Food Lover

I am a food lover of two dishes, adobo and pancit canton.

Adobo, especially the pork variety, has always been my favorite. I have yet to perfect the dish. I usually cook it until the oil from the pork fat mingles exquisitely with the soy sauce mixture. Ah, if only I have a photo. I promise to have one next time. There's a version of this dish wherein the pork is sauteed in its oil until no liquid is left, only the sumptous pork coated with the sweet sour flavor of the sauce and fat.

Pancit canton, the kind you cook from scratch, not from those ready to eat in three minute varieties, is my favorite noodle dish. It's a comfort food which I'm learning to cook the way I wanted it to taste. There had been hits and misses, but I'm getting there. There were times when the veggies become overcooked since the noodles has not yet reached the al dente stage. Now, I cook the noodles and veggies separately. So, the noodles are perfectly cooked while the veggies still has a crunch when you bite into it.

I would like to think that I can cook my favorite dishes from scratch. Well, the heck with thinking...I might as well DO IT...Because I do more thinking than doing...hehehe...Sayang ang bagong kusina....

Hopefully next time I will have the will to take photos of dishes before I devour them. Okay, okay, let me savor them first in my mouth before sentencing them to oblivion...

Happy Eating!!!

the big _5th

another birthday post...

i finally reached my 35th birthday...i hope i can make it until my 100th...

it was the most unforgettable birthday of my whole life. i don't want to elaborate. i usually cook for a special occasion at home but this time i was not able to. i celebrated my birthday a day before. the same day i went to see two doctors, my cousin and an ENT doctor, due to vertigo. my cousin JOAN (bless her jolliness...) said it was benign positional vertigo. the ENT doctor concluded the same, and said it was due to a virus...hello...i have to look this up in the internet...anyway, the world was spinning around me and i could not walk straight (kiss my modelling dreams goodbye...).

and so we just ordered take out at our favorite chinese restaurant. these are what we ordered:
seafood roll, beef with brocolli, buttered chicken, pancit canton, and seafood in cream sauce. we bought grilled fish in our neighborhood flea market, by mom gave me a chocolate cake, and i made fruit salad...that's it.

But, I can never thank the following people enough: God, who gave me another chance, and never gave up on me; my parents & siblings, who are always there for me no matter what, my husband and two kids, who are my life now and forever, my relatives and friends who have made my life an adventurous one...

sa inyong lahat, maraming salamat po...

until the next birthday....chow...

rice crisis...

The Philippines is suffering from rice crisis in two ways. First, there is perceived shortage of NFA rice, a more affordable variety of rice available to most poor people, and second, businessmen are taking advantage of this by increasing the price of well milled and high quality rice.

Taking stock of the situation, my thoughts came upon the Food for School Program of the Department of Education and the Arroyo Administration, which I wrote about in this blog.
What will happen to the thousands of school children who receive one kilo of rice per day during the course of the school year? What will happen to their families who depend on them and encourage them to attend school just to have one kilo of rice on their table?

I read in a major daily newspaper that the Secretary of the Department of Education assured the public that the Program will continue because they have the budget to cover for the rice allocation needs of the beneficiaries. That's good news.

This crisis may be good news to diabetics. It's a chance for them to cut down on the carbs intake and look for alternative food choices that is healthy and nutritious. This is all for now.

Food for School Program of the DepEd

I will feature a very laudable program of the Department of Education named Food for School Program. It started last 2006. The program aims to mitigate hunger of poor families and improve school retention. In the first phase of the program, only grade one students from selected elementary schools in areas declared as vulnerable provinces were given one (1) kilo of Iron Fortified Rice every school day for SY 2006-2007 and Summer of SY 2006-2007. Per our interview of the teachers from selected elementary schools in Zamboanga del Norte, the program was a big help to the families of pupils because it improved the attendance of their children in school and gave them rice everyday.

In one elementary school in Zamboanga del Norte, the teachers served the same rice to us for lunch, paired with sardines for ulam. We not only inspected the rice but ate it as well. For others, they are bothered by the yellow specks in the rice, but it is these yellow specks which gives iron in the rice. It is an eye opening experience talking to the teachers and recipient families about the program.

For SY 2007-2008, the recipients were expanded to grade two to six students. But it is still limited to one family per kilo of rice. Meaning, even if you have two kids, one in grade 2 and the other in grade 5, only a kilo of rice will be given, usually to the older child.

I hope that such program will continue and it will not be open to abuse and corruption by the people in government.

cheese sticks

i love cheese...well, the cheeses that i have tasted at this point in my life, that is. they consist of queso de bola, pasteurized cheeses, and the cheeses in pizzas which is mainly parmesan and mozarella. i have yet to try the american, italian and other types of cheese. from where i come from, these imported cheeses are available in the only gourmet store in our city, La Tienda. boy, are they expensive. i asked my brother, who is in the U.S., to send me some.

i love food that is fried...sorry, high cholesterol po. so, when they invented the cheese sticks, i tried it and love it ever since. cheese sticks are made of cheese cut into tiny sticks (depending on the size you want), and wrapped in molo or lumpia wrapper (edible wrappers made of flour and water). one box of eden cheese is enough for 100 pieces of molo wrappers. deep fry in hot oil over medium heat until golden brown.

you can make a dip to accompany it. my dip consist of mayonnaise, catsup, crushed garlic, cumin, a little sugar, and liquid seasoning. you can concoct a dip of your own according to your taste. i still have to perfect the cooking process, though. because of the thickness of the cheese, it oozes out of the wrapper before the wrapper is cooked. the result is burnt cheese in your oil. maybe a deep fryer will do the rick. well, i have to practice some more, because practice makes perfect. not only will i perfect the cooking process, i get to eat a lot of cheese sticks.

corned beef day

breakfast on sunday is corned beef day...we especially like the argentina brand. i usually out in a lot of onion, garlic, tomatoes and potatoes. we don't eat beef during the week so i take the opportunity to serve beef duing weekends. here's a photo of the dish and the spices while it was cooked, taken using my 1.3 megapixel camera phone. i don't have the budget to buy a digital camera...i hope my brother will give me one on my birthday.

i'm open to other suggestions for sunday breakfast...but, this will do for now. we usually wake up late in the morning and this is the fastest way i can whip up breakfast...

being the queen ain't that easy...