Babies, Adventures in the Kitchen and Nore-what???

So is this how it goes? I find a job and I ditch blogging altogether? Considering that I haven't blogged in oh, 2 weeks,  I'd understand if this little bloggie blog of mine would feel mighty neglected.

Like an unfaithful significant other, I'm pleading forgiveness and vowing more us time. So where to begin? I apologize, but it looks like it's going to be a lazy summary of what's happened in the last couple of weeks. Brutal, but it must be done.

New Addition to the Family
 I'm an auntie again! This time it's my sister-in-law who's given birth to her first child--a beautiful little girl. It's a wondrous occasion because it's also the first grandchild for the in-laws. We visited them in the Bay Area and the families were just giddy with excitement for the lil one. Yes, I loved our new little niece the first time I laid eyes on her, but I just have to chuckle...I mean, can there be such thing as being overly proud of your baby? I mean, I can understand the amount of fawning that goes on when a new baby -- especially the first -- is born into a family. "Oh, she isn't she the most gorgeous baby you've ever seen?" "She is sooo much cuter than such-and-such's baby!" "No other baby is cuter than our little girl." Considering that I already have three other nieces -- all of whom were flower girls at our wedding -- I was willing to be more neutral on the "baby wars." . But you know what, it's ok to be overly proud of your new baby, or granchild or niece. She's yours. You love her. You are truly blessed to have her. Savor the moment.

Hello, Work Force!
New job is going well. Since the company is new, and the position is new, navigating through all the details can give you a headache. Literally. I think I must have spent hours trying to get into our programming system...something that I'm sure won't take me more than a few seconds once I get into the routine of things. But I'm excited. I'm working in a field that I fascinated with -- Communications. In this day and age, it's an evolving and dynamic field. I was trained in print journalism, but no one can deny that the entire journalism industry is heading toward the digital world, albeit somewhat delayed by many accounts (ask the legions of unemployed journalists out there). Instead of fighting the future, I believe firmly in embracing it. I'm thrilled of the new opportunities in store. Prayers for guidance into this promising new adventure!

Nore-what?
That would be norebang and that's what we did for my lil sis' birthday bash. Norebang is Korean for song box, and that's what norebangs are really - a private room (some as small as boxes) where you and your friends can sing to Karaoke, without you having to sit through other folks' awful renditions of Summer Lovin. My sister rented a large, comfy room in LA's Koreatown where we sang with ultimate surround sound (uh, make that everyone but me...I don't sing). Makes a perfect night out for the karaoke king and queens out there!

Although, I did take to the mic once in a previous norebang experience. Yup, if you get me drunk enough I'll sing some Genie in the Bottle for ya! 

Lil Sis, the Rockstar
My lil sis in a band called the Lodevico Technique, a combination of our last name and a Clockwork Orange reference. A little ironic cuz their debut performance was at my sister's church's annual fair and A Clockwork Orange isn't quite church-inspired material, but oh well. She and her band rocked it out despite the rain.

You know what else I loved? Pupusas....mmmmm. They look like pancakes but they're stuffed with meat and cheese. El Salvador might be a tiny country but they sure know how to make their grub. 

RIP Trick-or-Treating!
Seriously, is trick or treating a thing of the past? Is it going the way of ice cream trucks and the milk man? Not one trick or treater came to our door for Halloween. Sad.

Run, Forest, Run!
I'm behind in my training by a couple weeks, but I'm still running. I'm up to 5 miles and have to tackle 6 miles this week. I've been running at our local park which is a 0.4 mile loop. Just to run 5 miles, I had to make it around 12.5 times. Kind of hard to keep track of my rounds. So I'm in search of a place to run long distances. I may check out Bonelli Park as a possible training site.

What's for Dinner?
I'm still cooking, even with the new job. I enjoy it so why quit what you love? I don't particularly like eating out when I know I have food in the fridge that might go bad soon if I don't whip up something with it. I hate waste. I hate spending a ton of money on eating out. But cooking has been so common that I've kind of slacked off with the food porn photo shoots. What has been on the menu lately?
* Beef Calderetta (a Filipino beef stew) -  Delicious, but the flavor might have been a bit too different for the other people in the house. I used Mama Sita's Spicy Calderetta mix. Great time saver, although I don't think it's that spicy
* Pumpkin pie - I was in the mood for some pumpkin pie on Halloween. But I cheated and used the super-duper easy recipe behind the can of my ready-made pie mix. Just add Carnation evaporated milk, eggs and pie mix into the ready-made store bought pie shell and you're good to go. Nothing spectacular in terms of culinary feats, but it was oh-so-good. Kinda bummed someone else beat me to the last piece in the fridge!

* Chicken Katsu, mac salad and rice- sounds like an odd combo, but if you've been to Hawaii and eaten a plate lunch, it's a perfect threesome. We're missing Hawaii (Kauai was our honeymoon spot), the waves, the island breeze. So I decided to whip up something my hubby adores. The Mac salad was pretty easy, although I had to make some modifications to the recipe. Yummy and on the sweet side. The chicken katsu was kind of time consuming, especially when you're cooking a huge portion. But the end result was worth it!
* Pasta with Prawns in Creamy Garlic Sauce - A tasty dish for any lover of the stinking rose. Just be sure not to overcook the shrimp. My mistake as they were a bit tough.

* Chicken Adobo - a Filipino staple and favorite.  I grew up with this stuff. In fact I know it by heart. While it's so easy to make and requires just a few ingredients (seriously just soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaf and chicken), the flavor is really intense, but delicious.

* Baked Mac and Cheese - I think I needed more cheese for the portion I was making, but the roux was so yummy. Bay leaf was something new to most mac and cheese recipes I've done, but it was a great addition!

* Egg salad sandwich - What's so great about egg salad? Well, if you add a little onion, a little celery and a dash of curry powder, you have one tasty sandwhich!

* Hu Tieu/Banh Pho Don Xao Bo (Vietnamese Crispy Rice Noodle Beef Stir-Fry)

As you can tell, my end result didn't look as tantalizing as my inspiration  on WanderingChopsticks , but even though mine wasn't as good, the fam still enjoyed the taste. Think I'll try this recipe again...maybe I'll get it right the next time.
Read more: http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2010/07/hu-tieu-banh-pho-don-xao-bo-vietnamese.html#ixzz14ZmoWaYT

* Chicken Curry Fried Rice - What I always do with leftover rice is fry it. But I'm always looking for new ways to fry rice besides the same old garlic and soy sauce combo. Since I had been on a curry powder kick lately, I decided to try this recipe. I eased up on the curry powder portion. Glad I did because it would have been way too overwhelming. The dish turned out well, the curry being intense but flavorful.
* Sweet and Sour Chicken - I didn't have enough ketchup that this recipe called for so my sauce was a bit thin. But I did marinate the chicken in a little soy sauce and rice wine to give it a little more flavor. I loved the bell peppers and the sweetness of the sauce, although I think I'd cut back on the pineapple in the future. It was a bit too tart for me.

I'm sure there were more dishes, but I'm probably boring you...Oh an my father-in-law brought us a box of potatoes. Hmmm....potato dishes, coming right up!

Adventures in the Kitchen #2

 Personal Photo

Banana Pudding
We had a batch of overripe, black patchy bananas. That happens a lot in this household. But I hate waste. And anyone who knows anything about bananas and desserts, bananas are best when they start getting their spots. So I made a some banana pudding. Never in my life have I made it, but I decided to give it a crack, using this recipe. Verdict? Loved it. I love Vanilla wafers and lining them on our pie dish made a wonderful, yummy crust. The consistency was a little thin, so next time I might add more egg yolks. Overall, very good! Not a bad way to salvage food!

Personal Photo

Sun-Dried Tomato Penne Pasta
This was adapted from Giada DeLaurentis' show (who, I'm convinced, can't possibly eat all the high-carb and sugary food she makes), but I added ground beef since a vegetarian dish wouldn't fly in this household. I used a jar of garlic marinated Sun-Dried tomatoes, but I needed more sauce for the amount of people I was cooking for...Forgive me, we're poor, so we I threw in another jar of marinara sauce. In the end, it seemed like another bolognese pasta with penne, but it was still good. The basil adds great color and flavor.

 Personal Photo

Lemon Garlic Baked Tilapia
The in-laws gave us a bunch of Tilapia fillets, so I had to think of an easy and quick way to cook them. I used this recipe, but followed reader reviews and used more butter. I didn't have a whole lot of fresh garlic left so I used garlic powder. I sauteed the butter, garlic powder, pepper, lemon and parsely together before I poured it over the chicken. Luckily Tilapia cooks pretty fast and 15 minutes at 375 degrees was just enough to get it moist and flaky, but cooked. It was yummy and light. To get the most out of the flavor, I would let the fish marinate for as long as possible. When I warmed up leftovers, the fish had soaked in all the flavors overnight and it tasted soooo much better.

Adventures in the Kitchen #1

No, this is not strictly a food blog, but from my latest posts, I suppose it would seem so. Yes, food is a big part of my life and I will always celebrate it on this bloggie blog. But I intend there to be much more discussed here other than my culinary adventures. But with no job at the moment, I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, which I tell myself to appreciate. When -- note when -- I find a job, I won't have the time to explore and cook new recipes as much as I've been doing now. So, each week, I'll keep weekly updates on the different dishes I'll try in the kitchen, and I'm enjoying every minute of it!

1. Longanisa - A sweet and somewhat spicy pork sausage. It's typical Filipino breakfast or merienda food. Cooking Longanisa is...interesting.  Simmer the links in an inch of water until the water has dried and then fry the links in its own juices, fat and sugar that have oozed onto the pan. Sure, your pan takes a merciless beating (expect a cake of burnt sugar to form), but the results are worth it. Just be sure you have a sturdy sponge on hand.

2. Chicken Parmesan - With 2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs in the freezer, I needed a chicken dish. Wandering Chopsticks was again my go-to recipe site, and although the recipe calls for chicken breasts rather than thighs, this turned out just fine. Family loved it, although I'd like to cook real Italian food someday. I can imagine all the true Italian chefs out there curling their lips at my corrupted take on Italian cuisine -- canned Prego and melted Parmesan cheese, and presto! I have chicken parmesan! Please forgive me, I'm poor and somewhat lazy.

3. Chicken Afritada - I'm feeling a lot like Iron Chef right now. My mother-in-law gave us a bag of potatoes and now I must figure out what I'm going to do with them. The first recipe that came to mind was chicken afritada. Or ah-pree-tah-dah, as Pinoys call it because they can't pronounce their f's. It's one of my favorite comfort foods. Unfortunately, this didn't come out exactly as I wanted...I only had boneless chicken breasts on hand and the chicken was somewhat dry. Alas, you win some, you lose some.

3. Chicken and zucchini stirfry - Sorry I don't have a photo of this one. Maybe I was sooo disappointed with the color and look of this dish that I decided that a photo would do a great disservice to it, since it was actually pretty tasty. I used dark soy sauce because that's all that we had (recipe calls for just regular soy sauce) and boy...did it make my stirfry dark!  I don't think you could make out the zucchini or the mushrooms I put in it because they all looked like dark brown pieces of meat. Why is it that food seems to taste better the morning after you cook your food?

4. Itailian breaded porkchops and potato salad - I don't have a picture of my porkchops...it was gone, just like that! I thought there'd be some left over after dinner for my usual photo shoot, but nope, none left. I suppose it's a good sign when the family gets seconds...and thirds and fourths. But I did have some potato salad left over to take a photo of that. I had to double up on the measurements and I added green peas and a sprinkle of paprika for more color.

I made meat lasagna...but don't call me Joan Cleaver

If you read my blog long enough you'll notice that I love food and I love to cook. Whether or not I'm a good cook is up for debate. My husband always says he loves what I cook, but I have a sneaky suspicion that if I served him a dish with flies hovering over it, he'd declare it my best dish ever.
OK, I'm not bad. I think most of what I cook, I actually like myself.

Still, even if I doubt my actual cooking abillities, I love to try a new recipe. With time on my hands and the fact that no one in my house cooks, I have been on a cooking spree.

Last night, I made meat lasagna from scratch (nope, no Stovetop this time). I've always wanted to try this recipe because it looked so easy peasy...and it was!

My first attempt at meat lasagna (Personal Photo)

I used a meat lasagna recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Wandering Chopsticks. It was a hit with the family and everyone said they loved it. It actually was pretty good!

One interesting note about this recipe is that WC says you don't have to cook the lasagna noodles before you bake it. I tried that, and when you first eat it after cooking, the noodles are definitely cooked...al dente, but cooked. When the noodles soak the sauce overnight, they become much softer.

In the future, I think I might modify the recipe a little with less meat (I ended up using much more than what was called for because I wanted to get rid of all the ground meat we had), less riccota cheese and more mozzarella.

As an avid tweeter, I had been updating my friends on my latest kitchen adventures. One teasingly remarked that it seemed I had become "little miss Joan Cleaver" since I had gotten married a month ago.

The remark made me uncomfortable. True, since I'm not working, much of my day is doing what housewives usually do and I love to cook. But I refuse to be seen as a housewife. I am not Joan Cleaver.

In my younger years, I used to diss the idea of being a housewife. I couldn't understand why you'd want to stay home all day. I thought being a stay-at-home wife and mother was so boring. Now, I understand why a woman would choose to dedicate her life to her family...I respect and honor it. I love, love, love my husband. We both want children someday, and I know my family comes before anything...but cooking, cleaning and taking care of a home is not what defines me.

So just because I'm married now and I like to cook for my husband, doesn't mean I'm Joan Cleaver. Don't label me with that stereotype, please. I'm much more than that. Much more.