I’m feeling guilty and sad for not being able to post and update my blog for these past days. I’ve been too busy on several things. One of the reasons is that I am quite busy looking for the suppliers for my small business. Christmas day is fast approaching and earning an additional income is a good idea. For the past 3 years, I’ve been selling baked goods every Christmas. I even baked brownies as one of the desserts on our wedding, as well as wedding favors for the sponsors.

We’ve been thinking great ideas and experimenting on new recipes to market. It’s good to know that there are websites that share various recipes that helped me in making my products. It’s really a big help. You just need to be resourceful.

Last Sunday, my husband and I started buying ingredients and additional baking pans and baking utensils that I’ll need. I’m so lucky for having such a wonderful husband who supports me in everything I do. He accompanies me every time he’s available in buying the ingredients. He even helps me create great ideas for our small business. We’re thinking and studying a good packaging for our goodies.

This morning, it was first time to visit Chocolate Lovers Inc to check on their products. They have everything a baker needs, from ingredients to packaging. They also have baking pans with different sizes for different uses. Luckily, I found the cake packaging I’ve been looking for, as well as other ingredients that are not available on one of my suppliers. What a great place. I’ll surely come back, and bring my husband with me.

In the meantime, I have to continue my study on my small business. I’m studying the proper product costing. I’ll post my products when it’s final. Bye bye for now.

Ciao!

It has been 15 months since I gave birth to a cute little boy. But my pregnancy weight didn’t disappear, and increases even more. I’ll lose some pounds and gain it all back. I actually gained 35 pounds since my pregnancy. Can you imagine that! Tsk tsk tsk! I have so much to lose. I need to be motivated in losing my pregnancy weight for health reasons and we’re planning to have our next baby early next year. I think this is the right time for me to start losing those excess weights.

I just joined the Southbeach Diet Plan Forum. This forum includes a number of topics regarding South Beach Diet and a lot of South Beach Dieters’ stories and progresses in losing weight. I’m planning to start my diet on Monday. I’ll first have my blood sugar level checked for diabetes. My youngest sister suggested me to have thyroid tests because she found out recently that she has hyperthyroidism. According to her doctor, it’s one of the reasons why she gained so much weight aside from eating too much hehehe. Besides, it also runs in the family. My mother had it when she was younger and my sister had it when she was pregnant on her first baby.

I hope this works. I’ve heard so many celebrities who tried this type of diet. I really need to bring back my post-pregnancy weight. There are more reasons to lose weight. First, health reasons, such as diabetes and heart problems. Second, magastos kasi ang mataba! I have to buy new clothes because the old ones don’t fit me anymore. Lastly, makakatipid na kami sa bahay hehe.

It’s time to start living and eating healthy so that we can live longer for our children. Let’s change our eating habits.

I’ve got this weight-loss ticker from Ticker Factory to show my weight loss progress. Wish me luck!

Most of my recipes were taken from COOK, FOOD, and Good Housekeeping Magazines. These magazines are very helpful because it contains various recipes from easy-to-cook to complicated dishes.

Here’s a recap of the recipes that I cooked in the past weeks. I intended to post it earlier but it is raining very hard today and the floodwater outside our house continues to rise. We started to bring some of our things in the second floor so that when the flood water is about to enter our house, we can easily lift all our appliances and furniture. This will be a weight-lifting and work-out for us again. While waiting for the water flood, I’ll post this entry for my blog first. So here it goes,

Pinoy Style Yakisoba

Yakisoba is a kind of Japanese fried noodle as yaki means fried in Japanese. Soba indicates noodles. It is a delicious fast food and is a popular lunch menu in Japan. There are many kinds of yakisoba. One is called sauce yakisoba since it is cooked by stir-frying the ingredients with yakisoba sauce. Another kind is called kata-yakisoba. Noodles are deep-fried and are crunchy. There is also shio-yakisoba which is a yakisoba seasoned mainly with salt. For this recipe, this is a sauce yakisoba-type. I got this recipe from the back cover of COOK magazine.

You will need 500 grams of Pancit Canton. Pre-cook the noodles by immersing it in boiling water and let it stand for 2-3 minutes. Drain immediately and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking and set aside. In a small bowl, combine ¼ cup soy sauce, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 pc siling labuyo (chopped) or 1 tsp chili paste, ½ tbsp sugar, and 2 tsp sesame oil, and set aside. Heat 1 ½ tbsp vegetable oil and sauté 1 pc onion (sliced) and 2 cloves minced garlic, 2 pcs carrots (jullienned), and ½ cabbage (shredded),. Cook for about 3-5 minutes stirring frequently until the vegetables begin to soften but don’t over-cook them. Add the noodles and the soy sauce mixture and mix thoroughly. Cook it for another minute. Serve it in a plate then top with chopped spring onions and toasted sesame seeds.

Chicken-katsu

This is a self-made recipe, which I originally called Chicken Tonkatsu. But, I learned that Tonkatsu is a deep-fried breaded pork, wherein ton means pork. Since I used chicken in this recipe, this should be called Chicken-katsu or Japanese-style Fried Chicken.

First, you have to season each side of chicken breast halves (about 400 grams) with 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, and 1 tsp paprika. Place ½ cup of flour plus 1 tsp paprika, 1 pc egg plus ½ cup milk, and Japanese bread crumbs into separate shallow dishes. Coat the chicken breasts in flour, shaking off any excess. Dip them into the egg and milk mixture, and then press into the Japanese bread crumbs until well coated on both sides. You can also put the bread crumbs in microwaveable container with cover to coat the chicken evenly. Then deep fry over medium heat and cook until golden brown. For the dip, I made the bagoong mayo-garlic sauce. Just add 1 tsp of ginisang bagoong to the mayo-garlic sauce I posted earlier.

Ripe Papaya and Avocado Smoothies

My husband and I love fruit shakes and smoothies. After I, a few months ago, accidentally broke down the blender given to us as a wedding present, we finally bought a new blender to replace the broken one. We can now make some smoothies. My son loves Papaya, that’s why it is a regular item on our fruit basket. For my husband, he loves avocado, he wants it scooped and placed in a bowl with milk, sugar, and ice. I let him try the avocado smoothie, he liked it too. Smoothies are easy to do. You’ll just need any fruit of your choice, combine it with milk or condensed milk, sugar, and cubed ice, and place it in a blender.

Tomatoes Frittata

A frittata is an Italian omelette with just about anything you fancy in it. Eggs are the base. This recipe is a simple dish. We had it for breakfast, served with garlic fried rice.

You will need 1 medium sized onion (chopped), 4 pcs medium-sized tomatoes (chopped), 4 eggs (beaten), salt and pepper to taste, and spring onions. First, beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Set aside. Then, sauté the onion and tomato, and let it cook for 3 minutes. Pour-in the beaten eggs. Add the spring onions, and let it cook over low-fire for about 5 minutes. You can also finish it in the oven and bake it at 180degF for 10 min to brown the top. Serve hot.

This is just the first part. I’ll post the continuation in another entry. Patutulugin ko muna si Andre.

At last! After almost 2 days of restructuring my blog, it’s almost done. I had a hard time restructuring my blog because I forgot to save my original template. So stupid of me… hehe… I have to look for all the links from my previous blog. Now, I’m almost done with it. Whole day ko ba naman gawin. The most important is, I’m happy with its new look.

I searched the web for 3-column templates and found my new template from IsnainiDotCom. I’ve also made some changes from the original template. I resized the columns and modified the number of widgets allowed per column. I found this site very helpful when it comes to designing your own blog. I’ve learned how to animate some texts, like the heading. For other template designs, you can also visit FinalSense. This site contains several template designs to choose from, from 2-columns to 3-columns. And what’s so good about this site, it’s for FREE.

Since I’m done with restructuring, I can now post the recipes of the foods I cooked in the past weeks. I’ll try to post during the weekend. For the meantime, I have to finish my work first.

I stayed at the office overnight last Tuesday coz I have to finish all my journals. I was able to finish my work at around 12am, but I decided to stay at the office coz it’s unsafe for
me to go home so late at night. I just told Abeth that I’ll be staying at the office until Wednesday morning, so he was the one who took care of Andre that night. He’s glad that Andre behaved and slept the whole night. Bait talaga ng anak ko hehe.

Staying at the office was a blessing in disguise because the rain poured heavily the whole night. Came Wednesday morning, I tried to leave the office as early as 5am, but it was still raining. I just waited for the rain to stop, but it didn’t. So I decided to go home and left the office at 7am.

I am supposed to ride the LRT but all the roads leading to the LRT were flooded, so I took a cab and asked the driver to drive me to the MRT instead. Abeth didn’t report to office because the streets in our place were flooded. He fetched me at the FX terminal. Abeth volunteered to cook sinigang na hipon for lunch since I have no enough sleep yet. Very kind of him, I’m very lucky. He also helped Nanay clean their house because water flood entered their house.

After helping Nanay, he went home with his little cousin, Dianne. She stayed here with us until her mom comes home to fetch her. We just stayed home and watched Piolo Pascual and Regine Velasquez’s “Pano Kita Iibigin” on DVD. It was raining all day and the streets were all flooded. We enjoyed watching and didn’t notice that the water level outside is rising. My sister-in-law together with Tita Doray (Dianne’s mom) stayed at our house because the streets heading to their house is overflowing.

As I prepared to cook our dinner, we noticed that the flood continues to rise. Abeth together with other male neighbors helped to push our neighbor’s van that was submerged into flood water. We didn’t really expect that the flood will rise too fast and enter our house. We heard that the water dam near our place released water. This is my first time here in our place to experience this. Even Abeth didn’t expect this to happen because our place is more elevated compared to Nanay’s place.

So, we moved some of our things to the second floor. We elevated the refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, gas range, and our sofa to keep away from flood water. It was very tiring because we have to lift all of them. Can you imagine that? **Sigh** We’re glad that my cousin Roy was there to help Abeth. That night, we prayed for the rain to stop, and it did stop.

In the next morning, the flood water subsided. That’s the nice part. But the hard part is the mess left by the flood water inside our house. We have to clean the whole first floor. Buti na lang sanay si abeth sa ganito, kasi palaging baha sa kanila pag sobrang lakas ang ulan. After cleaning, we prepared our lunch. Abeth asked me to cook lunch for his relatives affected by the flood. We cooked chicken adobo (because it’s the easiest thing to do during these days and chicken is the only meat available in the freezer), inihaw na talong, salted egg, tomatoes and bagoong, tinapa, and sautéed ampalaya. What a feast! Sarap kumain pag ganitong panahon. Abeth’s cousins went to our house to have their lunch. They just brought food for Nanay and other oldies who cannot make it to our house because the streets were still flooded that time.

This is an unexpected experience. We hope it won’t happen again. Take a look at some of the pictures taken inside our house. I forgot to take pictures outside because we were so busy lifting all our things.

I was tagged by toni. Thanks toni!

What books and/or magazines did I read this month?

Magazines: Cook and GoodHousekeeping

Books: Elsivier Publications and other Petroleum and Petrochemical-related Journals (Of course it’s my job!)

What movies and/or tv shows did I watch this month?

Movies: Transformers

TV: I watch MOMS regularly

What special days did I celebrate and how?

My mother-in-law’s birthday. There was no special celebration, we just had dinner.

What gifts did I give and/or receive?

Receive: Abeth purchased a CANON printer for me

Give: I baked a cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday

What illnesses or health concerns did I have?

Thank God I’ve been healthy this year and never been hospitalized yet (sana wag na, pahinga naman this year).

What fun things did I do with my friends and/or family?

Brought Andre with us when we went to the mall and the supermarket. Sobrang likot nya! But it was fun!

Me and my officemates went to Greenbelt and ate at Oodys (Did I spell it right?) . It was fun because we haven’t went out for a while

What new foods, recipes or restaurants did I try this month?

Recipes: I tried to bake the magic bars and nutty chocofudge bars.

New foods: OODYS’ Fresh Spring roll, Pasta in curried spicy chicken, and Pad Thai

What special or unusual purchases did I make?

We purchased the “I Wonder Why” series together with the complete Harry Potter Series

What were this month’s disappointments?

When my uncle (my mom’s brother) left our house in Cavite to finally live on their own with his family, without saying goodbye nicely because of sort of misunderstanding

What were my accomplishments this month?

I successfully decorated the cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday

On Andre: He can now walk all by himself

I’m now tagging Mitch, Cookie, and Thet