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Friday Finds

Early this morning, I went  to the Municipal Hall to pay our land and realty taxes for the year. The clerk there suggested that if we pay by the month of November or December for the following year, there is a 20% discount. I will remember that and will try to settle our 2021 taxes before the year ends. 20% is big enough, don’t you think?

On my way home, I dropped by the Liwasan (our town plaza fronting the Catholic church in our town). I love this idea of Mayor Kit Nieto to invite vendors/sellers from different provinces to sell their produce in our town (from Friday to Sunday) every week. It is cheaper than those sold at the groceries and wet markets. It’s been going on for more than a month now.

I was overjoyed to see different items – veggies, fruits, rice, meat, preserved fruits and veggies, dried fish of different kinds. There was even a vendor selling jars of rice coffee. There was a free taste and it was a nice drink, no caffeine of course. I didn’t buy though cause my shopping bag was already full. I bought white onions, eggplants, a whole squash and dried tilapia. It is Friday today,  every Lent I make it a point to abstain from eating meat on Fridays so we’ll have the dried fish and eggplant fritters or maybe roasted ones with fresh tomatoes for lunch.

Bought this kilo of Guava Java for only P70 pesos. They are fairly large and that jar of roasted peanuts (cooked without oil) is P60 pesos.

Can’t wait to take a bite on those juicy guavas.

 

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Jackfruit, Anyone?

Are you familiar with jackfruit? The one I showed you earlier in a photo is now ripe. I gave half of it to two of our neighbors.

There are three more growing big and many buds on the tips of the other tree. Just perfect for guinataang langka (jackfruit cooked in coconut cream with slices of pork or shrimps).

I bought saging na saba, sweet potato, glutinous rice (finely ground) and sweet potato because I am planning to cook guinataang halo-halo this afternoon. It could serve as dessert or afternoon snack. Cooked with coconut cream, a little sugar to taste and the various ingredients mixed together. Served cold  or hot, it’s yummy.

Here how it looks when it’s cooked.This one has Ube and tapioca pearls.

photo courtesy of Kuzina restaurant.

 

 

 

 

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A Blessed Ash Wednesday

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel”. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It’s the beginning of Lent.

Today we celebrate Ash Wednesday.

I attended the 6:30 am mass this morning. So many lay ministers around to put ashes on the forehead of the mass goers. Ash Wednesday is a Christian holiday of prayer and fasting. It signifies that we ought to repent for our sins during the Lenten fast. Aside from the Advent and Christmas seasons, the observance of Lent is one thing that I also look forward to every year. It’s a beautiful tradition that we Catholics observe. This culminates on Easter Sunday. The priest reminded us that every person between the age of 18 and 59 (beginning of 60th year) must fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Senior citizens like me are exempted but if we are well and fit enough to observe it, so much the better.

I recently checked my dashboard after a few days of being absent from this blog. Gosh, it’s a good thing Akismet protects us from those spam comments which are usually from porn sites. Imagine, since I started blogging, there were 56,079 spam comments that I deleted from my blog posts. It is clearly annoying.

Thank you so much to all my new followers. Sorry, I haven’t visited your blogs yet but I will one of these days.

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Hello Again!

Let me see…it’s been  five days since my last post here. Got caught by laziness the first two days and the last three days, Globe was on high maintenance. I wonder what that high maintenance actually mean since we didn’t have internet connection for three days.

Took advantage of the days reading in between household chores and some gardening. Done with three books, one was quite long, all of 599 pages. Chances by Jackie Collins reminds me of The Godfather. Remember those mafia scenes – crime, drugs, revenge, friendship, sexual encounters etc. It’s been a while since I read a Jackie Collins book. It’s melodrama to the max, alright.  That was followed by another Dean Koontz book entitled Watchers. Great characters, fantastic story. I love stories about dogs, another terrifying story from an author I am learning to admire. Earlier on, I read The Woods by Harlan Coben. Not quite as good as his other books but I gave it four stars just the same.

We’ve been invited to attend Fr. Aly’s installation as Shrine Rector and Parish Priest at the Diocesan Shrine and Parish of Our Lady of Light here in our town come March 14.  A good occasion to mingle with those priests who were previously assistant vicars several years ago.

I am trying to catch up with all your posts.  Bear with me please.

 

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Planting Chayote

I gardened for a while this morning replanting my rain lilies, some succulents and trimmed the Fukien tea plants. It is a lovely weather to garden now. The sun is shining and yet there is a cold morning breeze blowing. Perfect 🙂

Two weeks ago, we had a left-over piece of Chayote inside the ref. It is a tropical fruit shaped like a pear, with green skin and white flesh, that is usually cooked and eaten as a vegetable. I love mixing it with tinola, sometimes with chop suey  or pancit.

What a great surprise when I saw these green shoots. It is a sun-loving perennial and all parts of it are edible from the roots to the tender tips of the vine. I hope this would grow well and bear fruits so I won’t have to buy some in the market.

 

In a few days, we would harvest our langka (jackfruit). It is getting so big now. There are more fruits growing at the base of the tree. Hopefully, we could cook them as veggies.

 

 

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Puzzled By This Book

The Eyes of Darkness.

It was originally published under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols, it was Dean Koontz who wrote it back in 1981. I was compelled to read it when a friend sent me a message that Wuhan was mentioned in the book. I got curious, true enough, what is happening now is described in the book and considering it is a book of fiction, it is quite a puzzle to me.   I am not really into paranormal and I think this is my first book of Dean Koontz.  I have some screen shots of the pages where Wuhan virus was mentioned.

 

Is it fiction predicting the future or is it the present parroting a fiction? Is it a coincidence?

 

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Some Photos…Oreo’s Late Birthday Celebration

Since Thursday was  a regular working Day, Friday was Valentine’s Day and  Saturday was Family Day, it was decided that we celebrate Oreo’s birthday on Sunday.  Jovy prepared pasta and other finger food for the humans to enjoy but there was a special birthday cake just for Oreo and cupcakes too mixed with his favorite chicken liver.

Jovy took some photos.  There were actually so many but I just chose these four. This was held at Jovy’s grandma’s house.

 

Happy Bark Day indeed!

 

This time, he didn’t have doggie visitors but Jovy prepared these for the kids.

 

He knows how to pose in front of the camera…haha!

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Saturday Memories

Happy Sunday people and friends!

My gosh, I already reached 76% of my allowed free space for this blog. 24% more to go. I wonder how long will that be. Considering I have limited posting photos here and avoided posting them in high resolution unlike before, maybe it might take a while. I have another blog entitled Dreams Never End which you might like to visit too. The last time I updated it though was December 2019.

Yesterday was another lovely family day for us. Nissa’s family was here. Our good friend Fr. Aly spent lunch with us. We had a good chat about those earlier days. He has been our friend since our house was blessed in October 1995. He was only about two years into the priesthood then. He also officiated Nissa’s wedding more than eight years ago. It is really nice to bond with old friends, it’s like there is no gap in between.

I laughed at Nate for sneaking out some of his toys here. He was so proud when they were about to go and he was holding them in his hands. I told him, he has so few toys here compared to what he has accumulated at home. He wouldn’t leave them behind. He brought a Captain Marvel notebook and some colored pens which Nissa gave him. He divided the pages into Things Done, Drawings. Good, Bad etc. I laughed at his entries under Good. He watered the plants, he swept the floor ( he spelled the floor with just a single 0), he was behaved and he read books. On the Bad space he wrote: Daddy got mad at me because I was noisy. Under Drawings, he has several. He even drew a tree complete with roots and fruits showing 🙂 I taught him to draw a box and he imitated it and told me there was something inside it. Nate could be creative and expressive. I asked him what was inside, he told me he kept his toys there….clever idea! He is quite tall for his age and we have now the same size of footwear, haha.

Come to think of it,this is the only picture I took yesterday. We were more focused on sharing laughter and creating memories.

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

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Happy Valentine’s Day Mom!

via Happy Valentine’s Day Mom!

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