A new toy

It's been at least 8 years since I bought a camera.

I loved my Sony but it was time for a change.

Hello, Canon Rebel EOS t2i with 18-55 lens.

Haven't had much time to really use it and explore all that it can do

but here are some shots I've taken so far.

 1.  my new bowling ball...

 2.  a vase of silk hydrangeas that I put together.

 3.  a plant that a friend gave

4.  white vases on a shelf

I have so much more to learn about photography

and I have so much more to learn about photo editing.

I am excited at the prospect of learning both

and sharing the products with you.

New York, revisited

The first time I ever tried pinatisang manok was in December 1988 during my first trip to New York City.  My husband and I took a side trip to the Big Apple while visiting friends in Rhode Island for the holidays.  While in the city, we stayed with a college friend, Relinie, who was working as a nurse at NYU Medical Center at the time.  She served as our guide and brought us to some famous landmarks like the Rockefeller Center, World Trade Center, Statue of Liberty, and Macy's!  On our first day in the city, she served us this dish for lunch.   I have never forgotten how tasty it was.  Since then I have tried a couple of times to cook it but could never get just the right flavor because I never had chili pepper leaves.  Over the weekend, I finally found all the pepper leaves I could get my hands on and more.  One of our friends had several bushes and we took a few cuttings for planting and a few more for cooking.  Tonight, I may have just done Linie's pinatisang manok justice 23 years hence. 

Disclaimer:  Make sure to close all doors to the bedrooms, keep the exhaust fan at full blast, and light all the scented candles you can find.  Thankfully my husband was out when I cooked it and sprayed the house with perfume to mask the scent of the patis (fish sauce) before he arrived. 

Pinatisang Manok

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken wings
• 1 c chili pepper leaves
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
• 3 tbsp patis 
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbsp fresh ginger, julienned
• 1 cup water

In a medium sauce pan, saute garlic until brown - add onion and cook until translucent - add ginger for another couple of minutes - add the chicken wings and cook each side until brown (5 min on each side) - add pepper leaves - add water - bring to a boil - lower temperature to medium and simmer for another 20 minutes or until the sauced has reduced in half.  Serve hot over white steamed rice.

The week that was..

What made your week?

Me?  

Little things like...

 ...my new bowling ball...because it helped me get a couple of strikes at our League play.

...this Monarch caterpillar...because it will soon metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly!

...these calamansi...small but oh so good because the marinade I made with it came out so tasty.

 ...these mangoes...because I went on my first mango picking trip and collected a few bags of these!

...these sprouting green onions...because I never knew you could grow them just by placing the white part in water!

Breakfast, Pinoy style

This morning, we broke the night's fasting with a sumptuous spread of typical Filipino breakfast dishes.  I wish I could say that my family eats this way everyday.  This definitely was a little bit more involved than our typical, oatmeal or egg and toast but well worth the preparation because it was to share with friends who had just spent time this morning cleaning up Paradise Beach in Indialantic.  Our small Philippine organization, Sanlahi, Inc., has adopted this stretch of beach and we go and clean it up on the first Saturday of the month.  It was a pleasure to have prepared this month's breakfast to those who came out to help out.  These are some of the dishes we shared this morning.

Garlic fried rice

 I simply fried 3 tbps. minced garlic until golden brown and remove a few to garnish.

Add 4 cups old rice and fry until done. 

Top with fried garlic and serve hot.

 

Fried dilis

Fried danggit

Pork tocino

Tomato and salted egg salad

 This salad goes with tocino, longganisa, fried fish, etc. and fried rice.

4 red ripe Roma tomatoes, chopped

3 salted eggs, chopped

Salted eggs may be found in any Asian food store.  Some stores will keep them in the fridge or on the shelf.

I usually cut the egg in half with a knife and then use a spoon to scoop the egg out and add to the salad.  I chop it up in the salad or chop on a chopping board then add.

Sprinkle with a couple dashes of fish sauce, juice of a couple calamansi or lemon.

Top with 2 tbps green onions.

Serve cold or room temperature. 

This is how salted eggs come packaged

Tsokolate (Philippine hot cocoa)


Check out Erin's Hearty Meat Lasagna.

5 K

If you know me well enough, you probably would put a question mark after my name when I say 5K! As one would have it, Ralph and I have taken up a sport that is the farthest from what anybody we know would have thought we would ever do.  But, run, we have!  We ran our first ever 5K at the Melbourne Music Marathon in Downtown Melbourne this past February.  It was equally exhilarating as it was physically draining.  We had about two weeks to train - well, it was more like walk/run just enough to have endurance to cross the finish line!  I was both excited and scared on race day, maybe more scared than excited, really.  Surprisingly, I not only finished the race but actually finished in a little over 40 minutes!

My next run was the Melbourne Strawberry Festival a couple of weeks later . This was actually how I celebrated my birthday!  Ralph didn't run with me today, so I went with a little apprehension about my will to finish.  You see, Ralph was my cheerleader and the one who kept pace with me so I would keep running till the finish at the first 5K.  Thankfully, I had several friends who celebrated my birthday and ran with me.  Not only did I finish the race, I actually improved on my time by about 2 minutes.  The ultimate prize was a super delicious strawberry pancake breakfast prepared festival volunteers! 

On March 31, Ralph, Megan, and I ran the Game Day 5K at the Viera Stadium.  The best part of the run was coming into the stadium behind center field and running to the plate to finish the race!  My goal coming into the race was to improve on my last run's time.  However, it wasn't meant to be this time.  For the first time since I started running, I had side stitches.  It came on after I drank water at the water stop and then running on a down slope.  It cut my time for the race because I had to walk for about a mile of the 3.1 mi!  Nevertheless, it was still a fun run especially that Megan ran with us.

Happy smiles after the run!

To end our season of running, Ralph and I ran at the Melbourne Art Festival 5K in Downtown Melbourne at the end of April.  There were several hundred runners who ran that day and the food at the end of the run was awesome!  We even had mango smoothies!  The course was a beast!  We ran up and back of the Melbourne Causeway -twice!  I tell you, I was cursing as I was running on the second uphill run on the back stretch!  I have never trained for uphill running and boy did I wish I did. I thought I would lose a lot of time today yet I actually improved from the last time I ran at a similar (minus the second run up the Causeway) course in February.  I finished at 39:22 which was about a minute under my first run here! 

I have no plans of running again until the fall.  It is just so hot out there.  We still do run along Lake Washington Rd. every now and again just so we would be prepared when the running season (cooler weather) starts up again.

Running is a sport that was the farthest from our minds to get started.  In fact, I have always wondered how runners can just keep on running for miles!  After getting started with it, now I understand how and why runners do it.  It is grueling, don't get me wrong, but the endorphins that rushes in after the run is so great that it energizes you.  After the 3rd race, I actually felt more active after the run!  I don't know how long Ralph and I can keep running since we are both up there in age and the knees do get a beating, but for as long as they don't totally give in, we will keep running!  Why don't you come and join us in one of these runs sometime?

Future 5K runs that we are considering on running this year:

Turtle Krawl 5K Run/Walk - Indialantic, September 15
Ghostly Geckos 5 K - Eau Gallie Civic Center, October 20
Pumpkins in the Park 5K - Cocoa Village, October 26
Ascension Eagle Pride 5k/1K - TBD, November 10
Disney Family Fun Run 5K - January 11, 2013

Bucket List Runs

Disney Princess Half Marathon - February 24, 2013

Let's get a-planting!

Entrance - BEFORE

It's been 10 years since we moved to our house.  We didn't buy the property because the house was great, but because the yard was expansive and the houses in the neighborhood are not sitting on top of each other.  It was also dotted with at least 20 palm trees, bamboos, and oak trees.  Other than the occasional mowing of the yard, we have not done much to add to the aesthetics of the yard until this year.  We hired a tree trimming service to trim back overgrown palms and oak trees.  It looks so much neater to look at now (if there is such a thing in trees!).  Before they were trimmed, Megan would say to her friends who are visiting, "you'll drive through well-kept yards then you'll see a jungle - that's our house!".

We also started to add some landscaping to the entrance to the yard.  You will see above where we cleaned out a portion of the entrance, shaped it with pavers and planted some sun-loving perrenials.  Voila!  The next picture shows what it looks like after we added plants!

Entrance - AFTER

Newly planted butterfly garden

Butterfly garden after 4 months

 What we didn't have was a butterfly garden.  So, plant it we did.  A friend said one time that if you plant it, the butterflies will come.  We added plants that would specifically attract monarch butterflies, etc.  Monarchs are starting to become endangered so why not help out nature by planting plants that would attract them to it.  True enough, before we even planted the last plant, we already saw a couple of butterflies fluttering around the plants.  A few days later, we saw a couple of caterpillars munching on the leave of a couple of the milkweeds.  I have never been more enchanted to see nature on display.  Four months later the

Monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed leaves

plants have bloomed and thanks to the recent dousing of rain, the plants are robust and healthy looking - still!  I just love to look at the different colors every time I get out the front door and head to the car.  I always smile when I pass by.

We haven't had an herb garden in years now.  I found this broken wheelbarrow that was sitting behind a fence.  Ralph drilled holes let water drain, covered it with potting soil and planted the more popular herbs that we use for cooking, such as, basil, mint, sage, rosemary, cilantro and parsley.  The herbs have really taken off and we have pinched off several leaves from the basil, parsley and cilantro to for some of the dishes we've prepared.

An upcycled wheelbarrow used a planter for our herb garden

1/1000. Chicken Piccata

So, the journey begins with Chicken Piccata!  Before I go on, there are a few things that I realized as I started to cook.  First, I have no artistic ability on food presentation for photography.  Second, my camera is not the best for making food look appetizing even when it isn't!  Third, I wasn't sure if I should take pictures as I was cooking of simply take pictures of the ingredients and the final product.  Well, I guess I will just have to make adjustments as we go through this journey and maybe after 1000 recipes, I would have made major leaps and bounds in food photography and presentation, not to mention blogging!

I thought this recipe was very simple to prepare.  I have always shied away from cooking chicken breasts because I find them very bland and I am not too fond of it's texture either.  Surprisingly, the chicken came out just tender enough and the sauce, well, it was good but I think it was too lemony.  The problem I believe came with using only 2 chicken breast cutlets and not the recommended 5 or 6.  I was reading the recipe last night and for sure I read 2 instead of 6 so I sent Ralph off to buy only 2.  I did not adjust for this fewer cuts of chicken breast and went ahead and prepared the dish with the full recipe ingredients.   

Lesson learned:  make sure to adjust quantities accordingly especially when the main ingredient quantity changes!

Speaking of ingredients,  there was nothing in it that you won't probably have in your pantry already except for the fresh parsley and the chicken cutlets.  The latter was the only ingredient I purchased 

to prepare for this dish tonight.  The parsley came from my herb garden!

I began by liberally adding salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken cutlets and then coating both sides with about 1/4 c of unbleached flour.  Heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a 10 in skillet and sauteing the cutlets for about 3 minutes on each side until they were light brown.  If I had more cutlets I would have placed each sauteed cutlet in the oven that had been warmed to 200 degrees and with an oven safe plate to hold it.  I would them have to do same thing I did from coating with flour till sauteeing until brown.  Since I only had two, I just placed the cutlets in the oven while I added an additional 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and sauteed 1 minced glove garlic for 30 seconds or just until you smell the aroma of the garlic.  One cup chicken stock and 1/8 in slices of lemon from half a lemon  were added.  This was made to reduce for about 4-5 minutes after which the additional 1/4 c lemon juice and 2 tbsp rinsed capers were added.  This mixture was made to further reduce to about 1/3 cup for about a minute or so. 

The pan was then removed from the heat, 2 tbsps of butter was added and allowed to melt, stirring continuously.  Finally 2 tbsps of minced fresh parsley was added.  The cutlets were transferred to a serving dish and the sauce was added on top of it.

Serve immediately over linguine or angel hair pasta.  If you are feeling lucky enough, you may also serve it with a glass of Pinot Grigio.  Tonight, I added some Filipino touch to the dish and served it over hot jasmine rice.  Verdict? It was just as delectable.

One of 1000 recipes is now in the books! 

1/1000.  Chicken Piccata