In the tradition of....

Funny how I began thinking about my New year's resolution days after January. Although I've made a promise to myself never to make a New year's resolution list to follow through the year 2011, I've had a change of heart, or more specifically a change of food preference. Following in the tradition of doing something worthwhile or productive for the following year, I've come up with the perfect New year's resolution for 2011: cook up some real food in the kitchen. 

As much as I would like to admit that I'm a stay-at-home mom, I don't cook much. Although I could not count the number of times I cooked for my family with my fingers and toes, I could count with my one hand the so-called food I cooked for them. One was fried egg, then there's fried fish, and some ready-to-cook food stuffs and that covers everything. My one attempt at making something different was a veggie recipe, which consisted of potatoes, cabbages, and carrots. I just sauteed everything in the frying pan, added some salt and sauce, then viola, my kids and partner didn't eat it. Although by the time I was done cooking I was really famished I almost finished everything. I failed to notice the bland taste of the stuff I've prepared because of my hunger. 

Sometimes, it embarrasses me how my partner is the better cook. When he prepares our meal, my little tykes would all get excited and look forward to meal time. I'm not jealous though that he can whip up something good in the kitchen, I'm just a bit frustrated because I don't know a fig about anything in the kitchen. This issue has been niggling in the back of my mind since we moved to an apartment late 2009, and I just couldn't ignore it anymore when, at the right moment, another realization helped me make up my mind.

Another mind-opening event happened on New year's Eve when I was forced to pay an exorbitant amount for a pan of lasagna. Since I don't know how to bake one, and I was really craving for lasagna for our New year's Eve dinner, I ordered from my sister's friend. Upon eating a slice of lasagna I realized that I could make one just like this if I have the recipe for it. I'll just start with a simple recipe and just add my signature to it later when I become an expert.

If this ain't delicious, I don't know what is....

Photo source: recipe-to-make.com


So, topping the list of meals I have to learn this year is: (drum rolls please) Lasagna! I've found a relatively easy to make lasagna that I can follow without putting a hole in my pocket courtesy of the Pinoy Food blog. I'm confident that if I just follow each step carefully, I'd be able to make a passable lasagna and with constant practice, I'll be able to ace the recipe. Aside from this recipe, the site also offers so many other Filipino style recipes that I can go through and try cooking. I'm pretty excited to make my first recipe and I'll post pictures of my creations if embarrassment doesn't get the best of me.

Since food is one of my greatest passion, I'd also like to try cooking some of my fave foods. The second and third recipes to top my list are chicken salad and pansit palabok. I've just found the perfect site that offers free recipes: Filipino recipes. I hope to be able to cook any of these three recipes by February 22 for Smokeshade's birthday. It's the least I could do for all the yummy cooking he's done for us. Yum.... Thinking about it makes my mouth water...

Photo source: filipinodesserts.net and http://www.kusina.info.ph.

Since it's almost lunch time anyway, I'm off to buying food for our lunch. Wish me luck everyone!

One fine afternoon at MELs

   As I have been working at home for more than 4 months now, I can already feel some of its disadvantages. For one, no amount of chatting or posting shoutouts compensate for the desire of a face-to-face conversation. In my case, when I suddenly decided to resign from my current job to pursue a freelance career, I didn't think to stop and consider leaving some of my closest friends in the office. As I made a hasty leave in the office, afterwards being caught up in the adjustment period of my new job, it was only recently that I realized that I miss my friends.


  So, how do you remedy this? The answer is plain simple: Go out and meet people every once in a while. As soon as I realized that I missed my friends I immediately grabbed the opportunity of meeting them when a friend issued an invitation to meet, and fair enough, I had a good time catching up with them. Although the group was not complete because a couple of friends were missing, we still managed to have a good time.

     Aside from this, we tried a new place in town called From the kitchen of MEL's cafe and the food didn't disappoint. It was fairly priced and the servings are just enough to satisfy one's palette. The place has a relaxed ambiance and although we had to wait for the food for some considerable amount of time, there were a lot of diversions to keep us busy. The resto offers a game called dodecamino where your analytical skills and patience are challenged and you get to receive some cute stuff when you form some of the shapes they specified. If you don't want to stress yourself out, you can also listen to some good music while reading a bestseller from their book collection or browse through entertainment magazines. For the most part, all we did was talk until the food arrived.


   All in all, we had a blast and I get to relax and meet my goal of meeting my friends. I tagged my oldest son along and thankfully, he really behaved all throughout the outing. At the end of the day, I find myself looking forward to another social activity where I can really interact with people. Although I usually like to be by myself most of the time and I love being a home-based ghostwriter and copyeditor, it still pays to establish some connection every now and then. My friends and I have already planned to meet next month and I'm already looking forward to it.