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13 recipes to learn this year
13 Recipes to Learn this Year
I have the whole year to widen my culinary skills and learn these 13 sumptuous meals!!! Most of these recipes will be from Rachael Ray (my fave chef!!! because she eyeballs ingredients like me!), Ina Garten,Everyday Italian show or from the show Ka-Toque or from my mom's cookings. She doesn't cook often but when she does it's always special.
1. Lasagna! - I already know how to make Spaghetti sauce, or Italian sauce, or even tuyo pasta, but I 've never tried baked pasta, so for this year I want to learn how to make either lasagna or baked cannelloni.
2. Portobello Burgers with Roasted Pepper Paste and Smoked Mozarella - recipe found here. Ever since I saw Rachael Ray cook this in 30 Minute Meals I have been dying to try it out! Unfortunately, I thought that Portobello was not able in the Ph back then, but thanks to Yummy Magazine I found out that it's available at Farmer's Market! Yay! Now where can I find Smoked Mozarella??
3. Lemon Chicken - one of my favorite things to eat at Chinese restaurants especially North Park, it's about time I try my own version right?
4. The Perfect Adobo- I'm very picky when it comes to adobo, especially if it's chicken, the meat has to be cooked through, and it shouldn't smell malansa, the perfect adobo is the one with just a little bit of sauce and oil, instead of like a soup.
5.Kare-Kare - I wouldn't be Filipino if I didn't know how to make this right?
6.Pochero - This is one of my comfort foods, I love the taste of the soup and the contrast of banana, my makes makes a mean pochero so I just have to ask her for the recipe.
7.Outrageous Brownies - Ina Garten's recipe found here. I've never made brownies except for the instant ones from the box where you add egg and water and place it in the mocrowave or oven, but I really want to try this one!
8.Lamb Biryani - I saw this at Pinoycook. I've been wanting to experiment cooking with lamb for a long time, eversince I ate at Cafe Mediterranean, I think this is a great recipe to try right?
9.The perfect potato salad - another comfort food for me! I'm also picky with this one, the dressing should be just right and I usually like crispy bacon bits on top of my salad.
10.Shawarma Rice - one of my and Y's favorite food to eat when we're at Greenhills, the best one we've tasted so far was at Trinoma, which also had the best kebab rice I've ever tasted!
11.Beef Stroganoff - I have good memories of this dish served with pasta, cooked by Papa Ray, even though I'm not really fond of sour cream I'm still willing to try this recipe out.
12.PIzza! - any pizza, any flavor any topping, I don't know if I should also try making my own dough though, but I'd really love to learn how to cook this, this is Y's favorite food so syempre kailangan aralin di ba?
Yum!!
13.And last but not the least , I want to learn how to bake a Sugarfree cake for my dad, you see my dad's diabetic so I want to make him a dessert that he can eat, we usually buy him Ice Cream from Big Scoop or BTIC, or for cakes at Icings or Cake 2 Go, but I want to make him my own, I'm targetting October since it's his birthday month so I have less than nine months to try and try!
So there it is, the recipes that I would like to learn for this year. Hopefully I don't forget, there were some that I wanted to add, like dinuguan or bopis, but there are usually the meals I look forward to eating whenever we would go to Pampanga so I'd rather keep the feeling of anticipation for those dishes, and anyway I know I can't do it better than my Inang can.
Sometimes when the mood strikes me,I make a TO DO list of the things I want to or need to accomplish. For this year, one of the things I wanted to accomplish was to have my room repainted. Ever since we moved to Quezon City from San Juan around 6, 7 years ago, I painted my room only once, in this old rose, lavender almost pink color. Before the year ended I told my dad that I intended to paint my room since I had a two week vacation.
I never thought it would happen since the first week passed without anything happening, except maybe rearranging my bed, and creating chaos in my closet.But the second week, around January 2, we went to Sm Fairview and I bought paint and other supplies, the next day I started painting and by evening i was done!! I chose this color from Davies, it's called Orange High, I'm for a sunset theme this year for my room, my walls will be orange so my accents will be red. I still have a lot to do (like fixing my closet, which is still in disarray) and I still need to paint my cabinets white, I was going to paint it yellow but decided it will be too colorful so I settled on white., I also need to put up some shelves for my books and vanity, but I'm so excited! I've been planning for this for about 2 years now and I've finally found enough time and motivation to do it! And of course my dad's help, he fixed my lights and this one electric socket that never worked, plus he's FINALLY going to put up these paintings I bought about 4 years ago.
This is the on ly picture I've taken so far, I was lying in bed exhausted over the day's work and I only had enough energy for one picture. I love my new room!
notice how my cabinets look dirty? I'm going to paint them a semi glossy white next time!
I blogged about this pasta I had at TOSH in Cubao, what I had then was Gourmet Tuyo with Lemon Rind. I figured it was an easy dish to make since it didn't really require cooking any sauce.
What better time to spend one of my vacation days than cooking? I was alone at home and thought now was a good time to try it out! Here's the result of my latest kitchen adventure...
I loved it! Although I would have preferred it with linguini or angel hair instead of the spaghetti that I used. It tasted almost like the one in TOSH except that I used butter with the olive oil so it tasted buttery, I had a lot of leftovers and gave it to my dad, he finished it all!! Yay! Next to taste will be Y of course, I just hope I get another day to rest so I can cook this for him!
Happy New Year everyone! So to celebrate the new year, I've decided to answer a survey about the year that was.
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Really, truly enjoy my job. This is the fist job I have where I actually gave a letter of intent at the end of the school year instead of a resignation.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't make resolutions, they never made sense to me because I'd either forget about it or ignore it.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? not this year nope
4. Did anyone close to you die? None, thank God.
5. What countries did you visit? For 2007 I wasn't able to go anywhere but hopefully for 2008, I could at least go to HongKong or Thailand.
6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? A DSLR camera.
7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? This is hard...give me more time to think about and go through my journal.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Being able to stay in one job! 9. What was your biggest failure? Hmmm...for me to know, I'm still not completely over it.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nope, just the occasional fever and colds.
11. What was the best thing you bought? My camera!
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Lana!!!! ~ hehe she can walk now! 13. Whose behaviour appalled you and made you depressed? I'd rather not talk about it here, if you don't mind
14. Where did most of your money go? hay...food as usual.
15 What did you get really, really, really excited about? My job!
16. What song will always remind you of 2007? Collide (even the best fall down sometimes...)
Can't get You out of my had (because of the New Year's Eve celebration)
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? sadder ii. thinner or fatter? thinner!!! =< iii. richer or poorer? hmmmm...the same
18. What do you wish you'd done more of? I wish I'd saved more money
19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Procrastinate!
20. How will you be welcoming the NEw YEar? The usual, we'll be at my mom's side of the place, my cousins will set up the place so we'd have a live band and we'll sing our hearts out until the countdown.
22. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Aside from Y? I fell i love with photography and e-books!!! haha
23. How many one-night stands? None!
24. What was your favourite TV program? HEROES!!! Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, Bones
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Nope.
26. What was the best book you read? Like Water for Chocolate, the TWILIGHT series!!!!
27. What was your greatest musical discovery? hmmm.... this is tricky, let me get back to you on this hehe
28. What did you want and get? To buy a camera,have a laptop, enjoy my job and be happy
29. What did you want and not get? Get a DSLR
30. Favorite film of this year? At World's End, Freedom Writers, Meet the Robinsons,
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I had lunch with my family and Y, I can't remember what happened after that?
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
going to the Hillsong Conference with Y
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? anything that makes me comfortable
34. What kept you sane? Y
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Johnny Depp
36. Who is your real-person crush? duh?
37. What political issue stirred you the most? don't get me started
38. Who did you miss? the most important persons in my life were always a phone call away
38. Who was the best new person you met? new teacher here in school
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. It all begins and ends with God
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year "The more I seek You, the more I find You, the more I find You, the more I love You"
*****AND LASTLY!!! 1) GOALS/DREAMS FOR THE NEW YEAR: I want my own DSLR, and to travel somewhere after I've saved enough money, and something else I will not share because it's too personal
2) PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT YEAR ON: A. LOVE – Big decisions need to be made
Every year when a new one starts I like opening my journal and reading through whatever happened the past year. Unfortunately for this year I was not able to faithfully document everything that's been happening in my life, or even the important ones.
I do regret this, I would have loved to remember so much more about the year 2007. I love being nostalgic and reminiscing even the unimportant, mundane details.
That's actually one of the reasons that it takes so long for me to organize my room and my stuff. If I suddenly come across old letters, pictures and yes my journal, I would always stop everything and start going through all of them. Hence, my room always look half cleaned, most of the stuff that are not organized are usually hidden in the numerous cabinets and corners I have in my room.
I would love to blog about all of the events in my life, but I find that nothing beats the enjoyment of actually writing them all down. I mean I can actually remember feeling an emotion of anger when I see the squiggly lines I wrote on my journal. And when I'm excited I tend to write really fast so some words are unreadable, but I get them. Or when I want to emphasize something I use marker instead of a ballpen. I mean I can't do that in my blog!
Sometimes I would sit in front of my laptop, and I know exactly what to write but while typing the emotion slowly disappears, and I lose the motivation to continue, but when I have my journal in front of me, sometimes it takes me an hour just to write on it.
I even draw in my journal! And since I'm not really an artist this is a momentous event everytime you see a drawing on my journal.
For this year, I've decided to intentionally write on my journal again. I have this small diary that my BF gave me about 1 year ago, I never got around to using it because I had a journal already by that time, but I will make time this year.
So that when 2009 comes, I'll be spending the first day of the year laughing crying, reminiscing and simply enjoying the year that passed.
Y and I went to Cubao last night because he needed to buy strings for his guitar. We went around Gateway first then proceeded to Ali Mall because it's where we usually buy his strings. After that started loking for a place to eat dinner. We didn't want to go to Tokyo, Tokyo because we just ate at Karate Kid last Sunday, so no Japanese food for us. There was Hap Chan, but I didn't feel like eating Chinese food also, and Y wasn't in the mood for Gerry's.
Good thing that we found that one of our favorite restaurants, The Old Spaghetti House, was now in Ali Mall! And I was so craving for pizza. We decided to try something new because our usual orders would be the angel hair pomodoro and the chicken crepe or the spareribs.
So I ordered Smoked Bavarian Sausage with Fettucine Alfredo and Y ordered Gourmet Tuyo with Lemon Rind.
The funny thing was, after sampling both our dishes we decided to exchange food. I liked his pasta better andhe liked mine more than his. The old man sitting beside us found it amusing and commented on what we did, "ganyan talaga nagmamahalan." hehe. For dessert, we had Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake, which was just divine! Here are some pics of our dinner last night.
Here's a video of the Convergence that happened last October. Haha, dami ko nakita, like Y who I saw three times and one of our students, Robin, who was dancing at the last part.
But most of all, I loved being reminded of what God has given in my heart during the whole convergence, from the speakers to the worship time, I'm so grateful for everything. If you were there, I'm sure you'll feel nostalgia in remembering the whole convergence.
If you were not able to come, I hope you become blessed with the things you'll see in this video! God bless!
I was supposed to blog about this a few days ago, unfortunately blogdrive was down so I has to wait until it was up and running again.
Anyway, this is what I made for dinner for Y and I last Monday,
Okay, so it doesn't look appetizing in picture, but trust me it's good.
For those who can't distinguish, this is breaded pork chop, what made it delicious was that I added herbs to the breading. There was thyme, rosemary and of course, my favorite herb, basil. It was delcious! Y loved it, so that's my gauge, I also made lemon butter sauce to go with it, since I am so tired of eating pork chop with either ketchup or vinegar.
