

It was a busy weekend for me and Josef. He was in-charge of trimming the carabao grass while I re-potted, transferred and planted some bulbs and flowering plants in our small garden. It was a tedious job but all worth it. IMG_3694My Crossandra plants need to be transferred to pots because they are growing everywhere. They produce orange blooms all year round and  they are so easy to grow because they are self-propagating.

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These are my Rain Lilies newly planted as ground cover, some of them I planted in small pots near the shade. IMG_0060When in bloom, they look like this. Actually, they bloom after the rain, that’s probably where they got their names. This pink one is called  Zyphyranthes Rosea.  They need full sun though to grow well.

I also transferred my Amazon Lily into four pots. The funny thing is I need to break the original pot in order to  re-pot the bulbs since they are closely clustered.

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The dark green paddle-shaped leaves of the Amazon Lily are attractive on their own. Time and again, I’ve blogged about its  sweet-scented and velvety snow-white blooms.  It produces  flowers at least three times a year.

And yes, this is another surprise, I saw a pot of my orange lily breaking into a bud and probably in a few days, it would open its arms to the world.

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I also planted another bulb plant in two small pots. It’s the red onion variety which is locally planted and sold in our home province in Pangasinan. Locally, we call  it lasuna and it is best used in vegetable salads and our famous vegetable recipe called pinakbet.

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And the highlight of course is seeing our two jackfruit trees  bearing clustered fruits. I am thinking of cooking ginataang langka in a few days.

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My only frustration is, I could not trim our Fukien tea plants in perfect round shapes. I would probably need to hire a professional gardener  to do it.

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Our Precious Bundle of Joy

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Taken thirty years apart. Nissa at four months and Nate at two months. They’re like two peas in a pod – mother and son!

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Puto is simply steamed  rice cake which is prepared using a round mold  or muffin cups or several small plastic molds, whichever suits you is okay. There are varied ways to make puto one of which is puto pao –  it’s a puto recipe with filling. I used a puto mix here so it is pretty easy to prepare it.

mini puto pao

Ingredients:

200 g White King Puto Mix

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

5 tsp. cooking oil

1 can corned beef (I used the Delimondo brand)

Cook corned beef until it is dry. Set aside.

Boil water in a steamer and grease puto molder. Since I used the smallest puto molds, there was no need to grease them since the mixture comes off easily once it’s done.

Combine puto mix and water until well blended. Add sugar gradually and mix. Gradually add cooking oil and continue mixing until smooth.

Pour batter up to 1/4 of the puto molder, add a half teaspoon of corned beef then continue pouring the batter until the molder is 3/4 full. You can put cheese strips before steaming but this is optional and since you are preparing bite-size puto pao, it becomes salty if you put too much cheese so a thin strip will do. Put a clean cloth between the steamer and the cover so water won’t mix with the puto while cooking.

Arrange puto molders inside steamer and steam for about 25 to 30 minutes or until the surface is shiny and bounces back when pressed.

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Here are more quotes from my favorite author, Richard Paul Evans. Some are lifted from his soon to be released book, A Step of Faith.

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