Vignettes from the week that was

Am totally behind on the posts, so will just be cramming them into one rather lengthy entry.

Saturday, 11.29.08

Stayed home sick with a cold and the worst sore throat of my life. Ended up editing about a gazillion pics from our La Union beach trip two weekends ago (a separate post is in the works for this). Well, at least those pics are all done and posted

Sunday, 11.30.08

Finally went to see Twilight with my sister. We caught the 1pm showing at Eastwood Cinemas,which on the side has got to be my favorite movie theater. It has the perk of reclinable seats not found in most other theaters, without the extra price on the ticket. Each theater seats a comparatively smaller number of people, which means that the whole audience from front to back gets a huge view of the screen. The fact that it’s the closest cinema to the house doesn’t hurt, as well.

Anyhoo, back to the movie. A little conversation just before the movie:

Gwen: I can’t believe we’re watching the afternoon showing! That means we’ll be seeing the movie with a bunch of noisy, swooning preteens!

Genine: I know! I hope we aren’t seated close to them…

And a conversation during the movie:

Gwen: *swoon*swoon*swoon*

Genine: *swoon*swoon*swoon*

Well, at least we weren’t noisy swooning twenty-somethings–we did have the sense to swoon in hushed tones

My two cents on the movie: I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but i thought it was really good. Rob Pattison, who plays Edward, portrayed the restraint his character had to practice really well. The movie was concise, covering all the major scenes and storylines from the book without being dragging. Sure, with the paranormal stuff set aside, it’s still your typical teenage romance, but so what? That was what the book was all about, and i thought that the movie was a pretty good adaptation of the book.

After the movie we found out that Eastwood Mall had recently opened, so we went over to check it out. There aren’t many shops open yet, but it looks like it’s gonna be a great place to hang out in once they do. The layout is very circular, which gives the mall this posh feel (as you can imagine, i’m not very good at describing architecture). But the mall opens out into a terrace lined with shops and dotted with palm trees, so i’m hoping you’ll get what i mean about the posh.

After Eastwood, we went to church I honestly do not remember the last time i went to church. Going back wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be, and i learned something…so maybe i’ll go again this weekend.

Monday, 12.01.08

Went to work early to check on my new schedule for the next two months. As it turned out, i didn’t have to be at work that day. I went home right away, planning to study, but then my sister asked me if i wanted to go to the mall. And i’m not sure if i’m actually capable of turning down a trip to the mall…

We went to The Block at SM North Edsa. I got started on my christmas shopping, and after that we met up with a friend at Bubble Tea, a Japanese pop-inspired place so-called because their tea is served with sago, which looks like bubbles. Will be back for their Japanese green milk tea, which is de-lish.

After that, we just decided to take goofy pictures at the mall. So, like good little kids, we waited our turn to get our pictures taken with life-size Disney Princesses cardboard replicas. Here’s my best shot:

prince charming is mine!!!

I think some of the other kids may have gotten scared.

Wednesday, 12.03.08

TOXIC day at work. In hospital jargon, toxic means very, very busy, with lots of patients who all have lots of problems. Not repeating this again.

Thursday, 12.04.08

My sister and i stopped by Amici’s Tomas Morato, which is not far out of the way home from work, to get our gelato fix.
I had mint chocolate, which is my favorite flavor, so it was safe and yummy. But my sister had hazelnut and it was the best, like having a frozen Ferrero Rocher melt in your mouth. And so, this conversation:

Gwen: How come you always order the best things?

Genine: Because i order what’s special from a place. Like, you wouldn’t order chicken at a steakhouse, right?

Ohhh…so that’s why. And hazelnuts do come from Italy, don’t they.

My sister is food smart.

Friday, 12.05.08

Am missing my kikay kit, last seen in one of the lockers at the nursery, where i’m stationed now. Am hoping for the best but fearing the worst. So, a list of things i’ve lost so far to some wacko(s) at the hospital:

- nokia n series phone –> stolen at the interns’ quarters. while i was asleep.

- thermoscan (the good kind) –> stolen at the ICU.

- kikay kit (?) –> am still hoping this was just misplaced

I mean, who would steal a kikay kit? Most of the stuff in there’s half used up anyway. But the kit itself is all new and pretty and Lancome. And i’m wondering how i’ll be able to survive tomorrow without my oil control film

But i feel better now, after having a bowl of pumpkin pie ice cream. And blogging my heart out.

Missing kikay kit updates will be posted on this blog.

Dinner from Cooking for Mr. Latte

A few weeks ago, I finished reading Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser, a gem of a book that my sister and i found browsing through a bookstore in Eastwood City one lazy Sunday afternoon. The author is a food writer for the New York Times, and the book is a memoir about her love story with Mr. Latte, which is inextricably intertwined with her love story with food. Each chapter of her story was tied to a memorable meal, with the recipes given at the end of the chapter.

I really enjoyed the author’s witty, honest, down-to-earth storytelling. I loved how she showed how much food plays a part in everyday life, whether it be at a gathering of friends at the table, or a romantic dinner with that special someone, or a solo meal enjoyed just for the sheer pleasure of the food itself. Food brings people together; it nourishes and comforts; it can make you smile or laugh or cry.

I made this rule a few months back, that whenever i bought a cookbook or a cooking magazine, i would have to make at least one dish from that book/magazine. So for dinner tonight, i decided to make lamb chops from chapter 14 of Hesser’s book, Dinner When No One Wanted to be Alone.

I chose the recipe not because i particularly craved for company tonight, but because i wanted to make something a bit more special than our usual dinners but at the same time was really easy to prepare. I coated the chops in a mixture of rosemary, garlic, and olive oil and left them in the fridge for about a day. I added salt and pepper before broiling them in the oven for about 3 minutes each side.

The chops came out nearly perfect, brown on the outside and pinkish on the inside, and really flavorful. The olive oil and the fat from the chops gave the dish a creamy texture. Both my sister and i thought that the chops needed more salt, but that was probably my fault, as i’ve never been good at estimating how much salt or pepper to sprinkle over anything. In the end, it was still a really good, satisfying meal that my sister and i thoroughly enjoyed chomping down

Amici @ Don Bosco, Makati

Food trip at Amici, Don Bosco with people from work finally pushed through, after two months of trying to work out a common schedule! Amici is famous for their gelato, which comes in a spectacular array of flavors and colors, so i was raring to try that. But we did things the traditional way, dinner first and then dessert:

Tutta carne pizza

i know meat’s supposed to be the star of this pizza, but one of the things i loved most about it was the soft, creamy, melted mozzarella cheese–not at all gummy like what you’ll see in other, more commercialized pizza joints. Fresh herbs sprinkled generously all over the pizza also gave the dish a lot of great flavor.

Risotto di mare

Soft, fluffy saffron risotto with seafood with clams, mussels, and prawns–this dish was light and clean on the palate.

Roast chicken

Moist, tender chicken infused with rosemary.

Spinach fusili montanara

Spinach corkscrew pasta with a creamy tomato sauce with Italian sausage and mushrooms. Am such a fan of mushrooms.

Here comes the dessert!

As you may surmise from the photos below, i had trouble choosing a flavor. i ended up with mango jubilee, a dreamy creation mango creation topped with a tempting combination of strawberries and blueberries. The gelato was delightfully dense and creamy. i thought it could’ve used a bit more tang, to highlight the mango flavor, but it was still good, nonetheless.

i also got to taste the sans rival and mint flavors. i liked mint the best, but then again, it always has been my favorite flavor.

With pizzas going for around Php300 and meals at around Php200, Amici is good Italian food on a budget. Sure, it’s not something you’d have for lunch everyday, but if you’re looking for a food trip that won’t break your wallet too much, this is it. And with the gelato going for Php50/scoop, i’ll definitely be back for more of that.

Kitchen sessions

Sunday, October 26, was my only free afternoon of the entire month. i got home at 1pm and spent the first part of the afternoon lazing around and watching Wanted on DVD. By 5pm, i told my sister Genine that we had to do something fun that afternoon. She originally wanted to see a movie, but since there wasn’t anything good showing, we decided to cook up an extra yummy dinner instead.

The menu

French onion soup

Roasted Portobello mushrooms topped with mozzarella cheese

One roasted bell pepper sandwich

Mojitos

I made French onion soup as a starter. French onion soup has a classy ring to it, but it turns out it’s not so classy when you’re slicing the onions, your eyes all stinging and tearing up (from the volatile acids released by slicing the onion, which cause eye irritation). i resisted the temptation of asking the maid to slice them for me, just so that i could say that I cooked something by myself for maybe the 5^th time in my whole life.

Preparing the dish was an experience not only of taste, but of sight, sound, smell. The hiss of sliced onions hitting a hot saucepan, the rich heady smell of them sautéing in butter, the slow transformation of color from a raw white to translucent to a light caramel made for a true feast for the senses.

The caramelized onions went into a pot of beef stock. the soup was ladled into individual bowls, topped with a generous helping of velvety Colby cheese, and served with toasted French bread on the side.

Genine and i thought cocktails would be fun. We started making the Mojitos while we waited for the peppers to roast, so we could have a little drink before dinner. The Mojitos in the recipe called for white rum, brown sugar, crushed mint, and lemon juice. It tasted great, sweet and citrusy with a kick, although it looked nothing like the photo in the recipe. (I don’t see how mixing brown sugar with white rum can still produce a crystal clear drink; ours turned out sort of mud-colored.) It was so good that i ended up guzzling half my drink. By the time dinner was ready five minutes later, i had developed the worst case of lightheadedness in my life. It was so bad that i may never mix a cocktail again.

Anyhoo, we started dinner off with the French onion soup and the Portobello mushrooms. Both dishes turned out great. The soup was rich and creamy, topped with a generous helping of Colby cheese that melted into the steaming hot broth, and served with French bread on the side. Roasting the mushrooms gave them a great, meaty flavor, and mozzarella cheese has got to be one of my favorite things in the world.

Genine made a roasted bell pepper sandwich from different varieties of bell peppers she bought on a recent trip to Indonesia. The peppers were roasted at a scorching 500oF, cooled, then marinated in balsamic vinaigrette. The filling was scooped on top of a slice of French bread and topped with Colby cheese. They sandwiches were supposed to be our main dish, but we were so full after the starters that we ended up sharing one tiny sandwich. Anyhoo, Genine explained that it was one of those dishes that would taste better the next day, when the peppers had overnight to soak into the vinaigrette.

And so my most recent attempt at cooking met its happy ending in one satisifying dinner. I’ll probably be doing this again sometime

My favorite frozen yogurt place

In my book, hectic days at work deserve sweet rewards. That’s why i’m in love with Yohgürt-Froz, this little frozen yogurt store along Tomas Morato, Quezon City.

Yoh-gurt Froz logo

Yohgürt-Froz started by selling soft-serve frozen yogurt without the tang, which you could flavor with different fresh fruits or sweet choices like cookie bits or Oishi Pillows. Fruit (snack bits) and yogurt then go into this machine that blends them together, and what comes out is flavored frozen yogurt that’s like ice cream, except that it has a more natural, fresh taste. Plus, it’s healthy.

Recently, Yohgürt-Froz came up with Fro-Yo, which is tangy frozen yogurt which you can top with fruits, nuts, chocolate, or whatever they have on the toppings bar. I was reluctant to try their new product at first. Shops selling this kind of frozen yogurt have been sprouting up all over the city, and I hadn’t been impressed with any of them so far. My previous experience with tangy frozen yogurt was tangy = sour = icky.

Yesterday after work, i invited my sister to Yohgürt-Froz. She’s a huge fan of tangy frozen yogurt, so she ordered Fro-Yo topped with strawberries and blueberries, while i had non-tangy mango frozen yogurt, which is one of my favorites on the menu. Whenever we go out, my sister and i make sure to try each other’s food, so i had a spoonful of her Fro-Yo. Right then, my skepticism flew out the door, because Yohgürt-Froz’s Fro-Yo was del-i-cious. It was creamy, with just the right amount of tang to balance out the creaminess, but not so much that you could call it sour. So then i had several spoofuls of Fro-Yo, until my sister got mad because i was finishing her dessert. So i had to stop and concentrate on my own frozen yogurt.

The fruit toppings were okay, although not great. The strawberries were succulent and mildly sweet, pairing well with the creamy-tangy frozen yogurt. The blueberries were served frozen and turned out to be really watery when you bit into them, so i wouldn’t order those again. But for me, the real star of the show was the frozen yogurt itself, which totally made me look at tangy frozen yogurt in a new, positive light.

Fro-Yo tangy frozen yogurt topped with strawberries and blueberries

mango frozen yogurt

So it seems i may have a new favorite frozen yogurt at my favorite frozen yogurt store. I still love my old favorites, non-tangy yogurt blended with cheese and mango. But Yohgürt-Froz’s version of tangy frozen yogurt is definitely worth trying a second time.

lovely girls enjoying lovely desserts