GYN gone 2 years.

Has it really been two years ma? My mind blanks at the thought. But you are never far from my thoughts, regardless of what these are. As an amazing accomplished woman, whose childhood was a wild ride up the mountains of Baguio, ahead of your time in many things that became trendy way after you already created it....
Missing you and celebrating your life.

Another year RSM

Hey dad, it's been 22 years. Seems like yesterday. Yet the fond memories and the funny stuff become a great topic for table talk, specially tonight's Thursday Night Dinner.
We had Mexican food, ground beef tacos (with that la preferida mix the grandkids enjoy) and chicken fajitas from the little mexican grocer down the street. I also made black beans and rice, I sauteed a sofrito with the beans and added rice, along with onions. I hand made my tomatoes, cilantro and onion side, had whole wheat, corn and flour tortillas, sour cream and quesadilla cheese and shredded lettuce for the mixings and fixings. I should've had shrimps, crabs, inihaw na baboy or lechon kawali in your honor, hmm, maybe next week.
Here's to missing you dad, but you'd have been 90 by now.

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.