Ouch!

It's another looooong weekend but I don't see myself making anything more than what I've already prepared. I've marinated the yakiniku beef slices in a Korean barbecue mix I bought at an Asian store across our building and that should be ready in time for dinner.

When the beef was all soaked, I went on to help my tita prepare veggies for chop suey and I ended up cutting my ring finger with a new knife. Now, I love new knives but I hate it when they cut me... not that it's they're fault for being so sharp :P

This whole incident reminds me of a time when I was watching Wok with Yan on television and I was playing with a new paring knife (I was under supervision and it was small but it was still a knife--what were my elders thinking?). It was a tragic ending for a thumbsucking five-year old, I tell you.

Oh well...

My finger looks even more tiny now that it's wrapped in band-aid. It's a teeny-tiny shallow cut but it stings like hell. Argh.

Once upon a lazy Sunday night

You'd think that after an encounter with a humongous black angus burger at Charlie's last week, I'd shun off burgers for the next 78 days.

Wrong.

I went for retail therapy in a supermarket after an annoying afternoon a few days ago and found this:
How could I possibly resist?

It was right beside a stack of yakiniku beef packages (which I got as well; I'll post the photo when I finally get to do something with it).

I initially planned to make the burgers for lunch but I was totally wiped out after a long night of driving to Subic plus an early Sunday coverage at the Fort (yes, seriously). Besides, the rock hard patties took forever and a half to thaw so we had to wait till dinner for it to be ready.
So here's my cheeseburger:

That's the grilled steak burger patty right in the middle of cheddar cheese (bottom, thanks to my lolo) and blue cheese (top, thanks to Gerard), some lettuce which I tucked in when I was finally ready to wolf down the whole package just before the Italian Grand Prix started. Gardenia's burger buns are nice.

And here's the love of my current life:

Isn't he just absolutely yummy? :P Jenson Button won second place in Monza. To borrow PerezHilton's phrase, he's just super adorbs.

So early...

I guess this is why I'm "good" at making breakfast [well, relatively.. compared with lunches and dinners and everything else :)]

Quizzes Girls Games

Fish fillet in lemon butter sauce

Here's something from a friend:

http://eyesgonzales.blogspot.com/2009/02/attention-weekend-kusinera.html

I haven't tried making it but I promise I will.. one of these days.

Yummy breakfast

Maybe I should just shift to being a "breakfast kusinera" since I usually get time to cook only on Sunday mornings.

Here's what I made this morning:

I just layered store-bought pizza dough with mozzarella, cream cheese, feta cheese, strips of smoked salmon and topped 'em up with three tiny capers for a batch of savory breakfast. I was thinking this is best for brunch so there's an excuse to open a bottle of white wine but my mom got hungry early so we just paired it with coffee. Pretty weird combo, but the pizza rocks on its own.

*****

A couple of weeks ago, I whipped up some pancakes and served it with fruits.

Here's the box which made it all possible:

I already have a bottle of maple-flavored syrup so I just used the strawberry syrup which came with the mix to to make the pancakes blush a little.

There were more strawberries and there's always a risk we'd just forget about it in the fridge so I just served everything in one go. I also found yellow watermelon at the grocery. The color is kinda disorienting but it tastes just as sweet as the red ones.

There you go. Now I have another week to think of what to make for breakfast next Sunday :)

Dinner in Amsterdam? Let's!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Someone greeted me "HVD" this morning. Sounds more like a disease than a greeting, but what the heck. As they say, it's the thought (and perhaps the text) that counts.

A glass of chardonnay is waiting for me to guzzle it up as of this writing. Hardy's has been one of my favorites since I discovered it early last year. For one thing, it's really, really affordable. Less than P300 a bottle. How can you beat that?

It goes well with pizza (especially ones topped with anchovies, but I didn't order that for this evening - my mom said she doesn't like anchovy pizza 'though I swear one time I ordered it from A Veneto, she said it was good).

A couple of photos should be accompanying this entry but I'm still kinda woozy so I'll just edit and add it later. And I'm not exactly sure how much typos are in this entry. Again, I'll just edit later.

Happy V-DAY!

Briegud! Briegud!

Say "CHEEEEEESE!!!!

My friend, who went frolickin' in Europe for a couple of weeks, came home with this wedge of Brie for moi. I believe it's my prize for helping him pray to get the trip! Haha!

He got this piece of Brie from Maison Collignon, formerly known as Au Marche de la Butte, where Amelie shopped in... well, Amelie.

I almost finished the 125-gram cheese in one sitting. Siiigh... I have turned into a pig. Do pigs love cheese? I wonder. At any rate, thank you Chong Gerard - for the cheese and the shop pic!

P.S.

Read about Gerard's adventures on http://actorenescritor.blogspot.com/. Ciao!

All spiced up!

If I had a new year's resolution list, it wouldn't include not blogging. Unfortunately, I really had very little to talk about the past weeks. For one thing, like many other households in Metro Manila, we (still) don't have LPG. We ran out of it early January. We did find a tank of cooking gas some time last month but it's defective. We've been cooking everything on an electric skillet for almost two months. Meralco must be very happy these days.

I haven't done much experimenting since the start of the year. I made Veenagoongang Vavoy a couple of times. Made my Fake Cheesecake for New Year's eve and for a friend's husband's new president's post-inauguration party. Last weekend, I made Porky Rolls -only this time they were flat because I now have an amazing plastic tenderizing thingie, AS SEEN ON TV!! (Well, not really.)

A couple of weeks ago, my mom thoughtfully bought me a recipe book while on a business trip in Singapore. What she missed considering, though, is the fact that most of the recipes call for ingredients which demand frustration as I am not likely going to get them here.

One thing that's been bugging me, even before that fateful day of the recipe book's arrival, is Garam Masala. I see it in a lot of Asian recipes. Wiki says:

Garam masala, the literal meaning of which is 'hot spice' (in the meaning of high temperature as opposed to spiciness), is a basic blend of ground spices to be used alone or with other seasonings. It is common in Indian cuisine.

Now, I luuuuv spices. So when a friend said he's going to Singapore, I thought I'd ask for a tiny jar of Garam Masala for future use. He got me this....







... as well as it's seven cousins!! Here's a family pic:



I'm sooo looking forward to cooking with these babies! Thanks, Dax!

Noche buena!

Happy holidays!

What are you making for Christmas eve?

I haven't made a list. And the menu is usually taken cared of by the older people in the family. There's buzz, of course, that my cousin and I are in charge this year. Wish us luck!