Italian Beef

It was a quiet Thursday Night Dinner, no Bells, No JB and chinoys. But fun none the less with just the Dawnamites. Even Miggy decided to dance the night away after work.But, food goes on. I learned by just listening a quick way to do Italian Beef. The last time I made it for TND, I cooked it stove top and finished it oven, with lots of this and that. I heard from a friend I hang out with that a bottle of pepperoncini peppers and juice on beef in slow cooker would work. Skeptical, I added a head of sliced onion, salt and pepper but used the pepperoncini water and only half the peppers in a tall bottle. Wow. Place smelled tantalizing when we came home. With freshly baked italian bread, a quick pasta with meatballs, and some arugula for greens since I didn't want to use my asparagus, we enjoyed the meal. I still have to Julie and Julia challenge myself to cook everything in Kulinarya as is. With my penchant for tweaking, to follow it to the letter will really be a challenge. But.....we'll see and I will also blog it.

GYN at the apartment

Finally took mom's cremains home after months of whining and prodding by sister Patty who claims she cannot move or do anything because mom's cremains comfortably settled in her blue and white room whose doors are always closed made her feel creeped out. So we have her on the top shelf facing all of us at the dinner table, with Santo Nino and two iconic prints the baker/cook and fish (mom's known to be a baker of course and fish is good luck but she's also pisces) and a pretty stained glass something with purple flowers and a small votive candle holder. Hope you're ok with that mom until i can take you home and have a beautiful memorial mass for you at our old church in San Juan. Until then, welcome home.

Julie and Julia

I missed watching this when it came out on the big screen. But watching it on TV wasn't bad. I enjoyed Meryl Streep's rendition of Julia Child and the passion of this blogger who challenged herself to cooking everything in Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It got me thinking. So maybe I won't kill myself with trying all the recipes within one year, but I want to challenge myself to cooking everything in the Kulinarya cookbook collaborated by a group of gourmets and great imaginative cooks who decided to try a book of Filipino dishes to as close as standards as it can get. With the Pinoy penchant for tweaking and pinching this and that and adding this and that and secret this and that, plus our remembered memories of various food palates challenged by what we eat on a daily basis....hmmmmm.

Of course, I have to push myself to start. hahaha that would be the challenge in itself. So I may start tomorrow or next week and then blog it. Remember, I was known to be a good cook, but the mistake was not learning the kitchen food. Regrets weigh me down when I could have learned the secrets of mang Lucio and mang Emo, and I was lucky enough to have the baking recipes of Rolling Pin written down and usable, including secrets of mang Ernesto for his Vienna Cake icing. But truth is, tamad lang ako. i was known for spaghetti sauce, lasagna, Turkey and trimmings, etc. But I had to learn to make lengua and paella and still struggle with the perfect pancits.

Time will tell. Here I go again.

JB and TND

So TND had 2 types of pasta in honor of JB's 34th birthday. I made the clam pasta and a sausage and beef marinara for a baked penne with asiago and mozzarella cheese. He enjoyed this and that's all that matters. Come to think of it, 34????I can feel my bones (with osteoporiosis) creaking with the memories. Now he's a dad, with two kids and a wife, an obsession for baseball cards and blogging.....sigh. where did that little boy go? somewhere deep in the hulking frame is still the pasta monster!

Quandary

So I made lambing my eldest apo Hunter last Thursday night dinner and he said "ow, ow" and of course I said =, after I was poking him on his arm, what do you mean Ow? I am making you lambing! Next day i find out that there's a big huge pasa on his arm. So of course I asked. Seems like an over zealous church elder, a pillar of that church community they go to, decided to take it upon himself to force Hunter to go to the church service since he was outside standing around. Au contraire, his folks allowed him out because he was getting antsy. forcing a 10 year old who sasses back is really a challenge. But I do not see any reason why there would be deep painful bruises on his arm from the zealot. And the quandary is that his dad didn't react nor does his mother want to face the guy since he is a higher up, popular and revered person. Unfortunately, the only witness, just like in any bad movie where the only credible witness is a prostitute whose words hold no water, the only one who saw the incident is a person whose stature is somehow the lowest in the totem pole of the community. But there is a pasa, and that's a form of abuse. no amount of apology (and the person did not apologize or acknowledge to the parents) will erase the suddent break of trust. Sure, my kids do not want to destroy this man's good name in the community. but for goodness sake, take the kids away from the program he is heading until he gracefully retires from the program. the kid said that if he had a kid and this happened, he would call the cops. spoken like a 10 year old of today who has been taught that no one should take abuse from either parents, relatives much less a stranger. and to keep him in the program is like living next to an offender, you're always going to fear a break down, or retaliation or, even the kid's emotional scar. do something or i will.

Good Bye Julius

Patty has had Julius long before even Hunter was born. Smart little sheltie who adored her and was her constant companion all these years. But at age 13, it was downhill all the way after he ingested rat poison which made his inner lining bleed. Came the prognosis of cancer, and poor Julius. But such a brave dog, no whining, no moaning. When Patty went down that fateful Saturday, when she came to the store, she was pale, sweaty, out of breath and enough to make me ask dawn to take her to the emergency room which became a 3 day stay in the critical care unit because she lost a lot of blood and they had to pump 4 units of blood into her, Julius had to stay with Dawn and kids. By the time she got out, her concern was for him and not for herself. I told him not to leave her, to hang in there for her.And so he did. The mag-amo were both bleeding and losing blood together. He did wait for her. Allowed her a week more of his presence but he was fading fast. She made the ultimate gamble of chemo for him but this was the final straw. on Friday, January 22nd, when Kylie and I got to the vet hospital, Patty and he were in a visitation room. He perked up and looked so alert that I had that little queasy feeling that we could be making a mistake. But after our petting hands lifted off him, he immediately slumped into Patty's chest. He just waited for all of us. He was gone even before the 2nd shot was done. I'm outta here. He looked like he was fast asleep. I remembered mom when she sneezed twice and was gone. The crying came, and the sadness. Hunter. Maddie, Kylie, Dawn, Anamite and I wailed along with Patty. But I know Julius was glad to rest, he knew Patty was ok, and now he's out there with Mom.
I know it will take Patty many months to heal. She came for dinner and the moment I heard his little collar ringing, i thought he was in the room. I feel the sadness of loneliness settling in on my sister. but she knows we are here for her. But we cannot have the same effect as Julius did with her.

Lasagna & Pizza

One Thursday night dinner, I made pizzas for everyone. Rigo made the dough and I got all the accoutrement , from freshly sliced mozzarella, mushrooms, sliced pepperoni, spinach leaves, basil, fresh plum tomatoes, shredded junk cheese aka pizza cheese by the bag, italian sausage. Each pizza was different and I had them in sheet pans aside from the required 13" rounds. You'd think this would be easy but instead, what a mess, and to bring them in and out of the oven so they were freshly hot.

The next week, I continued my Italian streak and this time got Ricotta and shredded mozzarella/provolone to make lasagna. And yes, I used diced tomatoes, ground beef and Italian sausage for my sauce, Oh and sam, I did make the bechamel sauce, it does make a difference. Layering the cooked lasagna, sauce, cheeses, bechamel sauce and spreading the ricotta was a bit tiring but I did end up making 5 assorted trays. Kudos to me, I still had it in me to come out with a decent lasagna. I usually get lazy and buy the GFS or Stouffer brand of lasagna because I almost think there's no difference, oh wait, mine's not that salty!!! And richer with the amount of stuff I put in it. Another TND done.