The reason for the pot

Nilagang manok—literally, boiled chicken—is the reason why I got my humongous pot in the first place.


Basically, it's just chicken (I use 8 or 10 pieces) boiled with onions and fish sauce (patis in Filipino, nam pla in Thai). I bring it to boil then simmer for about 40 minutes.

While the chicken's simmering, I cut up all the vegetables. Green beans, ballhead cabbage, pechay (bok choy) and Chinese (Napa) cabbage. I add all these to the pot after 40 minutes and keep it simmering for less than 5 minutes.

It's because of the vegetables that I needed the pot. I always use a lot, but even then, they're usually the first to go. This new one is so huge, you'll notice that the water level is way below the rim—in my old pot, it would have overflowed already.

I really love this pot.

Dinner, anyone?

Sigh. I have gained some inches over the past couple of months. The jeans that were beginning to become loose enough to become hipsters now fit snuggly around my waist again.

And it's not just the fault of those cupcakes—though I'm sure they didn't help! I have to confess: I'm a stress eater. It's not that I begin munching when I'm stressed out, unlike most people I know at work. But I do tend to eat larger servings and choose food that's not as healthy. More meat, less fresh vegetables and fruits. The past two weeks alone, I had McDonald's spaghetti and chicken nuggets four times. Add the pastries and the chips, and I'm looking at a 10-pound gain (minimum!) by the end of the year.

So last night, just before drifting off to sleep, I made the decision to stop all the junk, have more salads for lunch again, and go back to my cereal drink for dinner. Nestle's Nesvita. Whole wheat, soya and rice flour in skimmed milk and buttermilk. It's got sugar though but I guess I can't have everything. And yes, I actually like Nesvita's taste, and I've done this before so it's not going to be difficult at all. So here's to loose pants and saying good-bye to this heavy, bloated feeling—cheers!

The evil gas station

Okay, okay, so it's not really the gas station that's evil (though that's not too far off, what with gasoline/petrol prices nowadays).

A new gas station opened a few months ago that's right at the route we take going home from work and the owners decided to build a strip mall on the lot. All the shops opened soon after the gas station did, and one of them is my favorite doughnut shop: Go Nuts Donuts. It's not even their doughnuts that I'm crazy about (though I do like them too). It's their cupcakes. Specifically these two:

Scream Cheese is butter cake with a cream cheese center smothered in fluffy cream cheese and with butter-flavored sprinkles.

Chocolate Peanut Butter is creamy chocolate cake spread with chocolate fudge and topped with a dollop of peanut butter cream.


I think I've already gained an inch around my waist since that store opened. Evil, I tell you.

Snacking on wasabi

Have you tried wasabi-flavored potato chips and wasabi-coated green peas? I swear, they're some of the yummiest snacks around. (If you like wasabi, that is.) My husband and I were perfectly happy with these, then I went to Tokyo two years ago and discovered this:

Deep-fried soba (thin Japanese buckwheat noodles) sprinkled with wasabi powder with wasabi-coated soramame (a Japanese broad bean). Even better than the potato chips and peas. The problem is, I have not seen it being sold here in Manila, unlike the other two. I sure hope someone decides to import them in commercial quantities soon.

Un-recipes

In my almost three months of blogging, I have yet to post any of my recipes. I'm reluctant to do so because they're not really recipes. As my husband can attest to, I have a strange way of cooking. I also have a strange way of deciding what to cook in the first place.

First, I decide what my main ingredient will be: fish/seafood, poultry, pork, beef, in that order of preference. Then I go to the produce section of our well-stocked local grocery and stand there looking at what's available and fresh. And while I'm standing there (looking like a fool, actually), I'm making up the dish in my head. What's the base? Will it be dry or a stew? If dry: Marinated? Grilled? Stir-fried? If a stew: Cream-based? Tomato-based? Clear broth? What flavor? Filipino? Chinese? Italian? Then I start loading the cart with the vegetables (there always has to be vegetables!) that I imagine will taste well with the base. After that, I go on to choosing the herbs, spices and what-have-you. Then, with my cart loaded, I stand there looking at it and ask the final question: Is there anything else I can put in the dish?

After I cook one my concoctions, I try to write everything down. But you can imagine that nothing is precise. Because just as I make things up in the grocery, I also have to wing it during the actual cooking. So if I do start posting my dishes here, I think I'll have to label/tag them as "un-recipes" so you know that some creative cooking will be required.

Have some water and fiber

So far, my husband and I have gone to four family/friends' gatherings, and we've four more scheduled until New Year (plus one more after, but I'm not counting that). This being the Philippines, all these gatherings center around food—mounds and mounds of food.

And whether it's potluck or catered, there's never enough healthy food, if you know what I mean. Beef, pork, dessert—that's it. Sometimes, there's chicken or seafood, but rarely is there salad or other vegetables. Pasta, noodles and rice are always the white kind, never whole-grain. My body's screaming for fiber and sweet, fresh vegetables!

This afternoon, after running errands, we ate at a small vegetarian restaurant where we both had our fill of tofu and mushrooms. And at home, we've stocked up on high-fiber muesli, brown rice, and whole-grain pasta. We just had smoked fish for lunch on the 24th, and my next dish will be a seafood and vegetable stew.

Nothing beats fiber for sweeping away all the excesses of the season, however. Okay, make that everyday! The huskier, the better. Fruits, vegetables, whole-grain cereals. Psyllium in particular has had lots of good P.R. lately, but I think that anything whole-grain should be good, as long as you don't get ones loaded with sugar too. I've discovered that the best time to have a high-bulk meal is breakfast—the full feeling stays with you the whole day. But to help the fiber do its job better, you also have to drink lots of water. (In fact, the psyllium fiber supplement I used to take had a warning: if you don't drink at least a liter of water a day with it, the fiber might clog your small intestines. Yuck. That scared me so I stopped taking it, even though I drink more than two liters of water a day.)

So if you come visit us, my offer of hospitality will be "Have some water and fiber!" They're good for you.

Food, glorious food

Christmas is still four days away and our refrigerator is about to reach its load limit. We're receiving food more than anything else this year. I'm also about to run out of air-tight containers. Here's a partial list of the food we've received as presents so far:

food for the gods
ham
smoked salmon
red wine
liver paté
Boursin-style cheese spread
chocolate chip cookies & bars (loads of this! all different from each other)
candy canes
polvoron
cheese tarts
caramel tarts
pears and oranges
caramel-coated peanuts

It's a good thing we've been too busy to eat much!

Rice cooker cooking

I don't know why I never thought of it before when it's so obvious, and I've made flavored rice in the past (although in an ordinary pot).

I've been trying to use up a sack of jasmine rice and I've been cooking variations of Thai fried rice to do so. Our staple at home is brown rice so no one's going to eat plain white rice, even if it's jasmine. But fried rice requires that you cook the rice first then cook it again in a wok with the other ingredients. Then this morning, I suddenly realized that I can just add the flavor directly into the rice cooker. So I dissolved a pack of curry mix into the water needed for cooking the rice. Halfway through, I dumped a can of drained mushroom pieces into the rice cooker, mixed it and let it continue cooking until it automatically stopped. Tadaah! Curry rice with hardly any effort.

Should have thought of this ages ago. Now I can't wait to try out other flavors.