Our Simple Christmas Dinner

*Recipes coming soon!*

I love the holidays, when everything is just about food. And this time, I just sat and relaxed while my older sister cooks our Christmas meals while I get to taste and eat while she's cooking. I managed to eat a buffet already by the time she forced me to help in preparing the food. So the recipes I will have to verify with both my memory and my sister's memory as well.

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Chicken and Veggies Stir Fry

Stir fries are great when you are in such a hurry. They can be done in less than ten minutes, and you can have a hearty and tasty meal with lots of color and a little spiciness with it. It's also great with leftover chicken and extra vegetables in small amounts, that way you won't have to throw away anything.
We still have a cup of uncooked shredded cabbage left from cooking pancit canton for

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Perfectly Crisp Homemade French Fries

When I was younger, I always asked for french fries at home. My parents would buy those huge bags of fries from Makro and PriceSmart back then, but they taste bland and way too flour-y for me. When I started cooking, I made a lot of homemade mojos ala Shakeys, and tried making french fries from freshly bought potatoes at home. 
But no matter how I cook them, they always turn soggy with oil, or

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Prawns in Tamarind Soup (Sinigang na Sugpo)

On cold and rainy nights when the warmth of the kitchen fire is so welcoming, a hot and steamy bowl of soup makes everything just right. Tamarind soup is used as a base for sinigang, a dish so popular in the Philippines that it is present in every little canteen that you come into. It has a lot of varieties, but my favorite one is large prawns (sugpo) and vegetables cooked in tamarind soup.

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Perfect Baked Potato Wedges

I don't know what characteristic potatoes have that my dad just can't resist buying bags of the stuff. Right after buying kilos of marbles potatoes and leaving half of them unused and beginning to rot, my dad brought home ten kilos of potatoes, but this time a lot bigger. It somehow gave me a false impression that he does this on purpose so the composting bin full of composting worms can have

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Shakey's Mojos and a Recipe

I love eating at Shakey's. They have been around for as long as I can remember, and as a child I remember going to one of their kiddie programs where we can make our own pizza using our choice of ingredients. And the pizza would always come with an ordered basket of mojos, which are potato wedges deep fried to moist perfection.

The mojos back then were a bit more tastier than the mojos I eat

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Noodle-crusted Eggplant Side Dish

Along with the Korean barbecue and the mung bean sprouts side dish that was served the other night, an eggplant side dish was also cooked so that the eggplants would not be left unused in the fridge to rot. Our house helper seems to hate eggplants, and for months I have watched kilos of the vegetable going to either the trash, or the compost pit in our small garden. My sister is some sort of an

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Stir Fried Togue Recipe (Mung Bean Sprouts)

When I tried to make togue, or internationally known as mung bean sprouts, a few days ago, I was planning on using it for our bento lunch box together with the planned Mongolian chicken. Hopefully everything will indeed go as planned, because it is quite hard for me to come up with impromptu recipes to cook for our baon. Anyway, the togue was used as a side dish earlier than expected because of

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How To Make Mung Bean Sprouts (Togue)

I have been planning on making Mongolian beef or chicken for our packed lunch anytime next week, and with my Alex's tummy growing flabbier as a result of so many meat dishes, I decided that it's time to incorporate more vegetables in his fatty diet. With the Asian inspired menu plan I have in mind for the first part of this incoming semester, there is no better side dish that togue, or mung bean

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An Aspiring Chef's Nightmare and Gomashio

It has been countless days since I last cooked anything. Okay, so I maybe a bit exaggerating, but a few days of no cooking activity, not to mention being stuck here at home during the last few days of summer vacation, seems like an eternity for a foodie-slash-aspiring chef like me. I have been drooling at the food photos over at Taste Spotting, and I feel so useless like this. But I feel a slight

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Ensaladang Manga (Green Mango Salad Recipe)

Whenever I eat too much meat, or any fatty dish whether it may be deep fried or pan fried in butter, I always feel guilty about having too much junk inside my digestive system. I try to compensate by adding greens and fruits to my diet, thinking that it would help me recover from the layers of bad cholesterol sticking to my belly as I eat mouthwatering sinful slabs of pork such as lechon kawali

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Fresh Lumpia, Chinatown Style!

I have always wanted to explore Binondo, also known as Chinatown, but so far I have only walked the length of Ongpin Street from Plaza Sta. Cruz. I didn't actually get any chance of eating their famous food, since the main objective of going there was to find and buy fenugreek seeds by the kilo. Unfortunately for me, we didn't find any seller of the said seeds in Ongpin, an idea given to me by a

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Lumpiang Sili Recipe with Sweet Dip

I have been a lover of spicy things ever since I was a child. I love mixing hot sauce with my barbecue marinades. I include chili-garlic sauce in my stir fried vegetables, and I absolutely enjoy crushing red bird's eye chili (siling labuyo) in my white vinegar in which I used to dip grilled meat and vegetables. I also have Thai peppers in my herb garden, and I am currently attempting to grow my

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Really Tasty Ampalaya Egg Scramble

Our household helper has certainly made things interesting in our quiet home when she went AWOL for three days, with a cash advance of her next month's pay, courtesy of my very generous dad, and with a text message that she would only go to church for the Easter Sunday Mass. God bless her wary soul as she has lied to us, despite our treatment to her as part of the family. Now while she is away,

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