All About Food

What foods would you like to make?

Filipino food of course like our sinigang (shrimp, fish or pork), adobo, paksiw na lechon, our Pangasinan mixed vegetables in fish sauce, some menus we inherited from the Spanish era, Chinese pancit in any variant, lumpiang Shanghai, veggie lumpia (just bought some ingredients a few hours ago) and of course pasta.

I bought a large ampalaya (bitter melon) which I will cook later with eggs. Yesterday, I cooked chicken adobo with coconut cream. Adobo is best eaten after a day or two. The vinegar which is the main ingredient and lots of garlic preserve it for long.

Getting hungry here🥥🥕🍆🍲

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Happy Weekend

Finally done gardening yesterday. A back-breaking job but it has to be done.

I bought five pieces solar garden lights but for the past two days we didn’t have enough sunlight to charge them fully. They need at least eight hours in full sun. Sayang! I am excited seeing the garden illuminated at night.

Jovy told me last night not to cook anymore for lunch because they ordered lechon pork belly. It’s the latest craze now here but we haven’t tried it yet. The belly is tied like a roll and cooked slowly in charcoal. They marinate it first before grilling.

It was only yesterday that we said goodbye to some food we had for New Year. I ordered dried fish online and milkfish from the vendor who passed by yesterday and made them into daing na bangus. Yummy dish paired with sliced tomatoes and boiled sweet potato leaves.

How was your New Year celebration? Do you still make New Year’ resolution. I don’t anymore but I promised myself to read another 100 books this year. Done with four.

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Closer To The Goal

In our language you call it “nangangapa”. I told you earlier this is a trial and error thing. Sometimes, I couldn’t even see the blog itself except for the latest blog post on my reader.

I need to log in via Google to see the whole thing. The app itself, I think is not enough. Considering that I need to take photos via this tab to be able to post them here, I may not be able to attach other photos taken from my CP. It takes better pictures than this one.

I just took a look at my total stats since I am dreaming of reaching a total of 600,000 by year-end. I need 90 plus more to reach it. I miss my PC, Josef is so busy he hasn’t taken a look yet.

I am closer to the goal, there are four more days to go before the new year.

My youngest brother from Tulsa are comparing notes on what to prepare for our Media Noche. He said prepare something sweet, something long like pancit, just a little of everything. I told him I’m gonna try lechon kawali. We still have embutido here which I cooked before Christmas and we haven’t touched the Christmas ham yet. Maybe a kilo of menudo too which I could prepare in advance.

In a few days, another leaf in the calendar would be lost. Let us all welcome 2020 with hope and prayers for a healthy life 🎊🎉💕🌝

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What’s For Media Noche?

 

Thinking of what to prepare tomorrow night for our media noche, to celebrate the coming of  the new year.  Usually, we celebrate a new leaf in the calendar with lots of sweets  like fruit or buko salad, cakes and the usual  food  like pancit, pasta, embutido, lumpiang shanghai, menudo (mostly  Chinese and  Spanish recipes handed down from one generation to the next). The price of buko (young coconut) has significantly gone up over the years. It now costs P35 per piece whereas a year or two ago, it could be bought at P20 to P25.

Celebration of new year here in our country is steeped in tradition. I blogged about this years ago how we celebrate New Year. It is pretty normal that two days before  new year, wet markets and grocery stores are filled with people shopping for fruits and sweets, must items that should be on the table come  media noche.  Tradition says that having twelve kinds of fruits  on the table brings luck, any round fruit will do but some are specific about what fruits to serve on the table. When they are not in season though, they cost sky-high. It is only during this time that you will see so many fruits displayed in the market.  Even lechon  (a roasted suckling pig)  could be bought whole or by the kilo. It’s one of the usual recipes that is served during Christmas and New Year.  I bought some fruits already, half-a kilo each for the small ones, pineapple  and  honey-dew but they are not yet complete. There are only six items  in all but the fruit basket is already filled. m I have to go back to the market tomorrow for the rest.  I am thinking of preparing chicken ala king, menudo, the usual baked ham,  and finger food like lumpiang shanghai (spring rolls). Pasta of course will  not be left behind  or pancit  for long life, so they say.

Attending the New Year’s Eve mass is also practiced by most Catholics here.  It used to be that mass was held at exactly 12am but that was changed over the years since you cannot hear the celebration properly with the sound of fireworks all around.  I don’t know why but they haven’t totally banned the use of firecrackers. It is still a big business particularly in some towns in Bulacan.They pose a serious and environmental health dangers, it’s pollution to the max.  I wonder why some people can’t do away with all these toxic chemicals. We never buy firecrackers,  our neighbors’ display are  more than enough to pollute the air in our village.

How do you greet the new year in your area? Do you have the same traditions like we do here?  May the coming 2017 be a brighter and better year for us. May it always be filled with  faith, hope and peace.

HAPPY 2017 !!!

 

 

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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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And It’s Good Old Champorado For Breakfast

It’s been raining since last night and my son said, “it’s a sin to wake up early in this weather” but when he saw the spread on the table, he smiled and said, “kain na”.  Yes, it’s the kind of weather where you just want to stay in bed and read while sipping a hot cup of coffee or listen to morning news on the radio.

We have champorado for breakfast with matching tuyo. My son  asked why we  always have to match champorado with fried tuyo and I told him, why do you have dinuguan with puto and instantly we had a game of what food matches this or that. It was a lively breakfast with Mom.

I used about 1/4 kilo of glutinous rice  and two cups of coconut cream to give it that creamy texture, about a cup of unsweetened  Ricoa cocoa and a cup of brown sugar to taste. The tuyo (dried fish) balances the sweetness of the chocolate porridge.

Since I don’t like milk which is the usual ingredient to make the champorado creamy, I have to substitute the coconut cream which is more flavorful. You need to constantly stir the mixture in low fire so it won’t stick to the bottom of the pan.  Give it a try, specially on a cold weather like this and you’ll surely have a second helping of it.

We’ve been to the market over the weekend and bought lots of dried pusit, dried deboned danggit,  and a quarter kilo of tuyo. It’s the beginning of Lent in two days and fasting is a regular thing that we do every year, less meat but more on fish, fruits and vegetables.

So, what did you have for breakfast?

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Did Someone Say It’s A Thai Dish?

I had to cook early for dinner because I haven’t made my blog yet for today.  It’s not really that much of a problem since I still haven’t visited the blogging clues they churn out everyday here at WordPress, to make this daily challenge easy.  Maybe when I’ve gone out of subjects to blog about, I will join the others writing about those subjects at hand.

I opened the refrigerator door and what were left  in the freezer were  one whole deboned chicken breast,  a pack of pork sirloin plus mixed veggies,  a small pack of a  frozen cream dory and yes, lots of eggs for breakfast.  We are due for our  weekly marketing tomorrow so these are more than enough for lunch and dinner. I was scouring our cupboard for some ingredients to go with what I had in mind but the curry powder was not enough for one cooking. I was thinking of making a pork curry for dinner, then I saw this pack of instant Phad-Kapraow paste which my daughter brought home from Thailand late last year. Phad Kapraow is a combination of vegetable oil, chili, seasoning sauce, holy basil (kapraow) leaves and garlic.  It’s a ready-made paste which you can just pour into the dish while cooking.

What to do, what to do? Adobo is a recipe which is uniquely Filipino using vinegar, pepper, soy sauce, garlic and ginger. I thought of making one but why not use Phad-Kapraow paste for a change? I didn’t add vinegar and soy sauce though since the spicy flavor of the paste is good enough for the recipe. I am wondering what to call this since it turned out really yummy, I’ll just give you the basic ingredients if you want to experiment on it just like I did.

1 whole chicken breast – deboned
1 whole piece pork sirloin
4 cloves garlic
small piece of ginger
1 head onion
salt to taste
ground black pepper
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups coconut milk

Saute pork and chicken together and let it simmer until tender. Add coconut milk and lower the heat, cook until the oil is visible, then add the Phad-Kapraow paste last. For garnish, I fried 3 pieces of medium-sized potatoes, cut into cubes and a whole medium-sized red bell pepper to add color to the dish. Hubby says, it’s good but I am still wondering what to call it really. We have this standing joke that when we can’t identify a dish (because we invented it), we call it “maskipaps” which means “maski papano” in Tagalog (anything goes in English). Would it be okay if I name it, Arlene’s Thai Chicken-Pork Adobo? What do you think?

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