'Miscellaneous' archive

The how-to-cook series

As much as possible, I take photos of every step of the cooking to make the blog entries more instructional. Well, okay, that’s the noble way of explaining it. Perhaps, the more glaring truth is that I’m just camera obsessed. Anyway, visual guides are always good in food writing. Even with the disastrous cooked dishes, I have a myriad of step-by-step photos that illustrate various stages of cooking — chopping onions the painless way, mincing garlic without the cloves flying all over the kitchen, the stages in beating egg whites, cutting the kernels off a cob of fresh corn… You name it, I probably have a photo for it.

Kitchenware sale and the breakfast blog

First, The Breakfast Daily is up. I mentioned it a couple of entries ago and I was hoping to launch it much earlier. But we just moved houses and getting broadband installed took longer than I expected so the blog didn’t actually go live until last night.

What’s in The Breakfast Daily? Breakfast ideas, some with recipes. Why didn’t I just integrate the content in this blog? Lots of reasons, the most significant of which is that I want to write about food and health issues which I don’t think properly belong in a recipes blog. Food and health can be very political issues so I needed a separate space for that.

Your kitchen and the environment

In case you didn’t notice, I was displaying the Blog Action Day badge on the sidebar for over a week. The campaign culminated yesterday, October 15th, with almost 20,000 blogs participating, including Pinoy Cook. What is it about? It is about the little things that we can do to help save the environment. Until the last minute, I couldn’t decide whether I was going to post an entry here or write an op-ed column.

Happy Mother’s Day!

To the mothers who cook my recipes; to the mothers who love to make their mouth water by ogling at photos in my food blogs; to the mothers who love to eat out; to the mothers who never experienced home-cooked meals in their childhood because their own mothers were lousy cooks (like mine hehehe); to the thin moms and the non-so-thin moms; to the young moms and to moms who will forever be young-at-heart, to the moms-to-be and to everyone else because we all have mothers, don’t we…

Where’s the cookbook? (cookbook update)

A couple of months ago, I told you I was writing a cookbook. I’m happy to announce that the pace has picked up and it looks like I will be able to finish the first draft by the end of this month. I am finally happy with how the photos are turning out. I am doubly happy that we have a new househelp to do the washing and cleaning each and every time I cook up a storm in the kitchen. It isn’t a joke cooking meals (including peeling, chopping, mincing, slicing, etc.), washing plates and pans and every utensil I used, setting up the meals to look presentable for the photos while the family whines that everyone’s hungry and I’m taking forever mounting the camera on the tripod and taking multiple shots from every possible angle. There were times when I was so tired from cooking that my hands would shake while mounting the camera on the tripod. At least now I don’t have to do the washing part anymore…

Birthday dinner: roast turkey, vegetable salad and peach cake

My husband celebrated his birthday last Saturday and we hosted a small dinner party. I opted to keep the menu simple since I would do the cooking alone. I decided on rice-stuffed roast turkey, a vegetable salad, baked spaghetti for the kids and a peach cake. I wish the photos looked better but I had to turn the camera flash on. I couldn’t set up the tripod since our guests had already arrived and were eager to dig in…

A food photo a day…

Most times, I take about a dozen photos of a single dish from different angles so that I’d have plenty to choose from. And I photograph just about any food that I see. You know, just for practice. Yeah, I do believe that practice makes perfect. So, question is what will I do with the photos as they keep piling up?

Thanks, Filipinas magazine!

It was reader Lourdes in the comment thread of my second Lasang Pinoy 8 entry who first informed me that this blog was featured in the April, 2006 edition of Filipinas Magazine, a California (?) publication. When I went to see, the March edition was still online and I thought that Lourdes was referring to [...]

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House On A Hill

Pinoy food

• Kilawing gindara
• Pancit bihon (rice sticks with chicken and vegetables)
• Guinataang paco
• Biko (sticky rice cake)
• Fish and malunggay soup
• Spicy, herb-y adobong sitaw
• A soup called bachoy
• Adobong kangkong
• Chicken tinola and liver sauce
• Chicken soup a la picadillo

Experimental

• Chicken livers and string beans
• Chicken and mushrooms burger
• Bangus fritters
• Fish & vegetables stir-fry
• Pork steak 2
• Yellow fin tuna and kamote (sweet potato) cakes
• Pasta with tinapang bangus (smoked milkfish)
• Bangus (milkfish) and broccoli stir fry
• Chicken and potatoes in yogurt
• Creamy Chicken & Vegetable Soup