Last Two Days Of 2018

Wet, cold and rainy Sunday afternoon. Or maybe this would be a blessing to us so we won’t have to smell those toxic chemicals from the firecrackers occasionally lit by some residents who can’t wait for the new year to begin. At least the air is somewhat balmy. And maybe, it would be nice if the drizzle holds until tomorrow night to lessen the smog. There’s a storm  and the rains are affecting Metro Manila too.

We were blessed and lucky early this morning to have Auxiliary Bishop Nolly Buco. He officiated the 6:30 am mass here at Our Lady of Light. He used to be the Parish Priest of said church. Although his homily was a bit lengthy (as always), I learned a lot from it.

Last night Josef gifted  me with a kilo of  this Sevona dark chocolate compound  for baking. It’s made by Beryl’s from Malaysia. I don’t plan to bake chocolate though for home consumption.  Since it will expire two years from now, I still have lots of time to use it.  They are still at it, baking cakes which are  additional orders.

 

I am planning to bake Granny’s Apple Crisp tomorrow for Media Noche, the only sweet I plan to serve aside from the fruits. Mom loves salad, any salad will do so I’ll make potato salad too. Some recipes are ready. Yesterday I made the lumpiang shanghai for frying, siomai and embutido (again) for steaming. Got to cook spaghetti too so I could give some to the neighbors.

Even if we don’t expect visitors this New Year, I’ll be glad to prepare something for the family. It is always nice to see Mom’s reaction when she sees the spread on  the table.

 

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Life With Mom (Part 14)

Been meaning to bake a simple cake for Mom for a few weeks now. Yesterday, I decided to bake a carrot cake for her. I used just a cup of carrots. I could smell  the sweet aroma of the cake from here.

 

Mom loves anything sweet. It’s a good thing she is not  diabetic, thank God. She loves all kinds of salads, be it veggies or fruits.  She had her favorite cup of coffee together with two small slices of this. Heaven!  Sometimes she would always say she is doing nothing but sleep and eat.  She watches the news on TV every night and her favorite soap operas but I wonder how she could understand the stories.  Her hardness of hearing is more prominent now. Back in those days when it started, she used  a hearing aid but didn’t feel comfortable with the noises she heard all the time.

She is so easy to please but sometimes at her age, she is so “makulit”.  How would I translate this in English, it’s actually a Tagalog word for persistence to the point of annoyance.  The past days and almost every day she kept asking me to call my younger brother to fetch her. She wants to go home to the province  but commuting is not an option. She is already old and sometimes so slow to walk when she is outside.  Gosh, she is turning 89 this coming month.

Have I told you before that when you reach 80, everything that follows is a bonus? I read that somewhere. Getting old is inevitable.  We will all grow old someday.

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Raisin Cookies, Anyone?

I was watching an early morning show on baking and I was impressed with the quick and easy way they bake desserts. I am for simple recipes that I could make in less than an hour and which does not need too many ingredients. I have a favorite site that I watch when I am not too busy with household chores, they make baking so easy and enjoyable. I checked the pantry and I was lucky to find ingredients for raisin cookies. I hope Nate would love this when they come over tomorrow for a visit.

 

You may find the recipe here at this site.  These are larger than those in the recipe since I used an ice cream scooper instead of a tablespoon.

 

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It’s Butter And Sugar-Free Banana Bread

I love Sundays.

I came home from an early morning mass and thought of trying a banana bread recipe which I copied several days ago. I found this site . It’s a Japanese array of cuisines and desserts where I  found several recipes using pancake mix. They had me at “sugar-free”. I love it.

You could try this, here’s how.

Ingredients:

150 grams Pancake mix

3 ripe bananas

1 egg

50 ml milk

Use a fork to mash the banana until creamy. Add the egg and mix thoroughly with a wire whisk. Stir in the milk.

Add the pancake mix and roughly mix it with a spatula. Lightly grease the cake pan with a little oil or butter then pour in the batter. Bake for 40 minutes at 180 °C.

That simple, I adjusted the amount of ingredients though using 4 ripe bananas, 200 grams pancake mix and 100 ml evaporated milk. It turned out like this, a yummy sugar-free banana bread.

Have a blessed Sunday everyone!

 

 

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It’s Shepherd’s Pie But Tastes Like Chicken A La King

There is really no contest between the two. I love both and this is actually another experiment because it was the first time I used chicken as the main ingredient instead of ground pork. I haven’t baked anything in a while, desserts or recipes. I am not really that too busy  but the last few days have been so stressful that I have to think of a way to relax and cooking relaxes me. One morning while we were having breakfast, Josef and I discussed about what we used to prepare on the table and I told him, let’s prepare something for mom that she would surely like. My mom is turning 86 in a few days and she’s talking of going home to the province before the month ends. I told her to wait for her birthday here. There is no reasoning with our old folks once they decide on something. She just told me yesterday to call my brother so he could fetch her. One thing I like about her is that she is always appreciative of what I cook. When she is not familiar with it, she watches  me prepare the ingredients and asks questions.  We’ve been on mostly fish and vegetables since the season of Lent started and Fridays are totally “no-meat days”. Sourcing what is available in our pantry, here it is, a yummy chicken shepherd’s pie. It always tastes good with panini bread, just plain grilled slices.

Mom loves the melted cheese and mashed potato on top. Baked it just to melt the cheese.

Never been good at taking pictures of food. One more try, that is…

P. S. And here’s the recipe,as promised Ren. You would need the following:

1 whole deboned chicken breast, boiled and cut into bite-size pieces

2 boiled potatoes

1/2 stick butter

dash of pepper

white onion, diced but it is better to cut it into small cubes

1 large carrot

1 cup of green peas

1 small can of Campbell Cream of Mushroom

grated cheese

Mash the potato with 1/2 stick butter, set aside. Saute onion, carrots, green peas and chicken then add in the can of mushroom last. Don’t put salt because the saltiness of the cream is good enough. Put in a baking dish, top with the mashed potato then grated cheese. A friend suggested that you can add bread crumbs to the cheese to make it crunchy to the bite  (it’s up to you). Bake for 30 minutes covered in aluminum foil or until the cheese melts. Serve hot with your favorite bread. I used the regular American loaf bread pressed on a Panini maker.

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Desserts, Anyone?

I am listening to some afternoon 70’s and 80’s music as I write this. When you’re used to blogging and posting something every day, you miss the hustle and bustle of the blogging world. I’ve been busy for a while though, catching up on gardening (finally finished replanting Crossandra  that just sprouted in all corners of the garden, regrouped them together in one line) and reading e-books, Christmas stories that warm the hearts and lift the spirits.  When it’s Josef’s days off, we work together to finish pending household chores that need his help. We found fresh zucchini and honeydew melons on our trip to the wet market last Saturday morning. Honeydew is juicier  than your regular melon found in the market. Low in calorie, rich in vitamin C and rich in fiber too. I don’t know if zucchini are in season now but  they are cheaper than a few months ago. It’s time to experiment on some recipes using zucchini. I normally use them for pasta dishes and crispy fries. I found out to my delight that there are about a hundred ways to cook zucchini. Here’s one simple dessert that I just baked a few minutes ago. The recipe is for muffins but I tweaked it a bit and came up with this yummy loaf.

Zucchini loaf

Last week, I made a variation of Puto (steamed buns) by adding Pandan flavoring. Just love it. I always reduce the sugar in the recipe, although I like to bake, I am not fond of too much sweets but my son is.

Puto pandan with cheese toppings

Josef gifted me with a three-tier Camel food steamer. It’s a late birthday gift, another gadget in the kitchen that I love. I have the bigger aluminum steamer which I use for embutido (our local sausage) and siomai (pork dumplings) but this one is easier to use and you can steam several kinds of veggies and meat in one cooking.  Healthy eats with no messy oil to think of. I tried it last night with carrots, sweet corn and deboned chicken breast with lemon.  Yummy! How was your week?

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Date Squares

This afternoon, I got really, really bored  so I started to update my journal, transferring some recipes I culled from the net for future kitchen experiments. I have to check our pantry if there are available ingredients for what I am planning to cook. Then I saw a pack of dates (my last one actually…huhuhu) which I am saving for my no-bake fruit cake. I don’t know where I could buy dried dates here (aside from the fact that they are expensive locally) but I was craving for something sweet. I’ve baked dates  bars before but I recently found a simple recipe sans vanilla extract and cinnamon powder.  Baking saved the boring afternoon. I love the smell of something cooking in my oven, the calming moments while waiting for it to bake, the oh-so-yummy look of it when it’s done.

Oh so yummy Date Squares!

If you want to try this, here’s the link.  I reduced the sugar because the dates are naturally sweet and used calamansi instead of lemon. Happy baking.

 

 

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Between Having Fever And Making Chocolate Crinkles

Here I go again with the same thought every time I don’t get to post for a few days at WordPress,  it is hard to start all over again. It seems as if the thoughts you have in your head vanishes like thin air when you are  ready to share and ready to write about it.

I’ve been sick for four days last week, that kind of feeling when you can’t do anything but shut your eyes and wish the pain of a gargantuan headache will just disappear. It was further aggravated by the  summer heat we are having at the moment and a fever that simply would not go away. I am not exaggerating. I’ve probably consumed gallons and gallons of water just to beat off the heat. I was still lucky  and blessed though because last week,  Mom, my sis-in-law and niece had a five-day short vacation with us so they did the cooking, cleaning the house and watering my plants while I was indisposed. My ten-year old niece was so attentive  she could pass for a nurse. She is good at doing those relaxing massages that make you feel sleepy.  She was seven when she last stayed with us during the summer and I am pleasantly surprised how she has grown to be a very responsible young kid.  I wish they could have stayed a little longer.

It is hard to go back to your normal routine when your body is weak.  I am taking things easy and that means the laundry is piling up, the carabao grass needs an immediate trim and our new puppy made a minced meat of my  bromeliad, even my angel plants didn’t escape from his roving eyes. This afternoon, for the first time this summer, it rained hard in our area, enough maybe to save on that much precious water for at least two days.

In between bouts of headache and fever, I was able to show my niece how to bake Chocolate Crinkles. I can still see the joy on her face and the smiles when she tasted the batter and said “ang sarap” which means  it is yummy. Since it was my first time to try the recipe, we have to go by the book, a step by step procedure that she could really understand. Surprisingly, they came out well, a good partner to the green tea our neighbor gave us when she learned that I was sick.  It was crispy on the outside but chewy and soft to the bite. She made me promise to teach her how to bake more goodies when she comes over again to visit us.

Yummy Chocolate Crinkles

I learned two more designs to my growing fascination for Rainbow Looms. It is quite hard (at least for me) to follow the instructional videos on YouTube which an eight-year old can easily do. My son bought more colors and they are really expensive.  Maybe when I am well enough to sit in front of the computer, I will learn more.

 

 

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It’s Chocolate Brownies With A Twist

It’s been a while and I felt quite lazy to sit in front of the computer and blog. This afternoon, I experimented on another dessert recipe culled from the net. I was looking for a simple recipe for chocolate brownies, something easy to do with a minimum of preparation and found this. As usual, I tweaked it a bit adding grated Belgian chocolate truffles on top instead of frosting.  My son was all praise for it and said it taste more like a chocolate cake than a simple brownie mix. I smiled and said, “the one on top makes it so yummy” plus the unsweetened dark chocolate I used.

Yeay, it’s so yummy!

Look at how it looked when I finished baking it and topping it with truffles.

Here’s the recipe if you want to try it. You can double the amount of ingredients if you want a thicker slice.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup  white sugar (since I used unsweetened chocolate, this is just enough)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

Frosting:

3 tbsp. butter

3 tbsp. cocoa powder

1 tbsp. honey

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup confectioner’s sugar

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and flour an 8-square inch baking pan. (I just greased it).

In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter, remove from heat and stir in sugar,  eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa powder, salt, 1/2 cup flour and baking powder. You don’t need to use a mixer, a spoon will do. Spread batter into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.  Garnish with grated chocolate truffles while still hot. Slice into squares when it is cool to the touch.

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s Mango Bread

“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces — just good food from fresh ingredients.”~ Julia Child

One of the  best volumes I’ve seen in cooking are that of Julia Child’s  Mastering the Art of  French Cooking. They’re available at Bestsellers. They come in four volumes actually but they cost the earth so I just look at the spines and indexes  and try to memorize some simple recipes  that don’t need  complicated ingredients.

We have some left-over food from yesterday and some ripe mangoes from the other Sunday that a friend gave us. I thought of  making mango bread and found this site on how to make a simple one.  The procedures are almost the same as making banana cake. Gosh, I burned my finger trying to take it out from the oven. I love the heavenly aroma of combined cinnamon and fresh mangoes.  There is something  so comforting about measuring ingredients, sifting the flour, mixing and such.  So here it is,  my yummy version of mango bread. Can you imagine a mango bread topped with grated Belgian chocolate truffles? Another friend who was on  vacation from Canada gave me a box of these sinfully addicting  chocolates together with some mint candies wrapped in dark chocolates.

I can proudly say, it  is really, really yummy. Here’s the recipe if you want to try it copied from  kitchenrunway.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 C All Purpose Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 C Sugar
• 2 tsp Cinnamon powder
• 3 Eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• ½ C Regular Butter, melted
• ¼ C Oil
• 2 Ripe Mangoes, finely chopped (or chunks if you prefer) I used 3 medium-sized ripe mangoes, coarsely chopped

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 180 ° C
• Sift flour into a large bowl.  Add baking soda, sugar and cinnamon and stir the dry ingredients to combine.
• In a medium bowl, beat eggs, add vanilla extract, melted butter and oil.  Combine the ingredients and add to dry ingredients.
• Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon stir to combine the wet and dry ingredients.  Fold in the  chopped mangoes.
• Pour batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 55 – 60 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
• Let cool in pan for 10 minutes.  Remove bread from pan and let cool before slicing.

 

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