Realistic Breads!

I have developed a fascination towards fake food over the years. I don't know why, but there's something about fake food that makes me very interested. Nowadays, fake food is widely used for restaurant food displays. So instead of putting up real food which will definitely spoil at the end of the day, food shop owners are opting for plastic or whatever man-made material displays.

One day my mom enthusiastically showed these:

It's a small chocolate donut topped with strawberry cream! I was so amazed because it looked so real and smelled like the real thing, too! It smelled like frosted chocolate, really! And on the right, it's a stress ball that looked like a chocolate bun! Even the facial features smelled like chocolate syrup! It was too cute! Too cute that I even bought my own from the same store and here's what I bought:

More smiley choco buns! I also bought a fancy chocolate donut, it is glazed with dark chocolate, sprinkled with bittersweet chocolate bits and topped with whipped cream and peeled sweet oranges. The features are so detailed, anyone might mistake them for actual treats and eat it! Just look at the bottom part of the chocolate buns! It looks like the real thing!

And I also purchased those stuff above. That one is a purse. It looks like a tube of wasabi but if you squeeze the top part it will open and it has a lot of room for your small stuff like coins or whatever and no, you can't open the black cap. That's what I thought too when I first saw this. Good thing there was a helpful clerk to assist me when she saw me curiously tinkering this. Isn't it cute? And the last one is a box of Do-it-yourself cake. Yup, what you see pictured on the box is what it should look like after you finish sewing everything. Yup, you will sew! Inside the box are lots of fancy fabrics and cloths and other yarns you will need. Since I am so lazy, I let my brother do it. He is halfway through and I hope it will turn out right. How about you? do you like fake food , too?

Super China Bowl!

It has been almost a year since I last saw my Chinese friend, Jianya Tang. She is a classmate in college and we helped each other through some tough times. We perfectly understand each other amidst barriers brought about by culture and language. I learned a lot from her and I believe she also did from me.

After looking at some Japanese school for us to learn Nihongo, we decided to eat at Super China Bowl!

The menu is mostly dumplings, noodles, vegetables and meats served on rice and that includes:

Those are pork and chicken on rice, pork dumplings and noodles. I had the pork dumplings and I was so surprised about the size of it! It was bigger than the usual siomai that are served on the street or on any other restaurants I have been in. It was very meaty and chewy. My noodles had siomai and beef strips. The noodles are way too thin than I think it should be but I enjoyed eating it with a pair of chopsticks. Eating at Super Bowl China really gives an extraordinary and authentic food experience even if the food is pricey.

Reyes Barbecue

Do you love barbecue? I do! I love anything grilled! While scanning through my computer folders I ran into some pictures we took when me and my colleagues ate out for barbecue! We went to Reyes Barbecue in Greenbelt 1, Makati.

The menu is all about barbecued meats. There is Boneless Chicken Barbecue for 115 pesos, a stick of Pork Barbecue is 45 pesos, Grilled Pusit or Grilled Squid is 160 pesos, Liempo or Pork Cutlet is 150 pesos, Grilled Hamburger 95, Grilled Bangus (MilkFish) Belly is 105 pesos. Pretty much reasonable prices. By the way, 1 US dollar is roughly around 48 Philippine pesos.

It's so nice to eat out with friends! Our company doesn't impose strict rules when it comes to breaks so we took our time, but of course we don't abuse this privilege. We were all smiles when our orders came, just look at my Chinese colleague and "mentally-challenged" friend (just kidding! ^^) Jessie.

Aren't they in cloud nine? Haha!

From the top starting from the left pic, that's pork barbecue on a stick, grilled tuna, bangus, liempo and finally, chicken. Each meal is served with rice, pickled papaya and a dipping sauce - a combination of peanut sauce and soy sauce or worcestershire sauce, I am not sure about the actual mix but I can definitely taste peanuts! And oh, that's a mango shake, over there.

Barbecue is more enjoyable if shared with friends!

Pizza!

Everyone loves pizza! Who wouldn't? Specially me! I mentioned pizza here.

I took the day off and I baked my own version of pizza. Here are the ingredients I used:

2-Medium sized Pizza crust. Okay, I haven't tried making my own dough so for the meantime allow me to cheat a bit. I had some grated quick-melt cheese. These are indeed quick melt, I had to refrigerate it after grating. I also had some ground beef and Italian sausage boiled for 20 minutes or so. The ground pork clumped together during the process of boiling so I have to crumble it. I had some sliced longganisa, onions and a few minced garlic just to have a little twist to my pizza and spaghetti sauce! Yes, I like my pizza with spaghetti sauce. This one had mushroom bits in it so I don't need to buy mushrooms anymore.

I sliced the Italian sausage. I bought this one from the local grocery and it was expensive! But it looks fancy with all the peepers and herbs inside. I spread the crusts with the sauce. I made sure I didn't place too much. Most of the pizza chefs say so. Then I arranged the sliced onions and garlic. And after topping it up with meat. I came up with two different pizzas!

The left one is the Italian Sausage Supreme and the right one is the local version, the Pinoy Longganisa Supreme Pizza!

After placing them in the oven, I realized I had a few ingredients left. So I used them to make mini pizzas with white bread.

The result turned out really great! The cheese melted wonderfully! The longganisa pizza was sweet and juicy and the Italian sausage had a hint of spice in it. Wow! I was able to bake two totally different pizza! My aunt loved it so much she told me I could run my own pizza restaurant. LOL. Who knows, maybe I would, someday!

My Cousin's Debut

It was my cousin Beige's 18th birthday yesterday. And I am one of the emcees together with my other cousin Ieth. I am glad that I brought my camera, there was so much to see. When I arrived my cousins Red and friend Arch were busy with the last decoration. The theme was something like a luau and beach party combined.

The venue is at Kidz World. This is becoming the official venue for our family gatherings and other stuff. If you could remember we also had a celebration at this post. I was very disappointed actually because I wasn't able to feature the food at the buffet table because I need to do my job as the emcee. We had Kare-kare which was so delicious and the vegetables in it are perfectly steamed and the breaded tofu was so firm I almost thought it was breaded fish fillet. There are more and we even had lechon but unfortunately I had no time to take pictures of the. So I'll just dump these beautiful shots I took from the place.

And below is a 3-layered-cake. Each layer has a different flavor, give-aways (I think) and the 18 Candles.

Okay, there are no food features in this post, except for that cake, but it is worth a share. So please do check out my blog again for more!

Healthy Shabu-Shabu

After going around in circles, finally we found it! Healthy Shabu-Shabu! Shabu-Shabu is a one pot meal where you blanch several ingredients right at your own table. Thinly sliced food is submerged in boiling water or broth or whatever then move in back and forth until it is cooked or simply leave it boiling. The back and forth movement makes a swishing sound. Shabu-Shabu directly translates to "swish - swish", hence the name.

The menu, apart from the cooked meals, are platters of raw ingredients. There are a bunch, actually. As you can see above, there are meat, vegetables, sea food, noodles, etc. It was my first time to eat shabu-shabu style so I was very much excited.

It actually took a while before our orders came in so I took the chance to take a photo of myself, hehe. And observe!

The utensils: there's a small bowl on a plate, 2 small spatulas at the left, one with holes in it. A pair of wooden chopsticks and a ceramic spoon for the soup. At the upper right, is a special sauce for dipping or for soup seasoning. It's pretty much an all-around sauce. As you can see there is a medium sized pot built in the table, that's where everything is cooked by no other chef but yourself. Isn't it nice? Then after a while, the waiter came and handed some more seasonings.

One raw egg, a small plate of minced garlic, spring onions, red and green chilies and an unknown brown paste. My brother said it was bagoong or fish paste, but it didn't taste like one. Then our pots were poured with a special broth. I don't know what it's made of but it's actually good, you could eat it on its own.

As soon as my pot was filled, I immediately seasoned it with garlic and spring onions. You know me, I hate spicy foods so I threw my chilies to my mom's plate. Gahaha!

Then, our orders finally came! Here's what we had..

The first one is a platter of fresh cabbage, lettuce, sweet potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, carrots silken tofu, sliced corn on the cob, fish balls, squid balls, white noodles, clear noodle and crab sticks. The next one is the seafood platter. It includes prawns, salmon strips, chopped squid, scallops and sea cucumbers. And the last one is the beef platter. These are fresh, thinly-sliced beef.

As I sip my papaya shake, I took the time to look around. The ambiance was okay. It did felt like a zen garden though it lacked a few more decorations. I love the wheel fountain. For my first time, I took whatever I can and dumped it in the pot.

Noodles and Crab Stick

Shiitake Mushroom and Squid Tentacles

Salmon and Beef

Add a few more, increase the temperature and let it cook!

I suddenly came up with an idea. I will make my own soup version and give it a name. It didn't took so much time for everything to cook. So I came up with these:

"Prawn-tastic!"

I mashed a few silken tofu, folded in some beef, added a leaf of cabbage, a slice of corn on the cob and topped it off with a giant prawn!

"Oriental Brown Soup"

For this one, I selected anything that has a brownish hue on it. Those that I found were shiitake mushrooms, sea cucumber, some scallops, beef and topped it off with some onion springs.

"Soft Soup Fast"

The ingredients in this one doesn't really have anything in common except for the fact that they are the first one cooked among the stuff I dumped in the pot. Cabbage, tofu and squid.

"Mini Seafood Ramen"

And my favorite creation! I had to arrange the noodles in a way that they won't tangle too much then cut the crab stick into thin sheets and delicately arrange them around the bowl and topped it off with a sea cucumber and some spring onions.

I had too much fun creating bowls, mixing possible combination and experimenting on a lot of stuff that I realized I haven't eaten much yet. When I looked around, there are a few ingredients left so I grabbed a few of what's left and again, dumped it in my pot!

I was enjoying every minute of it! Doesn't it show? Haha!

And for dessert, we had Halo-Halo. Yes, it's Halo-Halo. it's the first time I've seen one with very little shaved ice. A serving only had about a tablespoon of shaved ice and my jaw dropped to my amusement. At first I was disappointed but when I tried it, it was really good! The contrast between the sweetness of the banana and watermelon contrasted well with the zest of the kiwi, grapes and mango. The texture of black gulaman made everything nicer.

I really had a blast with my first Shabu-Shabu experience, I think I ate too much but it's okay, I didn't feel too much bloated because everything is boiled, not fried. Most of the time, I was asking my mom, who is sitting beside me if my sea food is already cooked. Honestly, most of them turn out either completely raw or half cooked! But you know, I can say, I have never ever enjoyed raw food this much since sushi. The most time I had waiting for my food to cook is about 3 minutes and for that, I could also say, Shabu-Shabu is not for everyone. Specialy for those who hate sushi but you'll never know! Try it!

Mom and Dad's Paluto

There's a fresh way of eating here in the Philippines, and I mean literally. We have here what we call, "Paluto" restaurants. "Paluto" equally translates to: "let someone else do the cooking for you". Now, the fresh part is, those restaurants are only a stone-throw away from the market whereas seafood is guaranteed fresh! I personally love eating here. You could ask the chefs how would you like it cooked and additional ingredients are provided by them by request. Of course, they don't have everything so you have to buy some yourself. Last time, our family ate at Mom and Dad's and after buying still breathing sea critters, here's what the resto came up with:


(Left to right, starting at the top) Calamres, Shrimp Tempura, Fish in Miso Soup and Shellfish. Calamres is also Calamari, I just don't know why it's called such here but what the heck as long as it taste good. I love their Shrimp Tempura, too. The breading is crunchy like that of the Calamares' and the meat is soft. I find it very surprising. Almost all Tempuras and Calamares that I have eaten have a harder meat texture because it's deep-fried, but theirs is different. It looks like the meat was steamed, then deep fried. Fish in Miso Soup was also good. I can't recall what type of fish it was but I think it's tuna. Miso soup is widely known for its health benefits to regular consumers so every sip of the soup was revitalizing. I also loved the shellfish. I think it was first baked, then stir fried with the shell on.

And of course, a feast is not a feast without Sisig. As seen in the photo, I mixed the sisig with raw egg. Sisig is really delicious but this one had too much chili.

And there's the rice. Garlic and plain rice. I should've ask them to put more garlic.
I just love garlic. This one had enough garlic but I wanted more.

These are the hearty soups I tried. The first one is a Chicken and Broccoli soup. It had, well, chicken and broccoli, some minced carrots, a few noodle strands and other small vegetable bits that I couldn't identify. It was by far, the most flavorful soup that I ever had. I liked it so much that I had two servings of this one. The next is Miki Noodles. Miki is actually a large type of noodle. It is thick and delicious as well. And lastly...

This is "Lato". It is sea weed, eaten as it is when harvested. It's like a soft stem with many sacs attached to it filled with gooey stuff. It's not really a "fear factor" food. I actually enjoyed eating this. The slimy whatever that oozes out when bitten is actually like salt water but not really salty. Lato is best eaten with vinegar.