So I'm still sleepy from my late night movie date with Thor (oh, and A was there too) last night. As expected, I was lazy to cook for myself earlier. Went with the usual steaming of the okra ceremony, but I wanted to take a photo also. Had to come up with something. Rummaging through our trusted pantry + fridge buddies, I grabbed the following ingredients:

2 pcs of tuyo, fried, deboned  and flaked
shallots, sliced
salad tomato 
greek olive oil

Just mix everything together, and this is what I got.

Too bad we have a 0 inventory for lemon today. Would've been nicer to have that tangy taste.

Got my digicam back! I was getting annoyed at taking some photos using my HP (and a DSLR isn't convenient to carry around). I learned how to bring a digicam (10MP at least) through my friend Leonard when he became our "personal" photographer for our wedding. He may have brought badass DSLRs with him 

for the event, but he also had his Panasonic Lumix with him. Made me realize that it's pretty handy to have around.

So I got a Samsung PL100, the one with a dual LCD (mainly for the purpose of just in case nobody else is there to take a photo of me with someone or something).

Reason #2, after almost 3 months of throwing up almost everything that I eat, I am finally able to rekindle how it feels to be able to eat anything. A, my sister and I had dinner at Superbowl in Megamall. Since I couldn't think of another thing to order aside Mapo Tofu, we had their Superbowl Fried Rice. Considering it had fried chicken, roasted pork, shrimp in batter, plain shirmp and nuts, it's like ordering a number of dishes in just one course. 

And then, of course, there's reason #3...

This better be good Kenneth Branagh...

I haven't had a cinnamon bun in years. I sort of outgrew the really sweet taste of it that I couldn't finish one serving anymore. When I do see one, I'd crave for it, but will not purchase one.

As I was making breakfast this morning, I was rummaging through our pantry and decided to make a pancake with a swirl. In as much as I like to cook from scratch, I do have my cheat stocks with me in case I get lazy (and this is one of those days).

My lazy ingredient of the day is Pillsbury's One-Step Creamy Vanilla Hotcakes. All I need to do is follow what the box says. But before I do that, I have to make the cinnamon bun filling..

I used a 1:3 portion of melted butter to brown sugar. Then just added around 1Tbsp of ground cinnamon. Mix everything in a bowl and that's it.

Now for the pancake. After mixing in all the ingredients, I placed a ladleful of the batter on the pan (don't forget to turn on the stove as one of my friend forgot to do when she tried to make pansit canton).

Swirl the cinnamon bun filling around the pancake as it cooks. When the pancake starts to bubble, flip it over. Give it a minute and take off the pan.To give it a more cinnamon bun feel, you can also add a cream cheese glaze. 

Now who says you can't have the best of both worlds?

Day 2's pulled pork involved adding sautéed bell pepper, onions, sliced jalapeno peppers and a can of V8. I wasn't able to take a photo of it because A and Snuz finished it off before I could even plate it.

Now comes Day 3 (based on the remaining amount of pulled pork in the fridge, it's only going to last until tomorrow) with mango salsa this time. It's quite tedious to prepare, but mango salsa is refreshing to have most especially we've been having warm spells lately.

ingredients are as follows:

tomatoes, seeded and cut into small cubes
onions, finely copped
mango, cut into small cubes
juice of half a lemon
parsley, cut finely
olive oil
salt

Just mix everything in and chill. Serve with rice and here you go

Cooking is one of the few household skills that I have. Next to that would be carpentry and other handyman thingies. You could check with my mom and Home Ec teachers how I've fared in sewing, knitting, etc. They'll tell you that at least I'm good in one field  than none.

We only have 4 (you can make it 5 if I were to include the fondue set that Santi gave us for our wedding, but that's another challenge altogether) cooking equipment at home - induction stove, rice cooker cum crock pot, oven toaster and, grill (which has never left the box due to its massive size, but we're saving it when we get to have our dream house). Most of my cooking challenge is making do with the equipment that we have as I don't want to end up with so many equipment. So I try to experiment what I can do with them.

A and I were watching a show on barbecue one time and we saw this pulled pork feature. Looks kind of tedious as it involves roasting for 6 hours and having to pull off the pork into shreds. Plus, there's that roasting challenge and I don't have an oven big enough for me to follow the instructions on the recipe. So I had to make it work using an oven toaster. With no thermometer and only had 3 heat settings to choose from with a maximum timer time of 15 minutes, I went on with my pulled pork challenge.

Armed with the pulled pork recipe by Tyler Florence, I tried it our using half a kilo of pork tenderloin and adding in the dry rub. I had to make adjustments on the recipe and kept tasting the dry rub before I applied it to the meat. After marinating it overnight, I started the day experimenting on the roasting settings. Since our oven toaster can only time 15 minutes, I had to keep on turning the pan every 15 minutes to even out the roasting of the meat. Apparently, after 30 minutes, our oven toaster has a preventive settings wherein it would shut down the heating coil and restart after a few minutes. So after the 60-minute mark, I decided to give the toaster a rest and basted the meat using the BBQ sauce. The original recipe doesn't call for basting, but an oven toaster tends to dry out food faster due to the vertical difference between the food and the coil. After 30 minutes, I flipped the meat and gave it another 30 minutes to roast.

I took out the meat and let it rest on the counter for 10 minutes while covering it with aluminum foil. I tried to pull the meat apart to see if it's tender enough to flake. Good thing it pulled off easily. Snuz helped as my official taste tester.  

Unfortunately, I only have my mobile phone with me to take a shot of the finished product. I'd better get my camera from my sister.

This is the first time I had to take a male friend out  shopping because he's been so restless this year (confidential reason, so I couldn't share it here). The shops of Shangri-la Mall served as his stress-buster for the day. We even had to cross to Starmall for a quick trip at Japan Home.

One of our best finds for the day is this Betty Crocker cinnamon bun scented candle from Japan Home  for Php66 only. We spent some time sniffing out the other scents - blueberry cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies and, strawberry streudel. Not so sure what he's going to use it for though.

After going gaga over scented candles, we went back to Shang Mall and headed down to Rustan's Gourmet-to-go. I bought a frittata for A and got my friend a sandwich. The only thing lacking in what we did in the afternoon is death by ice cream. 

Dinner time almost came and I texted A to meet me at the mall. So when A arrived, friend had to do the ceremonial turn over of giving me back to A.

A and I have been fans of Cyma from the very beginning. It's one of our special date places. A turns into a Pavlovian dog when he sees Cyma, he just has to suggest that we eat at Cyma. 

I have my usual dishes, but A wants to try everything on the menu. Since I already ate earlier with a friend, I couldn't eat anything heavy. So we ended up with Loukanika (flaming greek sausages) and Roka Salata. Obviously, that wasn't enough for A as he was still looking at the menu on the board. I did ask him if he wants to order more, but did remind him that I cooked embutido at home and bought frittata from the deli. So he opted to order the other items on our next visit.

When we got home, he shared dinner with Snuz. After that, he declared that he's already full. I guess Snuz was also because they both went straight to be after eating. I don't know what these two will do without me.

Thing about A is that he barely tells you what he wants. So I try to keep all my senses open for possible clues. Then there would be those right up the bat moments that he would say what he wants to do. He gave me 2 in a span of 1 minute

Thor. He's been looking forward to watching this movie since he first saw heard of the news last year. I just have to make sure to give him another reason to leave work on time on Friday.

A loves massages. He particularly likes the ones with hot tubs or saunas. He's the more kikay one between the two of us. Since chances are, he will be the only have having a massage, I might as well try to look for a spa that's located in a mall. 

Closest one that I could come up with is The Spa at the Podium. The mall is not so crowded, has lounge areas. Comes with wifi. Perfect.

Now that I have my work cut out for me, time to make reservations for A.

A has always been a fan of my cooking. It's so good to be working my way around our kitchen again after some time.  I heard he and Snuz survived by consuming rice meals from 7-11 while I was away.

We weren't able to go out shopping for groceries prior to establishment closure for yesterday and today. So it was quite a challenge to come up with something to eat for today.

After checking out the fridge and the pantry, I decided to go around experimenting on what is available and ended up with the following ingredients:

250g elbow macaroni
sliced button mushrooms
1/4 bar of grated Magnolia Quickmelt
Clara Ole chunky tomato sauce with basil
Mother's Best pickle relish
Laughing Cow milky cheese dip
sliced pickled jalapeno peppers
Filippo Berio sun-dried tomato pesto
extra virgin olive oil
finely minced garlic
freshly ground pepper

While cooking the macaroni al dente, I fired up the stove to begin making the sauce. Saute the minced garlic in olive oil. Add in the mushrooms. Pour in the tomato sauce and the rest of the ingredients until sauce becomes creamy (addition of the pickle relish, pickle juice and jalapeno peppers would be according to taste). I just added the cheese dip because I wanted to have a creamier texture. If you don't have cheese dip, you can add in some Kraft Miracle Whip or Real Mayo (be careful not to add too much as it would give the sauce more of a mayo taste). If you want to add a little sweetness to the sauce (more of for the Filipino taste), add a little strawberry jam.

 I guess A had a gut feeling that I'm currently making a mess in the kitchen again, he just sent me an SMS asking me what I'm cooking =)

And here you go! Am not sure what to call it, but am going for Spicy Creamy Sun-dried Tomato Pesto and Mushrooms Macaroni for now. 
Now to wait for A to give it a try...

Since I got out of the hospital a couple of weeks back, A has been asking me out at warp speed. I guess being out of condition since February, A's just happy to see me up and about.

We went to Be@utybrick last night for his haircut. Having a Japanese-trained Korean stylist, A ends up with a K-pop look. So he looks more foreign than his usual (nothing new there).

After getting a haricut, we tried out Chic-Boy. Unfortunately, they failed to make us part of the Chic-Boy hype. We'd still choose to go to Mang Inasal hands down.

We were about to hail a cab going to Greenbelt when I realized that we were out of small bills to pay for the ride. So we decided to take a nice stroll from Jupiter to Greenbelt. Good thing the evening was a little nippy.

Now comes the  pièce de résistance...having gelato at Caffe Ti-amo. It's my favorite gelato place and haven't been here for quite a while. It's just one of my happy-to-be-here moments. And how happier can I get when the shop had a ONE DAY ONLY, BUY 1 TAKE 1 gelato promo! I had my usual choco mint and dark chocolate. I went on to try their tiramisu. A went for choco hazelnut and a small cup of  Americano.


It was a Holy Wednesday night and there was barely an available cab at the mall. So we ended up strolling around again until we were finally able to get one at Paseo de Roxas.

Home sweet home to the our ever reliable tail-wagger Snuz, she had her dinner before watching the telly. A and I capped off the night by taking our first photo together since the hospital trip.

It's so good to be back home.